Remembering Seepapitso

SANDY GRANT
Correspondent | Friday April 16, 2010 00:00

 

But to challenge this general understanding, I ask you to go back with me to the new 'nation', the new country, which came into being at the end of September 1966; a new 'nation', which had previously had no capital town or city - a conglomeration of Tswana tribes - nations if you prefer - with their tribal/national capitals together with their varied subject peoples. Not a federation of Tswana people but an area of land defined geographically by the Protectorate, which brought some within its borders and left others out. Not a country, in normally understood terms, and certainly not a nation, merely a grouping of tribal nations with common attributes, lineage, histories, language and cultures, each with their own capitals; all to achieve independence and supposedly be blended together, as never before, as a newly confirmed state. How exactly was this to happen?

As far as I can discover, a sense of nationhood started to emerge only very late - my starting point is the 1960 stopover of the British Prime Minister, Harold Macmillan, in Francistown when he was en route to Cape Town and his seminal Winds of Change speech. On that Wenela Airstrip, the representatives of the two recognised communities in this country, Russell England, speaking for the 'whites' and Bathoen for the 'blacks', were together in their conviction that this country was able to determine its own future. But how was this to happen? The giddy rush to Independence which, from the blast off of the gun to the finishing tape, took a mere five years, meant that a new nation had to be somehow fashioned from the semi-autonomous, unfederated tribal national states, which were to be its base components. How could this possibly be achieved?

With a different leader, the outcome could so easily have been an absolute disaster. But with Seretse Khama at the helm, old local barriers could be swept aside, powers removed from traditional, sometimes autocratic, hereditary leaders and vested instead in new, democratically elected authorities and a new nation born. 

The transition was far from easy. The traditional leaders in 1965, notably Bathoen and Linchwe, understood that they were being displaced but with no clarity as to what was to be their role in the newly created 'nation', other than as members of an entirely powerless new body, the House of Chiefs. The sudden transition from the age of the great Tswana chiefs, Sechele, Khama III, Bathoen I,  Seepapitso II, Lentswe I, and Isang left them in a no-man's-land in their own country. They were given no meaningful role in the making of the new state and were, in a sense, swept aside, their earlier powers removed and their authority superseded by those of the new MPs and ministers.

Kgosi Bathoen could not take those humiliations - and in 1968 abandoned the traditional office he had held since 1929 to become, because he felt he had no choice, a politician, an ill-fitting Botswana National Front (BNF) politician but a politician nevertheless - and one, who in his new guise, was able to sweep away the Mongwaketse Vice President Quett Masire, in the 1969 general election. In retrospect, this one electoral reverse has always been viewed by academic commentators as interesting, but of little significance.

Bathoen himself might not have seen it that way. His intention, presumably, was not merely to defeat Masire but to help the BNF to an electoral victory, which would eventually see him displacing Seretse as president.  But because this didn't happen, the tendency has been to minimise what must have seemed to the BDP at the time to be a very real and very major threat. 

Bathoen's resignation from office, together with Tskekedi's death in 1958 and Seretse's renunciation of bogosi in 1956 meant that in 1968, when Seepapitso was installed as Kgosi, the past which was to hold the country together was left, to all intents and purposes, in the hands of the young Linchwe II in Mochudi and of Seepapitso in Kanye - Serowe and Molepolole, in terms of bogosi, being all over the place, and Maun, Ramotswa and Tlokweng unable to provide any comparable big hitters.

When Botswana's post independence 'success' story is described it has been invariably viewed only in terms of the wisdom, pragmatism, foresight and tolerance of the BDP government and its leadership. In respect of the twin roles of Linchwe and Seepapitso, there has been the now routine reference to the way that each flirted with opposition political parties and to their supposed involvement in political processes. Not a word is said about their joint but individual decisions not to utilise their undoubted powers/authority to wreck the new government and to break this country apart. They might have done it. For each of them, it would not have been so difficult. But they opted not to do so. Perhaps, they both had an empathetic understanding with Seretse. Perhaps they both had an extraordinary understanding of history and of the varied threats, which the country had previously faced, perhaps they had a feel for the personality of the people and a confidence in their ability to forge for themselves a decent future founded on past values. But both must have well understood that if the BDP government was the future, they were the mortar that would be needed to bind past and future together.

Looking back, it is hard to remember any published   comment, which reflected an understanding that this was indeed, the situation, and the chosen role of those two most remarkable individuals. Maybe the academics at the University of Botswana (UB) will be able to provide better information about that particular scenario.  

Both asserted the dignity and authority of their office and both were custodians of traditional law and traditional custom. Linchwe revived bogwera and bojale in 1975 organising six initiation exercises between then and 1988. For whatever reasons, Seepapitso did not follow Linchwe's initiative. Both were variously denounced as obstructive. Both revelled in taking on the establishment, and especially of self important District Commissioners. How, in the circumstances, could they not have done so? Both had personal failings (who does not?) and many regarded Seepapitso in particular as difficult, and perverse. Mmegi's columnist, Fred Dira, maintained that the decision to reinstall Seepapisto in 1995 automatically meant the humiliation not only of the district commissioners in Kanye, but also of central government itself - a view which many others may have held. But curiously nothing whatsoever resulted from this 'humiliation' of either the one or the other. 

Nor could anything be determined from Justice Aguda's remarkable assessment in 1994 that Seepapitso was a despot with no respect for the law or for peace and good order other than that without him, the processes of law and order in Gangwaketse had ground to a halt. How was that to be explained? How too is it to be understood today that the very government, which had taken the steps that led to Aguda's damning judgement was later to appoint Seepapitso to be its ambassador to the United States of America (US), where Linchwe had earlier served, and to China. My understanding is that at those two posts, he served the country with distinction.

So now he is gone and we need to go back to those historic bits and pieces, which constitute this country. At first glance, this is a straightforward sort of place, which is easy for anyone to read. The impression is deceptive. It is complicated and difficult to understand and interpret - as Seepapitso's roller coaster career most clearly demonstrates.  I leave it though to others to read what they may of the remarkable fact that between them, father and son led the Bangwaketse for 82 years, and of the concurrence between Linchwe's 44- year reign in Mochudi and Seepapitso's 42 years in Kanye. The sense of security and consistency that continuity of leadership brings matters enormously and is probably poorly understood. 

Within three years we have lost two giant leaders who have taken away with them their knowledge and understanding of a huge chunk of the country's modern history both local and national. And with their passing, we have lost their irreplaceable, intimate knowledge of the country's conscious and sub-conscious way of doing things, of living - that bridge to their known past.

I first knew Seepapitso when he was Assistant Town Clerk in Gaborone and was present at his installation in 1968 and really do need to be there when he is buried on Saturday. Kanye, for me, has long been a magical sort of place. It used to be so extraordinarily beautiful and in many parts, it still is. Inevitably, therefore, I was intrigued and honoured to meet and know its two traditional leaders. Others will have had different impressions, but for me Seepapitso was a presence and an authority. He may not have quite matched Linchwe's charisma, but his was a different sort of character. He was urbane, humorous, unassumedly charming, and inclined to a directness of speech and view that many found hard to take. He was, without question, one of those few key figures who helped to get the country through those tricky first 40 years.

But renewal and re-birth is a central feature of life so that inevitably the young take over from the old. But that moment of change is always one of regret at what has been lost, and of hope and fear for the future. For the moment, though, it must be regret at what has been so sadly lost. The future is something that no one can know.