What do you want to know?

Bongi D D M Radipati | Monday April 28, 2025 16:35

So did the last two chief justices of this Republic, the current speaker of parliament, the current leader of the opposition in parliament, and the current and first woman to be the permanent secretary to the president. In other words, and unprecedented in Botswana, the first citizen (and his wife) as the head of the executive branch of the government, the head of its judicial branch, the head of its legislative branch, the head of its alternative government in the wings, and the head of over 100,000 strong public service, are all alumni of UB. Given this, it is impossible to overstate the influence of UB on the minds of those who now control the levers of power in Botswana, and on the trajectories of their personal and professional lives.

Virtually, all of these powerful citizens, all now middle aged, arrived at UB roughly a generation ago. They arrived as typical students of yesteryear. Except for one or two, they were village-bred, recipients of public education, impressionable, and impressed by Gaborone. We (and I include myself for good measure) were not particularly well-versed in university education or appreciative of how lucky we were to be there. After all, studying at UB was essentially a rite (maybe even a right) of passage for every high school student who had done well in their final exams. The institution ignited in us our desire to understand the world, our latent curiosity about ourselves and others, and our drive to explore. We arrived at UB as youngsters. Something was right. We wanted to know from those who knew. We recognised ourselves. We left as young adults and professionals.

In the Ivy League, they teach you intellectual sparring; they prefer it when you are confident; and they want you to know that you can rule the world because the blood of achievement courses through your veins. As in the widely read book of our youth, Karl Marx’s “Communist Manifesto,” in a long and meandering study, UB would propel us to recognize achievement. But it was short on how we as its students could be the creative force for our own achievement. If in the Ivy League what they taught you is who is in control and how to join them, at UB they taught you the reason why they are in control. In a caricature of the unflattering traits of the Ivy League, UB then had the snobbery of Yale, the overconfidence of Columbia, the aloofness of Princeton, and the influence of Harvard. It is not surprising that this country’s current president and his vice are, as well, and as a first, graduates of the Ivy League.

UB has never held itself as a trades school, which is a good thing. We did not know it then, but in hindsight we, as students, really benefitted from UB’s rigid schedule of classes, laboratory work, library research, meal and leisure times. Still UB has a perplexing charisma. It is viewed as a symbol of stuffiness, often by those who have not studied there. Still, it is viewed as a badge of condescension, often by those who have studied there. Like other universities, UB helped us as young adults to become autonomous, well-developed and well-rounded individuals which was, and always is, better than the alternative. After it, it was almost impossible for us to forget that with its education we were headed to be a part of this country’s knowledgeable cadre; that we had professional jobs awaiting us on graduation; and that we had escaped the grim straits of uneducated youngsters elsewhere in the country.

It has always been my view that it would be preferable if UB and other tertiary institutions took their civic duties more seriously by systematically, consistently and deliberately encouraging their students to participate more in public affairs; by putting their knowledge and skills at the disposal of those whose plight appeals to them; and by being more diverse and more tolerant of competing views, ideas, and analysis in their work. This will be purposefully provocative. It will be intended to annoy both on the left and right of the political spectrum who pretend otherwise, by admitting something of life - that nobody has a monopoly of knowledge.

Learning things at tertiary institutions is a big topic, over which hundreds of skills, expertise and crafts have evolved and are still evolving. At an institution such as UB which offers both liberal arts and professional studies (engineering, law, medicine, etc), it is especially so. It is thus impossible to summarize what should be learnt there. Yet, there is a single idea that must animate that learning. It is the close and broad examination of a particular area of study and a simultaneous celebration and condemnation of it. Even as the learner of that area of study realizes that every higher learning offers incomprehensible abundance, he or she will toe the line of enlightenment, and allow defiance and acceptance to accompany them in their journey of learning, all at once. In this way, he or she will get to know that there is more than one way to stand up for your own edification.

Now that the political elite of Botswana is a product of UB, and now that the intellectual elite of this country can trace its brainpower to UB, we must be clear-sighted about UB and its alumni. There is a chance that a price is put on its education and the result thereof. Were this to happen, it can change the nation’s relationship with it. Unless this nation is alive to it, it may start to conflate the external financial value of UB’s education with the intrinsic mental value of being educated in the first place. We must know that UB’s education ought to be a way of being alive rather than as a way of making a living, and that an education is intrinsically valuable to all of us without reference to the chance or size of its earnings. Finally, if I were to be asked by a youngster now how they should conduct their education at UB or at any other tertiary institution, I would advise them to get it out of the way each day. They should do this before they have fully left the space of dreams, imagination and reflection to the space of youthful application. They should do this before they are required to cohere their life into an expected daily performance of things.

May your prospects for a good life brighten on the onset of your quest to know.

*Radipati is a regular Mmegi contributor