Saving Kuke village, saving Shashe river
I have just watched a Botswana Television (Btv) program which, in my opinion, can best be described as a horror show. The grizzly show depicts how huge swathes of pristine wilderness around the town of Kuke is being cleared of trees in the name of “commercial” charcoal industry. Our country is semi desert, as we all learnt and hopefully continue to teach our children today. How then can we cut the few trees we have and expose the land to the ravages of wind and other erosive forces? For those of us who still speak Kalanga, it is clear that the un-corrupted name of the town of Kuke is “ku bgwe”, meaning “at the rock/s”. This is so because travelling by bus on a tarred road from Maun to Ghanzi you see no rock outcrop of any sort whatsoever for close to an hour. The land is flat as far as the eye can see. Then suddenly you see a rocky chain cutting across the road in the distance. The spectacle is breath taking. At the base of the rocky outcrop is the town of Kuke. It takes little imagina...