The Gun Runners (II)

We had previously noted that one of the key men tasked with stemming the flow of firearms into Botswana, Jan Viljoen, instead used his office as Veldkornet of the Marico District to engage in the lucrative trade for himself.

While a few Boers such as Viljoen, covertly supplied Batswana with munitions, for the most part, the independent western Batswana merafe ended up relying on Griqua and other indigenous suppliers, as well as British traders and adventurers up from the Cape Colony.

Among the latter, David “Taute” Hume and his Kolobeng agent Evans, Cumming, Wilson, Alfred Dolman and his suspected murderer Henry Moyle, as well as Joseph McCabe, are known to have been volume traders, while few, if any, of the scores of Europeans who passed through the region are likely to have not supplied at least some guns to Batswana. But, with the notable exception of Cumming, most were publicly discreet about such dealings.

Editor's Comment
Routine child vaccination imperative

The recent Vaccination Day in Motokwe, orchestrated through collaborative efforts between UNICEF, USAID, BRCS, and the Ministry of Health, underscores a commendable stride towards fortifying child health services.The painful reality as reflected by the Ministry of Health's data regarding the decline in routine immunisation coverage since the onset of the pandemic, is a cause for concern.It underscores the urgent need to address the...

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