Parliamentary, council candidates pay for sex and votes
As the 2024 General Elections fast approach, some young girls are lining up and getting ready to throw themselves at council and parliamentary candidates in exchange for money.
Reports say this has happened with the past elections as the young women who mostly remain unemployed, see this as an easy way to make money, and will do anything, no matter how morally questionable, just to make an easy buck.
With the elections fast approaching, Kgosi Lekgatlhanye Mabua of Dibete village worries that they will once again be seeing all sorts of filthy conduct as during this time, some girls are known to sell their bodies to politicians then promise political candidates that they will vote for them after they pay them handsomely to do their dirty political work for them.
Kgosi knows for a fact what the young girls in his village do during elections and it breaks his heart. “Prices are already up and known publicly, during primary elections, a council hopeful has to cough up to P1 000 to be voted, while an MP puts P2 000 on the table.
“During General elections, the price goes up, an opposition member gets charged around P5 000 and councilors P2 500. These candidates cough out such monies to those young girls who will then become their foot soldiers on the ground,” Kgosi said.
Mabua said that the youth do not hide what they do with politicians, when they advise them to look for jobs or even take advantage of government poverty eradication programmes, they tell the oldies to relax, for they have better plans up their sleeves.
Unemployment is the biggest problem in his area but it does not worry the directly affected much, all they want is entertainment and to drink alcohol.
“They say entertainment keeps them sane, they get bored easily without it. We do our best to help them find jobs, we hire them through the Tirelo Sechaba programme but unfortunately the programme only hires limited
numbers.”
Kgosi was disappointed recently when close to 500 youth were allocated plots and they sold them immediately. The plots were sold to willing buyers at low prices of P5 000 and below.
Commenting on the issue of young girls and politicians, Botswana Patriot Front (BPF) women wing chairperson Catherine Sepora confirmed that all that Kgosi Mabua said existed all over the country.
“Politicians are smart, they assess the situation and take advantage of anything to win. If they are contesting in communities where voters are mainly female, sex and money favours crop in,” she said, adding that sadly, such issues never come out unless something goes wrong between the two parties.
“You will find that in some instances, parents know that their daughters are being given money and sexually exploited. And only when the male candidate does not meet his promises, will talk start that he abused their daughters and should not be voted next time, it is wrong,” she said.
Such cases are never even reported to the police because it is normally agreements between consenting adults.
However, her heart bleeds for women who are sexually exploited and then go on to be used to vote for people in power, the candidate benefits twice and the woman is given money only once if lucky. The not so lucky ones risk going home empty-handed.