29 Aug 2017

Mr Lucky Mokgatle, 30, is a lucky man as his name suggests.

However, his road to riches was not smooth sailing or was it paved in gold.

He travelled to strange and unfamiliar places in search of survival and riches.

Mr Mokgatle met challenges  along the way which nearly broke him down, as he sometimes slept with an empty stomach and on floors without blankets.

However, all that is now history as the young man is now the proud owner of African Jacana Botswana.

A graduate of Limkokwing University, Mr Mokgatle says a tertiary qualification does not owe anything to its holder nor does it hold its beholders to explore other opportunities out of line with their qualifications.

“This is because degree holders are no longer indispensable, as a number of them are unemployed,” notes Mr Mokgatle.

Speaking in an interview, Mr Mokgatle said he shifted his focus from pursuing a career in the media industry after graduating.

He said he discouraged while in his final year after realising that many students were graduating with the same qualifications while the local industry could not accommodate them.

Despite losing hope along the way, Mr Mokgatle’s expectation was to get a job in radio, television or the print media like some of his colleagues.

After graduating, he travelled to Maun where he only knew a friend that he had met while at school.

He relocated to Maun because he no longer enjoyed city life and the unemployment rate.

Initially he targeted settling in either Maun, Kasane or Ghanzi and he ended up in Maun where life was also tough.

With only P2 000 from his savings, Mr Mokgatle landed in Maun in June 2014.

He remembers waking up early in the morning from a friend’s family house to go and distribute his CV.

He targeted private companies, private schools, restaurants, supermarkets and other organisations.

After a few days running around, he was offered a job as a tutor.

However, it was not smooth sailing for Mr Mokgatle after getting a job because mishaps followed him as he had to find accommodation where he would stay comfortably.

He recalls how on that Friday afternoon he ran around Maun until he found a roundavel in Kubung ward that he paid P400 from his savings.

“At this point the money I had brought with me was now getting finished, and I paid for a house yet I did not have furniture.” he recalled.

Getting to his friend’s place that evening, Mr Mokgatle took his bag which only had his clothes and went to his rented house which was empty with no electricity or curtains.

Without a bed to sleep on, he says he used his bag as a pillow and lied on one of his t-shirts for the whole night.

He recalls how the following morning, without a bucket and bath tub to bath in, he just woke up and sat by the door thinking about the moment, not the past or the future.

Mr Mokgatle says he relied on fat cakes and sweet aid for the next few days, and that at times he would eat at his friends that he had met in Maun.

The situation changed after he got paid at the end of the month, and he bought a bed and other household furniture.

Maun was now home to the man as he had made friends from different walks of life.

One of the friends he met, who was a tour guide by profession, took him for a game drive at Moremi Game Reserve.

Having never experienced such a scene before, Mr Mokgatle was enthralled by the beauty of nature and animals.

After working as a tutor for almost a year, Mr Mokgatle left and got another job as a general manager at Senthaga Guest House  and Safaris.

His duties entailed overseeing the overall operation of the business from bookings to marketing.

While at Senthaga, he remembers how he was inspired by a tourist from Lebanon who told him that “if you want poverty in your family, work for somebody.”

He joined the tourism industry with the formation of his company, African Jacana Botswana.

With the experience he got from Senthaga and the networking he had made, Mr Mokgatle believed that it would not be such difficult to penetrate the market, adding that his personality of helping clients helped him to interact with people from all over the world.

Even though not well-settled, Mr Mokgatle believes his business is growing and believes that in two years he will be one of the biggest safari companies in Maun.

He operates a mobile tour business with hired cars and is looking forward to getting his own cars in the future.

Asked how his business was funded, he said with agents abroad it was easy to acquire clients from abroad who paid in advance. ENDS