Peter Woto has definitely come full circle - from the small village of Zwenshambe and back.

Born in 1941 in this small and insignificant North East village on the border with Zimbabwe, Woto is back to the meandering streets of Zwenshambe, spending his dotage among his cattle, goats and fields of mealies. A man back to his roots, and therefore back to himself.

Woto and wife, Maria, whom he married in 1962, have six children - two males and four females - who are now grown up and all but one have fled the nest.

Of the two men, the eldest, Teedzani, is a consultant based in Gaborone. Tawana, a mechanic, is the only one who remained home. He spends his times fixing vehicles around Zwenshambe village.

As for the women, Priscilla is a nursing professional, who resides in Sweden. Ambrosia lives in Mochudi, while Vivian is the proprietor of a fashion company in Gaborone, Kushatha Prints, lives in the capital city.

Woto spent his lifetime in opposition politics, most specifically the Botswana National Front. He was at the pinnacle of his political career when he assumed the office of Vice-President of the party. He would have clinched the party's presidency had it not been for losing to Otsweletse Moupo, who got 711 votes to his 487 when Puo Phaa went to the polls January 2002 at their executive committee elections in Kanye.

For the record, the build-up to the elections had an uncanny resemblance to the recent acrimonious Botswana Democratic Party (BDP) executive committee elections that were also held in the BaNgwaketse capital.

The BNF elections, just like those of the BDP, were held along factional lines. The BNF had the Concerned Group and Party Line, while the BDP had Barata-phathi and the A-Team.

BNF president, the iconic Dr Kenneth Shololo Koma, was retiring and was projecting Woto as his favourite replacement. Woto was therefore a Party Liner. His opponent, Moupo, campaigned as a member of the Concerned Group.

The tumultuous campaigning was given extensive coverage in the media, just as the build-up to the 2009 Botswana Democratic Party (BDP) central party elections.

Woto lost together with other members of the Party Line, while Moupo won.

For the sake of posterity, the results saw the BNF candidate for Barolong in the 1999 general elections, Kopano Lekoma, become the deputy leader.

Other top positions went to Phillip Monowe as general secretary, Klaas Motshidisi as national chairman and Mareledi Giddie as secretary for publicity and information.

Moupo had vowed to re-build the party by firstly eliminating factions. He was quoted as saying his campaign would be a "holy war" as he said people had decided who should lead them.Ultimately, Woto and others, Lemogang Ntime, Kwenantle Gaseitsewe, Gibson Ringa and Phillip Monowe were purged from the party. Koma and others, among them current human rights lawyer, Duma Boko, Lewatle Kgosiyareng, and Dr Cosmos Moenga were issued with suspensions varying from four to six months.

Charges ranged from formation of cliques, cabals or factions within the BNF, misconduct likely to tarnish the image of the BNF, divulging party internal matters to non-members or unauthorized persons, including dissemination of information or internal party members, to the public.

When asked about his expulsion from the party and its dismal performance at the recent general elections, Woto laughed softly before responding:

"They came to me the other day requesting me to come back to the party as it was breaking apart. I told them, I would have to come back with the people with whom I was expelled. In any case, I do not have time for trivialities these days," he said.He may have left politics behind, but leadership roles continue to follow him to the doorstep of his house.

Finding Woto at his abode is a difficult task indeed. He has official engagement after official engagement. Last week Saturday, after agreeing to meet us at his place, we had to wait until 3pm before he arrived from Masunga where he was officiating at a church function.

Home is deep in the bushes, about a kilometre northwards, off the road from Tshesebe.To get to his home, you have to negotiate a gravel road past some homesteads and fenced fields.

There are about six mud-walled rondavels in the spacious yard. The main house we got into is incomplete with rafters bare like the fangs of a charging cobra. The house is whitewashed on the outside, but inside it is painted a glossy white.The sitting room, which is sparsely furnished with sofas and a reading table, also has got a room-divider that reaches the top of the wall. Above the television set, lodged within the room divider, is a picture of two Roman Catholic priests in their robes.

Despite the creeping age, the white haired man with a light complexion and a skin that glows with health still exuded a lot of energy when we sat down to an interview that spans three hours.

He is wearing a cream-white flowing African print shirt with a VIP garlang on the breast pocket from the Roman Catholic function in Masunga.'It was a graduation ceremony for children at a school run by the Roman Catholic church in Masunga," he says nonchalantly as I pointed enquiringly at the garland.

