History finds its feet through Mophato
Goitsemodimo Kaelo | Monday September 28, 2026 06:00
But once you spend time going through the pages, that distance begins to narrow. What first looks like a book about dance gradually reveals itself as a book about memory, identity and the stories Botswana tells about herself.
That may explain Vice President Ndaba Gaolathe’s striking observation in the foreword. Gaolathe highlights that when he first encountered the book, he expected to admire its photography, documentation and the care taken to preserve something important.
What he did not expect, he writes, was to find himself inside the performances.
That is precisely the quiet achievement of Mophato. Predominated by photographs, the book takes the reader on an immersive ride that one may feel should never end.
Mophato does not merely place dancers before a camera. It places the reader inside a moving archive. Here, history is not confined to dates, names and official records. It has rhythm, posture, costume, gesture, expression and the collective energy of bodies moving together.
In terms of photographs, Charles brings to Mophato the same qualities for which his visual work is known: patience, precision and an extraordinary sensitivity to the moment. The images are immaculate, but their beauty is not lacking in creativity; they breathe.
This matters because dance can be difficult to photograph. A still image risks killing movement by freezing it. Charles, however, seems to understand that the task is not simply to capture where a dancer’s body is, but where it is going. His photographs retain anticipation. The result is a visual language that allows the photographs to speak alongside the text rather than merely illustrate it.
Mophato is more than a beautiful photography book. Its deeper value lies in its act of preservation. Botswana’s traditional dances are a storehouse of knowledge.
They carry traces of community, ceremony, social organisation and historical experience. To document them is therefore to document more than choreography. It is to record a way of understanding our world.
There is something particularly compelling about telling a national story through dance. Written history often privileges the official voice.
In this book, Charles does not appear to be chasing spectacle for spectacle’s sake. Instead, he allows the performers to occupy the centre of the story. Their bodies become both subject and archive.
The title, Mophato, consequently feels appropriate. A mophato suggests a group bound together by a shared experience, identity or purpose. The book itself becomes such a gathering: of dancers, photographers, historians, communities and readers. Perhaps this is why Gaolathe’s foreword resonates so strongly.
The unexpected experience of finding oneself inside the performances is ultimately what Mophato offers its readers. You may open the book expecting to look at Botswana. Before long, Botswana begins looking back. The book also captures all the productions that Mophato has shared with the world.
This are Pula, Borwa, Teemane Thari, Inyaya and A re yeng Botswana. Through the book, Charles gives the reader an insight into each production, and explaining each storyline and how it was performed. In part two of the book, he takes us through the backstage, giving the readers snapshots of what transpired behind the scenes.
He highlights the production crew and the performers, sharing snippets of what each production meant to them.
In an age when photographs are made by the millions and forgotten almost as quickly, Mophato: Botswana’s Story Told in Dance insists that an image can still be an act of remembrance. Its pages preserve movement without suffocating it, history without making it feel distant, and culture without turning it into a museum exhibit.