Makapanstad Traditional Council: “Small businesses will also suffer but we have to save lives, no Ditrupa this year”
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The year 2020 will most definitely go down the history lane as the most unusual year with bad memories and dull moments as lock down regulations force people to stay at home these festive season.
This also saw annual festive season traditions like Ditrupa being disrupted.
It is during this time of the year where people from places like Makapanstad, Pankop, Mmametlhake, Nokaneng, Seabe, Marapyane, just to name few get entertained by Ditrupa where they gather either for competition or just for fun usually at their respective tribal offices.
Speaking to Makapanstad Traditional Council Spokesperson Lentswe Makapan, he said 2020 will most definitely pose a negative impact in these areas which can also bring a huge financial backlog to local small businesses and households.
“We issued out notices to leaders of Ditrupa to tell them that there won’t be any of such activities taking place this year because of the global pandemic and the lock down that was announced by the President. We postponed the gathering to 2021.”
“We have had a very consistent huge number of attendance over the years of approximately of between 15 000 to 20 000 and last year we had the highest attendance of almost 30K people.”
He added that although it is very important to stay away this time around considering the growing number of infections, Covid-19 national lockdown is going to have huge negative impact not only on entertainment but on local small businesses as well because it is also during this time where informal trading gets an opportunity to flourish.
“We would have old and young people who make lot of money during this time by trading in different services, and by January they would have already made lot of money that would take them a long way” he said.
He said that the community is losing an estimated amount of R 300K when these type of gatherings don’t take place.
