Gaborone — Who says a mom-to-be cannot be a champion? Naledi Diketso, better known as Solo, defied all odds when she was crowned the winner of the music business show Lyric Leap's first season at eight months pregnant this past Friday.
Solo stepped onto the Lyric Leap stage as the second act of the night, following Blair Wa Seopedi and preceding Hazel, both of whom had delivered performances that made their ambitions unmistakable. With three backup singers behind her, Solo belted into the microphone, delivering a jazz-infused track enriched with a distinctly gospel undertone as she sang, motho ga a fele!, a bold declaration that she, too, was there to win.
A P30 000 cash prize and a recording deal both designed to help launch a sustainable music career hung in the balance.
Only one of the three finalists could take the title, based on strong vocals and the best original song.
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Solo took the audience to church, singing as though her life depended on it. And in many ways, it did, for the little life growing inside her depended on nothing less than her very best.
Solo joins a long line of inspirational female performers who refused to press pause on their dreams due to societal expectations around motherhood, especially in the public eye. One striking example is the 2025 America's Got Talent winner Jessica Sanchez, who won the competition at nine months pregnant. Her victory became a historic moment for AGT and a powerful testament to women balancing ambition and motherhood.
Also notable is comedian Ali Wong, who filmed her 2016 Netflix special Baby Cobra while seven months pregnant. In an interview with ELLE Magazine, Wong said she wanted to use her pregnancy as a source of power, a weapon, not a weakness.
In her opening monologue, she joked that many female comedians disappear once they fell pregnant, for reasons known only to them.
Yet her point cut deeper: decades ago, a baby bump was something to be concealed, restricted by strict rules and social prohibitions. What should have been a joyful experience often became a "stumbling block" for women in the workplace, a question of whether they could keep up and remain productive.
For women in the limelight, pregnancy was often perceived as a threat to their attractiveness, and by extension, their opportunities.
But the tide has turned. Women like Solo are boldly and publicly chasing their dreams, even while expecting.
Those old rules and social prohibitions have steadily lost their hold as women redefine motherhood and dismantle long-standing stigmas.
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Perhaps it is the very life growing inside them that fuels their determination, a powerful motherly instinct that makes them, against all odds, a force to reckon with.
When she entered Lyric Leap, Solo, a wife and mother-to-be had recently lost her job. For Sanchez, also a wife and expectant mother, the road had been long, marked by years of auditions and earlier setbacks. Yet something about carrying new life seemed to push them both to fight harder than ever before.
A testament that motherhood is the ultimate dream-catcher, not a dream killer.
BOPA
