The opening of Barclays Bank in Lobatse in 1950
Sandy Grant | Wednesday October 4, 2017 17:57
The number of the people present in this photo is extraordinarily few. Self-evidently they must be the Protectorate elite. Standing is the Resident Commissioner, Martin Wray who formally opened the new bank. He appears to be directing his remarks at M.H. Joosub, the developer and owner of the building who for some reason is sitting opposite him and with his back to the photographer. Was he on the programme, I wonder, to say a few words? Standing behind Wray in the shadow and only just visible is MS Ebrahim.
Seventeen years later the same Joosub would be opening his new Capitol cinema in Gaborone. Sitting next to Wray on one side is JDA Germond, the Divisional Commissioner South, who, a few months earlier, had laid the foundation stone of the new prestige building. Between them is a small cloth covered table which must have been placed there for some purpose. If there was something on it, a glass of water or a presentation of some sort, nothing is visible. On Wray’s other side are sitting four individuals who are presumably Protectorate luminaries. It would be helpful if someone could provide their names.
All four are naturally white, all suited and attired, cross-legged, with trousered turn-ups and unusually present on such an occasion, someone’s dog. One of them, perhaps was the acting District Commissioner, Vivian Gillett at the time. In sum, we have just eight key individuals with others behind them ranking lower down on the social scale. This is therefore a small cosy gathering, which must have included people who the Bank was likely to serve. But where are the bank’s probable clients such as Russsell England and the other traders not least those of the Indian community? The standing of the major Indian traders in this strange community is of some interest.
Then and indeed now, they generally seem to have been not quite in and not quite out. Germond had a street named after him in Lobatse, but were Joosub and Ebrahim similarly honoured? If so, have all three survived the recent re-naming of its streets by the Town Council, or have they all been replaced? But if there is some piquancy about the place of senior Indian figures in this group photo, it will of course be noted that not a single ‘African’, as they were then styled, is present. This is hardly surprising. Perhaps the only person who could have been invited was Kgosi Bathoen ,but it may have been thought that this was an inappropriate occasion for him. But it has to be born in mind that relatively few ‘Africans’ were then involved in the cash economy and it was only at this same time that the first of them, Gobe Matenge, was to open an account with Barclays.
enjoying their drinks in front of the bar. He said that both victims sustained leg fractures and they are currently hospitalised at PMH.