Kgosi Babedi James Manthe (Headman of Records) of Mmopane is an unhappy man. What would elsewhere be celebrated as developments has brought him nothing but misery and sorrow.
With urbanisation catching up with his village, the Headman has watched first hand as the once bushy ploughing fields have overnight turned into sprawling ganglands dominated by criminals that terrorise his people.
 
Only a short distance from Gaborone, the hardships that have come to characterise Mmopane come with the territory.
They are a price one pays for being a heartbeat away from the city.
While development planners had estimated that the population of Mmopane would have grown by 3 percent in 2016, the number has more than doubled from 6 429, according to 2001 statistics to 15 450, in the 2011 statistics. 
This has made the village’s current situation very worrisome. Instead of having a clinic, this huge population is catered by a Health Post. The only primary school in the village is over-populated.
While big enough to have two junior secondary schools, the population is forced to share such amenities with the neighbouring Mogoditshane and Ledumadumane villages as there is none in the village. This means a walking distance of more than three kilometres by students to and from the schools every day.
Infrastructure is far below par. The list goes on and on.
“We need a Post Office where the pensioners can get their pensions. The small Kgotla compound is currently over burdened, serving as both customary court and pay point for the pensioners. Crime is growing at an alarming rate with some criminals now using guns, something we did not know of in the past. The situation is worsened by the fact that the village does not have enough tarred roads and street lights,” said Manthe somewhat lamentably.
While the leadership is disturbed by the underdevelopment of their village, Manthe said there is not much they can do. They are beaten by the government’s reasoning that recession does not permit such development. There could have been a second primary school at Mmopane Block One but recession proved to be a barrier towards its construction.┬á┬á
He said there is a serious problem of illegal immigrants who live in the village. The government deports them and within a few days the same people are back in the country.
Of even greater concern to the Headman are the environmental burdens that his village has to carry as a result of growing pressures from increasing population as well as developments.
Top on his mind is the fact that Batswana connive with foreigners to illegally harvest River and pit sand. While only a few years ago these resources were found in abundance in Mmopane, today the practice of over harvesting through illegal means has left nothing of these natural resources for future generations. Worse still he said, the fines for this crime are not punitive enough to keep perpetrators away from it. 
“First offenders are fined P1000 and others are fined P3000. These are too light to keep these people from the crime as they are business people with lots of money. Their vague reason for causing such serious damage is that the gazetted areas where they can get such resources are far for them as they have to make many loads per day,” he said.
Asked whether they have not considered forming Trusts so that they can through Community Based Natural Resources Management (CBNRM) monitor the harvesting of their natural resources, the Deputy Chief said education on the formation of such Trusts came very late when the illegal operations had already caused irreparable damage. He foresees a worsening level of poverty in the village as lack of land due to expansion of the nearby Gaborone discourages youth to utilise government’s youth empowerment programs.
His sentiments were echoed by the Village Development Committee (VDC) Chairperson, Kagiso Dintwe.
“Migration of people from especially Gaborone for better accommodation at less rent has brought with it serious problems in this village. The only one primary school we have here is so overpopulated that the school does not have an administration block. There are no teachers’ quarters and teachers’ productivity is questionable under such conditions. It is common in the school to have one teacher having to teach forty-five pupils or even more. Instead of having two secondary schools we do not even have one. The government does not want to build schools for us because the officers say the secondary schools in neighbouring villages are not far,” said Dintwe, adding that immense poverty is going to ravage the village in the future.
Like Manthe, he says youth economic empowerment remains a mirage.
His biggest complaint is that it takes too long to process applications for youth empowerment projects and as a result the youth end up giving up.
Furthermore, he said the government’s action to expand Gaborone into Kweneng, which saw people’s fields being taken at very low compensation, will only spell poverty.
He is of the view that many villagers are so used to farming that they do not know how to spend money. As a result, they are going to squash the compensation money and become destitute in the not too distant future.
He said; “The government is going to have to register many people here for handouts in the near future. Government has seriously blundered by changing those people’s way of living.”
Asked why they did not, as the leadership, organise for workshops so that they called together beneficiaries of compensations for counselling to advise them on seeking help from financial advisers the Chairperson said, “Really, how do you call to the kgotla someone who has suddenly become half a million Pula richer? Someone with loads of money is a god. You have to hear everything from him or her. Some are trying to invest the money. But many are buying cars and enjoying themselves.” Both leaders feel that there should be two VDCs ÔÇôone in Mmopane Block One (the newly expanded phase development of village) and another in the bigger village.
For his part, the area, Councillor Pagenyana Phage, said the situation in Mmopane is a cause for concern. He blames the Ministry of Local Government for what he calls sabotage.
“The Ministry is sabotaging my ward. The government relocated people to where there is no water or any development whatsoever. From there, the same government spends as much as P220 million to develop Mogoditshane Block 4; just a bush where there is no one; maybe it is because some rich people are going to be allocated there. As if that is not enough, in a village where a nurse says she helps more than one hundred and fifty or more patients per day, such services are done in a Health Post. This number shows that the village qualifies to have a clinic the size of Block 9 Clinic.┬á The council had shown interest of upgrading the clinic but the government decided to transfer clinics to the Central Government. The ministry of Health, which has always shown weaknesses, is inevitably failing to make any changes,” said the Botswana Congress Party (BCP) politician.
Phage says people’s health does not matter much to the government.
Elsewhere in the country, the maximum number of pupils to be found in a school the size of the one in Mmopane, Phage said, is 880, but Mmopane Primary School has more than one thousand four hundred pupils.  Without enough classroom blocks teachers are forced to improvise by sharing infrastructure, especially during rainy seasons.
Phage says putting over 100 young children in the same classroom all at once can only be a health risk.
“The Council Secretary is a cooperative person but there is nothing that he can do as he cannot pop out money from his pocket for development,” said Phage.
He is reluctant to blame the area Member of Parliament.
He says the MP has long wanted to quit but was stopped by his party for fear of losing the constituency.
“In the next elections I am not going to stand for the ward but the constituency,”
As a way forward all the three men felt the village should be turned into a fully fledged constituency so that the representative will be able to monitor developments from close range as Gabane, the current head office is far away.
