Here was a community of agrarian people able to earn a living while learning academic and technical skills. As young people growing up in this community, we all knew that at the end of our primary school leaving education, we would either go to Swaneng Hill or join the brigades.
This bibliography is not so much about one man’s work, but his philosophy of education and life in general. It is an annotated story about that man’s contribution to humanity; of how his ideas impacted the lives of poor ordinary folk. It is the condensed story of the works of Patrick van Rensburg, the rebel diplomat turned educationalist and newspaper scribe. The Serowe brigades taught people a variety of skills ranging from building (brick work, thatching and stone masonry), to farming (dairy, bees, horticulture and vegetables); textiles (silk-screen, dyeing, weaving, wool spinning and dress making), welding, mechanical and electrical works, printing and publishing - the whole shebang! The cooperatives were involved in retail (shops), thrift savings, livestock trading, and printing and publishing. First started in 1964, they were initially set up as an initiative that provided competition to the mainly white traders who monopolised business in the community. A secondary motive was that of encouraging the community to create savings. The folk school that was Swaneng would later inspire the establishment of Shashe River School (in Shashe). Madiba Educational Training Centre (in Mahalapye) and McConnell College (in Tutume). As for the brigades and the cooperatives, they found wholehearted support from the government of the day and were replicated country wide. These organisations still exist 58 years after the founder first set his foot in Botswana. Such was the legacy of van Rensburg.
