Prologue: Serowe at the dawn of the Swaneng era

Tom Holzinger | Friday November 1, 2013 15:48

 

The birds woke up long before the sun and proclaimed the day, a warm and lazy February 11,1963. A few hours later a group of 28 excited school students filed into a single room on the eastern edge of Serowe. They had in part constructed that classroom themselves. Many were already adults. Against the odds, they were about to start Form 1.

There was no ceremony to mark the launch of the new institution. The rough classroom stood on a dusty hillside, gripped by all the drought, poverty, and political uncertainty of the waning Bechuanaland Protectorate. But the hopeful students and the school’s founders knew that they had launched a brave project with big ideas: Swaneng Hill School.

The night before the opening, King Moshoeshoe II of Basutoland had visited the school, accompanied by Kgosi Rasebolai Kgamane. The first man had been enthusiastic, the second one had not. A fortnight went by before the next notable visitors came, Kgosi Linchwe Kgafela of the Bakgatla and the writer Naomi Mitchison. They gave the school their full backing at once.

“Naomi,” wrote the principal later, “happily agreed to talk to the class and kept them attentive for two hours with her views on the similarities of Scottish and Tswana ways of life, and on development strategies aimed at benefiting the population as a whole while trying especially to uplift the most needy... I hoped some of them might one day put her ideas into practice.”1

Despite the unknown future, the thoughtful among the 28 knew that they were making history. Within a few years Swaneng would change their lives, and their village, forever.

 

Changes in Gamangwato

From the outset, Swaneng was joined by countless threads to local and international history. The story of Swaneng’s first Head Boy serves as an example.

Otsogile “Oates” Pitso was the oldest student in that first class. Born in Serowe in 1942, during World War II, he and his brothers spent most of their early lives at their father’s cattlepost in Kolokome, far from any school. Had the world not been changing, quite likely Oates would have never seen a classroom.

During the War many Batswana soldiers went overseas, fighting in a European conflict on behalf of their colonial masters, the British Empire. Very few found it strange. After the war, though, there was pressure for modernisation. In 1948 Tshekedi Khama, the Ngwato regent, mobilised a large mophato, Malekantwa, to build the first secondary school in the district.

This was Moeng College, sited in a remote valley in the Tswapong Hills. Serowe men laboured there for months without pay. In the words of future vice-president Lenyeletse Seretse: “It was hot, as only drought years can be, and we worked all day outdoors. Each man had to bring along his own rations, but it didn’t work out. Soon we were starving. Some members of the regiment had brought horses. They died. We ate them. We pushed wheelbarrows up and down, mixed cement, moulded bricks and by the end of it some of us had learn how to lay bricks. We were on the construction site for ten months and had put up most of the buildings when we were called back.”2 When Moeng was complete, it represented the highest level of education that Serowe youth could hope to obtain: The South African Junior Certificate and, much later, the Cambridge Certificate of Education.

But there was hardly time to celebrate at Moeng. Within months the Ngwato nation was fractured to the core by the epic clash between Tshekedi and his nephew Seretse Khama, sparked by the latter’s marriage to an Englishwoman. Further modernisation was delayed by a decade.

The young Otsogile was scarcely aware of these events. He remained a herdboy until the age of 12, when his father finally allowed him to follow his older brother and go to school. “In those days,” he says with a wry laugh, “people thought that education would be wasted on very young children, so we were expected to grow up a bit first.” In 1955 he enrolled in Serowe’s Western primary school to begin his Sub-A, now known as Standard 1.

His exceptional abilities were soon evident and he advanced steadily. For Standards 3 and 4, he had to transfer to Simon Ratshosa School. At that time it was the only school in Serowe to offer all six years of primary. When he began his final year in 1962, though, he had little hope of going further. The fees at Moeng were difficult to pay even for well-off families.

In the middle of that year, a soft rain fell in winter. One morning Oates’ head teacher, the renowned and formidable K.K. Baruti, entered the classroom with two unknown Europeans. Makgowa! The students rose and stood until told to sit down.

Baruti’s English was deep and formal. “Good morning, students. I would like to introduce you to two supplemental teachers who will help you prepare for your examinations. You are very lucky. Please meet Miss Elizabeth Griffin and Mr Patrick van Rensburg, who come from the UK.”

There was a long, awkward silence, then the clamour began.

 

The Prime Movers of an Era

Liz Griffin, soon to be Liz van Rensburg, was young and attractive, short and dark-haired. Though she spoke her words with care, she laughed easily and carried an inner grace that won instant respect. She had grown up in Wales without much fuss and was only 24-years old. Intimidated by nothing, she adapted quickly to Serowe and Serowe to her. She was the first and most natural of the dozens of Swaneng volunteers who followed in her footsteps.

Her better-known companion, van Rensburg, had been born and raised in South Africa. Older than Griffin at 30 years, he was a complex man with a complex background. He had been a public servant in South Africa, until he denounced apartheid and fled. Now he was banned in his own country. His past often haunted him and influenced his decisions.

Van Rensburg had written a book, Guilty Land, about his struggles. It opens with a punch:

“On the night of 30 March 1960, I fled from South Africa to Swaziland to seek political asylum. Until May 1957 I had served the government of South Africa loyally and to the best of my ability. In less than three years, I had graduated from being a servant of the government to being one of its extremist opponents. I was regarded by nearly all Afrikaners as a traitor and was treated as such.”

The British administration wanted no additional trouble with South Africa, a white-ruled country that had declared itself a republic the previous year. They allowed Van Rensburg to enter on the condition that he should not engage in politics. It was a bitter request. He consented in order to pursue an evolving vision of African education.

