Patricia Maganu
4 November 2009
column
After the eviction of Botswana representative from the Big Brother Revolution (BBR) house, Batswana have cried foul saying that Botswana was one of the countries given a raw deal because she only had one housemate, while others had as many as four housemates.
Botswana was one of the countries that had a single housemate in the house, Kaone Ramontshonyana was evicted last week after being paired with South Africa's unpopular Liz. As he was the only one, Kaone's eviction meant that Botswana's chances were automatically killed. Most Batswana say that after Kaone's eviction they have stopped watching Big Brother because they feel cheated. Countries like Nigeria and Namibia originally had three and four housemates respectively which, viewers say, increases their prospects of winning. One BBR follower, Leslie Thekiso said she had lost interest in the show because there was nothing to watch anymore.
"We had one person in the house and he is out so why would we want to watch it now?" she said. It was very unfair, said Thekiso, who goes on to say that she is of the view that other African countries look down upon Botswana. "I do not know what it is about this country that makes other African countries not to take us seriously.
If Nigeria or South Africa had gotten one housemate in the house there would have been a huge uproar," she said. She said that Big Brother added salt to injury by introducing the pairing system. "When they paired Kaone with Liz we all knew that he would be gone sooner than anticipated because no one seemed to like Liz, even the organisers had to know that by pairing the housemates they were killing others' (like Kaone's) chances," she said. Twenty-one-year-old student Bone Kaisara, says that she knew from the word go that the show would be boring and unfair.
"It was like Big Brother organisers were trying too hard to bring something new to the table but forgot that they were doing the show for the people," she said. She said that someone in Botswana should speak out because the show is clearly unfair. "The grand prize is a lot of money and for that reason the organisers should have made sure that whoever gets to take the money home is a deserving candidate. Kaone and other evicted housemates had strong chances to take the money but it was not fair," added Kaisara.
Kaisara further says that the show looks like it was fixed for Nigerians to win the money. Another Big Brother follower Kago Mhale says that it was not fair how the game was set this time around. "Unlike other countries Botswana had only one representative and when he was voted out it was all over for Botswana," she said. She said that the organisers of the show never took the time to explain to Africans how the housemates were chosen such that some countries had the advantage over others. "Kaone was a very strong player but there were just too many odds against him," she lamented.
Mhale said that Kaone was very unfortunate as he was a strong contender for the money but the pairing of housemates killed his chances. "I believe that if Kaone had not been paired with Liz he would not have lost the money but he had to go because the viewers did not like spoiled Liz," she said. Many Batswana said that they lost interest in the BBR show the day that Kaone was evicted and now watch only on Sunday when it is the eviction show and just out of curiosity as to who takes the big bucks.
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