The pillar
Sandy Grant | Wednesday May 18, 2016 16:25
But look around with care and it won’t be long before you find that it pops up on a variety of older buildings, most obviously, District Commissioner’s offices, tribal offices and chiefly homes. The combination of those three can hardly come as a surprise. All three possessed authority and had a need to display it - and the obvious answer was the pillar. The impressive pillared frontage of the Phuthadikobo Museum in Mochudi was, though, of a different kind.
Those very large, immensely heavy pillars had to be carried up the hill by hand because there was then no road and therefore no mechanical means of getting them to the building site. But the effort was worth it because they were required to make a statement, not, in this instance, about authority, but about prestige, the prestige of the new school and the prestige of the tribe itself. Small wonder that the home of the project’s lead figure, the Regent Isang Pilane, should also have a pillared frontage. Prestige buildings, however, were in very short supply during most of the Protectorate years so that it is necessary to jump 40 years before a similar need was to emerge. Unsurprisingly, this was to be the new National Assembly in Gaborone with the architect concluding that the pillar should be its most distinguishing feature.
It didn’t really matter what kind of pillar was chosen because, even with such an enormous choice of size, shape, materials and design, it was impossible, with a pillar to go wrong. Development may have occurred only slowly in the years immediately following Independence but once diamond money started to filter through the system, very large new company owned offices sprung up also needing to make a strong architectural statement about prestige, power, and inevitably wealth. Once again, the answer was the pillar. Nor did it take so long before more modest office buildings began to feel a similar need to project an image and an identity. Again the answer was the pillar. In recent years that need, that urge, to make a statement about identity, prestige, wealth, and social position has spread to individual house owners.
Supply was quickly triggered by demand so that the production and sale of pillars for the home has today become a significant roadside business. But it is not only the entrance to the house which has come to require elaboration and some kind of porticoed frontage. It is also the entrance to the plot itself which now needs to proclaim itself. The progression has been very rapid – from the old fashioned, mass produced mesh gate, to the welded patterned gate and then on to the ornate, pillared entrance with a decorative security shelter providing that extra indication of status and wealth. It’s a long, long way from the old lelapa.