Shoshong: A short history

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It’s amazing. I have long been advocating the need for this sort of book about all the major settlements, hoping that one day someone would pull it off, wanting to have a first shot at it myself but never quite getting around to it. But now it’s been done and this new book deserves the loudest of all trumpet calls of welcome.

But how ironical it is that this book is on Shoshong, a place of immense historical significance but one which has found no favour with guide book writers who have been able to find little of interest in it.  Shoshong is a place, which has been left behind both by history and by our own inability or sheer disinterest to peer into the past and to get a feel, an understanding as to what happened there, and why.  

Think about those arms of government, and the country’s varied institutions and the substantial resources available to both, which could or should have published this book at any time during the last 50 years. Yet again, however, it has been left to a single individual to go it alone and to put together this remarkable self-published book. Even more remarkably, someone who freely admits that he is generally bored stiff by history has put the book together at home.  

Editor's Comment
A call for calm and unity towards October 30

Political parties are actively campaigning, with the ruling Botswana Democratic Party (BDP) facing scrutiny not only for its policies but also for alleged connections to political practices in neighbouring Zimbabwe.Meanwhile, the opposition is voicing concerns over potential electoral ‘rigging’ and the composition of the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC), selected by the Judicial Service Commission. We have also had disturbing trends...

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