Tshwaragano Hotel
Sandy Grant | Wednesday August 26, 2015 17:22
I read three which seemed to be agreed that the Tshwaragano Hotel had been burnt to the ground.
A later report from someone who had been to check the extent of the damage was more reassuring.
Yes, six of the rooms had been destroyed but the main buildings were unaffected. What a relief but also what a surprise.
When thatched buildings are clustered together fire moves so easily and so fast, especially in August.
But this time around at least, Tshwaragano will survive to welcome more guests and to give pleasure to many visitors.
But it has been given a severe warning. If it wasn’t fully insured, it is going to struggle.
If it opts for future insurance coverage it is going to pay very heavily.
If it concludes that thatched roofs are now a liability, it will need to replace the thatch – which might need to be done anyway – and go for tiles. These may not be quite the same but at least they will not spoil the view.
But what caused the fire?
As with the Gaborone Golf Club it seems that no one was around when this started.
It couldn’t have been lightning at this time of year so it must have been caused by an electrical fault, like so many fires in recent years.
If so, there appear to be numerous alarming possibilities ranging from poor quality workmanship, poor quality materials, terrible adaptors, or rats chewing the wiring, I have been told that wiring needs to be replaced after 20 or so years. Can this be correct? If so, what happens when this is not done – which would be the norm? Is it inevitable that buildings routinely become bonfires at some unknown time?
But let’s give a bit more thought to Tshwaragano which probably opened its doors a year before the government was able to balance its books without budgetary assistance from the UK. It was the first hotel to be built away from the line of rail since, Riley’s in Maun, the Kgalagadi Arms in Gantsi and the Serowe Hotel itself.
It was built before the advent of diamonds when the country was still one of the poorest in the world, when tourism barely existed and undoubtedly it would not have had the slightest hope of being approved for a loan from today’s bureaucrats.
But with van Rensburg’s extraordinary initiatives in Serowe there was an echo of another man’s new deal in a different part of the world.
When the cash has dried up, the economists have little to offer and it becomes the opportune moment to start bottoms up instead of top down and initiate what they would not normally approve – such as building a new hotel in the middle of Serowe. It cannot be done, many said. It’s the wrong time, advised some and a second hotel in Serowe can never be viable, claimed others. But it did and it was.
But for this sort of thing to happen it needs someone at the local level with extraordinary vision and leadership. It just happened that Serowe had such a person.