Without characterising the days or commenting on how they were, we congratulate you, Sir, on completing 365 days as Head of State. We have noted with the appointment of Commissioners to the National Planning Commission, and we wish them well in the execution of their duties and Mandate...

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Since its independence from Britain in 1966, Botswana has hosted hundreds of thousands of refugees from Angola, Namibia, Zimbabwe, Lesotho and South Africa. And in these many decades of harbouring foreigners, there was never a single incident of an outbreak of violence between its nationals and refugees. The same can be said about other SADC countries that won their freedom at different times, but certainly decades before ours. They also accommodated foreign nationals in their countries...

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To those of us who have gone through the rite of passage called koma/ukoloka or initiation, as it is called in English, these frequent reports of the deaths of initiates or their spine chilling injuries, are as painful as they are extremely annoying. Every new report about a needless death or hospitalization feels like a fresh thrust of a dagger in one’s heart. We were a group of well over three hundred boys when I went through initiation back in 1957 in the Tzaneen area, and all of us returned to our homes safely...

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In an interview wherein he was asked to demonstrate the potency of black consciousness, Steve Biko answered in one word, “Soweto”.  That bold statement was an unequivocal reference to the June 16 uprising.  Biko, the founding father of the Black Consciousness Movement (BCM), makes it clear by this statement that June 16 was no fluke or accident of history.  It was a reflection of the determination of a people to fight till the last person – till the last drop of blood of that last person – against all forces of oppression emanating from the theft of their land by the white colonial settlers.  This was the unflinching resolve of a heroic people who would no longer endure the raping of their women...

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That great thinker of the nineteenth century, Karl Marx, had observed that religion was the opium of the people. If he was around in South Africa today, he would have pronounced that, for this June and July, 2010, soccer is the opium of the citizens of this beautiful country. For now, with our levels of patriotism reaching dizzying heights, it seems most of us have forgotten about our class, gender and racial differences. We are united in our support for the national team in a manner and intensity never seen before in our country...

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