Kgalajwe�s last glance at the mayoral seat
Pini Bothoko | Friday August 8, 2014 11:05
James Kgalajwe ascended to the mayoral seat after his predecessor, Ephraim Maiketso, suffered a vote of no confidence, which was upheld by the Francistown High Court.
At his office this week, Kgalajwe described to Mmegi how overwhelmed he was at being chosen as mayor of the city and achieving his dreams in the process.
“I took this seat during a difficult time,” he recalls.
“I quickly established that all of the city developments were frozen due to lack of funds while I had to deliver to the community and prove to them my strength.
“I had to think quickly and I came up with the idea of calling all heads of council committees to map out strategies.” During that time, the country was recovering from the global recession and the government’s revenues had been constrained since 2008, resulting in the majority of developments shelved.
He said at that time, Francistown had been hoping for the long awaited design and construction of the storm water drainage master plan, reconstruction of Francistown Stadium, expansion of internal roads and construction of a junior secondary school at Gerald Estate.
The northern city had also hoped to service more land in order to tackle the bloated waiting list.
“I had to think outside the box as the Mayor and come up with ways of addressing these issues. With the committee chairpersons, we managed to visit ministers and inform them about our problems as the second city.
“To date, we have managed to achieve the majority of our plans through the idea I introduced, “ said Kgalajwe.
The Gerald Estate school has been financed, while Cabinet has also approved the storm water drainage master plan. Council has also been addressing the maintenance of our internal roads.
“We have also requested the minister to allow us to allocate partial developed land in order to tackle land servicing delays.”
In the litany of achievements, however, one stands tall. Kgalajwe is proud of the Vision 2022 he developed while in office and the city’s first ever Investment Pitso which will soon be held with the idea of attracting investors Francistown. “I came up with an idea of our Council having a Vision to plan its things along and that is when we came up with the Vision 2022,” he says.
“Since then, I have had sleepless nights in making sure it succeeds. This is my brainchild idea and I am proud of it.”
Vision 2022 plans to transform “Ghetto” into a world-class city and already a massive marketing campaign is underway locally and internationally.
“Our plan is to make Francistown an investment hub of choice. It needs to brand itself in economic terms and this goes hand in hand with success,” he said.
While Kgalajwe will not be contesting in the coming general elections, he does not rule out a future in politics. “I cannot say it’s over because as a politician, it’s hard for us to say no to politics,” he said. “Politics is a community task and if an opportunity present itself, I will grab it.”