Leadership seems to run in his veins such that back in Zwenshambe, he is a leader in a plethora of spheres. He is the headman of his ward, chairperson of Zwenshambe Brigade's Board of Governors and chairperson of the Roman Catholic Church's development committee in the region.

He is the chairperson of the Nata Beef Producers Association, which advocates for cattle farmers in the Nata area.

He was the chairman of the church's parish council in the northeast before relinquishing the role to a Masunga man, Pius Mokgwathi. He was also the chairperson of Zwenshambe Junior Secondary School.

Circumstance turns boy into man
Woto was born in Zwenshambe and schooled up to Standard Three when his First World War veteran father decided to take him to a Roman Catholic mission primary school by the name of St Theresa in Lobatse where he went up to Standard Six in 1956.

That year, his father became gravely ill and could not provide for the family, hence Woto had to leave school to work for six months in present day Zimbabwe at a company called Rhodesia Wire Industries.

"I could not go to secondary school because I had to help out as father was sick," he said.

After the six-month stint in Bulawayo, he decided to come back home and got a job as an untrained teacher at Matsiloje Primary School. He was there until 1958 and then transferred to Mapoka Primary School where he spent another year.

In 1959, he obtained a bursary to train as a teacher at Lobatse Teacher Training College where he completed his Lower Primary School Certificate in 1961.

But the learning bug had bitten him, and he could not help himself. After completing the course, instead of pursuing paid employment as a teacher, he embarked upon a gruelling self-education process.

Junior Certificate, his next goal, was uncharted waters for him. He just did not know where and how to start, but he soon came up with a plan.

He went around to people who had finished their JC and either borrowed or bought books to help him with studying. He also decided to recruit others who had completed at Lobatse TTC to study with him.

"Initially there were three of them, but as the going got tougher, two dropped out and there were only two of us left," he said.

The man he had recruited to study with turned out to be a long-time bosom friend who to this day is still very close to Woto.

He is Dingaan Mulale, a fellow retired educationist and a distant relative of the veteran politician.

When the two men started out as partners in their dimly lit study rooms, little did they know they were embarking on the most difficult part of their lives.

They had since graduated as trained teachers. Woto was at Masunga Primary School while Mulale, who is a year younger than Woto, was at Mapoka. "It was difficult the way we conducted our studying. Infact, studying was difficult on its own those days. We had no syllabus to follow. We just used our instincts," said Woto.

As they were staying far apart in Masunga and Mapoka respectively, they devised a plan to alternate cycling to each other's places of abode to spend the evenings studying. It was a ritual they performed for two years.

Their sacrifice was worth it as they passed their JC.
Woto says he felt the urge to continue and consequently advised his friend that they should move a step up - take on O'levels and study for the General Certificate of Education (or Form 5 in today's language).

"It was more difficult to study GCE. There were no examination centres in Botswana. We had to go and sit for our examinations at Mpopoma in Bulawayo where we looked like lost sheep among the many candidates who sat for the examinations.

"When they discussed, we would be completely lost because we had been reading wildly. We had no one to guide us. When the results came out, we had passed only Religious Education. This could have been because we read and discussed the Bible from first page to last.

"Luckily for us while there, we got to know that there was a syllabus that it is followed.We went and bought it at Matopo Book Centre in Bulawayo. When we got home, we took a week reading the syllabus. We realized that we needed a lot of textbooks for the three subjects we wanted to study.

"We had a system of studying. We gave each other assignments and then took turns to lecture to each other. After the lecture, we would engage in a serious discussion while consulting the books. We did not have a break in our studies. Even weekends we reserved as days for revision," said Woto at length.

At the end of two years, they sat for the three subjects and passed two of them. It gave them courage to continue, and the following year, they took three more subjects and passed two of them as well. They now had four subjects in their hands and by then with Woto's appetite for education insatiable, he set his sights on university, even though there was still one O'level subject to study - the one they had failed in their last examination.

Woto personally went to the University of Botswana, Lesotho and Swaziland (UBLS) where he was issued with forms to complete and in 1971, he entered the institution as a student and in 1975, he was draped in graduation robes, having completed his Bachelor of Arts Degree plus the Concurrent Certificate in Education.

