Shashe

 I just had a concversation with an upset man. He gave his name as Damien Uwe Hobona, in the village of Mafhungo/Hubona. I will try to present his narration verbatim as follows: On 28th of this month I visited a private clinic in Francistown to get advice on diet. A relative works there. I was advised that my medical scheme (BPOMAS) necessitates that I be referred by my doctor, having done tests, to the clinic. It made sense. My relative asked me how I am feeling though. I told him “reasonably fine”. He suggested that he take my blood pressure. I obliged. He took two readings, declared the pressure is fine. Then he took a piece of paper, wrote down the date and wrote down some numbers: Bp ….; Pulse…..; MAP….; Repeat…. He then suggested that if I have reason to suspect that my blood pressure is not O.K. when I am at home in Mafhungo/Hubona village, perhaps the best thing would be to visit the clinic in Mafhungo/Hubona and check my blood pressure, seeing as I do not know how to measu...

 Mindful of the great extent to which the British Colonial administration seems to have gone to obscure the beacon positions of Hubona Nshakazhogwe’s ranch, I am constrained to describe in any detail, the actual position of Hubona Nshakazhogwe’s stolen ranch.  Suffice it to say that the British referred to the ranch as Nshakazhogwe ranch.  Needless to say, that ranch is nowhere to be found on official Botswana Government maps. Instead a FAKE “Nshakazhogwe ranch” now appears, well to the north of what the British can surely identify as the correct position of the genuine Nshakazhogwe ranch. The genuine Nshakazhogwe ranch lies between the two latitudes (20 degrees 48.996 minutes South) and (21 degrees 01.460 mintues South). The FAKE “Nshakazhogwe ranch” has been drawn on the official Botswana Government’s  1: 1000 000 map, between the latitudes (20 degrees 42.162 minutes South) and (20 degrees 46.486 minutes South). Just like the stolen, genuine Nshakazhogwe ranch, the...

Stealing fourteen thousand hectares of pristine, flat, productive land may seem hard to accomplish, but not if the thief is a government, and the owner of the land is illiterate. As our country’s sixtieth Independence anniversary approaches, one family sees it as yet another milestone in their forced deprivation. Hubona Nshakazhogwe was a peasant in colonial Bechuanaland Protectorate, who sued Chief Khama iii following the chief’s despatch of a regiment to assault, and if necessary, kill him in or around the year 1914. Hubona won the suit on appeal to the British Privy Council, and was compensated with the 14000 hectares of land. That land has now been stolen.  To be fair to the ruling Umbrella for Democratic Change (UDC) party, which came to power only in 2024 after fifty eight (58) years of rule by the Botswana Democratic Party (BDP) , the UDC had nothing to do with the said theft. The theft was entirely the work of the BDP government. But conventional wisdom, and even the legal ...

We have identified a problem regarding the SADC unity referenda between South Africa and Lesotho. Given that there is only one boundary involved, the referendum in Lesotho would simply reduce to whether the Lesotho nationals want unity or not, rather than to assigning different weights to different boundaries as in other countries, South Africa included. The referendum billet in Lesotho would then be about unity, and not about which country to unite with. If UNITY passes the referendum test, then we could end up with a new composite country called South Afr-otho (South Afrotho) at Level1. Well, just thinking... 

 The referenda can be conducted simultaneously or at different times in all SADC countries. However, the best results are likely to accrue from simultaneous referenda because such referenda eliminate neighbour contamination bias. Unity of SADC countries is assumed to be in stages, herein referred to as unity levels (UL). Unity Level1 (UL1) proceeds from the current state of country sovereignty to the first composite sovereignty, where some countries will have united with others. Unity Level2 (UL2) involves the unity of composite, as opposed to initial, sovereignties. As Unity levels are progressively traversed, the nature of the SADC organisation itself will gradually approach a Union State. How long a stage or level lasts will be determined by the SADC organisation prevailing at the time.  This write-up concerns itself only with Unity level1 (UL1).  A SADC member country (SMC) may unite only with a SMC with which it shares a common border. A sea border is considered a co...

Broadcasting news in national languages other than English and Setswana is a good thing. The government deserves to be praised for that. However, the implementation of the measure leaves listeners somewhat confused, When a report written by correspondent X is presented on BTV, it has to be translated by correspondent Y into whatever the current newscast language is. The identities of both correspondents X and Y are revealed. So far, so good.  The problem comes at the end of the translation. The translator signs off as if the report was WRITTEN by him/her, and not merely so translated. This is wrong. Unless the listener followed the report all the way from start of introduction, the listener is left with the false impression that the report was written/crafted by the translator Y and not by its true author X. The correct approach  should swap the introductions around. The news reader should present ONLY the name of the WRITER of the report. At the end of the translation, the tr...

