11 Sep 2016

The attorney general, Dr Athalia Molokomme, has pledged to adopt Mathangwane Primary School.

Officiating at the 86 anniversary of the school on Saturday (September 10) in Mathangwane, Dr Molokomme said she was ready for the challenge and would work with other stakeholders to see to it that the pledge she made become a success.

Giving a background of the school, she appreciated the village leadership and the then school management for having a vision of investing back then when there was nothing. 

The school, she said, was opened in 1930 and at the time Botswana had nothing but the dedication and talent of the people who found it important start a school and have their children go through to get education.

Investing in education, she said, established a backbone for the human resource seen today and over the past years including herself. 

A lot of sacrifices, she said were made to build structures by molding the bricks from the mud to build first classrooms in the school as people back then survived from being pastoral and arable farming. 

And because there was proper cooperation between the communities everything became easy even when there were challenges.

The school, she said through government support has been developed to be in the state it is today and it has to counted among the successful stories of post Botswana particularly in this time when the country is celebrating its 50th golden jubilee.

Dr Molokomme nonetheless implored parents to be active participants in their children's education adding they should instill discipline from young age and be role models for their children. 

And this will make core-parenting of teacher parent to be easy as they work together as partners for the success of students.

Furthermore, she noted that Batswana at this time they should be proud of their country for the achievement in health care services and education amongst others because compared to other countries, Botswana has reached greater heights on its own.

Reliving his days as a teacher in the school in 1986 teaching standard four class, Mr Mbigani Moseki said the class had 45 students who besides being taught under the trees they excelled in that by the end of  the year all passed their end of year examination.

As disciplinarian himself, he said together with other teachers they guided the classes of those years towards success and majority of their students progressed to secondary schools which at the time they were very few. ENDS