Respect Basarwa

| Monday July 5, 2010 00:00

As we speak, there is a controversy surrounding the very name of the Basarwa.  Historians and sociologists referred to the Basarwa as the Khoi-San in the early 1960's. That happened at a time when Africa made a deliberate effort to rediscover itself after nearly 400 years of colonialism.

The Basarwa were the first to resist colonialism on the coast of the then Cape Coast. On the roads leading to that province from Botswana, the Khoi-San names of villages abound, also recognising several of their encounters with the Boers.

As a reaction to the undermining of the status of the Basarwa as the original inhabitants of this country, they have decided that they do not want the designation of 'Khoisan', which is closely linked to the process of African decolonisation.

The name of Basarwa, then appears as a rejection of a name that could have been prescribed for them by the Setswana groups who now believe that they are their masters.

Ditshwanelo participated at a regional conference, partly sponsored by the Botswana government about 15 years ago in which they suggested a name for themselves loosely translated to mean 'The Beautiful People'.

The dynamics of naming made it possible for the Basarwa - which name they previously rejected - created the grounds for the rejection of the Setswana driven name of Basarwa which they did not like initially.

The Basarwa though, have been assisted in their struggle for self-identification by research, financial sponsorship and legal representation by Norwegian-based organisations as well as Survival International.

It is not unlikely that their rejection of the name Basarwa, was a response to their rejection of Setswana cultural imperialism, which is any case modelled along the lines of the arguments that the Europeans used to captivate the Batswana.

The Basarwa have now revered to that classification name, which is, for the most part, a rejectionist name when contrasted to their struggle for liberation.

The prejudice is that the Basarwa fear school, they eat everything that is before them because they have no sense of decent diet.

If that is true, it is not any different for the Setswana speaking groups who are just as guilty for the furtherance of those vices.

It is far more important to recognise the right of the Basarwa to education, egalitarian political and economic rights, to education and to the good old freedoms of democracy.