Old Palapye - The Magistrate�s Residency
Sandy Grant | Wednesday June 28, 2017 17:49
And why did the LMS, with or without Khama, decide to build the successor church in Serowe of stone when brick might have seemed the more obvious choice. The remains of several buildings in Old Palapye can be identified with certainty.
Some may be identified in the course of time whilst others will continue to be a matter of speculation. One question however can be answered with absolute certainty. From Rev. WC Willoughby’s sketch map, unearthed by Professor Neil Parsons from the LMS archive in London, there is one building, apart from the church, which can be identified with absolute certainty.
This is the Magistrate’s Residency located near the LMS missionary area. Sadly, this building is misidentified by the National Museum as being the house of Khama III and the well behind it as also belonging to him. It can safely be assumed that the well related to the house and whoever had the use of the one also had the use of the other.
This is disappointing but perhaps more to the point, it is a serious and very misleading blunder. It is impossible to understand how the museum could have reached this conclusion. The house, as can be seen from the photo, is rectangular. Khama never made the break from living in a circular, traditional home to one which was imported and rectangular.
In addition, it should have been obvious that Khama, as was the normal practice for Tswana Chiefs, would have lived close to his kgotla. The problem with the National Museum’s information board, if it is still the same as a few years back, is that the kgotla is surprisingly omitted even though its remains are fairly easily found.
Even so, it should also have been obvious that Khama would not have opted to live so close to the area he had given to the LMS which, again rather oddly, is described by the National Museum as being the area of European settlement.
If this had been correct it would have been the most improbable place for Khama to have located himself. As was only to be expected, he would naturally have lived at the centre of his town with the European traders and their stores placed some way away.
A problem for the National Museum is that the sloppy information it provides via its information board at Old Palapye is replicated in Gaborone and perhaps elsewhere.
Whether this is the result of carelessness or sheer indifference may be a matter for speculation. But if tourism, domestic or foreign, is to be further encouraged it really does need to provide more accurate and factually correct information