"Was he really buried here?" asks one obviously in doubt herself.
 But indeed Koma lies here. He was buried two years ago in this village. Somewhere.
Others who had heard that he was buried in Mahalapye  somehow thought that he certainly must have been laid to rest at the Mahalapye Secondary School cemetery, after all the cemetery lies at the foot of a school that he had helped to build. That to them would have been a fitting send-off - Koma's grave over-looking the village landmark that he helped set up.

Few people have lived a life so rich, so barren, so tumultuous and yet so intriguing as Dr Kenneth Shololo Koma. And even fewer people were ever so loved, worshipped even, loathed and even despised.

Koma managed to scale the heights of achievements against the mountain of adversity that could have swept him under to lead a dreary and sultry life that his peers were subjected to. This ordinary boy from Ditharapa ward was not just content with mediocrity but wanted to soar out of the horizons of his everyday routine. Education provided him with an escape route and in the end he became one of the first Batswana to reach the pinnacle of the education summit and went on to achieve many firsts mainly in his political life. Koma chartered and navigated new grounds. He trail blazed. He constructed and deconstructed-both in the literal and figurative sense.

Mmegi team is in Mahalapye in an attempt to figure out what the legacy of this departed icon is.

Nothing shows the split personality and the contradictions that dominated Koma's life and his politics than his grave at the Madiba Cemetery in Mahalapye.

His two-year rashacled grave elicits an emotional outburst from those who knew him.
Madiba cemetery is fairly new and not as congested as the two others at Xhosa ward and the older ones just at the foot of Mahalapye Secondary School. Unless you know the grave in which the body of the late Koma was interred it takes quite a search to locate it. The grass is overgrown here and even the goats and donkeys that pasture here cannot keep up with the grass that continues to enjoy the rainy sprinkle. Most of the graves wear uniform green net shade that have been placed on some wrought iron that provide some shade and help to compact the soil into one place.

It is not easy walking through this maze of graves to locate one grave that looks just like the rest of them. The few graves that stand out are those that have marble tombstones and there are few of them.

On some of these graves the paint on the name plates has been erased by the corrosive nature of the elements of weather or in other instances it is the whole name plate that has  been flung very far from the rightful grave, much to the anguish of 'grave hunter's 'like ourselves this afternoon. After more than 30 minutes of searching in the scorching sun we locate two graves of the Komas. One of Boiki Simon Koma, the late son of Dr Koma and another Koma and somehow we became complacent and conclude that our target is within sight. Alas! That was not to be.Another search starts. After another 10 minutes of criss-crossing the graveyard in the sweltering heat, we at long last come to a rather small mound of protruding soil somewhat holding a small welded iron.

By comparison the iron bars look much thinner than those on the shades around it. Like the graves around the iron bars are draped in a green net cover. The fading inscription on the epitaph reads:

Dr Kenneth G. Shololo Koma: Born 27 -07-1923: Died 19-03-07: Buried 24-03-2007.
To the left of this grave lies a graveyard companion, perhaps unknown to him in the here before, Balibi Banda. In front is the grave of another graveyard companion Gladys Gaolathe and behind is the grave of Lerato Elebetse.

Koma's grave has fuelled debate amongst his supporters and other members of the public. Some say his graveyard is an insult to the memory and the colossal contribution that Koma made to Botswana. In the words of Kaptien Katinga, a long-time Koma political disciple, who is now a councillor for Parwe in Mahalapye, the grave is a stark reminder that Batswana do not value their heroes.

The Zulus in South Africa still talk about Shaka in reverence, Indians respect and still worship Mahatma Gandhi. His grave in New Delhi is a major tourist attraction. Why are we disrespecting our own hero?", he asks rhetorically. Katinga feels that the indignation that he sees at Koma's grave is a challenge, in particular to Botswana National Front members and those in the Botswana Congress Party and the National Democratic Front who regard Koma as their political mentor.

Katinga's association with Koma stretches as far back as 1969 when he (Katinga) had just arrived in Botswana from South Africa. When Obonetse Menyatso, a mutual friend of the two men, learnt of Katinga's passion for politics of passive resistance and the Black Consciousness fervour he picked up while in South Africa he suggested that Katinga should meet with Dr Koma.

"We immediately hit it off. Koma was then the Administrative Secretary of the BNF."
According to Katinga it was clear that Koma was in reality much more powerful than most in the party. He said Koma was the straw that stirred the BNF. At the time Koma was the life of the party as he propelled its ideological direction in the politics of the left. Katinga remembers the study groups where Koma was a teacher and he says he proved his knowledge and analytical mind in unraveling political questions of the day.

He almost gets excited talking about his time with the man he calls 'the philosopher'. But Koma to Katinga was not just about theory he knew about political strategy. Reminiscing, he thinks of one day in the winter of 1969 when they held a difficult planning meeting in Mahalapye as a precursor to the 1969 Kanye Congress that ultimately  ushered in Kgosi  Bathoen Gaseitsiwe as the new President of the BNF.

