A matter of definition � towns and villages
Sandy Grant | Wednesday May 10, 2017 15:46
In the tribal areas where by official definition, there could be villages but no towns, there were the old tribal capitals, some very large, notably Serowe and Kanye. But then came major problems with the advent of Phikwe, Orapa, Jwaneng and Sowa Pan all located in tribal areas.
The solution was extract them from the customary land use areas in which they were embedded, make them all freehold areas and townships – with Phikwe soon to be upgraded and given the status of town with its very own mayor. But the problem of definition had the bureaucrat planners hopping all over the place in an effort to avoid terming the old traditional settlements, towns.
First we had agro towns, then urban villages although villages are more likely to be agro and the traditional settlements, more likely to be urban! But then came Mogoditshane, located in a tribal area which had barely existed at Independence.
It is now to all intent’s and purposes, a suburb of Gaborone and like Tlokweng to the east, very much a peri-urban area. The differences between all these settlements are of great interest. Only Maun, Kasane and Phikwe have airstrips/airports. Only Palapye, theoretically still a village, boasts that it has a full-scale university. It now also possesses major hotels if not game lodges, as do Mahalapye, Serowe but with Mochudi, Ramotswa and Kanye lagging behind.
Ramotswa in common with Serowe can claim to have an enormous public library which is somewhat trumped by Serowe’s huge District Council Offices, and its DIS base. Serowe too has made admirable recent efforts to line its main road with neem trees as earlier did Molepolole with its pepper trees.
Other places have not done so. Many of these settlements now have new hospitals and police stations of a startling size. Most now have shopping malls, the most ambitious with two, even three.
The laggards are left behind with one or none. Some measure of the ability to make the jump from village to town must, I suppose depend on the extent to which each one has been able to shift from the circular or U-shaped to the straight.
Similarly on the proportion of paved to unpaid roads and double story buildings. The experts on such matters will also have taken note of the small number of these settlements which have mayors which obviously helps to determine the difference between towns and villages.
Taking note of these differences may be undoubtedly playful but an underlying theme is the really serious question - can a rurally based culture survive in an urban setting? Or will there eventually come to be two related but distinct cultures.