A Diamond-Less Beginning

Sandy Grant | Wednesday March 29, 2017 15:47

 

A friend in Canada recently told me to say that he had seen the new film, The United Kingdom but that he had not previously been aware of the diamond connection.

I have not seen the film but suppose that the diamond factor must have been included because the producers felt that the story needed an extra zip.

If this is correct, it is likely that another entrenched fable will be added to that of the 1895 visit of the three Dikgosi. But as regards diamonds, I need to mention a little known but invaluable book by Edwin S. Munger of the California Institute of Technology published in 1965 by Oxford University Press. It is titled, Bechuanaland, Pan African Outpost or Bantu Homeland?

Munger is thorough and balanced and ends with a lovely concluding statement; ‘If history has not been altogether kind to them, neither has she written her worst pages about them. Let the future be for the Bechuanas to write.’ But the key point about Munger is that in the 114 pages of this very fine book, he never even mentions diamonds.

He is, nevertheless, cautiously optimistic about the country’s future. In later years, having worked my way through archival material, I was hugely impressed to learn how self-confident and optimistic were all the country’s leaders in the Legislative Assembly. 

On the other hand, at ground level, my one abiding recollection was that the country was stuck in a poverty trap from which there seemed to be no possible escape. It was, for instance, a waste of time to ask people about their priority needs because they all knew that the question, was ridiculous because it could in no way be related to the hard facts of reality. More and better schools, an improved health system, better roads, intellectual invigoration; it was all too far off even to be worth discussing.

 At this distance, and given such remarkable later developments, it is probably hard to imagine that there could ever have been such a scenario. But bear in mind that in the 10 years prior to 1966 there had been almost zero development anywhere in the country. The mephato here and there had played their part.

Otherwise, there was Ruth Khama’s Community Hall in Serowe, backed, I believe by Oxfam, Clutton Brock’s BDA in Pilikwe, van Rensburg’s initiatives in Serowe and community mobilisation in Mochudi. Not to overlook an effervescent, Naomi Mitchison.  But all that still amounted to little more than a very empty cupboard. Those early years, with drought and a desperately awful Francistown held in thrall by the Tati Company, were bleak in the extreme.  On the other hand, the worst so often brings about the best and the few foreign volunteers who made their way here responded with great heart.

For them and for others associated, these were the few key years of remarkable congruence which contributed greatly to those first years of desperately needed stability and change.