So he has gone, without even a final goodbye. Probably it makes little difference where one receives news of this kind, at home, or, as in my case, whilst visiting relatives in the UK The impact is just the same - very hard. Mind you, there was always the possibility that, with a major operation of this kind, he might not pull through. And we had to recognize as much. On the other hand, he himself was remarkably confident. He had great confidence in the specialist he had seen in Johannesburg and was in no doubt that he would soon be back in Mochudi in good health and spirits.
But he must have known that there could be no guarantees that this would be so. In the very difficult weeks before his operation, when he was waiting for the treatment to reduce the size of the tumour, he was incredibly brave and philosophical. We joked, not for the first time, as to which of us might go first. But we never went much further than suggesting that if it was me, he would talk, if it was him, I would probably write. And I am now landed with a job that it is the last one in the world that I would ever have wanted - to try and write about him and his life time achievements without first giving him a draft for his approval. That said, I am conscious that he is somewhere behind me, peering over my shoulder, concerned that I get it right. So where do I even make a start when considering someone whose career has been long, varied and frequently controversial? With Kgosi Linchwe as a major traditional leader both in Mochudi and Moruleng over the border? With him as a diplomat, as an authority on customary law, as an innovator and moderniser, as a leading member for many years of the Ntlo ya Dikgosi, as a linguist and farmer or possibly as someone whose pungent comments could be quoted from one end of the country to the other? Perhaps it's right to begin with his youth, with his curious placement at an Afrikaner school in South Africa and then his time at another in England. How curious then that he should have said that he wanted to be a lawyer in later life.
