04 May 2014

The Motor Vehicle Accident Fund employees from Botswana, South Africa, Namibia and Swaziland have been commended for actively supporting initiatives that seek to elevate culture in the minds of the public.

Botswana Railways chief executive officer, Dominic Ntwaagae praised employees during a handover of a cultural house to Boyeyi Primary School by the employees as part of MVA corporate social investment policy.

The four countries supplied their cultural ornaments which would best help the learners to appreciate different cultures other than their own.

Ntwaagae said the cultural hut had been erected as one of many such structures that stand as beacons and light towers scattered around the country guiding children back to culture.

He urged the school management and the children to look after the donation with pride and fully utilise it for the benefit of the nation.

“This is a matter of significance because there is a growing recognition and concern that we may be losing touch with our heritage as people,” he added.

Ntwaagae observed that culture must be guarded and protected jealously because failure to do so would lead to its inevitable erosion culminating in a loss of identity and consequently significance.

The chief executive officer said with the advent of the new era custom and culture have come under threat as ways are being aggressively eroded and children are the hardest hit as they are exposed constantly to culture that they do not learn from home but from television set.

He said if there was no intervention to restore direction, the nation would lose culture.

He said the children who were tomorrow’s leaders must be brought into the circles of culture to strengthen its wealth so that they could protect and preserve it for their own children.

He said the best place to embark on a culture saving strategy was at the beginning of a child’s education at pre-primary school level.

In addition, Ntwaagae said the 21st century with its diverse benefits had been immensely helpful had also made the world a global village which hah had a negative impact on African culture.

Culture is slowly dissipating into vague memory with its only stalwarts being the elderly of the generation  and as soon as the torch bearers pass on from this world so would culture, he said.

He revealed that villages which used to be the final frontier for culture preservation were slowly losing identity as old ways were forsaken for the new.

“It is for this reason that initiatives of this nature are of such momentous importance,” he said.

He said preserving culture was not an invention of MVA Fund but was initiated by the government in a bid to uphold Batswana culture.

He said it was noteworthy that the national 2016 vision had a pillar that was directly related to culture namely a united and proud nation.

Ntwaagae said the pillar covered the development of Botswana heritage, culture and celebrating the cultural diversity of this nation.

He said culture was the essence and heartbeat of any people as it connected people with their past and gave them history adding that the concept of BOTHO could be traced from culture.

For his part, the chief executive officer of MVA fund, Cross Kgosidiile said four countries came together in sports, culture and to strengthen their relationship with a view to improve service delivery.

He said they decided to leave a community of Maun specifically Boyeyi school with something that could be beneficial to them.

MVA employees also donated two sets of television to the special unit to assist the school in their learning and teaching thereby adding value to the school performance, he said.

He thanked the employees for a commendable job noting that the donation would indeed make a difference in the lives of the learners. ENDS