Professor Tlou buried and celebrated

Lekopanaye Mooketsi
Correspondent | Monday July 5, 2010 00:00

Hundreds of mourners, including UB academics attended the funeral. The funeral service was conducted at the Lutheran Church in Extension 12. UB held a service for him on Friday. 

Speakers at the funeral service included UB vice-chancellor, Bojosi Otlhogile, and the judge president of the Industrial Court, Elijah Legwaila. Speaking at the funeral service, the executive director of the Tertiary Education Council (TEC), Dr Patrick Molutsi, described Tlou as a leader with compassion. 'He was a compassionate person.

Here lays a great leader in the society in the past 50 years,' he said. He said Tlou served the nation with distinction and rare qualities. Molutsi, who worked with Tlou at UB, said the former vice-chancellor has also bred leaders. Molutsi said Tlou was the first TEC chairman, adding that he served the board with distinction. He said Tlou was the second chairman of the Botswana Institute for Development Policy Analysis (BIDPA), which he helped establish. 

Molutsi said Tlou built a number of institutions. 

A pastor of the Lutheran Church said Tlou was in the higher decision-making body.  He said Tlou connected their church with the international world.  The pastor said Tlou was one of the people who advocated that the church's headquarters should be moved into the country. He said Tlou also proposed that the church should be taken to the people.  One of the products of this initiative was the Tshidilong Stimulation Centre in Maun. He said Tlou did not only produce graduates at UB, he also did that at the church.

One of Tlou's former UB students described him as a walking encyclopaedia. 

According to his obituary, Tlou was born in Gwanda in the then southern Rhodesia in 1932.  He is of Bobirwa parentage being the first born son of Mangisa Malapela Tlou and Moloko Nare.  He had five siblings, two of whom are still alive.He attended both primary and secondary schools at Manama and Goromondzi in southern Rhodesia.

He later did a teaching certificate and subsequently taught at Manama Mission Secondary School before leaving for the United States to further his studies. 

He attended Luther College in Iowa from 1962 to 1965 and graduated magna cum laude in African history. 

In 1966 he obtained a Masters of Arts Degree in Teaching (MAT) from Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore before proceeding to Madison, Wisconsin for another Masters Degree in African History in 1969. 

He went on to pursue a doctorate degree in African History at the University of Wisconsin, which he completed in 1972. 

He started his academic career in 1971 as a lecturer in History at the then University of Botswana, Lesotho and Swaziland (UBLS).  He rose through the ranks to senior lecturer, Associate Professor and subsequently Full Professor.  He was not only academically gifted, but was also a leader, becoming Head of History Department, Dean of Faculty of Humanities and founding Director of the National Institute of Research (NIR).

Tlou also served as a diplomat. He was appointed Botswana's permanent representative to the United Nations in 1976.  That was a critical time in the liberation struggle of southern Africa because he had to articulate Botswana's foreign policy so that it did not antagonise the racist regimes of South Africa and Rhodesia which were Botswana' neighbours.

He returned to Botswana in 1980 to become the deputy vice-chancellor and subsequently UB vice-chancellor.  He served in this capacity for 14 years and retired as vice-chancellor in 1998.  In true reflection of his humble nature, he went back to the History Department where he continued to lecture in History until his final retirement in 2005. 

Tlou is survived by his wife, Professor Sheila Tlou and three children, Kgosietsile, Kagiso and Moloko.