Grace Dambe was Deputy Mayor in the first Town Council and became Mayor in 1969. Jeanette Nwako was also a member of the first Council and later became Deputy Mayor, Eleanor Gabaake became an elected councillor in 1969, Rosinah Mannathoko was Mayor between 1974 and 1976 and again in 1978 and, around the same time, but in a different area of public life, Gaositwe Chiepe was Director of Education. Fortunately Janet Hermans knew and admired several of these distinguished ladies and wrote about Victoria Namane in an article in the Kutlwano of November 1974.
Later, she was to help Frieda Matthews produce her autobiography, Remembrances. In summarised form Janet told us that Namane who was born in Kanye in 1901, was a member of Gaborone’s Preparatory Committee and the first woman to be appointed a High Court Assessor. Her grandmother, Gagoangwe Sechele, was married to Bathoen 1. Mrs Namane remembers the First World War when she and others in Kanye knitted socks for the troops. She also remembers the flu epidemic of 1918. Although only 17 at the time, she used to accompany the magistrate’s wife in helping the sick. The magistrate owned one of the only two cars in Kanye at the time, the other belonging to the chief. She began teaching in 1922, after three years at Tiger Kloof.
