Not in this day

| Tuesday July 23, 2013 00:00

According to a recent survey, some parents in the area lack even basic literacy, resulting in their children, some as young as six years, being the driving force of prosperity on many farms and cattle ranches.It is mind-boggling how such a reprehensible practice is possible in 21st Century Botswana, a country that has prided itself on being multi-racial and democratic right from the inception of the Republic in the mid-1960s. Yet it is rampant and systematic, the masters of the beastly order being people of a specific race that was always associated with the erstwhile heresy of apartheid.

Minister Peter Siele and the district's traditional leadership acknowledged the existence of this loathsome horror in tones almost of one referring to a curse from the gods before whom mortals are a hopeless lot. The recent report also reveals an escalation in school dropouts that is linked to this abomination of desolation on Afrikaner farms, mention of which is anathema in insouciantly multi-racial Botswana. A similar silence is expected, almost enforced, when it comes to how tragic the school hostel system for so-called Rural Area Dwellers, among whom Basarwa are preponderant, has become a convenience for the sexual appetites of the young scions of the farmers.

Yet there is no doubting that education is an instrument of social change. And if that is the case, it is much needed by the oppressed communities of Basarwa if they should escape the life - if that it can be called- of vassals to which they seem condemned beyond the Third Coming.But if it should be relevant, formal education that comes to what has been called God's forgotten people must embrace their way of life and tap into their superior conservationist skills, among other things, and rejecting any attempt to alienate them from the environment.

Above all, Basarwa must be engaged in discussions to hear from them what they think can work in giving their children more access to education. Such an approach should eventually bring to an end the practice of retailing their children to commercial farms where they are exposed to harm, sexual exploitation and hard, un-paid labour.But all this will be impossible if the support of the upper crust of our society in political leadership that has always colluded with capitalist farmers in Ghantsi in the exploitation of Basarwa and other minority groups, does not end first.

It is the most sorrowful state for anyone if their survival should lie in submitting to all forms of exploitation and degradation. It is lamentable for a nation to lay claim to civilised standards while it encourages the visitation of wickedness upon sections of its citizens.

                                                                       Today's thought

       'You may choose to look the other way but you can never say again that you did not know.'

                                                                    - William Wiberforce