Elecetera II

SANDY GRANT | Monday June 17, 2013 00:00

On and off, I have known Molemane for many years, latterly as a valued member of the Board of the Phuthadikobo Museum. He was like so many of that older generation, a lovely person. With that obligation fulfilled, there were several very different items that did catch my attention. One was the news that Kenya Airways is developing its connections between this country and Nairobi which might, just might bring down the cost of flights to almost everywhere else in the world.

But as week follows week of the BMC enquiry, and one remarkable revelation follows another and with accusations flowing thick and fast, two key figures are yet to appear namely Mr Nilsson, if I am correct, and Mr D. Falepau although by now the Commission must have seen everybody here worth seeing, some of them twice, and visited all the varied places  around the world with banks holding BMC accounts. Surely by now it must have been a simple matter to discover which individuals opened those accounts, when and even why? And surely by now we should have been given the names of the people who have been BMC Board members over, say the last five years, and not just a chance name here and there?  But then no newspaper, as far as I could pick up, was able to report on the cleaning up, upgrading and repainting of the hugely controversial multi-purpose building in the centre of Mochudi.

This enormous building has been left unused for many long years as the inability to achieve any compromise between the Kgatleng Council and the owner meant that demolition appeared to be the inevitable outcome.Demolition, environmentally a disastrous outcome, would, of course, have devastated the centre of Mochudi for weeks on end.But with every indication now being that the building is being prepared for use it must be supposed that compromise has somehow been reached. For this breakthrough to be achieved, for this Gordian knot to be cut, both parties must have made the concessions which had previously eluded them. Rumour has it that Satar Dada has purchased the derelict building and is now busy putting it into proper shape. Maybe, maybe not.

But given the sheer intractability and duration of this particular problem it really is surprising that there have been no reports about these new developments, about the decisions that have been made which justify its costly repair and re-painting and the concessions and conditions which must underlie such a tremendous change.  My own assumption is that a new owner, if indeed there is one, would have set out their stiff pre-conditions before becoming involved in what could be a wobbly kind of commercial undertaking. It has long been a mystery to me how this preposterous building could ever have been given planning permission. It is so totally out of scale, it is wrongly located, and its impact on an already hopelessly unplanned centre of Mochudi is likely to be devastating.  The key factor has to be transport in an area which is already seriously congested and underplanned. 

The multi-purpose building does possess its own parking area which was presumed to be adequate for both commercial deliveries and for residential needs. With an increase in traffic through central Mochudi in recent years, however, additional vehicles, some of them inevitably being very large, will be using this access road are likely to cause a major mess. Both parties, the Council and the owner, would have been well aware of this problem and could have looked at the back of the building to see if a solution could be found there. My guess, and it is only a guess, is that negotiations could have taken place over the ownership and use of the sizeable area formerly used by the old Community Centre and Brigades. If all those buildings, now effectively abandoned, were demolished, additional access would be achieved from the Mochudi-Sikwane road reducing the congestion on the other side and a very sizeable parking area would be opened up. In contrast to the Mochudi scenario, there have been regular reports in several newspapers of the doings of the Parliamentary Public Accounts Committee which appears to be doing an excellent job.

For some reason, I have no particular recollection of this body - a failing on my part, previously poor coverage or a less robust performance in the past by PAC members?  Now belatedly I can recognise what an important job it has to do. Lastly a quick mention of the widespread concern about the future of a shop, just one shop - effectively the country's one and only accessible bookshop, Exclusive in the Riverwalk Mall in Gaborone which has been closed now for several weeks.Will it re-open or is it a gonner - to our great loss?