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56 www.inbusiness.co.bw | Issue 12 | 2017
SPORTS DIPSY IS NO DIPSOMANIAC Far from being tipsy, Botswana’s best-known football export is about to open a new chapter in the country’s sports world, write DOUGLAS TSIAKO & MBAKISANO TJIYAPO At present, circumstances surrounding sports and turning it professional in Botswana cannot inspire many parents to encourage their children to take that route. But here and there, perhaps yielding to extraordinary passion in the child and the unconditional love of parents, some do. One such family are the Selolwanes and their son, the groundbreaking Diphetogo, alias Dipsy, whose nimble feet took the lad to the US at the youthful age of 22 in the Year 2000. Never mind his country’s celebrated reputation as a stable democracy in the midst of bloodthirsty white minority regimes, it was unheard of for anyone to make a career out of sports in the Republic of Botswana, football, and especially football, included. Today, although he admits to many moments of doubt partly owing to naysayers disguised as friends, Dipsy is thankful to God that he remained resolute. The lad is made of sterner stuff. The same stuff that saw his grandfather, the famous Blackie Selolwane, gather musicians into formidable ensembles in 1940s and ’50s Francistown. The most famous of these, Selolwane Swingsters, did memorable gigs across Bechuanaland and exported soulful sounds from the so-called protectorate to concert audiences in white-ruled Rhodesia and apartheid South Africa. Adroit with the saxophone and dexterous on the concertina, the eclectic giant was also much present in public affairs, forming the advance guard of the independence movement in the radical Bechuanaland Peoples Party of Philip Matante whose battle cry was land reclamation. At the same time, Old Selolwane played fluid football for Bechuanaland 11, dispossessing rivals in the middle of the park for re-distribution to his assault squad ahead. The range of his repertoire is affirmed by how he also rose to become president of the Bechuanaland Tennis Association at a time when tennis was the elite racket of white settlers. Dipsy’s is the same material that has enabled his uncle, the illustrious John Blackie Selolwane, to straddle the world like a colossus of the guitar, strumming across oceans and continents with the likes of Spanish songstress Joan Palomo of “Granada” fame and English singer, actress and composer Petula Clark whose April 1968 duet with Harry Belafonte, “On the Palm of Glory,” aired to high ratings and racial rantings because it was the first time that a white woman had ever held a black man’s arm on American television. Perhaps Uncle John’s ‘flaw’ lies in flouting the sporting and cultural boycott of apartheid South Africa with Paul Simon’s “Graceland” project of the late 1980s, but he is there in the massive multi-cultural ‘kibbutz’ that survived the controversy when Graceland won the 1987 Grammy Award for Album of the Year. Here at home, Dipsy’s uncle had been with the legendary Kalahari Band where he became known for speaking without a verb being To Page 57 Dipsy’s uncle John Selolwane has straddled the world like a colossus with his mean guitar. With him is Dipsy’s mother “Sister Gert” who could never be put down in the decibel stakes when GU was in the park. www.inbusiness.co.bw | Issue 12 | 2017 57
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