The old trading stores
Sandy Grant | Wednesday November 4, 2015 16:29
Churches looked like churches, houses looked like houses, and anything with pillars was obviously either the office of the District Commissioner or the house of the Kgosi or of some other eminent personage. Today anything goes and there is little to distinguish one from the other. Everyone and his aunt has a pillared entrance to their home.
Churches look like banks, and great blocks of building could be almost anything from Ministerial offices to the headquarters of a major corporate. The one building type that is still recognisable is the specialist shop which is still so easily identifiable because of its show windows. But specialist shops are a relative newcomer to this country. Prior to Independence, Gaborone had none, and the same was true of Francistown, so far as I can remember.
Scattered throughout the country, however, were general trading stores which, as their name suggests, sold just about everything. In a sense, they were yesterday’s supermarkets. Unlike supermarkets today, however, which from the outside, have no identifiable feature or characteristics, the old trading stores could usually be picked out because their windows were unconventionally set below roof level, a feature which is well displayed in the photo of the old Bakgatla Store in Mochudi. This arrangement ensured that whilst the store was well lit, maximum use could be made of the walls. At first sight, it might be thought that this particular store is a two-story building – certainly the two sets of windows would suggest as much. In fact, the lower set of windows which may be original, provide light for the store’s offices. The windows and door to the left of the building are undoubtedly recent infill additions.
It is likely that these specialist buildings are now something of an endangered species. In Mochudi, the old Mochudi Trading Store which also had these high set windows, was demolished to make way for the still unopened colossus opposite Spar. Chand’s once upon a time store, which also had them, has been a shell for year’s past.
Sampson’s Cash Store, probably because it was of a later date, was unusual in having conventional shop front windows. It was taken over by the hospital and brilliantly converted into housing units. Elsewhere, if memory serves Chand’s store in Sikwane was another which had high set windows. And for a certainty, buildings of this type are still to be found in Lobatse. But up and down the country, the likelihood is that only a few now survive. Everywhere, older buildings have been either demolished or drastically modernised and unfortunately the old trading stores will not have escaped that trend.