the monitor

Gov't, teachers must unite for school sport

Today’s launch of school sport and arts in Lobatse should be a moment of national celebration, a long-overdue end to a five-year drought that has starved young talent and diminished Botswana’s sporting future.

Instead, it risks becoming an exercise in empty symbolism, undermined by the government’s baffling refusal to properly consult the very people essential for its success: teachers and their unions. President Duma Boko’s initiative is welcome. The suspension of these vital programmes in 2019, initially blamed on budget woes but rooted in a standoff over fair allowances for teacher-coaches, has done untold damage.

Restoring them is the right thing to do. However, the manner of this relaunch is profoundly ill-advised and threatens to derail it before it even begins.

Editor's Comment
Human rights are sacred

It highlights the need to protect rights such as access to clean water, education, healthcare and freedom of expression.President Duma Boko, rightly honours past interventions from securing a dignified burial for Gaoberekwe Pitseng in the CKGR to promoting linguistic inclusion. Yet, they also expose a critical truth, that a nation cannot sustainably protect its people through ad hoc acts of compassion alone.It is time for both government and the...

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