 I just watched (on TV) an operation by South African Police Service (SAPS) to arrest illegal miners in Gauteng Province. According to General Fred Kekana of the SAPS, one hundred and seven (107) of the captured illegal miners are Lesotho nationals, while a lesser number are from other SADC countries. Presumably, all the foreigners will be deported back to their countries, once the legal processes have been finalised. In the case of Lesotho nationals what this suggests is that they will no longer be welcome in South Africa. But their country is TOTALLY surrounded by South Africa, meaning that it is practically impossible for the latter to make her borders impenetrable to the soon to be deported illegal miners! So my question to the Southern African Development Community (SADC) is: Why has no SADC meeting resolved to conduct referendums in ALL SADC countries to determine what percentage of their nationals WANT their countries to UNITE, and with which, if any, of their neighbours?...

They recently buried the scoundrel. Flags fluttered at half-mast. From eyes half-glazed by booze tears trickled down chubby cheeks puffed up by our stolen wealth. This, I imagine, is what took place, because I was not there. I did not attend, nor did I watch on TV. The scene was “too ghastly to contemplate”. Festus Mogae had accolades posthumously heaped on him. What I found particularly distressing was the credit he was given for battling the HIV pandemic in our country; all because he had gone to the International community with a begging bowl on our behalf and declared that AIDS was threatening to wipe us out. The International community generously responded and offered help. What Festus Mogae did not tell the International community was his role in the way the disease spread around the country. It was at a time when Government was the main employer of the common man in our country. Mogae was Permanent Secretary to the President (PSP) and Head of the Civil Service. Married civil ser...

Like I have said many times before, I am not a lawyer. However, I have been reliably informed by those competent at law that A CONTRACT CAN BE CRAFTED TO BIND TOGETHER TWO PEOPLE OF ANY GENDER, TO CO-OWN EVERYTHING THAT EITHER ACQUIRES OWNERSHIP OF, GOING FORWARD! Our laws do not prohibit a person adopting a child of the same gender as themselves, but they do prohibit a person adopting a child of the opposite sex. So I wonder if the so-called “same-sex marriage” is simply a backdoor attempt by paedophiles to get their hands on innocent children. There is a massive campaign being waged to change our culture and our religious norms by people who have actively participated in Africa’s enslavement in the past. The “argument” presented by those people FOR legalisation of same-sex marriage is something they call marriage equality. But men and women are not, and have never been equal. Rather, men and women are complimentary. Their role in perpetuation of the species “Homo Sapiens” is complime...

 Lest we forget...

In the wake of the terrible tragedy of twelve (12) scholars getting killed in a road accident in South Africa, I watched the eNCA television channel yesterday where Mr. Barnes passionately laid out his “take” on what needs to be done.  In my view he is 100 % right. Purpose built bold yellow/orange vehicles, the very kind they use in the United States, need to be acquired to serve as scholar transport. You see, the main reason why scholars wear school uniform is because children’s safety is everybody’s responsibility. Your child is my child, and vice versa. If children’s transport boldly stands out in traffic, drivers of such transport won’t dare drive as recklessly as they do now, because we will all be watching, and we’ll not hesitate to do a citizen’s arrest on a reckless scholar transport driver. The children being transported are completely at the mercy of the criminally irresponsible drivers.  So, I hope the eNCA commentary by Andrew Barnes leads to scholar transport ALL ...

 Is what we are experiencing in Southern Africa, gender based violence (GBV) or something more sinister, namely gender based war (GBW)? I think it is the latter, and it is caused by OUR KILLING OF MARRIAGE. You see, when the colonialists subjugated our subcontinent, they were looking for wealth. They had no time to waste with complex native customary laws. So they contented themselves with controlling the apex native administrators – the so called CHIEFS, and left the “micro” administrations to their cultural practitioners. The result was that we continued to marry according to our traditions, thereby subjecting our families to cultural stabilisation. When we attained independence, we made no effort to harmonise European marriage law and practice with our own traditional laws and customs. We were too lazy. All we continued to do is to practice Roman Dutch Law of marriage alongside our own cultural laws of marriage. The result is the mayhem we are witnessing today. Young people no l...

 It would take a lifetime to try and change place names back to their original Kalanga language form. Indeed the exercise is neither practicable nor desirable, because to the inhabitants of those places, the corrupted versions of the names are what now makes sense. However, now that we have news read in Kalanga here at home, we Kalanga speakers feel bombarded by constant mispronunciation of place names. Take the name “Molepolole” for example, which is a sprawling village/city some fifty kilometres west of our capital city, Gaborone. I put it to the news writers that if they ask an old (and I mean old) person in that village, what the name of the village is, the answer will be “Mulipulule”, which is the Kalanga pronunciation. The question now is: in reading the name “Molepolole” during Kalanga news cast, which pronunciation should be presented to listeners? Should Kalanga news writers not make an effort to do just a little research on the correct (Kalanga) pronunciation before givin...

