FRANCISTOWN: Although she had "always been interested in politics", Maria Kusasa's activism started in 2009 when the Botswana Peoples Party (BPP) recruited her to stand as its parliamentary candidate in Tati East.
"When the BPP parliamentary candidate for the 2004 general election declined to represent the party again in 2009, there was a vacuum," the 40-something year old mother of two boys says in an interview. A gender activist who is also a born again Christian, she got the shock of her life when male chauvinists of ruling Botswana Democratic Party (BDP) used the fact that she had lost her husband in 2007 to cast aspersions on her suitability as a candidate.
"Just because I am a woman, I had to go through what a man in my situation would not have to go through," Kusasa says. But she soldiered on undeterred, managing to surprise everybody, including herself, by garnering 2,353 votes to the BDP's Guma Moyo`s 5,396. This was despite the fact that she had joined the party in July, only three months before the elections. "Considering the lack of resources on my part, and the short space of time I had for campaigning before the elections, I did well. The one lesson I learnt is that the people of Tati East want change," adds Kusasa.
