The Pilane Estate and Printing in Mochudi

Tsodilo Printers is the sister company of Tsodilo Services which publishes the Sunday Standard and the Telegraph. On the other hand, it is also likely that nothing would have changed the probable conviction of the Tsodilo Printers and its boss, Prof Malema, that their initiative was the first of its kind in Mochudi/Pilane. Amazingly, because only in Serowe was there anything remotely comparable, the initiative in Mochudi is the third of its kind.

The first was made by the Dutch Reformed Mission which had a press, which was housed in a still extant rondavel. The project was headed by Sophonia Poonyane who printed the small magazine, Lesedi la Sechaba in the 1950s. The second initiative came with Naomi Mitchison’s acquisition in the UK of three ancient treadle presses which she persuaded the Crown Agents to ship to Mochudi, and with the arrival of an 18-year-old volunteer printer, Johnny Gumb to get the new project off the ground.