A sad farewell to one I once knew well

QUESTION TIME
PATRICK VAN RENSBURG | Friday September 14, 2007 00:00

To a large extent, our frequent and mutually appreciated contacts in Mochudi, Serowe and elsewhere, in those early days, were brought about by Naomi Mitchison who had first heard of me when I directed the Boycott Movement (against Apartheid) in London in 1959 and the early Sixties. She had recognised all the promising potentials of Kgosi Linchwe and made me and others aware of them, too.

 
A very early meeting in Serowe was in a rondavel at Swaneng in which my wife, Liz, and I, lived. Naomi came with Linchwe, both in evening dress, which we weren't able to reciprocate. Naomi presented Liz and I with a poem she had written about us. Linchwe gave us a cheque for R500 from the Bakgatla administration, which infuriated the Bangwato hegemony of the time, though we were getting our school going with the help of people from abroad and even from liberals in South Africa.

 
Naomi was attracted to our self-help policy which was working well with students helping to build Swaneng Hill School, and the Brigades which I set up in 1965 - as the first of many set up elsewhere by myself and others.
At a later time, after Sandy Grant had arrived, a work camp was held in Mochudi to assist in constructing what Sandy called a combined community development/refugee transit centre.

 
I can't write with any authority on Linchwe's governance of the tribe, but I sensed that his administration reflected liberal traits along with the traditional, if not mildly conservative, ones. He was not himself against adults' smoking dagga, as I recall, for instance, but there were, perhaps, questionable tribal practices that he more strongly upheld, but probably with tribal approval.

 
In 1974, as Director of the Foundation for Education with Production, I organised the first of a series of conferences on alternative education in African countries in Dar es Salaam, with the support of the Dag Hammarskjold Foundation of Sweden.

 
I'd appreciated Linchwe's positive approach to work and study and invited him personally to the conference, besides representatives of Botswana's Ministry of Education.  
In those days, by the way, I was not only a prohibited immigrant in South Africa, but Rhodesia, and South West Africa as well, and I had to go out through Zambia via the gap in Chobe between Botswana and the other countries.

I had invited Linchwe at short notice and we travelled together en route and eventually from Lusaka to Dar es Salaam.
The young Linchwe's presence made quite an impression on a number of people. He participated usefully in group discussions, and he much appreciated the keynote speech of President Nyerere which emphasized the importance of linking work and study.

 
We had invited well-known innovators of work and study from Ghana, Nigeria and Ethiopia as well as non-English-speaking former colonies, as well from the Liberation Movements, especially the Mozambicans and Zimbabweans. The ANC was establishing its SOMAFCO (Solomon Mhlangu Freedom College) school in Tanzania, and other movements had schools outside their own borders, all of which were practicing a measure of education with production.

 
While Kgosi Linchwe and I maintained a good personal relationship thereafter, it was not as regular and close as it was whilst Naomi was around.
For all his commitments to his 'tribesman', Kgosi Linchwe, was an internationalist when I knew him. Perhaps, he had to be an internationalist, given that the Bakgatla were spread across the Botswana and South African borders.

 
As Sandy Grant has pointed out, President Seretse Khama had clearly taken note of Kgosi Linchwe's personal strengths in having sent him as Ambassador to the US at an early stage of Kgosi Linchwe's life. Both he and President Masire recognised the Kgosi's abilities and strengths in assigning them to important positions and duties.

 
I last saw Kgosi Linchwe in Maseru at a SADC meeting at which President Masire was present. QKJ Masire was introducing his regional leaders to other participants, including Batswana, and assigning me the role of a White Chief.
I much regret that I was unable to be present at the Kgosi's funeral, because of commitments which have brought me to South Africa. I am closing down all our projects there because of lack of official support.

 
I mourn silently with the Bakgatla, and keep fond memories of their late Kgosi.