After nearly 60 years of independence, Botswana has made a historic step towards cultural inclusivity by opening its state broadcaster to indigenous languages.
On September 29, 2025, during Botswana’s independence celebrations, Botswana Television aired, for the very first time, news in Shekgalahari, Ikalanga, Shiyeyi, and Naro, in addition to Afrikaans - a major move that recognises linguistic diversity and restores visibility to marginalised communities.
On November 28, speaking from Gaborone, Buyani Zongwani, the Acting Director of the Department of Broadcasting Services, who oversees Botswana Television (BTV) and Radio Botswana, stated that they had only one month to launch the first batch of newsreaders presenting bulletins in local languages.
"We do have challenges in terms of people who are saying we now have cluttered news in one channel," Zongwani said, noting the challenges of the programme. "The major, major, major issue here is inclusivity, equality and diversity," he added.
Johannah Martin, an Afrikaans news presenter and editor, said people in her community have welcomed the initiative.
"The majority are excited that the language barrier has now been broken. They can hear the news, they can listen to the news, and they enjoy the news because now it's reaching them in their own language, and they understand it better," Martin said.
Botswana held its last general elections in 2024, bringing a new government to power after 58 years. This change of regime came with a commitment to officially recognising other languages in the country and allowing content creation in citizens' native languages on state broadcasts.
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00:08So in September, well, we got the advice that we should start immediately in a space of a month.
00:38So we should start preparation to launch the first batch of indigenous languages.
00:49We do have got challenges in terms of people who are saying we now have cluttered news in one channel.
00:58They used to watch BTV news broadcasting in Sichuan and English.
01:04Now they are saying it is the same bulletin being run on several languages.
01:10The reception of the language by my people, oh, there are people who are really excited.
01:38The majority are excited that language barrier has now been broken.
01:43They can hear the news, they can listen to the news, and they enjoy the news because now it's reaching them in their own language, and they understand it better.
01:54So our job is to translate those stories into our language so that our people at home can hear the stories in their own languages and not in a secondary language.
02:17Translating from Sichuan into your language.
02:45Translating from Sichuan into your language, the concepts, the languages are not the same, the structures are not the same.
02:53Sichuan's structure is the subject, verb, object, and then in our case is the verb, final language.
03:00We know the challenges that we are encountering, but the major, major, major issue here is inclusivity, equality, and diversity.
03:12We know the truth.
03:14We know the truth is the subject.
03:17We know that the people of the language are not the same, but we have a lot of different things that we have in the same way.
03:22We know that the people of the language is that we have a lot of different ways.
03:24We know that we have a lot of different ways.
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