06 Jan 2014

Morobosi Festival started some few years ago as an annual entertainment draw card for Tswapong music revelers, but the annual event has become synonymous with revellers from some parts of the country who throng a farm in Manaledi for a dose of music to welcome the New Year.

According to the organiser, Phaf Phafana, the two-day event held from the last day of the year and beginning of the year in the last five years had been a success.

Phafana said in an interview that the event with a family program during the day and more dance music during the night was a youth oriented having started after the realisation that the youth from Tswapong area who were based in urban areas were no longer visiting their villages during the festive holidays. Rather, he said some opted to visit other places of interests in and outside Botswana.

Therefore, he said they initiated the event to serve as a platform for the youth to interact with the community, promote village tourism and benefit others economically who normally sells their wares during the event.

“This is beyond the region but now draws interests from other parts of the country as well,” he said.

Also, he highlighted that another idea behind Morobosi Festival was to use it to highlight the landmarks synonymous with Tswapong area.

“There are many features associated with Tswapong and we saw this as an opportunity to draw people to our area so that they may learn more about the area especially our way of living,” he said.

He said they also saw it fit to incorporate cultural activities saying besides being entertained by local and international artists/DJs, revelers were also treated to cultural cuisine and cultural artifacts which were normally on display during the day’s activities. “The community is involved since we allow them to sell traditional beer, branded artifacts such as Phafana so as to boost the village economy.”

Besides the music festival, he said there were Morobosi events on July and September in various places in Tswapong. The July event, he said was held in Moremi to promote Moremi Gorge which was run by a trust in the village. Phafana pointed out that they had plans to grow the Morobosi brand further saying some South African had already shown interest on the initiative.

“We had DJs from South African gracing our occasion.”

He said they intend introducing mountain hiking in the future and they had already consulted Botswana Tourism Organisation. “We want to have a calendarised type of an event.” Also, he said they had applied for land where they would have a cultural park.

He said they had also incorporated giving back to the community as part of their initiative adding that some profit generated was donated to a primary school in the Village Development Committee (VDC) of the hosting village. Last year, he said they donated a full set of computer to Manaledi Primary School and some profit to Manaledi VDC. One of the international acts who graced the event was Jodie Denis aka Aluku Rebels from the United Kingdom who was equally impressed with the initiative.

DJ Aluku Rebels who had been producing South African music said there was great talent in Botswana. Besides, DJ Aluku Rebels, other acts were the local DJs. ENDS