UB’s student political newbie wins SRC elections

Diplomatic Student Power (DSP), the newly-formed student movement, recently won all 13 Student Representative Council election posts on offer for the 2023–2024 academic year at the University of Botswana (UB).

The newbie beat long-time-standing student representative parties that have been running student politics, particularly Moono Wa Baithuti, which has been winning most of the posts.

The UB had been congested with parties that are affiliated with political organisations outside the university system.

Moono Wa Baithuti affiliates with the Umbrella for Democratic Change (UDC), while United Student Movement (USM) is linked with the Botswana Congress Party (BCP) and Alliance for Progressives (AP).

On the other hand, GS26 is one other example of such a party affiliated with the ruling party, Botswana Democratic Party (BDP).

DSP chairperson, Topo Kwena and incoming vice president said their association was only formed on March 17 with only the goal to have an independent movement in the university.

“I formed this movement as Topo Kwena together with my vice chairperson Maatla Ngakaagae after we realised that national politics influenced student politics in the sense that the likes of Dithapelo Keorapetse and Duma Boko show up at times of elections to caucus for votes,” Kwena revealed.

However, he said the DSP is an independent movement which is open to everyone in the university regardless of whether they are from BDP or UDC provided they remove the party colours within the university.

Though Kwena said DSP is an independent movement, some students in the university believe that Tshephang Mabaila is the brains behind the whole movement. In response to the claim, Kwena said Mabaila is a student at the university.

“Mabaila is a full-time registered law student at the University of Botswana, so he understands student grievances,” he said.

Giving a general overview of the elections, Kwena said DSP had a convincing win.

“DSP defeated UDC, BDP and USM by more than 300 plus votes on every portfolio which shows exactly that students wanted an independent movement that does not align with any of the outside parties,” he said, adding that the win was an obvious one.

“DSP is happy, the campus is happy, the students are happy, and now what we are going to do is to to put the interests of students before anyone else’s interests because we are not pushing any mandate for national politics.”

DSP will take the reins in the next academic year that commences in August and ends in May 2024.