" We met with colleagues from the North led by the then BNF president Daniel Kwele and Koma felt that it was in the interest of the party to have Bathoen as President. His idea was that there were real open tribal hostilities, which unfortunately fed the stereotype that a Kalanga could not lead a national organisation that would enlist the support of the mainstream Tswana groups who were hostile to minorities. As a Mongwato he knew that people in this area would resist and he believed that Bathoen, as a Kgosi and member of a prominent mainstream Tswana ethnic group would give the BNF the traction to compete with the Sertse Khama-led BDP. Comrades argued that Koma's position stood against the fabric of BNF but Koma argued on the platform of political strategy and said that sometimes expediency was a necessity in politics. The meeting went on into the evening sometimes threatening to split the comrades down the middle but in the end Kwele and his team barged out of the meeting and took the midnight North-bound train to Francistown. As you know Bathoen was elected to lead the BNF at the Kanye congress and that is how BNF built a base in Ga-Ngwaketse."

Katinga says he was one of the team that, prior to the 1984 elections, persuaded Koma to relocate to Gaborone to wage a frontal attack on the BDP government. They thought Mahalapye might take long to catch up on the revolution and as it turned out Koma was in luck. He made it to Parliament as Gaborone South MP in 1984 after the Tshiamo ballot box fiasco and he carried on as MP until 2004 when he retired.

In the period that Koma relocated to Gaborone a lot happened in their political relationships. The BNF broke up several times and Koma eventually ended up at the New Democratic Front. Katinga, too, eventually left the BNF and at one point joined the BDP but was fired from the party when he contested the 2009 elections as an Independent candidate. For the first time he contested the election out of any political formation and he won, while he had failed several times under the BNF. Unfortunately Koma had passed away and did not see his protˇgˇ finally winning a council seat. 

"Even during the time of political upheavals we still remained friends with Koma. Whenever he visited Mahalapye he lodged at my place."

To Katinga the only way of making sure that Koma's spirit lives on is to set up a monument and a foundation for Koma.

Mahalapye elder and Mosolotshane Councillor Mogalakwe Mogalakwe shares Katinga's sentiments and he believes he says together with some BNF colleagues are planning to do the same thing.

"A monument? A monument for what? Koma was no hero," quips Obonetse Menyatso a veteran politician and one of the few surviving men that have had a long relationship with Koma stretching well over four decades.

Coming from a man who professes to have learnt much from Dr Koma it is a bit of a surprise. Menyatso says it was Dr Koma, who in 1965 sent him to Czechoslovakia and the Soviet Union (Moscow) to study political science. This coming from a man who says he can bear witness to the many people that Koma trained must feel like an 'Et Tu Brute'.

"Look, my assessment of Kenneth Koma is not borne out of any bitterness or ill will. He and I were not friends, we shared something much deeper. We were comrades, we shared an ideological bonding. We spent a lot of time in political trenches, in political study groups and I came to appreciate his incisive and analytical mind particularly using Marxism as a tool of analysis," he says, adding that Koma had a beautiful mind.
The tragedy with Dr Koma, according to Menyatso, is that the life of Dr Koma was characterised by two very different Komas.

"There was the Koma that I met in 1965. A revolutionary and a selfless individual that helped give the BNF direction and a soul. A theoretician who transformed the BNF into a progressive organisation. A Koma who led a party that gave Batswana hope. A man who chose to build a political organisation than get an easy salary and be comfortable.

But there is another Koma. The Koma of post-1984. This was a completely different Koma that we sent from Mahalapye to Gaborone. I do not know what happened to Koma the hero that we knew when he got to Gaborone in 1984. Is it the friends that he met in Gaborone or was it Parliament that led to 'our hero's decadence?" Menyatso wonders.

Menyatso blames Koma for having destroying Batswana's faith in politics and trashing the goodwill of a movement that once carried the hopes of Botswana. In his assessment the problems that continue to bedevil BNF even unto this day are the result of Koma's unprincipled leadership. He said Koma derailed the party even against sound advice and he believes that the BNF is today a reactionary organisation thanks to Koma's reactionary tendencies during his Gaborone days.

Menyatso believes that it would be a farce if we were to regard Koma as a hero even when we knew that the man betrayed thousands of people.

"If people want to build him a tombstone at his grave let them do that if it makes them feel good. But a monument or a foundation? I will oppose that because we cannot allow people to be duped into believing that Koma was a hero when we know that he had overspent all the credit that he had accumulated pre-1984."

James Olesitse is one of those people who were considered Koma's political disciples. In their long political relationships they fell out and fell out big at various points in their history.

At one point Olesitse, together with the late Mareledi Giddie frustrated with Koma's leadership of the BNF left to form the Social Democratic Party.  They later made up only for Olesitse and Koma to part ways again. Today Olesitse is a stalwart of the opposition Botswana Congress Party (BCP), a party that was essentially formed out of protest over Koma's leadership.

