Mokotedi Taps On Youthful Exuberance, Legal Background
Staff Writer | Monday January 16, 2017 16:33
He has about three to four months to have concluded all the necessary processes to have the Labour College, which would be the first of its kind in the country, operational.
He will need to draw from his youthful exuberance and a combination of his socialist, leftist orientation and human rights law background to have the institute ready to open its doors by the end of the first quarter of the year.
Mokotedi says his immediate focus and mandate is to have the college that he leads to have completed the registration and accreditation process by the first quarter so that by the second quarter the institute is ready to roll out in-house short courses aimed at capacitating BOPEU members. As The Monitor visits the pro-UDC and fervent Botswana National Front activist at his African Mall offices, Mokotedi talks about the determination to do things right.
“We are not here to cut corners. We are not in a hurry to open our doors, although, I must confess, with our branding of the building, we have attracted a lot of enquiries from both the public and BOPEU members as to what sort of programmes we are offering or when are we opening for business,” he says.
“ We are not in a race to open our doors yet. First of all, our foremost task is compliance and registration with the Botswana Qualifications Authority (BQA). It requires certain legal processes to make this institution accredited; the registration and accreditation process is in motion already.
We have already shared the 2017 action plan with the board and hope that by end of the first quarter we will have been registered and accredited; that’s our starting point, as a law abiding and responsible citizen institute.
In the second quarter, we will communicate to stakeholders as to when the premium college will open, first for union capacitating primarily; the long term process is to admit those who want to pursue labour related courses with us”, Mokotedi, who boasts of a Masters in Law from University of Pretoria, adds. “I’m still settling in my new role, I’m very excited to be joining the corporate sector, which is also an academic environment.”
Mokotedi also sees the Labour College as a research think tank of the union whose duty is to activate the research component of the college and breath life into the union through cutting edge labour research.
“We need to be responsive to pertinent and current labour and national issues with a bearing on workers’ interests; for instance, we are heading into the budget speech; we should ask, how can the national budget thought be shaped,” he says. To achieve this, Mokotedi says they are forging collaborative partnerships with like-minded institutions in the global village, having already benchmarked with institutions in Germany, Zimbabwe, Uganda, Kenya, and Ghana among others.
Asked whether ILES has any learning programmes for accreditation and registration, Mokotedi told The Monitor, “ Our pot is ready to be dished. We have developed the curriculum for certificate in labour law, labour relations, dispute resolution, shop steward programmes, to name a few”.