The newly elected Member of Parliament for Gabane-Mmankgodi constituency, General Pius Mokgware says he has his task cut out for him.
Mokgware is the first Member of Parliament for the area from the opposition ranks following ten years of uninterrupted BDP reign.
The predominantly youth electorate, dominated by disgruntled public servants among them soldiers, police officers, teachers, nurses and parastatal employees voted Mokgware allowing him victory albeit with a narrower margin than had been expected.
Of the ten council seats in the whole constituency, Mokgware’s Umbrella for Democratic Change (UDC) got away with seven.
Clearly putting his experience as a military man to bear, Mokgware is the man behind the ‘operation’.
He revealed in an interview that it was evident that the youth of the villages of Gabane, Mmankgodi and Metsimotlhabe in the constituency were determined to show displeasure on the welfare of their communities.
Infrastructural underdevelopment, unemployment, residential plots applications’ backlogs, poor school results and environmental conservation are some of the issues of great concern in this constituency.
When The Telegraph visited the party’s offices in Gabane on Sunday, Mokgware was already meeting with his team of young and old councilors, together with his campaign team to map the way forward.
“First and foremost we have to set structures to ensure coordination of activities for the envisaged changes to smoothly flow. Communication and access to information should be eased,” he said leading the way towards his office.
Evidently thoughtful, Mokgware alluded to the fact that the unemployment rate in the constituency did not require an expert or statistician to say it is high.
This needed concerted efforts by all stakeholders to at least reduce it. There are a lot of residents of his constituency who are part of the longest waiting list for residential plots-dating as far back as the 1990s. His task for this group is to make follow-ups on applications and try and establish what could have propelled the allocation procedure not to bear expected results; then solve it.
Therefore, Mokgware’s first step to be expected in the first 100 days in office would be to call a high level consultative council which will include the youth, women, business community, farmers and civil servants.
“Next we will set up youth empowerment programs. This will start with my sitting down with them so as to understand what they have in mind and together we set up strategies to implement the ideas. The third step will be to set up development plan for the whole constituency,” said Mokgware.
He explained that he aims to have both short and long-term programs that will be informed by the discussions he will have with the different stakeholders. He is going to ensure resilience by all members of the society by ensuring information is properly disseminated so as to discourage the dependency syndrome and promote self-reliance.
Mokgware’s UDC won the election by 7155 votes. He was followed by BDP’s Lesedi Mmusi with 6833 votes, while Nthusang Mozambia Dibe got 3056 votes.