Over two decades van Rensburg was to write much about Swaneng. Fifty years later, his writings remain the best source of primary information. This series in Mmegi uses much of his material, balanced wherever possible by other first-hand accounts and the author’s own participation in these events.

 

Leaders Forge an Alliance

Historians like to write, “At Independence, Botswana was the poorest country in the world.” But this is rubbish. In 1962 Batswana had maintained decades of peace, enjoyed a good diet, were free from most tropical diseases, took care of their neighbours in trouble, were tolerant of differences, and cherished a long tradition of democracy in kgotla.

This good fortune made the country attractive to overseas donors, experts, and innovators. Van Rensburg and Griffin were only two of many outsiders who decided to cast their lot with this struggling little country that had high aspirations for its future.

How did this work on the ground? How did reformers of all backgrounds persuade the conservative status quo to change? It was self-evident that Serowe’s tribal leaders always had the power to make or break Swaneng. How they were won over to the van Rensburg dream is a fascinating story.

The traditional Kgotla in Serowe had been divided ever since the future Kgosi, Seretse Khama, married Ruth Williams in 1948. Tshekedi opposed the marriage with all his force, as did the Colonial Office in London. After extraordinary turmoil, the Empire sent both men into exile: Tshekedi to Pilikwe and Seretse and Ruth to London.

In 1956, to much jubilation, Seretse and Ruth returned to Serowe. The agreement? That Seretse and his sons and grandsons would never assume the Ngwato chieftainship. This condition was more bitter to traditionalists than to Seretse. The latter was already dreaming of parliamentary democracy, a republic that elected its leaders. In 1961 he launched the Bechuanaland Democratic Party, a non-tribal party that led Botswana to independence five years later.

Van Rensburg, escaping from South Africa in 1960, stopped over in Serowe to talk to Seretse about his ideas for development. When he made his long-term plans two years later, he and Griffin decided on Serowe for their future school.

Van Rensburg and Seretse, despite their very different personalities, had several striking similarities. Both had travelled to the UK and found wives. Both had made reluctant promises to the British. And both men had risen above their origins to achieve a liberal view of society, reflecting tolerance and a deep respect for human rights.

During the time that these strong leaders overlapped in Serowe, 1962–1965, they got along well and supported each other’s goals. Crucially, Seretse backed Pat’s plans in the Serowe kgotla at every key meeting. They often invited each other for a mixture of social life and political talk in their homes.

Ruth Khama, though, seemed less comfortable with Swaneng’s innovations. Early on she remarked that Griffin and Van Rensburg ought to marry. (And they did, rather quickly). By the time Ruth and her household moved to Gaborone in 1965, the friendship between the families was cooling. Thereafter they saw each other infrequently.

 

The African Winds of Change

“Freedom is not something that one people can bestow on another as a gift. They claim it as their own and none can keep it from them.”

The fiery speaker was Kwame Nkrumah, who became president of independent Ghana in March 1957. Further decolonisation followed swiftly. By February 1962, 19 African states had achieved their independence from Britain and France. Independence was in the air.

It was also on the airwaves. The invention of the transistor had led to small, battery-powered radios. By the late 1950s radio could reach most Africans. The effect was as dramatic as that of primary education. People learned of world events — and grasped that in the struggle for freedom, they were not alone.

(The departing British, perhaps to forestall more radical voices, established Radio Bechuanaland, soon to become the wildly popular Radio Botswana).

Southern Africa was the last region of the world to gain its freedom. A substantial number of white settlers, mine owners, and industrialists fought to keep their close connections to European power. They generally feared and despised black Africans, whose land they had stolen and whom they employed as labourers.

Batswana often think that we escaped such racism. This was not true, as Swaneng’s early students knew well. In 1962 Serowe was a segregated village in employment, education, health services, recreation, and social life. When Elizabeth van Rensburg gave birth later that year:

“On arrival at the hospital, Griffin was shocked to find the words For European Use Only printed in large letters on the sheets of her bed! Going into labour and at the mercy of the white British doctor and the fierce white Scottish Matron, she was in no position to put up a fight...”4

 Racism bred its reaction: African nationalism

In South Africa, Kenya, and elsewhere, this nationalism was radically assertive. In Bechuanaland it was strikingly mild. The British had worked closely with dikgosi and tribal councils to administer the Protectorate.

On the world scale, Africa still counted for little. Great powers and great fortunes were mainly concerned with the outcome of the Cold War, the 70-year confrontation between privately owned economies, “capitalism”, and state-owned economies, “communism”. In 1962, notably, the Soviet Union and the US almost went to nuclear war.

In Bechuanaland as elsewhere, political radicals were commonly denounced as communists. Patrick van Rensburg had to deny this charge frequently. In the mid-1960s, however, developments in China — the Cultural Revolution — made its kind of (apparently) participatory communism attractive people who wanted social change. This trend too would leave its mark on Swaneng.

 

Rooted in the Land

Despite the tumult abroad, it was the small, local features of Serowe that mostly shaped the new Swaneng projects. These small links to tradition and change, and the strong independent characters who appeared during Swaneng’s early years, are the focus of this series. The author gives the last word to his old friend, Bessie Head, whose insights about Swaneng were often the sharpest:

“Serowans have never lacked direction — they have always been involved in causes and debates. I admit a love for those causes, so that my definition of the soul of Serowe may favour the themes of social reform and educational advance which have been a reality of village life. This story, and it is a beautiful one, has a long thread.”5

 

1. Patrick van Rensburg, unpublished memoirs.

2. Bessie Head, Serowe: Village of the Rain Wind, 1981.

3. Patrick van Rensburg, Guilty Land, 1962.

4. Patrick van Rensburg, unpublished memoirs.

5. Bessie Head, Serowe: Village of the Rain Wind, 1981.

 

tom_holzinger@yahoo.com