23 May 2017

There truly  is life after public service.

This is true for former Botswana Police Service Sergeant, Ms Thandie Malebang, who is a living example of success after public service.

She is now a revered and highly sought after Botswana Qualification Authority (BQA) certified motivational speaker and businesswoman.

Ms Malebang is accredited on anger management, emotional intelligence, marital counselling, HIV and Aids, Gender Based Violence (GBV) and stress management.

Her impressive array of renowned clients include Debswana’s Morupule Mine, Botswana Housing Corporation, Attorney General Chambers, BOPEU, Bank of Botswana, Botswana Examination Council, Francistown City Council and the Francistown High Court among others.

Narrating her journey to success in an interview with BOPA recently, Ms Malebang stated that she joined the Botswana Police Service on January  18,2006 as a Constable and resigned from duty last year on April 30 having reached the rank of Sergeant.

She was based at Kutlwano Police Station in Francistown when she decided to call it a day as a police officer, to pursue her lifelong dream of motivational speaking and entrepreneurship.

“During my days at Botswana Police Service, I realised that I had a God given talent of public speaking and comforting people in distress,” She noted.

She said she mastered this trade so well that other people from faraway places started to take notice and different government departments and parastatals started engaging her to motivate their employees.

“They would go to the extent of booking flight tickets and make hotel reservations for me as a sign that they really needed my service,” she said.

She said, all this cross-country invitations to address people in different places were done for free as she was not getting paid to talk and motivate others.

Giving it a thought after some time, she realised that she can actually cash in from her speaking talent and that is when the idea of leaving her job started kicking in.

The career of motivational speaking, she said, required someone who really loved reading, saying she was an avid reader.

Her private library, she said with some measure of pride, had more than 200 books and that she further had around 75 e-books in her phone.

“I am the kind of reader who buys books. Reading is crucial to a motivational speaker because it is through reading that I get to broaden my vocabulary,” said the married mother of two.

Ms Malebang’s motivational speaking talent has also been a hit with the students as she often gets regular invites to schools in Francistown and beyond to address students on matters of delinquency, and other issues such as dangers of alcohol and drug abuse.

She has addressed students at Mater Spei College, Shashe River  Senior Secondary School, Donga, Goldmine and Montsamaisa junior secondary schools, among others.

Apart from making other people feel better, Ms Malebang is an astute business woman who owns laundry business, a cleaning, events managements and supplies company, which she self-funded.

Being a staunch Christian woman, she sometimes offers motivational sessions for free and often works closely with her former employer, Botswana Police Service in some of their local events by borrowing them tables, chairs and tents for free as a way to give back to the community.

“My future ambition is to open my own academic institution to teach my trade and employ more counselors and psychologists,” she concluded. ENDS