05 Jun 2016

The International Museum Day commemoration provides an opportunity for the Department of National Museum and Monuments to promote its mandate of conserving, protecting and promoting Botswana’s heritage.This was said by the Minister of Local Government and Rural Development Slumber Tsogwane during the International Museum Day  commemoration at the Domboshaba  National Monument on Friday June 2.

Minister Tsogwane, who is also MP for Boteti West, said the theme of the event, Museums and Cultural Landscapes, was also fitting as it challenged the department to take an active role in sharing and contributing knowledge and expertise in the management and upkeep of cultural landscapes.

“It also gives the department a new impetus to our national aspirations of monument development for diversification of the tourism product as expounded in the just-ended National Development Plan 10,” he said.The minister said one of the initiatives designed for this diversification was to improve and increase tourism products especially in community areas.

Giving an overview of the Domboshaba Ruins, Tsogwane noted that the site, which was declared a national monument in 2006, was an iron-age satellite settlement that existed towards the end of the Great Zimbabwe period.He said the ruins were respected by the local Kalanga communities because they believed they could trace their ancestry and origins from the people who built and occupied the Domboshaba heritage site.

On another note, Tsogwane commended the Ipelegeng Programme for the role it continued to play in the implementation of tourism projects.

He stated that despite the limited financial resources during the NDP 10 period, a couple of tourism projects had been implemented through the Ipelegeng Programme; citing among them those at Gcwihaba, Mogonye and Kolobeng.

“This implementation has seen developments such as access roads, trails, gatehouses, campsites with ablution blocks which in turn has spill over benefits of employment creation in rural areas,” he said, adding that all the materials and labour that was needed for the projects were sourced from the local communities.

On the gatehouse to the Domboshaba monument, the minister indicated that the project had cost government just over P714 000; money which he pointed out had been well-invested in community empowerment as well as rural development.An official of the Botswana Tourism Organisation (BTO) Tshoganetso Ponoesele implored the North East District to capitalise on its proximity to Francistown by developing its tourism sector so as to benefit from the city’ spill-over effect.

She noted further that the BTO had also seen the need to identify tourism hotspots in the district; a process whose end she noted was to bring to prominence such places to ensure that they too contributed significantly to the growth of the country’s tourism sector.

Ponoesele also underpinned the importance of responsible tourism, which she said would allow for local communities to derive full benefits from the various tourism opportunities availed within their localities. ENDS