Keitseng's home to become site museum

Gothataone Moeng | Friday December 13, 2013 17:24

 

Under the project, a collaboration venture between the Fish Keitseng Family Trust, the National Museum and Art Gallery and the South African High Commission, the museum will have an exhibition room dedicated to the life of Fish Keitseng and his role in the South African liberation struggle.

It will feature offices at the back of the compound.However, the historically significant house that was vital in the South African liberation struggle will not be disturbed. The Keitseng home was declared a national monument last year.

An active member of the African National Congress (ANC) who was in and out of South African jails for his part in protest action organised by the ANC Underground, Keitseng was banished from South Africa in 1959 following the Treason Trial in which he was one of the defendants.

In Botswana, Keitseng continued to help the ANC, establishing a network of safe routes for ANC freedom fighters going abroad for political and military training. Hundreds of ANC cadres were hosted by Keitseng in his Peleng home, perhaps the most prominent being former South African presidents Nelson Mandela and Thabo Mbeki. Mandela died aged 95 on Thursday last week at his home in Johannesburg.

Seatlasaone Keitseng, the family spokesman, told Mmegi yesterday that the family also plans to have a cultural centre at a family plot in Mogoditshane that is also of historical significance pertaining to the liberation struggle. Further, the family trust, which is expected to be launched on the anniversary of Keitseng's death on March 28, 2014, is planning a number of activities in Kanye to remember the July 1962 landing of Mandela and Keitseng in the village following trips to East Africa.

The main objective of the family trust, according to Seatlasaone, is to protect the history of the liberation movement not just in southern Africa but Africa as a whole. The trust also plans to carry out research and document the history of Botswana's role in the South African struggle.

Plans are that as the trust grows, it will establish scholarships for researchers to devote themselves to researching and documenting this important piece of history. Chief Curator at the National Museum, Phillip Segadika, said plans for the Peleng home will take off as soon as funds are available and that the trust is actively fundraising. Yesterday, historian Jeff Ramsay, who co-wrote Keitseng's memoirs with Barry Morton, called Keitseng's home a 'material testament' of Peleng's place in the region's shared freedom struggle.