My review follows closely on the tracks of another review by Fred Morton in the Mmegi of September 4, 2020. Morton’s review dealt with the surface thematic issues of the publication and opens space for me to engage more with issues germane that the memorial hints to, highlights or underscores. It perhaps deals with the way the author goes about the enterprise of his representation. From the point of view of witness, I vouchsafe that van Rensburg breathes through this 354-paged biography. It is a verifiable collection of life. Stories that have so been felicitously rendered. I also write to attest generally that the biography lives up to its claim as a diligent portraiture and a depiction of a life, one that has been sensitively and accurately rendered too, to the point of exact detail. I believe the biography is a befitting homage to the life and spirit of Patrick van Rensburg, and a token of solace to those closest to him; a celebration of the life of Patrick van Rensburg even. And Pat was many a things to many people. As a work of art, the biography is certainly the story of the life of a great man that van Rensburg was. A workaholic devoted to doing for others. It is a first of its kind, in-depth, in magnitude and in the sense of its artistic distance, a first in the recent annuls of Botswana to be written at the end of a rich life albeit carefully with a sense of learned disinterested interest.
The biography reflects its subject matter as an unfortunate godsend that arrived slightly before its time. To the neo-colonial leadership of the country that was Bechuanaland of his time. Van Rensburg was the proverbial ‘margarita au porko!’ pearl on the neck of swine, hence his appellation by the first president at one time as “the purveyor of our youth”. His valuable contributions went unheeded or less taken advantage of, though they were technologically sound and appropriate at the level of leadership. This, precisely because he was the man that he was an innovator; an inventor of systems; and this was a fact that made lesser men tremble with fear, impotence and just a sense of inadequacy.
