The New Rail Park Mall Pedestrian Bridge

This handsome new bridge is now paired with the earlier, undistinguished and rather grotty bridge which takes pedestrians over the railway line to the bus rank. For many Gaborone residents the existence of this striking new bridge will come as a surprise – as indeed it did to me.  Despite the best intentions of the first planners in the early 1960s to create a colour blind non racial new capital and town, Gaborone today is more divided than most of us would care to admit. When the mail train ceased its journeying between Bulawayo, Francistown, Gaborone, Johannesburg and Cape Town the expatriate community changed its dependence patterns and shifted to a new reliance on travel by plane and by privately owned cars.

When it did so, it effectively abandoned the area around the railway station, which it no longer needed. The non-vehicle owning community promptly moved in. In an odd way, the creation of the new Railway Park Mall has highlighted this division in spectacular fashion.