inBUSINESS Issue 15

Bontleng’s Village Development
Committee (VDC) to determine eligibility
beforehand. “In addition to a meal, the
children received hampers with a party
pack and T-shirts,” Keitshupang said.
Formed in 2012 by General Masire,
THC Foundation is a registered
non-profit organisation dedicated
to supporting women and children
who fall victim to domestic violence.
The charity takes its names from the
initials of the given names of the retired
general, Tebogo Horatious Carter. The
Orphans and Vulnerable Children’s
Party itself is an annual event hosted
and sponsored by THC Foundation with
support from willing entities. “We are
open to collaboration from other entities
to help us host the children’s party,”
Keitshupang explained.
Remaining events on THC
Foundation’s calendar for this year
include a donation of school shoes to
children in Palapye. This will take place
at the Central District town’s Catholic
Church on a date that is yet to be
announced.
Meanwhile, the apartheid regime
had brought its hand to lean heavily on
Kofifi’s black folks when - under the socalled
Natives Resettlement Act of 1951
- it forcibly moved them from the poor
but vibrant township to Meadowlands
in Soweto in 1955. Coloureds were
trekked to Eldorado Park, Indians to
Lenasia, while the Chinese component
of Sof’town was carted -
fighting for space
with all their
worldly
possessions in the back of open trucks succeed because nostalgia is driving a
- to central Johannesburg to make way pining for a return to a township that had
for working class whites as the brutal a distinct place in time and space as
sacrilege of apartheid unfolded.
defined by its unique taal or lingo, and
In the wake of the forced removals, where danger lurked at every corner in
much of the legendary township was the midst of profound religious devotion,
reduced to rubble. However, the advent an eagerness for education, as well as
of democracy in South Africa has seen a predilection for jazz and penchant for
a vigorous attempt to resettle Kofifi the blues.
and return it to its oorsprongklike,
Sof’town was an improbable
though admittedly retro style, status concatenation – at once symbiotic
of vibrant multi-culturism. To that end, and unplanned – of contraries where
considerable racial diversity is being condemnation was always in lockstep
achieved – without contrivance, it has with celebration. This is the township of
to be noted - because by 2011, 26.8% old that was home to Dr A. B. Xaba of
of the 5 371 people there were Black the ANC; Can Themba of Drum when
Africans, 25.8% of them Coloured, 5.1% the magazine mattered the more; writer,
Indian/Asian, 41.4% white while ‘Others’ actor and journalist Bloke Modisane;
made up 0.8%. The main languages of Oliver Tambo of the ANC; protest poet
the new Kofifi were Afrikaans (44.5%), Don Mattera; jazz songstress Thandi
English (31.9%), SeTswana (4.7%), Klaasen; the irrepressible Percy Xoboza
isiZulu (4.5 %) while the portion for of The World; writer Mongane Wally
‘Other Languages’ stood at 14.4%. Serote and trumpeter, flugelhornist,
While this may still be a far cry from composer and singer Hugh Masekela, to
the 54 000 Africans, 3 000 Coloureds, name but a few.
500 Indians and 686 Chinese who lived And such is indeed the connection
in Sophiatown in the late 1940s, – of contiguity of land as of the human
the
project spirit - between people and places in
should Botswana and South Africa that one
could almost name the latter two Kofifi
notables, Serote and Masekela, as
Botswana’s own because they trained,
entertained and wailed with many out
of a small house in the very Bontleng
when the township was home to Medu
Art Ensemble during their long years in
exile.
This they did alongside Bachana
Mokwena and his delightful wife Miriam,
MK commander George Phahle and
his social worker wife Lindy, lilting
songstress Sonti Ndebele, as well as
renowned artist Thamsanqa Mnyele.
Sadly, Bra Thami, who was also a
trained insurgent, ‘The Big George’
and Ous Lindy perished in the June 14
(1984) raid by apartheid commandos
on Gaborone while Bachana was
killed in a booby-trapped car
that left Miriam an invalid when
the couple was returning from
the burial of another victim of
apartheid death squads, ANC
human rights lawyer Bheki
www.inbusiness.co.bw | Issue 15 | 2017 51