"There is need for unity and strategy planning. I believe we must return to the principles of inclusivity and cooperation following what we have been through and the person to take us there is this one."

"I am appealing to all citizens of Gaborone, including the business community, to appeal to the council's cooperation. We should have a small and clean capital city, decorated with trees. Let it be our vision that by 2016 we will have planted trees all over the country."

"These stakeholders determine the credibility of the elections and their involvement is critical."

"Citizens, political parties, civil society organisations, election observers, media, law enforcement agencies, candidates and their functionaries."

"The government must always listen to the public and political pressures build up and respond in a considered manner and in the best interest of peace and stability of the country."

"That's the method we have been preaching. But you might say that is an old fashioned, tired message, but we don't know any alternative to that. Over and above that, of course, we are in a position to provide anti-retroviral therapy to citizens without charge. We also have prevention of mother-to-child transmission programs in our alternative clinics."

"First, of course, we are teaching the A-B-Cs, abstain, be faithful and condomize."

"In other words, whatever economic rate we achieve, it would be one-and-a-half percentage points less than what it would have been in absence of HIV."

"The experts tell us that the effect of the HIV prevalence in our population would reduce our potential growth rate by one-and-a-half percentage points annually."

"And in this respect, we take special pride in our progress toward gender equality. According to the 2003 U.N. Human Development Report, Botswana was ranked 16th in the world in terms of total percentage of females serving as legislators, senior officials and managers. The combined figure for women occupying leadership positions in our country as of 2002 was 35 percent."

"I believe one of the secrets of our success has been our commitment to empowering all members of our society."

"The only country I mentioned at the UN meeting is South Africa which I said is the most liberal when it comes to issues concerning LGBT groups."

"I never mentioned Mugabe or any president in my speech. I made the speech at a UN meeting last September. What I said is that I used to hold the same beliefs as my African counterparts with regards to LGBT issues but I have since been converted."

"I observe in this Forum's founding document, and indeed also in the draft constitution of the regional body to which it is to be affiliated, recognition that journalists and media owners have a common duty to work to the highest professional standards and ethics."

"We are hurting. Gomolemo was my friend. As a consequence of that friendship, some in my party [The ruling Botswana Democratic Party] suspected I was also a member of his party [the Botswana Movement for Democracy] The Lord gave and Lord has taken."

"A revolution happens when you lose confidence in a government and there is no alternative"

"Even as we have differed among ourselves over the course of 11 general elections, we have, nonetheless, continued to travel together towards our common destiny. I pray that that which divides us as Batswana will, therefore, continue to be less than that which joins us as a nation that is proudly united in its diversity. In this way, our differences of political perspective will remain a source of our governing strength."

"Corruption imposes heavy costs on the country and distorts development policies. It hurts the poor disproportionately by diverting funds intended for development. It undermines government’s ability to provide essential services. It fuels inequality and injustice and discourages foreign investment"

"Bad governance doesn’t just undermine service delivery, it retards development, and it also drives violence"

"The old order must give way before it corrupted the new"

"We, the young people, wished to see Batswana acting as a country at the end of the colonial era, not as tribes. This is what caused two colleagues and I to want to start a paper [in 1954]. It was not money, or politics. We were reading African Advisory Council minutes and seeing that the Chiefs wanted to be big fish in small ponds."

"We used to say to our donors, ‘help us to help ourselves, and the more you help us, the sooner you will get rid of us"

"In a democracy like ours, elections belong to citizens, not the government and its institutions. Government institutions conduct elections on behalf of the people."

"it is still alive and doing its job but like I said I want people who can do the job, people who are capable and can match modern-day challenges and poachers."

"A lot happened but it is not important to delve into the past now as we now have a perfect relationship with the new director."

"Everybody knows my views on Kgosi and the way he was running the DIS. So, at the time Kgosi was fired by President Masisi, I decided not to engage my conscience about it. Let me leave it there."

"I am surprised that for the DIS, P15 million can be authorised to fix the computers. What are we saying to Batswana?"

"I was frustrated. I thought I had a big catch only to find that it was never meant to be. Magosi is not your regular guy. He is the cream of the crop. Young, talented, level headed and educated in his field and that’s the Intelligence I envisaged. He would have been well suited for what I had anticipated."

"Many people say Magosi was hired to head the wildlife intelligence that is not true. Magosi never worked in my ministry. My request to hire Magosi was rejected and shot down with force by those who held power then."

"They are now telling the poachers that they are helpless and are now running to the public for help."

"I am ready to work with President Masisi to find solutions to the high rate of poaching because it is threatening our tourism industry. This is not a partisan issue but rather an issue of patriotism."

"If we cannot protect our animals what about the citizens."

"Remember that our Intelligence Unit once arrested DIS officers with ivory and they failed to account for it. We handed the case to the police and it just disappeared and when we enquired we were told kgang eo e ko bagolong."

"You cannot promote illegality and claim to be law abiding. I am an addict to the rule of law and cannot be associated with banditry and illegality. The stretch of imagination that I can be associated with illegality is utter nonsense."

"That is why in 2017 through our intelligence unit we managed to arrest DIS officers at Makalamabedi with ivory which they failed to account for."

"We had the best intelligence unit in the country and the only wildlife intelligence unit in Africa specializing on wildlife. The reason they were the best is because they solely focused on wildlife and managed to contain poaching in the country."

"We will be reviving the annual tourism pitso to share with and guide Batswana on global tourism markets and create general awareness in the industry."

"Three to Five sites are to be identified for tourism development within the Okavango Delta by Botswana Tourism Organisation (BTO) in partnership with Batswana."

"We are currently relaxing requirements for some of the former hunting concession areas with a view to allocating them for tourism development by Batswana."

"In politics there is nothing like kgosikgolo we are all equal."

"The law doesn’t exclude me from standing again. If they call a by-election again, there are many capable people in the BPF who can stand and win any day in Serowe, unlike the BDP."

"I am not surprised because he came crying asking for help and promising to remove BDP from power but, after he got help, he defected to the same party he promised to remove."

"The longer there is no solution to the stalemate, the more it becomes very difficult to monitor a temporary security zone, while violent rhetoric is emanating from both capitals."

"The stalemate is firmly wedged between these two irreconcilable positions. The danger of the continued stalemate is war."

"We are worried that the longer they take to begin the process of normalising their relations the longer and harder it will be for them to do it after we have left. I keep telling them that every successful peacekeeping operation is successful because of the cooperation of the parties."

"Our work is tied to the work of the Boundary Commission [and we] can only complete our mission if the Boundary Commission completes its work, announces the decision, and the parties accept it."

"the mission has not achieved every objective that we wanted to achieve"

"There is still a lot of bitterness between them."

"The most important thing is you have to deal with those problems effectively in order to protect the integrity of the process you are developing."

"And here we are, we are enjoying relative tranquillity and the peace process is on track, we are preparing the border to be demarcated."