The caption read, ‘Sandy Grant preserves the past of the Bakgatla people. He is pictured sitting with a traditional drum, more than a hundred years old, which the tribes folk fetch from the museum for ceremonial rites.’ The photo has particular relevance in the context of the application currently being made to UNESCO for this very same drum, the womens initiation (bojale) drum to be recognised and listed as a sacred artifact. Supposedly the drum may never be handled by a man, or even by an uninitiated woman. What then might explain my apparent apostasy, my blatant, unprofessional disregard of the sacred, mystical qualities of this drum?
The fact was that the myth regarding the drum began to emerge only in, I think, 2001. It was then that it was first claimed that the opening at the base of the drum was symbolical of the woman’s womb. Thereafter the necessary embellishments began, bit by bit, to be provided. Awkwardly for proponents of the myth, the women’s drum had been historically abandoned by them. The whereabouts of the drums – there are in fact, two – was known by Amos Pilane (male) who showed it to me (male), on my request in 1971. The two drums were found by us in a pile of discarded junk in the lelapa of Leburu Pilane, Amos’ niece (female), behind the kgotla leobo. Kgosi Linchwe (male) said that he (and Mma Seingwaeng) had been unaware of their existence. Amos, noted tribal historian, has been the only person to state with authority that the drums were used during bojale and were brought by the Bakgatla to Mochudi in 1871.
