Reminiscing about Selebi-Phikwe�s years of yore
Ryder Gabathuse | Friday October 14, 2016 18:08
Botswana Congress Party (BCP) president, Dumelang Saleshando had the rare privilege of living in Selebi-Phikwe of yesteryear and duly benefited from the copper/nickel town’s offerings at the time.
“My parents relocated to Selebi-Phikwe when I was only eight-years-old. The reason for the move was BCL, where my father had just landed a new job,” reminisces Saleshando, who is a businessman-cum-politician.
Remembering the year he moved to the copper/nickel town with nostalgia, Saleshando says though smaller than Gaborone where he had just moved from, “I fell in love with the town because it had the semblance of both a town and a village”.
He explains that Selebi-Phikwe looked like a village in the sense that most families knew each other well. He is quick to remember that it was easy to get parental consent to walk to the other side of town to play with friends.
“No place was considered too far or too unsafe, allowing the youth of our time to nurture friendships that have endured the test of time,” quickly remembers 45-year-old Saleshando, who is also a former legislator.
One of the privileges of having a parent working for BCL was the low fees the parents needed to pay for the children to access the multiracial Kopano Primary School.
Although for all intents and purposes it was just an average private school, Saleshando says for the Phikwe residents it was considered the epitome of quality education.
He remains indebted to the teachers who shaped his character and attitude to life whilst at Kopano.
“Before I completed my Standard Three, I was diagnosed with what was then considered to be a life-threatening heart condition. My mother, who was a nurse, used to narrate how fortunate I was to have been attended to by the BCL medical team at the mine hospital, whose timely, accurate diagnosis allowed me to have a second lease of life.”
What used to strike the young Saleshando about Phikwe was the economic divide between the blacks and the whites.
“Whites lived in bigger houses with spacious yards and we called the neighbourhoods ‘Tshaba Ntsa’ (a threatening mesage, warning potential burglars) hanging on the gates,” he says, insisting that this did not worry him much as a primary school boy.
“Instead, it gave me the drive to study hard with the hope of returning to Phikwe as an adult, to work for the BCL mine as a manager and to occupy one of the houses,” he says, revealing his ambitions at school.
He was told by his career guidance teacher at Kgale (St Joseph’s College)that if he wanted to work for a mine, he would have to get good grades for Geography and true to his target, he used to top the class in Geography.
But, unfortunately, his grades for Chemistry killed his dream of working for BCL Mine.
Having been born in Francistown, Vusa Ziga’s family moved to Phikwe around 1974 where his father was the education secretary and his mother a teacher. Ziga is head of operations at the Botswana Television station and its in-house soccer analyst.
He quickly remembers that the then life in Phikwe was both exciting, challenging and eye-opening. He says the town was a close-knit community with most in the town employed by the BCL.
“The best thing about the town was the sports activities at either Area 1 and Area 2. We basically kept ourselves busy either swimming, playing tennis, rugby, soccer and others.”
Because of the closeness of the community, families supported each other a lot and Ziga quickly remembers at one point Saleshando’s mother organising a best couple contest to raise funds for the Botshabelo community.
They (Ziga and the boys) came en-masse to support as young men and he remembers the likes of Hisso Sebina, Dumelang, himself doing their thing at Area 2, which was the place to be for evening entertainment.
Ziga and company interacted well with a large refugee community from various countries such as Lesotho, Angola and Zimbabwe.
“Phrases such as Chomela e ole were buzz words whenever it was pay day at the BCL Mine and you could tell by the number of the miners at various entertainment venues. The miners were generous as they shared with anyone willing to imbibe.”
Ziga says they always made sure that whenever some of their peers or older brothers who worked at the mine were paid, they were waylaid around town by siblings and friends and pulled into the nearest shop for a pair of jeans, shoes and so forth.
One of the beautiful things was the commitment to education by parents and students alike throughout the years and possibly every child at that time wanted to live at Tshaba Ntsa where all senior officers of the mine stayed behind well-manicured gardens and pools.
Ziga and company had a good time as they could walk from one side of the town to the other without the threat of encountering criminals.
“Everyone woke up to the Chomela ( the smelter) bellowing smoke in a westerly direction and at times the fumes were so suffocating, but we stayed on as we do today as this is our town,” boasts a true Phikwean, Ziga whose love for soccer was cemented in the town.
He says whilst he and the likes of Botsalo Ntuane, who was popularly known as ‘Mpimpi’, supported the mining town’s soccer giants featuring the likes of Torpedo Ebineng, Papi Senatle, Best Sechele, Muller Dintwe, Peter Muchina and others, they also had their own non-league teams.
It was at some of the non-league teams that the likes of Thabo Motang, Enock Dube, Jester Sealetsa, States Segopolo, Hisso Sebina, Hundred Mosimanegape and others, were scouted into top-flight leagues.
As a sports fanatic, Ziga credits the BCL Mine for even ensuring that facilities for various sporting codes were provided, which gave the copper/nickel town sporting life.