Tumelo Setshogo
8 October 2007
The Botswana National Youth Council (BNYC) in concert with the Fredrich Ebert Foundation (FEF) is to embark on political empowerment workshops for youths intending to contest the 2009 general elections.
Invited are young people under the age of 30 years who want to contest both primaries and the general elections.
The council is using one of its programmes 'Youth in Politics' that has been identified as a focus area in the 1996 National Youth Policy. In a press release this week, the BNYC says they are mounting two projects, the first being 'Youth Register and Vote (Monana Ikwadise o Tlhophe) aimed at mobilising the youth for the October 2-22 national voter registration.
The second project - 'Youth Capacity Building for Elections' - is aimed at building the capacity of the youth who would like to contest the 2009 general election as well as any by-elections that may precede the general elections.
Workshops facilitator Ndulamo Morima said the first project would begin "early next year as we were asked to prioritise the two projects by our sponsors. We will start with the capacity building one".
He said the workshops to be held in Ghanzi, Tsabong, Gaborone, Palapye and Francistown would start "this month up to the first week of November". Topics include the 'art of campaigning, resource mobilisation for electioneering, developmental approach and leadership and governance. "Also the first project is targeting the primary elections of Botswana Congress Party (BCP) and Botswana Democratic Party (BDP) which are to be held in November and December respectively," revealed Morima. The second project "will start immediately in 2008 to cater for other parties and, mind you, this is for the benefit of young people intending to contest the primaries," he added. Morima said they would use University of Botswana (UB) Democracy Research Project personnel "specifically Dr Zibani Maundeni, who helped in the developing of a comprehensive training manual which we are going to use in the coming projects".
He added that they are also meeting with voter education trainers twice a week to prepare them for the exercise. Meanwhile, BNYC will hold a mass campaign on voter education on October 13. "We are going to include schools and other youth around the country to encourage them to register during the ongoing process," said Morima. He said the march would start from the Youth Centre "and we will go to the National Assembly for a briefing with (Tonota MP) Pono Moatlhodi, the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association (CPA), Botswana branch."
He said the districts would stage their own demonstrations to sensitise the youth.
On other developments, he said the council was bracing for district committee elections ahead of the October 26-28 annual general assembly in Kang.
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