Selecting the site for the country�s new capital
Sandy Grant | Wednesday December 3, 2014 11:11
It follows that I am obliged to take rapid issue with Jan Wareus about the statement he made in Mmegi (28.11.14 - ‘The Planning History of Gaborone) that I have previously maintained that Gaborone was chosen to be the site of the new capital because it had ‘land belonging to a very humble and understanding tribe’ – presumably the Batlokwa.
The historical facts about the area, which is today the core of the city, are straightforward and Wareus especially, as an eminent and experienced town planner, should take care to avoid contributing to problems where none should exist.
The Batlokwa did not have possession of this area when it was decided that this should be the site of the new capital. Were it so, the area would have been classified as a tribal reserve akin to the Kweneng, Kgatleng and GaMalete.
Self evidently, it was not. Had it been, it would not have been selected. Seretse made it absolutely clear in 1961 that the new capital had to be situated in an area which was neutral and where everyone could buy land.
If indeed, as Wareus and so many others still unfortunately claim, the Gaborone city area was then tribal, it would have been, amongst other possible and similar candidate places, quickly disregarded – tribal areas being, by definition, non-neutral and with land that could only be customarily utilised.
When Sebele returned from his 1895 visit to the U.K. he gave to the British Government the land for the railway that it had requested and which he had agreed to provide. This land stretched from, give or take, Mogoditshane to the already established international border with South Africa.
There was no popular resistance which suggests that he did, in fact, have sufficient claim on this area to give it away - with the exception, of course, of the small but significant British settlement in the Gaborone Village. Uncomfortably, it has to be accepted, that by doing so, he also gave away the Batlokwa who he had earlier agreed could settle on the eastern side of the Notwane River.
The British Administration surveyed the land that Sebele had given it which it then split into farms - with the exception of the area settled by the Batlokwa. They then handed over the entire area to the British South Africa Company, including the part occupied by the Batlokwa, with the exception of one of the newly created farm areas which it retained as a Crown Reserve.
The others were all sold. It was the area reserved by the Administration - which included the Village settlement and later the railway line and station - which became the site of the new capital.
Had this country been a colony instead of a Protectorate, it was almost a certainty that the Batlokwa would have been forcibly evicted and the Crown Reserve been completely encircled by freehold farms. Instead they, and the BSA, held back out of respect for the aged Kgosi Gaborone so that between 1905 and 1932 the Batlokwa were allowed to remain where they were but as tenants, obliged to pay rent to the British South Africa Company for the land they occupied. When Gaborone died, the British pulled of an unusual deal by which the BSA surrendered its ownership of the Tlokweng area in exchange for mining rights elsewhere in the country. The deal enabled the British to declare Tlokweng a native reserve and gave the tribe the security that it had probably never experienced since it had settled there nearly 50 years earlier.