inBUSINESS Issue 12

Government Enclave
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This hub of government offices gets its name
from the type of ‘business’ that is conducted
there. It is home to the National Assembly
(Parliament and Ntlo Ya Marena), the Office
of the President, the Attorney Generals’
Chambers, the Ministries of Finance, of
Foreign Affairs, of Home Affairs and of
Education, among others, as well as a war
memorial of Botswana’s fallen heroes of
WWII.
Otherwise called Pioneers Monument, the
war memorial ‘salutes’ the 10 000 Batswana
who died in action in WWII, one of whom
was yours truly’s maternal grandfather,
Molwa Sekgoma. He was among soldiers
who returned from the war front and later
passed away from natural causes. They are
equally commemorated on the monument.
Little is generally said about the sacrifices and
bravery of the African soldiers who fought in
what critics also call the Imperialist War, let
alone the Batswana contingent that made up
the largest number of any African country.
Viewed in this light, the significance of this
monument is multiplied.
Also on Government Enclave is the Heroes
Monument that pays tribute to members of
the BDF who died between 1977 and 1989.
This was the height of southern Africa’s
liberation struggle when Botswana became
a veritable battleground in which the Cold
War became very hot as forces of the white
minority regimes in South Africa, Rhodesia,
Angola Mozambique and South West
Africa effectively became proxies of Western
powers while the Eastern bloc used the ANC,
APLA, ZANLA, ZIPRA, SWAPO and the
MPLA to assert its worldview. The period
marks the formation of the BDF in 1977 and
the beginning of the process to dismantle
apartheid in 1989.
The last monument we view here is the
statue of Botswana’s founding president,
Sir Seretse Khama, which used to gaze on
people as they went past it between the Main
Mall to the east and the train station and bus
terminus to the west. Today the statue faces
Parliament where Seretse’s son, President Ian
Khama, took the oath of office in 2008.
The Village
Prison Tower
04
We learn that this neighbourhood actually predates much of the rest of the
city. It was built as a colonial village where the masters set up camp and ruled
the entire southern part of the High Commission territory of Bechuanaland.
“Colonial village” is an interesting morsel of information because Botswana is
always lauded as a country that was never colonised but rather ‘protected.’ This
‘Freudian slip’ is revealing because the description of Botswana as a ‘protectorate’
can be misleading since in every other way the ‘territory’ was a British
colony.
At The Village, we also visited a cemetery that is described as the final resting
place of approximately 116 white soldiers who died in the Anglo-Boer War
(1899 – 1902). Walking around the now neglected graveyard, the inscriptions
on the headstones are brief biographies of the people there interred and their
loved ones.
Says one: “To the loving memory of Sampson Couch French, Captain Royal
Irish regiment, eldest and dearly loved son of Savage and Fanny French.
Cuskiny, Queenstown, Ireland. Born Jan 23rd 1870. Killed in action when
gallantly leading an attack on Kopje near Crocodile Pools on Feb 12th, 1900.
‘Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see the Kingdom of God.’”
05
We end our tour early at the Prison
Tower, which was originally a fort
that later became a prison. It is still
under the custodianship of Botswana
Prison Services that now uses it
as a document storage facility. This is
somewhat disappointing because it
may depreciate its value as a tourist
attraction. Yet the monument stands
tall for anyone to see. The rumour
of this tower having been the place
when death row inmates finally met
the hangman and their end imbues
it with an aura of the eerie.
www.inbusiness.co.bw | Issue 12 | 2017 33