Mogoditshane: a town of squalor, splendor and survival
Whenever the name Mogoditshane comes up, one thinks of many things: traffic, crime, scores of people, goats, political rallies, hustlers, car parts, second hand dealerships, Saverite, BDF, Millennium,
Trekkers, Staywell and even the famed, RraBeisane.
There is a joke that the goats in the village have adopted human behaviour so much that when they get to a roadside, they look left, right and then left again before crossing to the other side.
Mogoditshane, which falls under the Kweneng district, is a place of many stories - there is always so much happening there!
This could be largely attributed to its size and population.
I have always found the village fascinating because while it was only established around 1988, it has flourished into a huge urban dwelling at a really fast rate, and boasts amenities that include clinics, schools, malls, and dealerships among other things.
In the 1990s, the then sparsely populated and sleepy village was under-developed with many patches of forest.
As the years went by, people started occupying land and building houses slowly, and it grew. Many foreigners arrived with their shrewd business sense, and they bolstered the area’s economic activity - from the Nigerian car dealers who always offer a ‘discount’ and confidently approach clients, chest puffed out, and boisterously saying, “Eeh, my friend, let’s talk ‘business’ now,” to the criminalminded who always suggest some dodgy backdoor offer at a “good deal.”
In Mogoditshane one cannot afford to drop their guard because while some of the people could be good-natured, the truth is that there will always be someone trying to con or rip you off.
The village has an air of a jungle, where ‘survival of the fittest’ is the operative phrase. There they always remark: “Fa o bonya, o jelwe!” (You wink you lose!)
Mogadishu, as many love to call the place, is a hive of activity and has a loud heartbeat.
It is both a place of squalor, struggle and poverty that exist side by side with affluence, success and wealth.
Over the past few years, the population in Mogoditshane has ballooned from 14, 246 in 2001 to 57, 637 in 2001, with the latest census taking the numbers close to a staggering 90 000 - 88 098 to be exact. Mogoditshane is a semi town not only because it is densely populated and lies on the periphery of Gaborone, but also because the infrastructure is improving, and localities are mushrooming at high speed.
Urban migration has contributed to the growth of Mogoditshane; people are flocking here for work and vocation, and in search of greener pastures. Most notably, accommodation is cheaper.
The most annoying thing about Mogoditshane was, and still is the high crime rate. Most people there have experiences of being robbed. There is a lot of crime largely due to unemployment.
Nowadays ‘Mogadishu’ is a hive of activity with dingy, dodgy and seedy places where a lot of bad stuff happen - drug selling, killings, rape, robberies, hijackings, and prostitution among others. It also has a night life that is always popping, with ‘mzobozobo wa mjondolo’ vibe, making it a fertile ground for crime.
It is a village that never sleeps. There are always people up and about, even late at night and in the wee hours of the morning, that one cannot help but wonder: What are they doing, and where are they going?