 Last Friday, 14th November 2025 a friend of mine, Damien Uwe Hobona, told me a harrowing tale of what he had endured at the receiving end of a tongue lashing by the Tonota chief. Below I'll try to produce what he told me as closely to "verbatim" as I can remember. "Last Friday 14th November, I was subjected to absolute terror, public humiliation and ridicule at Mafungo-Hubona kgotla by a Kgosi from Tonota. I can’t remember very well who they introduced him as: Kgosi Raditladi or Radipitse, I’m not sure. The Kgosi had been expected a week or so earlier. The villagers had duly gathered at the Kgotla, but the Kgosi had failed to show up. It was announced that he had not been able to secure diesel for the sixty (60) Km journey from Tonota. So, on Friday 14th November, the Kgosi arrived to deliver his long awaited judgement. The venue is a leobo, which is basically a shed with wide openings in the walls to provide natural ventilation during gatherings. The architecture r...

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...

 Take this statement: "If A,then B ..."  In the above statement  1. Is TIME implicit? 2. Is SPACE implicit? If the answer to both questions is "NO" doesn't that suggest that it was THE WORD rather than a BANG that started it all? Just thinking!

I have just watched Botswana television (Btv) news cast. It is reported that some six hundred cases of economic crime have been reported to the Directorate of Corruption and Economic crime (DCEC). I wish to register, rather than report one such crime; the difference being that I do not know who committed the crime, and the person whose name was used is deceased. My hope is that regardless of who committed the crime, the current government will move to remove the “ear sore” from our discourse. Our late president Ketumile Quet Joni Masire was not entitled to use the title “Sir” before his name. The Knighthood he was awarded in 1991 was an honorary one, which does not confer the right to use “Sir” before one’s name OUTSIDE THE UNITED KINGDOM.  Some, especially those who may have used their proximity to the seat of power to GRAB the title un-procedurally, may see my registration as political vindictiveness. It is not. I would not care a hoot if president Masire had died along with his ...

 There have been rumblings of late, criticizing our continued use of the death penalty. I think these criticisms are misplaced. The death penalty can and should be practiced WITH A SLEW OF SAFEGUARDS AGAINST INTENTIONAL ABUSE by the state, and unintended failure of the justice system. If we replace the death penalty with life imprisonment, it won’t be long before we have criminals serving life in jail and serving death to innocent citizens on the outside SIMULTANEOUSLY. How would we then deter such criminals other than through the death penalty?  Look, it is hypocritical of any state to say it does not practice the death penalty, when it LICENSES some of its citizens as non-state actors, to carry firearms. In such a situation, the state has effectively OUTSOURCED THE DEATH PENALTY to private citizens; to mete out the penalty to would be criminals who try to usurp the state’s right to be the sole practitioner of said penalty. State actors carrying firearms on the other hand are...

 There are several practical steps that can be taken to successfully roll back Chirwa: 1. Chirwa language should immediately lose its “official” status to the English language. 2. Ability to speak Chirwa language should immediately cease to be a requirement for one to obtain Botswana citizenship. 3. Chirwa, just like other “indigenous” languages, should cease to be a compulsory subject in schools. Where possible, scholars should be encouraged to study any other languages spoken in the country, including Chirwa. Only English should be retained as a compulsory language in schools. 4. Knowledge or proficiency in Chirwa should immediately cease to be a requirement for one to get a government Department of Information and Broadcasting job. Instead, that requirement should be replaced by consideration of THE TOTAL NUMBER OF “INDEGENOUS” languages that the applicant is proficient in. 5. Government should move to legalise community radio stations which will have the latitude, tho...

 On Friday, August 1st a local newspaper “The Voice”, reported a harrowing story about a young couple, an eighteen (18) year old girl and her twenty-four (24) year old lover, being each jailed for twenty years, after being convicted of performing anal sex on an eleven year old girl. Evidently, the 18 year old girl was not prepared to take her lover’s dick into that part of her own anatomy! The incident, and subsequent trial took place in a town that is traditionally NOT a Setswana speaking region of the country. Like most of our country however, the people who live there were forcibly de-linked from their language and culture by the Setswana speakers following the declaration in 1971 that henceforth, ONLY Setswana language would remain official.  What these two young people did was horrific. They deserve a harsh punishment. But should our disgust at what they did lead us to lock them away for practically ALL their productive years? Are there no extenuating circumstances? Do we...