Youth movement encourages voting

In an effort to tackle voter apathy among the youth of Botswana, a group of youth have come up with a project called ‘Young Voters Rock’ to appeal to the young people.

The Young Voters Rock project is a brainchild of two local music producers, Keabetswe Ragalase and Obusitse Motshidisi. They have produced a song due to be released this month and they hope it will appeal to the youth about the importance of voting in general elections. According to the duo, “Young Voters Rock project is a non-partisan youth driven movement with mission to motivate the youth to register and vote in the upcoming 2014 elections.

The motivation behind this project is the unfortunate reality whereby despite being the most affected demographic group by a plethora of socio-economic challenges such as unemployment, HIV/AIDS; the youth are least active when it comes to choosing political leaders.”

Motshidisi said that the project objectives include mobilising the youth to register for 2014 elections, to recruit youth volunteers who can reach out to their peers in their areas and to empower the youth by availing them the options and policy positions of all 2014 elections parliamentary candidates.
“This compelled us to initiate such a project in order to mobilise the youth through a number of interventions which young people are more likely to respond to positively than what has been tried before,” he noted.

The duo’s theme song, A re Tlhopheng features various artists including Scar, Eskimos, ATI, Apollo Diablo, Orakle and Modiratiro.
Last year the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) took a decision to hold supplementary registration in February this year due to low voter registration during last October registration period.