Sir Seretse Khama - leader of a fascist Tswana pack

Two recent newspaper reports have caught my eye. The first report is in the Sunday Standard newspaper dated 25 April - 1st May. It speculates that this year's Sir Seretse Khama's centenary celebrations are likely to be a Serowe affair, rather than  a national one. The second report is in The Voice newspaper of 30th April, 2021, and is titled "Botswana deports 57 refugees".

The fake fall-out between President Mokgweetsi Masisi and former president Ian Khama has had a devastating effect on prospects for national reconciliation between the Tswana speaking tribes and the rest of "Botswana's" tribes, particularly the Kalanga speaking tribes. Even assuming that the fall-out was real, its influence on, among other things, the voting patterns in the 2019 General elections cannot be disputed. The southern Tswana tribes overwhelmingly deserted the Botswana National Front (BNF) whose leader was perceived to be supporting Ian Khama, in favour of the Botswana Democratic Party (BDP) of President Mokgweetsi Masisi, who is from the south of the country. The Northern Tswana tribes in turn, deserted the BDP. Instead of swinging to the southern-routed BNF though, a convenient vehicle to receive their votes was created by the architect of the fake fall-out, Ian Khama, in the form of the Botswana Patriotic Front (BPF). The prevention of votes hijacked from the BDP falling into the hands of the BNF was consummated by a willing BNF leadership who supported Ian Khama's new party and raised no objection to Khama plagiarizing the BNF's signature word "Front" and using the colour yellow, which is easily confused with the BNF's traditional orange colour. Meticulous planning, wouldn't you say? Therein lies proof, if ever one was needed, of the fakeness of the infamous "fall out".

The real tragedy of the "fall out" though is that it stopped national dialogue on numerous issues, including those that the new president had, to a good extent, based his campaign on, such as the promised constitutional review. In this regard, Covid-19 lent a helping hand in achieving the intended outcome. As the first of the two newspaper reports referenced above shows, President Mokgweetsi Masisi and former president Ian Khama are unlikely to both attend the Sir Seretse Khama centenary celebrations at the Serowe Kgotla. I suspect that Tswana tribes in the south of the country would not be interested either, in celebrating the centenary of a Khama, particularly the father of Ian.

The Sunday Standard newspaper report makes no allusion to Kalanga speaking tribes' or any other tribe's attitude toward Seretse Khama's centenary celebrations. Kalanga tribes hate Seretse Khama for what he did to their language - banning it from being taught in schools. They vented their anger at what he had done, by destroying a Mophane tree that was dedicated to his memory, on a road that he frequently used to visit them. To really understand the sentiment of Kalangas towards the declaration of his Setswana language as the only language that may be taught in schools, one needs to appreciate that Kalanga language was a written language when the British colonizers arrived in southern Africa. The alphabet that is now referred to as the Greek alphabet is a Kalanga alphabet. The same alphabet is also used by the Russian language. Kalangas could read (ku laba). I was never taught to read or write Kalanga at school, and yet when I saw the Russian "B" as used in "Brezhnev" I knew that it was the same "B" that the Kalanga used in "ku baba" meaning "to carry something (a child) on one's back" as opposed to "ku baba" meaning "to be sour/bitter/itchy". The Romanized version of the alphabet as used here does not differentiate between the two Kalanga infinitive verbs whose pronunciation is quite distinct from each other.

Seretrse Khama's banning of the Kalanga language was not a haphazard knee jerk reaction to a perceived danger to national unity. It was a carefully thought out strategy to alienate Kalangas from their national identity, an identity which, as The Voice newspaper report referenced above shows, is now in Limbo. The Voice newspaper report quotes a Botswana Government employee, one Greg Kelebonye, as saying IN AN INTERVIEW "These are Tswana tribes who are Batswana but live in Zimbabwe..." in reference to the 57 Zimbabwean refugees who have been deported back to Zimbabwe. From Greg Kelebonye's statement it can be deduced that non-Tswana tribes, such as the Kalanga, that live in Botswana are not Batswana as far as the Botswana Government is concerned. Yet for cosmetic purposes members of these tribes are referred to, and have their national ID documents forcibly labelled, as "Batswana". Bear in mind that the current governing party, the BDP, is the same one that Seretse Khama cofounded more than half a century ago, and has remained the governing party since.

Seretse Khama's attitude towards the Kalangas is further complicated by the ambiguity of his life story. The Sunday Standard report referenced at the beginning of this post states that he was born in Serowe. But we know that the centenary celebrations mean that he was born in 1921, at a time when his father, Sekgoma the Second had not yet reconciled with his own father, Chief Khama the Third. It is on public record that it was only in 1922 that Chief Khama the Third reconciled with his son, then Prince Sekgoma, thus enabling Sekgoma to come to Serowe. Therefore the question can be asked: How could Sekgoma's son be born in Serowe, at a time when his father was not able, for whatever reason, to set foot in Serowe? Indeed how could Sekgoma have been living anywhere in the Bamangwato Tribal Territory, ruled over by his father, when Seretse Khama was born in 1921?

The answer to the above question and its extension, seems pretty obvious to me - Seretse Khama couldn't possibly have been born in Serowe in 1921; his father Sekgoma Khama was most unlikely to have been living anywhere in Bamangwato Tribal Territory in the years preceding, and right up to the year of his son, Seretse's birth. So where was Sekgoma Khama living? Somewhere in the North East, perhaps!

Therein perhaps lies Seretse Khama's misguided belief that he could simply prohibit Kalangas, who occupy most of the North East, where he was possibly born, continuing to learn, read, write and ultimately speak, their language. This behavior of Sir Seretse Khama portrays him as an unforgivable fascist Tswana dictator towards non-Tswana tribes.