16 May 2017

Around 26 teams are expected to participate in the inaugural Mayor’s Five-Aside corporate tournament charity event to be held at Bank of Botswana Grounds on May 20.

Briefing the media, Mayor of Gaborone City Council (GCC), Kagiso Thutlwe said the council has collaborated with Mega Sport to hold the charity event, adding that they were expecting participation of both men and women teams.

He said as a mayor of Gaborone he had come up with a couple of initiatives in an effort to take the city council to the people.

He said this came after perceptions that they only took the council to the people through Kgotla meetings.

"We have found it important to go beyond Kgotla meetings so as to be interactive with corporate people and residents of Gaborone. If you remember very well, in the past years we used to have breakfast meetings with corporate companies but we are opening our doors to engage each other to see how best we can join hands to develop the city,” he said.

Furthermore, he said he was the ambassador of 90-90-90, a UNAIDS programme whose main target was to ensure that by 2020, 90 per cent of all people living with HIV would know their status.

He said the 90-90-90 was the 2014 Paris declaration, signed by mayors throughout the world where they vowed to have healthy people in their cities and those who had been affected by HIV to have access to medication.

“And as far as this is concerned, we have realised that our brothers were not taking part in issues of testing for HIV and as a mayor, a man and young person, I have to make sure that we bring on board men in sport by encouraging them to test for HIV,” he said.

Botswana, he said had taken a decision that all those who were infected should immediately take medication without delay, adding that for people to be healthy by 2020, it was important to test early and take medication.

Mega Sport representative, Seabo Gabanakgosi said the tournament will include women as a way of encouraging them to participate in sport.

He said women participation in sport in this country was worrisome adding that their desire was that all teams taking part should ensure that they had women team. ENDS