This is a tribute to both national pride and sporting excellence and features Botswana’s first-ever Olympic gold medalist. On the flipside is the 4 x 400m men’s team that won silver at the Paris 2024 Olympics. So what this means is that for a while we are going to have these athletes featuring in our pockets and wallets – for those lucky enough to keep a P50 note long enough in their wallets in these trying economic times. Bank of Botswana bravely decided no, not this time and asked politicians to sit on the ‘You Have Been Commemorated For Far Too Long’ bench. This time it is the athletes turn. Remember politicians want to be commemorated all the time. It is like they have ringside seats at the Commemoration ring. You get schools, stadia, highways, hospitals, clinics, toilets, water tanks named after them.
You can't even get a cup of coffee without it being a ‘Public-Private Partnership Brew Sponsored by Politician X’. I think the ultimate goal is to have a verb named after them. I bet one day, we'll have to start saying, ‘I need to go Politician Y myself’ instead of ‘I need to use the restroom.’
