Sekgoma�s House, Serowe (3)

Sandy Grant | Wednesday January 20, 2016 15:35

 

The house had long been unused and was severely dilapidated.  Its re-emergence into public life opens up a number of previously unconsidered topics, not least its design for which there appears to be no obvious precedent. For me, it seems improbable that the house could have been designed by someone without formal architectural skills.

But who might he have been and why would Sekgoma have wanted a house which was clearly intended to be used during the day and not, as per tradition, at night.  The traditional lelapa, both front and back, acted as living room and kitchen, the rondavel, singular or plural, provided the bedroom.  A pit latrine, if there was one, provided for other needs, otherwise recourse was to the adjacent bush or nearby riverbed. Sekgoma’s house was designed for a completely different way of life. It had two verandahs which had a notional connection with the lelapa, larger in front and miniscule at the back.

It had three living rooms, the entrance room and the two octagonal rooms at the sides. Unfortunately we have no idea how those rooms were used.  Was one a sitting room and the other a bedroom or were both side rooms used as bedrooms? In contrast, the nature and purpose of the smaller rooms at the back is straightforward. Here is the kitchen, the bathroom and the toilet.

Unfortunately Hartmut Herold’s beautifully drawn floor plan gives no idea how, on the side of a hill, the drainage system actually worked.  Nor does he provide information about the materials that were used.  The roof is of much interest.  Roofing, what amounts to two octagonal buildings, with corrugated iron sheeting required considerable skill. If no alterations have been made to the building, as appears to be the case, the corrugated iron sheeting, now 90 years old, is of a quality that many today will find hard to credit. Unfortunately we do not know for how long Sekgoma and Tebogo lived in this house. Did they move into either the Red or the Green House, as seems likely, when Khama III died in 1923? And if so, who then might have occupied it? Why do I have it in mind that the house was once owned or merely just used by Bonyerile? But let me return to the question of precedent.  Any variation from the standard rondavel house may appear an attractive idea until the difficulties of roofing become apparent.

Thatching grass can roof almost anything.  Rectangular materials are only good for roofing rectangular buildings which may explain  why we have only the remarkable, ruined hexagonal building in Francistown and Mma Shaw’s now lost octagonal (?) home in Palapye.  Otherwise, what do we have? There is the multi-sided living room in Tshekedi’s Red House and nearby, if memory serves, a house, if it still exists in its original form, of multi-sided rondavels.

  I have no information about this house but would dearly love to know if it preceded Sekgoma’s remarkable building or merely copied it.