"If people were to set up a foundation or trust in memory of Dr Kenneth Koma I would certainly associate myself with such an initiative," said Olesitse adding that even in the BCP they know that Koma was his hero.

Olesitse believes that Koma, being a true paragon of equality, would have preferred to have been given the simple burial that he was given and that he certainly must be resting in peace interred among the common people.

"But since capitalism has led to the commercialisation of everything including even death, people might want to erect a tomb stone for him but that is not my idea of keeping his memory for posterity. Koma has written a lot of pamphlets, made some great speeches.

Through the mass media people could be sensitised about his works so that Batswana could appreciate that they had a thinker perhaps a giant whose intellectual work towers those of Nelson Mandela, Samora Machel, Kwame Nkrumah, and others. When people have reached a stage of appreciating the man and his ideas that is when a monument can be erected in his name and at that time everyone would be aware of his hero status"
Koma, according to Olesitse, was no Saint and chief among his vices he underlines administrative frailties.

"Koma was a theoretician and he did that very well but seemed to have been paying scant attention to matters of administration. To him these were secondary to keeping ideological clarity but unfortunately this undermined the good that he did over the years.

But let us not forget that this is the man who helped build the people's political consciousness. Koma's ideas influenced public policy, reformed education, agriculture and even electoral law. You can talk of free education, adult suffrage extended to 18-year olds, agricultural policy on food self-sufficiency, paid for maternity leave for civil servants and this later led to a more focused and broad battle on gender rights. These and many other ideas were inspired and supported by the consciousness brought about by the efforts of Koma. You cannot take away such immense contributions even though he had his own shortcomings. Let's criticise his capitulations."

University of Botswana (UB) historian, Dr John Makgala sees Koma as someone who had political endurance despite little achievement, which was compounded by bankrupt leadership. In his view, Koma and the ideas that he stood for are now irrelevant to modern day Botswana.

While the world is allowed to peep and even tear into the personality of Kenneth Shololo Koma, his only surviving brother Gojamang Shololo Koma is somewhat indifferent. After all his younger brother a long time ago took a decision that he wanted to become public property.

Koma Senior was three years older than the late Koma. He talks of how he and his parents waited in anticipation for Dr Koma's sojourn in foreign lands to end so that he could come home, get a decent job, marry, raise a family and make his parents proud. He admits that he and his parents and other relatives wanted to get a piece from their well-educated brother and son but that was not to be.

When Koma arrived he made it clear that he would not lead a choreographed life. He was not going to take up any formal job, he was not going to marry because he had given his life to politics.

"This obviously put him at variance with our parents. We were all disappointed but my parents in particular were shattered.

Bone ba ne ba re polotiki e tla tsenya kgotlhang ha gare ga rona le bogosi (they thought his political activities would bring animosity between our family and the ruling dikgosi) He says Koma tried to reason out with their parents but they did not understand and to them he was a rebel because he chose a completely revolutionary life.

Having outlived both his parents and his more famous brother Koma senior believes that his brother conducted a very clean politics. He said he knows that he never insulted anyone or even fought bogosi as his parents feared. Although his younger brother did not form government as he had set out to achieve he is happy that his ideas helped build this nation.

Is he proud of his brother? He does not hesitate to affirm in a powerful yet frail voice.
He pauses and looks for a handkerchief to spit something that from the way he is moving his lips and contorting his face must be very bitter. With both hands he covers his mouth, spits into the brown hanky and in an anti-clockwise motion wipes both ends of the mouth. He waits for a while and when he has regained his poise he moves his lips as if he is ready to say something.

He says the greatest asset that his younger brother had was to start things but it seemed he never succeeded completing them. He is here talking about Koma's projects like building shops, plots, buying houses but he might as well have been talking about his political life too.

He (Koma Senior) is a traditionalist and he says he would never forgive his brother for not marrying or at least following the Setswana custom of 'marrying' his children.

"In his life we formally knew of just one son who unfortunately passed away. But ever since Koma passed away there have been all sorts of Koma's children popping up even though we do not know of them. Worse, they are laying claim to Koma's estate to an extent that his estate has now been placed under judicial management.

I am an old man I do not need this in my life."
The last thing that he wanted to do with his brother's estate was to erect a tomb-stone at his grave and commit the rest to a trust as per the wishes of his brother. It  seems this cannot be done as he has to go to court and in front of strangers to show who between himself and Koma's 'children' (or as he says batho ba ba reng ke bana ba ga Koma) is more Koma than the other.

The old man has the handkerchief to his mouth as we prepare to leave. He is quiet, perhaps deep in thought or just thinking to himself why his young intelligent brother had to be sacrificed to politics when all they got in return has been pain.  The Koma estate seemed to be stuck in the 'wrong' hands. Even the political movement that he founded seems to be floundering. Some sections of the population seem to be in a hurry to erase his memory. Did everything die with Dr Kenneth Shololo Koma? The answer might lie in that brown handkerchief all wet from bitter spittle.