Historical Dictionary of Botswana

Reviewed by Sandy Grant | Friday June 12, 2009 00:00

As with its three earlier predecessors the new edition of this important series is a most remarkable compilation.  However, my copy cost no less than P499.95 at Books Botswana, otherwise known as the UB Bookshop, which is, as far as I know, the only place where it is currently available. When news of its publication was first announced, the stated price was even higher so the assumption is that a negotiated price was achieved. 

This is a great shame because even the revised price will inevitably mean that only few of those here who would benefit most from it will actually do so. It should for instance, be in every library, secondary school library, in every educational institute, every tourist lodge and of course in all government departments and parastatals. 

The price will probably ensure that this cannot happen but then the price must indicate that the Scarecrow Press in the United States of America (US) has secured its market for its country-by-country Africa series - this being no. 108 - and may be indifferent as to how many or how few copies are sold here.  In other words, this book is published for a non-African market and when this happens, we only rarely know that such books even exist. Mind you, it may well be that I am totally adrift when it comes to the price of new books because Sillery's The Bechuanaland Protectorate has recently been re-published in the UK and is on sale at 57 pounds sterling. I see that I bought my copy for R3.30! The implication seems to be that new books are becoming as expensive a commodity as in the pre-Guttenberg days when only the super rich could afford to buy them.

The start off point therefore is entirely wrong not least because people here will not be able to know what has been written about them and about their history and will thus be unable to comment, to criticise or object.  But this new volume is the fourth in the series, the first having been published in 1975.

Why did this government, with plentiful diamond money, fail to recognise that this particular publication was of maximum importance and that it had therefore to get involved, to invest and thereby gain some control over what is authoritatively said about it  - if not for its understanding and knowledge - but for the new supposed star in the sky, tourism; in other words, so that visitors to this country, rather than ourselves, may be better clued up about it.

Previous editions of this Dictionary were published in 1975, 1989 which cost me R38, and 1996 and it is fascinating to note how it has evolved over the years and what the editors have decided needed better weighting.  I don't possess the first edition but the new Dictionary is substantially larger than the third; but it is comparison with the second edition which better demonstrates the extent of change. The new dictionary has five pages of acronyms (compared with two!), 15 pages of chronology (compared with four), a 22 page Introduction (compared with six), dictionary entries of 346 pages (compared with 143) and a bibliography of 92 pages (compared with 73). 

But having noted the dramatic increase in size, it is also a fascinating exercise to try to pick out other changes - entries that have been discarded - van der Post seems to be one, new entries that have been included and entries that have been re-written as a result of new information or revised interpretations; to work out what ought to have been included but got omitted and to identify the mistakes that are almost inevitable in a work of this kind.  For instance, it is a trifle whimsical to describe State House as 'tiny'.

To approach the Dictionary in this way, is in no way to diminish it; rather, it is to recognise its exceptional importance for anyone who has any kind of serious interest in this country. But there is one mistake, however, which is particularly surprising - because it suggests a serious misreading of Botswana's history.

This is the Dictionary's insistence that this country was a colony.  This particular observation is made by the Series Editor in this and the two previous editions, and possibly in all four. But it is also repeated in some of the dictionary entries - thus,  ' like many other ex-British colonies, modern Botswana has adopted a British style education system'.

Is this an accident or is it an indication of personal bias? I am not sure, even though Britain is given a bit of a hammering. But when Prince Philip (the Duke of Edinburgh) is described as queen (lower case q) Elizabeth's son, one begins to worry. But it is invariably the 1896 visit to Great Britain of those three Dikgosi which brings out the different personal preferences. And so it is, unsurprisingly, with this edition which is adamant that the visit was a total flop. Interpreting this country's history is exceptionally difficult because so much of it revolves around what did not happen rather than what occurred.

The Dictionary's treatment of Great Britain well demonstrates this difficulty. It states, the country has retained a remarkably positive image among its ex- subjects even though it nearly handed the place over to Cecil Rhodes, it nearly handed it over to South Africa and that it nearly conned everyone here, particularly Tshekedi into believing that the British really did care whereas, 'the truth was that Great Britain wanted Bechuanaland for itself and for its imperial vision of continental control'.  By and large, the 'nearly' approach to this country's history has been of greater interest to historians than the obvious need to concentrate on why so many of those 'nearlys' didn't happen. In other words, the need should be to find greater interest and fascination in what did happen rather than in what didn't. But that would be to swing historical interpretation away from its long-standing fixations. Self-evidently, in this instance, the Dictionary has allowed its grasp of 'truth' to supersede its interpretation of 'facts'. 

But enough of that particular issue. In the next edition, I hope that there will be space for Derek Jones, the first mayor of Gaborone, for Poverty, surprisingly omitted from this edition, for Patrick van Rensburg's later day importance as the founder of Mmegi, for the Bamangwato Development Association, the country's first modern style non-governmental organisation (NGO), and for Guy Clutton Brock.  And so on.

But when all the inevitable questions, doubts and refutations are set aside, we have before us a most remarkable publication, an astonishing treasure house of information whose compilation represents a most amazing achievement by its three historian editors.

Quite how they, and their editor predecessors, have managed to cover every area of the country's life from economics, to disease, to social practice is a matter for wonder.  That said, I really do believe that this Dictionary is so extraordinarily important that its content should, for the first time, be systematically reviewed for accuracy.