03 Sep 2020

It is September 1, 1986 and 22 year-old, Ms Pono Garegae is nervous yet grateful as she drags her feet into Bobonong Multipurpose Cooperative offices.

She, together with one Lapologang Morake, are assuming their reins as newbie cashiers. 

It was at a time when supermarkets were just a dream in Bobonong.

Shoppers from Bobonong frequented neighbouring Selebi Phikwe town for shopping, a need that the Bobonong Cooperative aimed to address when it was established in 1974 and duly registered in 1982.

Now, 34 years later, Ms Garegae  sits atop the general manager’s chair. She is in charge of the entity that gave her a break and nurtured her ascendance to the apex of the Cooperative’s management order.

Ms Garegae draws from her head every event as it happened, however minute.

She has grown to be a moving library of Bobonong Multipurpose Cooperative’s history.

She remembers the good and the bad, the successes and failures.

In retrospect, Ms Garegae gathers how she progressed from an ordinary cashier to a purchasing officer then members deposit controller and safety cashier before undertaking a bookkeeping course in 1990. The certificate qualified her for an appointment to the cooperative’s bookkeeper post.

In 1997 she was appointed an accountant, a position she served in until 2020 when she was elevated to the general manager seat.

 “It has been five years since we paid members their dividends owing to poor performance of the cooperative,” Ms Garegae narrates a sad tale of Bobonong Multipurpose Cooperative, which hitherto has stood the test of times nonetheless.

Bobonong Multipurpose Cooperative is an undertaking that packs successes and challenges simultaneously, at least according to the general manager.

Ms Garegae expressed delight in that members were happy that their shares continued supporting young people who are majority employees. The employees have pension fund that would support the employees post their term with the cooperative.

The multipurpose cooperative boasts 60 salaried employees and nine board members who draw sitting allowance and special assignments stipend.

Throughout the entire journey she has suffered the pains and joy of the cooperative as it tripped and fell, bounced back and shook off business challenges.

She has also smiled at brighter days when the cooperative was a star performer.

While other cooperative societies are dead and buried, theirs is a story of surviving even the harshest of conditions: a success story in her words.

She occupies a small, partitioned office with light brown wooden walls separating her from her surbordinates.

The better part of the space is filled with shelves of files and folders.

Ms Garegae takes giant steps into a journey that chronicled the genesis Bobonong Cooperative Society.

The cooperative was birthed when a group of Babirwa dipped into their pockets to establish a conveyer belt between the people and Botswana Meat Commission abattoir in Francistown especially.

Individuals’ sole efforts of selling and transporting beef cattle to BMC had proven a quickest way to landing in poverty.

Concerted efforts to establish an entity that would address the task in question were hatched.

Around 1973, Ms Garegae recollects that each member contributed P5 as a share.

The contribution would then deliver a marketing cooperative which opened up to new members. Sadly, the founders have since passed on, but their legacy liveth, Ms Garegae reports.

The move then gave rise to possibilities of consumer cooperative that would then germinate.

The two entities were then merged in the 80s to give birth to a Bobonong Multipurpose Cooperative.

In Bobonong, the Multipurpose Cooperative runs a bar, butchery, Makala Retail Shop, Agric Shop and a hardware shop while the Gobojango Branch runs an all-in-one shop. 

Fast forward to 2020, the cooperative, a shopping beacon of the past faces stiff competition from emergent retail stores and shops. 

The multipurpose cooperative is struggling to assert itself as a king of the shopping jungle.

New retail stores have come up with stifling prices much to the detriment of the cooperative entities and as such sending fears of extinction to the darling of the yesteryear.

The closure of Francistown BMC exacerbated the challenges, so says Ms Garegae.

The commissions drawn from cattle sales to BMC earned the cooperative commission that boosted the cooperative coffers.

In fact, the general manager reveals that it was from the commission earned from the marketing side of the cooperative that led to erection of various units.

However, all is not lost according to Ms Garegae.

Processes are underway for Cooperative to construct a shopping mall at its allocated plot where it will lease shop space.

This is in part fulfillment of future plans that could see members banking some fat dividends. 

However, lack of funds has crippled the plans though Total Filling Station would soon set up at the rented space.

The society boasts seven plots, two of which are yet to be developed. 

The cooperative has rescued Selebi Phikwe Consumers from financial doldrums to keep it afloat with insignificant interest, according to the general manager. 

The same gesture, Ms Garegae says, has been extended to Shoshong Consumers.

Together with three other cooperatives, Bobonong Multipurpose form a quartet of Ditsweletse Housing Cooperative Union Limited for property leasing at Oodi. 

Each of the four cooperatives forked out P1.2 million to the cause.

Bobonong Cooperative society is run by a management board, guided by bylaws to serve the interests of members. 

Board members, who are members of the cooperative society, are elected on a three year term. 

However, members who quit are replaced at annual general meetings. Ends