04 Apr 2016

The PlayFest has lived up to its earlier hype of promising to thrill with traditional indigenous games.

In its second year, the fest showed signs that  it will only get bigger and better.

People came in droves especially the young ones who mostly grew up in cities to partake in the traditional games.

The fest games included  diali, crazy 8, skonti ball, koi, diketo, kitchen, tap-tap, ma-roundas, mhele, suna baby, dutch, morabaraba, donkey donkey, hop skotch, black mampatile, dibeke and safe.

Mduduzi Madzwamuse, better known as Mdu, who together with his team organised the PlayFest had indicated earlier in the week that within the changing world, societies and values were also changing and as such the estrangement of indigenous games in the modern household was robbing future generations of the perks of participating in such games. 

Mdu said Batswana’s traditional  games were good for  physical and mental development as players acquired strategic skills, precision/accuracy skills, co-ordinations skills, arithmetic skills through practice and experience as it is evident in a book titled Metshameko ya Setso, Batswana’s Native Games Rule Book.

He indicated that the case of cultural estrangement presented an opportunity to exercise the reinforcement of Botswana’s cultural values in the community and that is what happened at the PlayFest.

Play Fest was aligned to educate and (re)instill the cultural values attached to our native upbringing, in which native games carried community values, and the fest provides  an opportunity to teach the culturally estranged younger generations about such values.

On what plans they have moving forward, Mdu said there will be a 3^rd Play Fest in August, which will be a cultural exchange festival which will invite natives from all over the world to participate. 

“Activations will tour the country and be hosted in big villages and towns, spreading the message of cultural preservation and pride, which will be stretched till 2019 and possibly beyond. Ends