inBUSINESS Issue 12

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