�Old-timers� dismiss research paper on Gaborone
Tefo Pheage | Friday September 9, 2016 15:14
This follows University of Botswana (UB) historian and director of Confucius Institute, Professor Part Mgadla’s sentiments in a research paper arguing that the legislative councils did not apply themselves thoroughly and voted hastily for Gaborone despite being the least qualifying of all the other places. According to him, there are things that need to be looked into when deciding over the location of a capital city.
Availability of water, communication networks, roads, railways, airport, plenty of land are what make a capital city.
In deciding over the capital city back in 1958 to 1965, Mgadla says the pioneers selected Gaborone despite having better placed places to choose from.
His gripe is that Gaborone was not a suitable place as evidenced by the current challenges that the city faces like shortage of land and water, among others.
“When I asked the minister how much we use to pump water to Gaborone he said the money is in the region of billions. Today we have a city that is boxed between the land of Bakgatla, Batlokwa, Bakwena and Balete and cannot expand anywhere because of wrong choices,” he says in his paper.
Other places which were suggested to be the capital city pre-independence were Pilane, Morwa, Bokaa, Manyana, Dibete, Tuli Block, Shashe and Francistown. He further argues that Gaborone is not the most central place and was selected without merit.
Debating the issue at the UB, where the paper was presented, Magang defended the pioneers. He stated that they were in a rush to solicit the four million Rands offer from the colonial masters which would have not been issued, had they delayed to make the decision.
“The engaged experts were foreigners and had never stayed in Botswana and even the Professor who was engaged did not even know the topography of the country and no one within these men could make any accurate projections. It was not easy as it sounds,” Magang argued.
Magang however agreed that Gaborone’s expansion inability is a sad story. “At some point I wrote a memorandum for the government to buy neighbouring farms for expanding the city, but that was not successful.”
He said modernised professors should not just discredit old-timers, but acknowledge their challenges at the time. “We needed the four million Rand.
Who could get that money anywhere? An amount of four million was not even in our vocabulary, he said to the laughter of the congregants. So allow us old-timers to say we could not think straight,” he said.
Former career civil servant, Gobe Matenge also vehemently opposed the paper, saying democracy was at work. “Twenty-two people from the Legislative Council voted against 11 people. We did not have the luxury to decide and consult everything and satisfy everybody, “ he said.
Former UB Vice Chancellor, Professor Bojosi Otlhogile also opposed the paper. He dismissed the issue of centrality saying capital cities are not always decided on accessibility to people giving an example of a few countries in the west.
Lawyer, Tebogo Sebego applauded Mgadla for the insightful and well-researched paper saying the country needs such contributions to stimulate debates in Botswana for the development of the country.
Mgadla is of the view that based on his research and observation, Botswana’s capital city can still be relocated as it has been the case with Malawi, Zambia, Mozambique, Nigeria and many others who moved to more ideal places.
“One T. Shaw is said to have made a prophetic question insinuating that Gaborone was not the right site when he quizzed that we are going to make another move 50 years from now.
He quoted Shaw as having said ‘Gaberones is too far South and I am sure it will prove to be unsuitable in years to come,” he said.