UDC PRESIDENT WILL OPEN G- WEST INTERSECTIONS

war was won on the basis of the size of an army: the larger the size, the better an army’s chance of winning the war. Thus citizens were people who were useful to the nation- state. In 2022, hundreds of thousands of Russian troops are losing to Ukrainian drones. Citizenship also worked when people counterbalanced rights with responsibilities. Today the same people who don’t want to discharge their responsibilities as citizens want to claim their rights as citizens. With one of the worst scores for labour productivity in the world, Botswana fits the latter description very well. Countries should be able to pick and choose whom they want as citizens and citizenship should be earned. Why should a nation be obliged to provide for people who don’t feel obliged to contribute to its development? Citizenship should also not be permanent but those who served a nation diligently should be allowed to retire in dignity and enjoy the fruits of their labour. So, don’t be overly concerned about whether the figures of the 2022 Census are accurate ( we aren’t); be concerned about the original meritocratic intent of citizenship being corrupted, such that the willfully useless are considered citizens. Yes, citizenship is still important but we should recognise that not everyone qualifies to be a citizen.

Then- President Ian Khama hoped that the Kazungula Bridge would be a huge feather in his cap. What actually happened though, was that the Bridge has bolstered the profile of his number one political enemy. The Botswana Democratic Party can literally point to the Bridge as one of its achievements but the Botswana Patriotic Front ( Khama’s party) can’t. By the same standard of political irony, it is looking increasingly likely that the Umbrella for Democratic Change ( and not the BDP) will be able to literally point to the Gaborone West intersections as one of its achievements. Children who were born when construction of these intersections began many, many years ago no longer qualify to get Tsabana rations at government medical clinics. At the rate the construction is going, the intersections will be officially opened by a UDC president during the second term of a UDC government.