Easter weekend news

We are starved of news. Especially around holidays such as Easter. So the poor journos at Btv have to somehow put together a bulletin to fill that space - a seemingly very tough proposition during Easter weekend.

This is usually the script:

News article 1: Mokolodi residents have spent a quiet Easter weekend with very few motor accidents and vehicle infractions

News article 2: Botswana Police Services recorded five incidents of semausu break-ins and three cases of motorists without seatbelts in Mmutlane

News article 3: In Bonwapitse a drunk villager was charged with stock theft involving three hens and a cat.

News article 4: ‘Here in Pitseng we set off fire crackers to exorcise Judas deeds

On Btv bland news seems a thing. You could be chasing a mongrel guilty of eating unfertiliszed eggs and make it into the evening news. You could be having an argument about ownership of mangoes because the tree canopy straddles the adjoining yards and make headlines. Btv news represents the stereotype of a third world TV news bulletin found in almost every third world country ever made. Everything about them scream third rate.

Some places do not make the news. If they do make the news it is usually because the minister had visited their kgotla and the excited villagers have about 20 seconds of fame during question time. This is the time where you hear questions like ‘Minister, when are we going to have more schools in our village? I have been forced to send my son to Driving School some hundreds of kilometres away because we do not have enough schools in this village’. To some villagers Driving School is some kind of tertiary education facility! Of course, for a lot of small village residents, dullness is part of the appeal. They don’t want the kind of excitement the towns and cities have. They don’t want to live in a place where the New Year is traditionally welcomed the same way that Ukraine troops welcomed the Russian troops but with more bullets. Not all villages are like that though. Some take their images seriously. Maun, more famous in times past for being a village occupied by people who are adept at eating water lilies has bucked the sleepy village bias. Everything comes alive when Easter arrives. Half the residents of Gaborone descend on the village for the horse race. Ok, that would be the official reason for getting the visa from a tough spouse. But horse racing is the last thing on the minds of the arrivals. Newshounds should seriously think about the news value of Maun during Easter holidays. I am not talking the yawnfest where horses race on a dusty patch. That is a side issue. Gabs people are really there to Gomorrhise the poor village. But there’s nothing worse - and I include the Great Depression in that statement

Btv news represents the stereotype of a third world TV news

bulletin found in almost every third world country

ever made.

- than not having GC people in Maun during Easter holidays. Otherwise where would all the juicy stories come from.

We want the full coverage of the Maun Easter shenanigans. You know, the type where men suddenly come down with cases of dementia and forget their dates behind to deal with a huge hotel bill with only a P100 that has been stuck in their bras since the GD6 left GC. GD6 is the unofficial mode of transport to Maun during Easter.

At this point the Motswana Woman Facebook page is now a casualty ward. It is clogged with pretty ladies in Maun holding up large SOS signs written in red like

Help, I just need P200 to at least get to Francistown

Help, I am stuck in a hotel with a 4-digit bill and the guy I came with is nowhere to be found

I saw pictures of my partner in Maun yet he’s supposed to be at the farm

Usually that is where these stories end and we need to know what actually happened to these ladies. That is some juicy palaver that only trained journalists with all their media school armoury can dig up.

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