Khawa of yesterday and today
Zolani Kraai | Friday May 19, 2017 11:14
The festival, now eminent on the Botswana tourism calendar of events, is not only a magnificent tourism landscape but also one of Botswana’s economic diversification best practices.
The festival has for over the past three years attracted approximately between 3,700 and 12,000 people showing huge growth.
This year’s event will be held from May 26 to 28, and is expected to attract more spectators despite the chilly southerly winds predicted by the weather bureau. This situation however, never deterred Khawa festival followers from braving the chilly winds.
It may sound scary to mention the chilly weather but once you are in the centre of the village, you are welcomed by the warm and dusty but friendly winds caused by the riders excitedly testing their bikes.
Mild morning breezes turn to hover over the plain and scaled dunes, but become warmer as campers line up for breakfast at various catering points organised by BTO, but only for those who would have secured available accommodation and meal coupons within the campsites.
At sunset, the camping sites are decorated with campfires colouring the shrubs landscape. Pockets of music genres roar in every camp, in the vernacular, bula buti, to the delight of the campers.
On a lighter note, the economic impact is evident in Khawa alone and a comparison can be made between a normal weekend sales spend of approximated P2,1 million to P5,6 million pula over the event weekend.
“The positive tourism effects are not only during the event weekend, but 42% of spectators interviewed during the event say that they visit the area outside of the event itself, said BTO executive marketing manager, Jillian Blackbeard.
She added that, Khawa and other events are set to drive diversification of the tourism region to include areas not traditionally associated with tourism, like Sowa and Gaborone. She said the events will drive the diversification into new tourism such as sport and adventure and culture and heritage.
This year there will be quad and motorbike challenges at a registration of P50, fun camel rides at P100, helicopter scenic viewing at P500 amongst others.
Khawa lovers will be treated to free of charge sand boarding, motorbike stunts and contemporary music.
The Ministry of Youth of Empowerment, Sport and will host the much fancied polka dance and other cultural exhibits.
Just where is Khawa and how has it evolved over the years? Significant developments have been carried out in the village since 1985. From a status of an unrecognised settlement it was, to a recognised settlement it is today.
In 1975, Government intensified its establishment of Tribal Land Grazing Land Policy (TGLP). Khawa benefited through the objective of the policy that sought to improve the social and economic wellbeing of rural populations through service centres.
The centres were created to absorb displaced populations, known as Remote Area Dwellers (RADs). They would overtime also provide education, health facilities, and create alternative job opportunities.
The Kgalagadi District Council eventually resolved to adopt Khawa as an unrecognised settlement in the early 80s under the RAD programme.
Like in many other settlements in the remote areas of Botswana, Khawa existed around boreholes some drilled by missionary institutions and Botswana Government through the department of Water Affairs. The village first ever borehole used a windmill to extract water from underground into the reservoir.
Now dilapidated, the windmill and the reservoir remains can still be visible at a location hundred metres west from where the kgotla is now.
In terms of village infrastructure, just as you enter the centre of the village, there are still visible old foundations and skeleton structures that resemble the wild berry makeshift cooperative initiative and the village only windmill then.
Missionaries, some from the Lutheran Church would later establish ties with government to assist the dwellers in Khawa with portable borehole drinking water and schooling facilities. A tuck shop was set up and they too would be transformed into cooperatives.
As part of the evolution of the Kgalagadi district, the Ministry of Local Government under the Kgalagadi District development plan 6, 2003-2009, constructed a four classroom primary school, two teachers’ quarters, a nurse’s house, drilling and equipping of two boreholes and an 80km feeder road linking Gakhibane, Khuis to Khawa. Some of the council staff housing was constructed under the drought relief programme.
Even though the objectives of TGLP policy in some areas threatened the settlements, mobility and livelihood of migrating farmers and hunters, Khawa survived the odds.
Back in the Bechuanaland protectorate era and towards the early 90s, a journey from Tsabong to Khawa would last four hours, on a five-ton J5 truck. But nowadays, with the help of gravel road, it takes only two hours from Tsabong.
Khawa village has secured a prominent place on the map and has gained recognition as one of the tourism attractions in Botswana. BTO has developed a land use plan for the village and has assisted the village trust to secure a campsite plot for use in generating sustainable income for the community.
There is saying that says, “I would rather die of passion than boredom”, from the words of Vincent van Gogh describing the significance sights and sounds of tourism.
Khawa, even its leader, Kgosi Piet Manyoro does not know when its first inhabitant settled here. Born and bred in the settlement, Manyoro says the ancestral roots of the current Khawa society can be traced to neighbouring villages of Khuis, Gakhibana and Bokspits.
The village is a melting pot where no one tribe is numerically superior to another, as Manyoro says in Setswana whose deep Afrikaans influence is unmistakable, “Motse oo, ke makgatlhanela thapong, go na le Batlhware, ba ba binang tlhware, go na le Bakgothu le Bakhalade, ba ba senang sereto, (The composition is of Batlhware, Bakgothu and the Coloured, Afrikaans speaking community)”. Remote as the settlement is, Khawa has not lagged behind in development, says Manyoro.