- There is no Miss Botswana pageant this year- BCW
- The show goes on- New restructuring team
GOSEGO MOTSUMI
After it was recently announced that the Miss Botswana 2018/19 beauty pageant, which has been marred by controversy will take place this year under a new restructuring team, the license holders of the pageant, Botswana Council of Women (BCW) have turned around and challenged the announcement last week Friday. In their statement, BCW said they wish to inform the public that the pageant will not take place this year and they have not authorized any company or individual to host this year’s pageant.
In an interview the deputy president of BCW, Lebelelang Maswabi confirmed that they issued the statement that went viral online and they were sticking to their word. “It came as a shock to learn that Miss Botswana was scheduled to take place this year when the whole committee knew nothing about that development. You can imagine the shock when we heard the radio and TV interviews, so we thought we should share our side of the story with Batswana,” she said.
Maswabi went on to say members of the executive committee decided to cancel this year’s pageant at last year’s Annual General Meeting because they wanted to put their house in order and start the next pageant on a clean slate. “We are addressing all the issues that have affected us negatively. The Miss Botswana brand is associated with controversy and we want to get our ducks in a row. We want to educate people about BCW as an NGO and Miss Botswana as the organisation’s fund raising event because there is a confusion and that process takes time,” she explained.
For her part the coordinator of Miss Botswana and National Treasurer of BCW, Dorcas Thobega said as the executive committee they were not consulted about staging this year’s pageant and have not signed any agreement to rebrand Miss Botswana with any company or individual. “We decided to speak up as soon as we heard because whatever happens with the Miss Botswana brand is our responsibility. If we had any partnerships it would have been announced publicly through the right channels,” she briefly said.
However, it was announced that the national pageant’s grand finale was slated for September 21st, 2018 at Masa Square Hotel by BCW through Development Advance Institute. There was Miss Botswana Stakeholder Briefing held on Friday 24th August 2018 where the new restructuring team shared their plans to rebrand, mend relations with sponsors and to update the nation about the current state of the pageant among other issues. Responding to the BCW’ s statement Team Leader of Miss Botswana Restructuring, Basadi Masimolole said, “We cannot comment on internal issues of BCW. September 1st they held their AGM in Maun and assured that they will issue their press release. In the meantime the BCW President has encouraged us to proceed with our Miss Botswana plans as scheduled for 21, September 2018.”