24 Aug 2017

President Lt Gen. Dr Seretse Khama Ian Khama will again confer Botswana Honours and Awards on a number of achievers during independence day.
Among those to be honoured are four sport personalities.

The four include national athletics team coach, Mogomotsi Otsetswe, former Zebras player, Mogogi Gabonamong, 400-metre runner Isaac Makwala and sport administrator, Tebogo Lebotse-Sebego. Gabonamong, Makwala and Lebotse-Sebego will be conferred with the Presidential Certificate of Honour (PCH), an award to recognise outstanding statesmanship.

On the other hand, Otsetswe will receive the Presidential Order of Meritorious Service (PMS), an honour awarded to any person for actions or services benefiting Botswana or any community or organisation therein in any particular field or sphere and for any acts or devotion to duty.

Otsetswe has proven to be instrumental in the development of athletics in the region.

Testament to Otsetswe’s achievements is that the coach has had some of the countries like Maldives and Zimbabwe assign him some of their athletes for training.

He has also guided the likes of Baboloki Thebe, Karabo Sibanda and Amantle Montsho, some of the country’s top athletes.

He was assigned the national relay teams, which competed at the IAAF/BTC World Relays Bahamas 2017 held at the Thomas A Robinson National Stadium in Nassau.

The 4x 400 metres men’s relay team won silver medal while the 4x 400 metres women made history by qualifying for the World Championships, for the first time.

He was also assigned the team to the recent IAAF World Championships held in London early this month.

In an interview, Botswana National Olympic Committee (BNOC) chief executive officer, Tuelo Serufho said honouring sportspersons was a good development.

Serufho said sport people did a lot through among other things, making Botswana known to rest of the world.
“Some of our sportspersons are role models to many in the country.

Their performances and achievements epitomise what we are and or what we stand for as a nation,” he said.

Serufho further said sportspersons were true example of notions such as ‘hard work pays’ and had demonstrated good traits and values such as perseverance, discipline, commitment and excellence.

“Our sports men and women have shown that small as we are in terms of population and with our limited resources, we are not afraid to punch above our weight and compete successfully against bigger and better resourced countries,” he said.

Further, he said the country did not have highly advanced technologies that developed countries deployed into sport development “but during competition time, Botswana is always giving them competition.”

In that regard, he said he was happy that sportspersons were now getting recognition in decent numbers.
“To them I would like to say congratulations and remind them that this should spur them on to want to achieve more, in any other capacity, in and out of sport,” he said. ENDS