Then and now

Sandy Grant | Monday June 9, 2014 18:54

Included in the package were letters to and from Naomi Mitchison, newspaper articles by Naomi, and photos – two being of Kgosi Linchwe’s wedding in 1966.

Taken together, they brought back to me memories but also events of the past which I had totally forgotten. And then, shortly afterwards, I enjoyed a long discusion with Elias Dewah which covered much ground, past and present, and included comment about some of those people who we had both known in the past, such as Greek Ruele. 

Following that discussion, I took myself off to Gaborone needing, amongst other items, to buy a replacement part for my ancient Isuzu pick up.

I got myself to Auto & General which is situated bang next to the most diabolical traffic junction in Gaborone (or at least one of them) where I was identified by one of those extraordinarily helpful ladies who told me that she comes from Mochudi and that Greek Ruele was her father. How was that for an amazing coincidence! I ask her if she knows anything about Naomi Mitchison of long ago who was so close to Greek. She says that she is named after Naomi! I then ask about Greek’s wives, saying that I only knew Senewa.

That is my mother, she says! I am totally floored. The conversation took me back to those days, now so long ago, when those few of us from elsewhere came to give a hand and also to contribute to the creation of a brave new world.

We were lucky to have experienced something that has now gone, something that the younger generations today can never know. 

 It was a world of ox wagons and Bedford trucks, of general trading stores which sold everything, of wind up telephones and party lines, of older army men wearing ex army greatcoats, of seasonal mass migrations to the lands, tilly lamps and cold water bags, of the mail train and the mixed, of rondavels and decorated homes, of children singing in the evening, and everyone sleeping outside when it was hot. 

It was a time when a 60-year-old lady from Scotland with a formidable reputation as a writer, believed that in Mochudi she had found the promised land.  And linked hands with Linchwe, with Greek, with Norman Molomo and Francis Phiri to make it an even better promised land. And then how one thing led so quickly to another. 

 But my musing on the past didn’t last long because from my auto world I stopped off at other places in town and met other people, long time residents, who unable to give me the chance to recall that long distant  past, offered their disturbing assessment of the present. 

And it was disturbing. Where had the brave new world of the 1960s gone?  In its place was a concern about tomorrow, about the new paths that the country appears to be taking, about corruption, about personal uncertainty and insecurity, about the conviction that foreigners are no longer welcome here, about the humiliation to which many applicants are routinely subjected, and which they must endure in order to obtain work and residence permits.

And then there are the reiterated comments that Zambia, after its past setbacks, is now again on the up and that this country, in contrast is on the decline with the result that many have already gone whilst others are also preparing to make their move.

There is a strange feel about all this. How can this country be the best in the world in which to invest when an unknown number of those who had invested have already packed up and gone?  How can we be declared to be almost corruption free when a general impression is that corruption is now massively entrenched? 

How can there be this idea that we are on a slippery downward slope when the recently ended Youth Games have been such a marked success, when the diamond world now comes to Gaborone, when immense new buildings are appearing in Gaborone’s central business district and when its city skyline is changing by the day? 

How can it be when the prospects for mining look so bright, and when almost imminent is the  construction of no less than three heavy haul railway lines which will take the country’s coal to South Africa, to Namibia and to Mozambique. 

These ought to be near euphoric days when the brave new world of the pre-diamond days is being repeated but in different form. But it isn’t quite that way, is it? Something, clearly, is not as it should be.