BOT50: Happy is a nation that has no history
Thalefang Charles | Friday August 26, 2016 14:55
Some people have argued that this milestone should be used to also look back on where this country comes from. But it appears priorities have been shifted to a day of dancing and playing instead of introspection. Are we that lost and without soul that on this 50 years of independence we could be crossing borders to procure foreigners to come and teach us how to dance on our independence day? Well, I am getting ahead of myself.
The preamble of the Official 1965 Bechuanaland Protectorate Handbook described us as the happiest Africans ever lived because we do not have any history.
The introduction reads: “Happy is the nation that has no history. By this standard there can be few nations in Africa happier than Bechuanaland, for apart from the inter- and intra-tribal conflicts normal to the African continent before its emergence into modern life and thought, its record is remarkably free of incident of any kind. The Batswana offered an equally friendly reception to missionaries, traders and soldiers alike when they came to offer their various receipts for happiness, and since the British drew a line on the map and said ‘This is Bechuanaland’ they have lived quietly and undemandingly for 70 uneventful years.”
One might think Bot50 was actually reading from this rather flawed text when they planned the Bot50 events. At 50 years the people are happy painting trees and tyres in blue black and white and no mention of the identity of the nation, no heritage, no heirlooms to display and be proud about, no forum to tell heroic tales of nation builders other than an embarrassing tale of a trip to Britain by three chiefs to plead with Queen Victoria not to give the country to Cecil John Rhodes.
One of the country’s prolific writers and historian Jeff Ramsay noted in one of his many historically rich missives on why the white imperialists discouraged us to learn our history saying, “our inner strength draws from our past experience, which further informs our sense of identity. It is no different for a nation…the architects of imperialism understood that denying subject peoples their indigenous past was an effective means of disempowering them.”
In 1970, the late President Sir Seretse Khama lectured on the importance of finding our identity, our past and our soul as a nation.
“We were taught, sometimes in a very positive way, to despise ourselves and our ways of life. We were made to believe that we had no past to speak of, no history to boast of. The past, so far as we were concerned, was just a blank and nothing more...It should now be our intention to try to retrieve what we can of our past. We should write our own history books, to prove that we did have a past, and that it was a past that was just as worth writing and learning about as any other. We must do this for the simple reason that a nation without a past is a lost nation, and a people without a past are a people without a soul”. But disappointingly Khama’s (Seretse) government and his later administrations did not teach Batswana their history. The school syllabus in Botswana is only concerned with the likes of Shaka Zulu and Adolf Hitler.
With Seretse Khama’s words echoing in our minds, Mmegi team travelled to Mafikeng, South Africa to retrieve, albeit little, what we can of our past and hopefully present to Motswana that wish to find self and that we actually do have history beyond 1895 and 1966.
Every year towards the end of August, local historians and writers revive a tribute to the man they all agree to be the Father of the Nation – Kgosi Sechele I of Bakwena. This is because August 30 is remembrance of the Battle of Dimawe that sparked the Batswana-Boer War of 1852-53.
The Batswana–Boer War of 1852-53 was according to Ramsay, “seminal event in Botswana’s birth as a nation.”
Another historian, Professor Thomas Tlou concurs saying, “If Sechele had not fought the Boers, it is probable that the whole of Botswana would have been slowly occupied by them and that Botswana would be a part of the Republic of South Africa.”
Yet another Motswana who tried to highlight Sechele’s contribution in the building of modern Botswana is former cabinet minister David Magang who said in his book, The Magic of Perseverance, “Out of the [Batswana–Boer War of 1852-53] emerged a glorious outcome. A new solidarity brought the various Batswana nations much closer and the modern Botswana was born. Sechele’s place in the pantheon of Africa’s monarchial greats such as Shaka Zulu, Moshoeshoe of Lesotho and Mansa Kankan Musa of Mali was assured. Unfortunately his epitaph would hardly inspire repeated visits by his own people, thereby reducing him to a mere footnote in the annals of the country”.
Kgosi Sechele’s Six Pounder Cannon that is displayed at Mafikeng Museum is a very important artefact from the Batswana–Boer War. At the museum it is just known as some of the artillery used during the Mafikeng Siege. But according to various historians, Sechele’s cannon was instrumental in the Dimawe Battle because it is believed to have stopped the Boers’ conquest. But due to lack of local records, details on why such national heirloom is now sitting at Mafikeng Museum instead of Kweneng (or even at Parliament) are sketchy.
Mafikeng Museum is open to the public after a two-year closure while they were doing renovations, that are still not complete as yet. When Mmegi visited there was no information and not even a curator to explain why “Kanono ya ga Ramokopi – as Sechele is affectionately praised – is held there. Further reading on the cannon reveals a long list of sketchy speculations on why it ended up at the Museum. Reverend Richard Moleofe, who is a retired military officer and commentator, once made the trip to Mafikeng armed with the same questions and returned with those hearsays. Moleofe wrote in 2013 saying the cannon is thought to have been sold (at times saying ‘given as a trophy’) to Kgosi Montshiwa.
Sketchy information from the museum says the cannon, which they rightly identify as “Sechele’s cannon” belonged to one E. Rowland who apparently kept it in his garden before it was acquired to be used during the Mafikeng Siege.
So maybe the greatest legacy Bot50 should have done with money that they supposedly squandered on foreigners who are coming to teach Batswana how to dance on our independence day, would have been to buy back Sechele’s Cannon from the Mafikeng Museum.