The wonderful Minnie Shaw

Sandy Grant | Wednesday February 10, 2016 17:24

 

There is Sekgoma’s extraordinary house with its two octagonal rooms. Also in Serowe is the multi-sided living room in Tshekedi’s Red House, and there is the ruined hexagonal house in Francistown. 

Until the floods in Palapye apparently destroyed it, and other buildings of historical importance, there was also Minnie Shaw’s fascinating home which may have had striking similarities with Sekgoma’s hill side house.  Almost certainly Mma Shaw’s home also consisted of two multi sided rooms which are just visible in this 1974 photo. It is possible, I suppose, that the one might have provided the inspiration for the other, although it is a very long shot. 

Nevertheless the existence of two such buildings probably constructed at around the same time is an extraordinary coincidence.

The wonderful Mma Shaw, also known to many as Granny Shaw, was one of those who was presented to the Prince of Wales when he visited Palapye in 1925.  Sadly, I have lost the key part of her funeral programme so that I cannot know when she was married and came to Palapye.

But she used to talk about Khama III and having a post marriage chat with him – disparaged by those who know better because Khama never spoke English and her LMS Sechuana with the ‘ch’ rather than the ‘ts’, only came later. But such conversations can nevertheless, occur. How do you like it here in Palapye, Mma Shaw, said Khama? I don’t like it at all, Chief, she replied, There are no women.  No I don’t like it one little bit. Don’t worry, he said, they are all at the lands and will soon be coming home. Lovely story.

 Mma Shaw is one of the very few who were given both a Botswana and a British award.  She stayed with me in Gaborone when she came down from Palapye to receive her award from Seretse.

Worried about the procedures involved she asked me if there was anything in particular that she would need to do.  I told her not to worry but as a joke suggested that having received her medal, a salute might be in order. I did not expect her to take me seriously but with the medal pinned on to her lapel, she took a pace backward and snapped the smartest of all salutes.  Those in the stadium attending the event, hugged themselves with delight. And why not? But then Seretse himself might well have been as delighted. 

After all Minnie Shaw had been one of their first white ‘friends’ in a community that, in those not so long ago years, had been generally antagonistic to them. I wonder if she will have been featured in the new film?