Upon entering the office everything is upside down, the room has not been swept for the past three years, cabinets are not labelled and to make matters worse no budget for equipment to clean the mess". This of course is a figurative imagination which I am afraid reflects exactly the state that she found herself in.
Day one meant business, she had to start the ball rolling. Unions were demanding this and that. Student Representative Councils had their issues, A lot of Batswana Students were stranded outside the country some having resorted to strip dancing, taking drugs and regularly committing suicide. The department of Student Placement was in a mess. Cases of favouratism had been reported. School structures were so dilapidated and without necessary resources. School labs had become classrooms. printers, phones, photocopies were only reserved for secondary schools. This was a sad reality and it was clear from day one that she would step on some peoples toes. I remember in her first few days, she called us (Unions) to her office and told us exactly what she had found on the table, that we were demanding that teachers be treated like other public servants, that accomodation was at its worst and that we had long proposed a model to resolve the levels of operation issue. She agreed with us that yes these things need to be resolved. She pleaded with us and advised that she would do her best to find solutions to these problems and that we must be alive to the fact that her ministry competes with other ministries for resources and she just asked for a small favour which was that while she was looking around for those solutions we must make peace with ourselves and be a little positive because she reasoned that it would be difficult for her to get the necessary support from the public or those in charge of authorising resources if she was found to be asking for resources in order to channel them to a Ministry that was at war with itself. We all agreed to give her time and pehaps it is the time factor that resulted in people losing patience.
