Has it ever been the aggressor?

It was bound to happen. Provide dodgy information and sooner or later someone is bound to repeat it and then fairly quickly it becomes an unchallengeable fact. Much like that deeply entrenched ‘fact’ that in 1895 the three Dikgosi went to the UK to ask for Queen Vic’s protection.

As far as I know, hard information about  ‘the old hotel’ in the Gaborone Village or about Mr C.J. Rhodes connection with Gaborone is yet to emerge. An attempt to fill the gap the National Museum, however, has done a bit of inventing.

It states that the small ‘hotel’ in the Gaborone Village, which it also describes as a small rest camp, was built in the late 1880s in Batlokwa territory ‘under the auspices of the British imperialist Cecil John Rhodes’. It had space for storage only for ‘ the local pioneer army’. To get quite so much wrong in a couple of sentences is a truly remarkable achievement. The settlement at the Village was established by the British Protectorate Administration on land sequestered probably from the Kwena and not from the Tlokwa.  It had nothing to do with Mr Rhodes although it might just be possible that he had a minor commercial interest in the place – but we do not know. What we do know, however, is that there was no such thing as far as the hotel’ is concerned, as ‘the local pioneer army’.   What the National Museum was presumably intending to state, as it has done at the Fort, is that this was a base for Rhodes’ Pioneer Column of 1890 which invaded Mashonaland and established Salisbury, now Harare.

Editor's Comment
Congratulations Anicia Gaothuse!

The contest had 10 beautiful young girls as finalists and unfortunately only one could wear the crown.The judges picked Anicia Gaothuse. To all those who feel their contestant should have won ahead of Anicia for whatever reason, hardly; the judges found Anicia to be the best among the best, so desist from disrespecting our newly crowned queen on social media or anywhere else, for that matter! Each of the 10 beautiful young women had supporters...

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