Gaborone as it was 50 years ago
Sandy Grant | Wednesday January 7, 2015 14:00
Could this mean that we appropriately celebrate the 50th anniversary this year? The question is worth exploring. Gaborone, with Francistown and Lobatse, was already recognised by the British Protectorate Administration as a ‘town’ so that the establishment of an elected Council couldn’t make it more of a town.
On the other hand, this was not to be just another town, this was to be the new capital. But could the new Gaborone be regarded as the capital of a country which, in theory, would only come into existence in the following year, 1966?
Prior to Independence, the country was routinely described as a ‘territory’ or as the Bechuanaland Protectorate with Bechuanaland being synonymous, of course with 1966’s Botswana.
But it was also a country even if its identity had been created only by virtue of its becoming a Protectorate in 1885. But then again, a country is defined as an area with internationally recognised boundaries – as indeed was the case here – whose inhabitants had a shared national identity. Up to sometime in the middle 1970s, however, the inhabitants of this ‘country’ had no such shared identity being known collectively as nothing more specific than ‘Africans’ or more particularly as members of their respective tribes. The term ‘Batswana’ came only slowly into current use.
Probably the establishment of Gaborone as the new capital should therefore be celebrated next year as part of the Independence anniversary. But that leaves little time, for instance, to start pinning down what sort of a photographic and archival record might have survived from the key years when the new capital was being constructed.
The National Archives will help with the former and may possess some relevant photos. It is possible that the National Museum may also possess some relevant photos but the details of its collection have never been made known.
In the circumstances, its continued retention of archival photos known to be a major importance is akin to a library which holds books but will not allow anyone to read them - an extraordinary policy for any institution claiming to have any sort of an educational role.
Then, of course, there is also the Department of Information and Broadcasting whose photographic collection should long ago have been catalogued and recorded. The fear, however, is that much material was lost when premises were changed from the small to the larger and then the largest. And then there are the personally owned collections which have a nasty way of getting lost.
I wonder what Judy Campbell and her family intend doing with Alec’s presumably huge photographic collection? Might there be some real jewels tucked away there?
In sum, though, it seems likely that little may have survived – but it would certainly be worth making the effort to find out. Significant resources are being allocated for the recording and safeguarding of aspects of the intangible heritage.
Is the tangible heritage of so little comparable importance that it can be totally neglected? Anyway, for this week, the accompanying photo is my own personal contribution. It is undated but my guess is that it was taken in 1965 at Ditokana which, by my reckoning, was situated more or less on the western edge of today’s UB. But as soon as possible I will try and relate the photo to the line of the hills in the background.