Wear a leteitshi and feel grown-up
Bongi D D M Radipati | Thursday June 25, 2026 16:27
Her eyes lit up. Even at such a young age, it was clear to discern that the garment was her favored thing. Probably instinctively, she adjusted its matching headwrap that could have loosened during the hectic dance. She acted like a queen and was in no rush. The wedding party resumed their dancing for the guests. She and every member of that party wore a leteitshi of identical or complementary patterns. On her, it could have been a tailored dress or a combination of a skirt and a matching top.
Then it hit me. The art of a dance performed by a group like hers is in its synchronicity even though it is an individual’s performance. The sameness of the dancers’ attire still allows for individual variety and expression. And ordinary life, a dance celebrating a marriage, and a marriage signifying love, can all be bearers of our national meaning.
A leteitshi typically has colorful or vivid prints. Its designs are often tailored or are a wrap and a tuck. It is usually worn with a matching headwrap (tukwi) or scarf. On a scale of intricacy, young girls often wear a leteitshi with a simpler design, less elaborated style, and minimal accessories. Women are likely to wear one that features ornate designs, layered with other fabrics, and accessorized with jewelry and beads. In either case, the baseline is identical. A leteitshi does not merely lie on its wearer's skin or sit listlessly on their bodily frame. Instead, it fortifies their spine.
To wear it is to inhabit and inherit a cultural confidence and an individual gumption that the flimsy silhouette of modern fast fashion can’t approximate, much less, provide. In meeting one wearing a leteitshi, their onlookers do not see an apparel worn haphazardly. Instead, they see the structure of personal life and national pride worn publicly and simultaneously.
The history of a leteitshi appears to be linear and not as vibrant as the fabric itself. From the metallic clatter of 19th century looms in Europe, particularly in Germany, was produced the stiff, starched smell of the indigo cloth that was later called leteitshi. Similar garments made for and now ubiquitous in Eastern, Central, and Western Africa were made in exactly the same way. Trade and colonization would popularize leteitshi in Southern Africa, while other versions of it would be popularized in the rest of Africa. The quirky and shorthand term “German print” for African markets and African wearers would come to define all those cloths to this day.
Some apparels demand a particular posture when they are worn. It seems to me that few will require a dignified posture as a leteitshi would. Why? Because one can’t slouch in a tailored or customized leteitshi and its matching headwrap. I dare say that one can’t behave erratically or dishonorably in that attire. To do so is a sacrilege equivalent to a member of the disciplined forces misbehaving while wearing their forces’ uniform. As I reflected on the majestic posture of that young girl, I came to realize how a leteitshi, a mere garment that is easily dismissible as a relic of colonial legacy, worn externally, could inspire and create an internal sense of self-esteem and confidence in its wearer, even at a young age.
Today, we take it for granted that our cultural attire and image are essential to our personal, community, and national well-being. But I do not recall us always thinking this way. A lot of this important awareness about our personhood and identity appears to me to have emerged in a short time during the latter part of the last century. My generation came of age in different villages of Botswana in the 1970s and 1980s. I struggle to recall seeing youngsters wearing a leteitshi during that time period. Then, this garment signified and projected adulthood, maternal seriousness, and personal identification. At the time, a young girl donning a leteitshi would probably have been perceived by others as pretentious or misplaced or acting untimely.
Yet, instead of being compelled by perception to retreat into irrelevance or obscurity, a leteitshi has taken its rightful place in the repertoire of our traditional dress. Importantly, it has survived modernization. Although tailors increasingly fuse it with modern patterns, designs, and silhouettes, and although its wearers increasingly seek to make it chic as they each deem fit, a leteitshi remains stubbornly, unchangeably, and beautifully a Botswana identity. Therefore, one can't fail to see the seamless intersection of tradition, culture, and the 21st century fashion taste in a leteitshi.
There are many things required for one to feel grown-up. I can’t list them all here. But I want to say that one of them is an adoption of the leitmotif of a leteitshi. As a middle aged man, like everybody else minding my own business as a guest at that December wedding, I couldn’t fail to see the significance of a young girl wearing her leteitshi and feeling and projecting the weight of that apparel. Any youngster who continues to don it ensures that her generation, unlike mine that missed it, continues to fit it and into it, as perfectly and as confidently as the young girl in her tailored leteitshi dress.
Because a leteitshi is now a cultural uniform, and it transforms its wearer, a youngster wearing it now gets her first tangible taste of cultural belonging, grace, and seriousness. If Western clothing gives our youngsters the freedom to speak and act anyhow they choose as long as modernity allows it, I say that a leteitshi gives the same youngsters the responsibility of belonging no longer to themselves but to their larger communities and societies.
The phenomenon of a child behaving like an adult is called precociousness. Done right, it can be cute. Tie it to one’s embrace and celebration of their cultural identity, traditions, and history, and you have acceptance and heritage pride. If a thread of the past, continuity, and awareness runs through my observation of the youngster who sparked my unique epiphany, it is simply this. Personal aesthetics commingling with public performance can bring joy to us as spectators while simultaneously projecting a nation’s soul.
*Radipati is a Mmegi contributor