Underfunding hinders BNF women’s mandate delivery

Newly appointed Botswana National Front (BNF) Women’s League president, Katlego Morolong, believes that the lack of funding is a major barrier to achieving the party’s goals. She told The Monitor on Sunday that the BNF does not have a gender policy or action plan in place, which the party is hoping to address in the future.

Morolong stressed the importance of these policies in advancing the rights and opportunities of women in the BNF. She was appointed BNF Women’s League president after Dr Bonang Nkoane resigned from both the party and the position.

Nkoane’s resignation allowed Morolong to step up and take on the role.

“The BNF Women’s League is working hard to raise funds to support women candidates during the upcoming general elections. We hope that the UDC will complete allocating constituencies soon, so that we can set a realistic budget for supporting female candidates,” she said.

“In the 2019 General Election, UDC deployed more men than women in both local government and parliamentary elections, we hope that this will change in the 2024 General Election.”

She cited findings from a recent research that found out that only 25% of the party’s central committee is female, short of the 30% representation required by the party’s constitution.

Morolong said they could do better to achieve gender equality and equal representation.

The BNF WL president added the research also revealed that the League needs to focus on capacity-building and mentoring programmes to increase female representation.

She noted that the report also identified options for improving gender equality and the advancement of women within the party. “We are committed to implementing these recommendations and increasing the number of women in decision-making roles,” she continued. Morolong said the league will advocate for more women to be elected to key positions within the central committee.

She believes this is vital to advancing gender equality within the BNF and increasing female representation in politics.

Currently, in local government, BNF has 129 councillors and only nine are women while at the parliamentary level, the party does not have a female representative.