Molebatsi is a 79-year-old father of two brought up in Maitengwe who has been a long time resident of Tlokweng.He speaks Setswana with both a sprinkle of South African Tswana accent and a slight Ikalanga accent, the former a result of 27 years spent in South Africa as a construction worker, where he says he first learnt Setswana along with Sotho, Zulu, Venda and Afrikaans. Despite the languages he learnt later in his life, the traces of his formative years in Maitengwe, where he spoke Ikalanga exclusively - "the language I suckled from my mother" - are evident.
Molebatsi shares his concern about young people's predilection - at the expense of indigenous languages - for English with his 68-year-old wife Gertrude Gini 'Mma-Lindiwe' Molebatsi who, originally from Standerton, South Africa, grew up speaking Sotho and Zulu. Their concern, however, is microcosmic of how the older generation feel about what has been described in some quarters as a crisis of Botswana's mother tongue languages.