Meanwhile, Woto persuaded his friend who had remained in his teaching post at Mapoka to also go to university.

"During long vacations, I would go and do temporary teaching. And it was in my first vacation when I was posted to the school where he was the headmaster that I persuaded him to join me at the university. I told him to just go there and ask for the forms to fill as I had done.

"They had introduced the mature entry programme which he would use to get started.The following year, he was admitted to the university and we resumed our system of studying. Fortunately for us, though he was a year behind me, there were some lectures which we attended together," said Woto.

Woto said after he completed, he wanted to go back to teaching, but instead he was posted to the Non-Formal Education Department where he was to understudy some expatriates.

He said he was not happy with the posting and made his feelings known to his superiors who compromised by agreeing to send him for further training.

In 1978, he went to pursue his Master's Degree at Wisconsin University in Madison, United States where his thesis was Continuing and Vocational Education. After completing in 1980, he came back home where after some time, he assumed the post of Chief Education Officer in the Department.

After only four years in the department, he decided to retire in 1986 at the age of 45.Actually, before he retired, he had gone into both arable and pastoral farming. Together with a few partners, they had acquired the Tribal Grazing Land Policy (TGLP). He had then decided to give his cattle ranching farm at Nata his full attention.

The going gets tough
He is with his cousin, Dr Robert Nfila, but the going is presently tough there because a wildlife park borders their farms and elephants continuously trample the fence, rendering their livestock vulnerable to predators.

"It is so tough that nowadays we are thinking of giving up," he said.

Also, Woto is actually one of the pioneers of Pandamatenga Farms. While doing his cattle ranching at Nata, he simultaneously did arable farming at Pandamatenga.

He reminisced about the times when together with others, among them the late Member of Parliament for Barolong, Ronald Sebego, tried taming the virgin lands. Their efforts included de-bushing and acquiring loans to start planting, but there too, they had to contend with animals and plagues of rats that destroyed crops.

In the end they failed, but Woto believes there was "no political will" from the government as is the case now.

"Otherwise we would be far if there was someone like (President) Ian Khama who seems to be trying by all means to revive farming. We failed because farming there (at Pandamatenga) was labour intensive. Seeds were cheap but everything else was expensive.

"All the people who started with me are sitting at their homes empty-handed. We were never compensated for anything," says a woeful Woto.

Nowadays the Pandamatenga Farms are occupied by white farmers who found the land ready for the taking. It now boasts of electric fences that deter wild animals from invading the farms.

Government is doing all it can to assist the farmers to really turn Pandamatenga into becoming the true breadbasket of Botswana.

The never-say-die man
In the meantime, Woto was active in trying to help develop his village, which initially had only a primary school.

Before he retired, they established an ad hoc group called "Milikani Mu Swi Babe" which had branches in places like Johannesburg in South Africa, Selebi-Phikwe and Francistown.

The main committee of the organisation was in Gaborone where Woto was the chairman.The organisation spearheaded the election of the Zwenshambe headman of record, Masilo Ngubalane. Their next task was to raise funds to build the kgotla shelter and the community hall.

And against hostile objections from surrounding villages which felt Zwenshambe was not a village, they applied for a community junior secondary school.

They mobilised funds from embassies, private organisations and the corporate world.Zwenshambe villagers assisted with doing the construction of the school, as they had done with the kgotla and the community hall."These were community initiated projects and we had support from smaller villages like Gambule and Gungwe," said Woto.Today, the village also boasts a brigade, which Woto says was initiated by members of the community through "Milikani Mu Zwi Babe.""The government assisted here and there in all these projects, but it was the community which stood up to all these challenges," he said.

These past few days, as his land has been blessed with good rains, Woto has been preoccupied with preparing to plough his 20-hectare farm in the vicinity of his home."I should have started ploughing yesterday (Friday, 21 November). I plant millet, sorghum and groundnuts. Yield is dependent on the rains. If they are good, we get a bumper harvest.

"Nowadays I am switching over to hybrid seeds. I am hesitant to plant maize because it is sensitive to heat," he said excitedly.

Woto took advantage of a construction company that was upgrading the gravel road that passes by his home and asked them to dig a ditch in the middle of his field, which has now turned into a dam. He intends to use the water for irrigation. And when the rains come, Woto will be ready to till this land and yet again reconnect with his place of origin.