The Pilane Estate and Printing in Mochudi

| Wednesday October 15, 2014 16:25

 

Tsodilo Printers is the sister company of Tsodilo Services which publishes the Sunday Standard and the Telegraph. On the other hand, it is also likely that nothing would have changed the probable conviction of the Tsodilo Printers and its boss, Prof Malema, that their initiative was the first of its kind in Mochudi/Pilane. Amazingly, because only in Serowe was there anything remotely comparable, the initiative in Mochudi is the third of its kind.

The first was made by the Dutch Reformed Mission which had a press, which was housed in a still extant rondavel. The project was headed by Sophonia Poonyane who printed the small magazine, Lesedi la Sechaba in the 1950s. The second initiative came with Naomi Mitchison’s acquisition in the UK of three ancient treadle presses which she persuaded the Crown Agents to ship to Mochudi, and with the arrival of an 18-year-old volunteer printer, Johnny Gumb to get the new project off the ground.

But before doing so, he (and the project) had to agree that he could help out the Protectorate Administration in Mahikeng by becoming its temporary Acting Government Printer - it being generally believed that whilst governments sometimes assist NGOs they are never, ever assisted by any NGO. In the event, the Mochudi Printers, after a very successful start, was unable to survive his departure, and the entire plant was handed over to Swaneng which was then in process of taking its own printing initiative. This initiative also came to grief, after a brief flourish, but the printing legacy there is still carried on by Serowe Printers Coop.

The establishment of the Tsodilo Printers in Pilane not only prompts thoughts about the two earlier printing initiatives in Mochudi but also throws light on other earlier development initiatives. It might be a common impression that these NGO initiatives flourish, flicker and die, invariably leaving nothing behind. Tsodilo Printers, however, is located in what was in 1973 the country’s first rural industrial estate. What made this initiative possible was the existence of a Leatherwork project at the Community Centre and the agreement that if this were re-located to Pilane it could help trigger the establishment of other production projects.

The idea worked out well. BEDU moved in, the Swedes were interested and Pilane boasted leather projects for the next 40 or so years. On the other hand, however, the industrial estate idea, over the years, did not really take off, for reasons which I never really understood. The recent replacement of its small time producers by LEA suggested that the Pilane Estate might be working towards a different kind of future. In the event, the establishment of Tsodilo Printers there has at least vindicated the efforts of the then District Officer Development, John Speed, who engineered the 1973 initiative and the DDC, at the time, which really did do what it was supposed to do!