Moshana: where poverty is inescapable

BABOKI KAYAWE
Staff Writer | Monday October 4, 2010 00:00

The sky is overcast, and women walk home with buckets of water drawn from a standpipe balanced on their heads, while men drive donkey carts loaded with drums of water.

In pairs and threesomes, old women balancing their frail frames on walking sticks, some accompanied by youngsters, complete the morning scene of Moshana.

As palpable as poverty is, a drive through the village makes one feel, breath and almost touch the abject standard of living here. Some 20 kilometres northwest of Kanye, the principal town of BaNgwaketse, poverty in Moshana is visible even to a blind man.

A woman in her late 30s sits in a dilapidated structure behind which there is a tent. Her home is not fit even for goats and she sits sadly in a wheelbarrow that multi tasks as a chair. The Monitor team enters the yard only to discover that the woman is a teenager of only 17.

Hers is misery; there is no better descriptor of the story of her life. She blames it on her lack of education which she says will forever tie her to the bondage of poverty.

“It is sad that I cannot read nor write,” she says. “As a result, I cannot find a job.”

Seventeen-year old Sethunya Lentwe would have loved to go to school like other teenagers her age.Unfortunately, her mother, who worked in Gaborone, did not register her.

Lentwe has always known her village to be like this and intended to bring about change for the better, beginning with employment.

“But there is nothing I can do now,” she says. “Even the Ipelegeng Programme rejects me because I am below 18.”

So keen is she to get an education that Lentwe recently registered with the Department of Non-Formal Education for literacy classes.

Twenty-seven year old Onneetse Rasedikela is also trapped in the clutches of poverty. Unemployed, she lives with a boyfriend who has respiratory problems and four hungry children.

“It is terrible,” she simply states. 

Thatching the only hut in their yard, the suffering in this family is no different from the Lentwes’. Unemployment is the running reprise of every conversation here.

For Rasedikela, things took a turn for the worse five years ago when her boyfriend, 32-year old Olerile Tekelelo, left his job at the quarry - the only source of employment in the village - after he was diagnosed with pulmonary tuberculosis and other respiratory diseases.

Out of work and in serious health trouble, Tekelelo says the social transfer system is discriminatory. “I am neither registered for the food basket nor for the housing project,” he laments.

The goats in the backyard are his only source of livelihood. But they are not his; he only looks after them on somebody else’s behalf who pays him with 2.5kg pocket of sugar and the same amount of mealie meal. 

The controversial quarry has cut production levels, resulting in more unemployment. However, Kgosi Seate Marumo says alcohol abuse is mainly to blame for the abjection of Moshana, though he adds that the problem is declining.

Another root cause of poverty is the abundance of impalas (ditholo), which destroy crops in this region. Kgosi Marumo says as a result, people have developed a despondent attitude to ploughing.    

Generally, people do not utilise anti-poverty government initiatives like CEDA’s Young Farmers Fund and the government’s Integrated Support Programme for Arable Agriculture Development (ISPAAD).

Kgosi Marumo says he has teamed up with the Member of Parliament, councillors and the Department of Culture and Youth to educate the youth on various programmes available to them.

But the traditional leader complains that “a creeping tendency of laziness” that relies on the Setswana culture of compassion and sharing. “I am not saying people should not give,” he says. “But let us be independent and groom our children to stand up on their own feet.”

Towards poverty alleviation, Barclays Bank of Botswana recently launched a special affordable housing project for Moshana. The bank has set aside P1 million to build 32 houses for 30 families with Habitat for Humanity as the implementing partners.

Sixteen houses are currently being built under the programme. The plan is to build another 16 units when the first batch is completed some time this month, making it the biggest - and most durable Christmas present ever for the beneficiaries.