A Remarkable Partnership

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SANDY GRANT | Monday December 15, 2008 00:00

In past years, Van Rensburg  has been a prolific contributor to Mmegi and perhaps the only one who has familiarised himself with successive National Development Plans. But with no journalistic qualifications to justify his being registered as a journalist under the new law, it may be that we have seen the last of his contributions.

How very odd it must seem to him that so many wheels seem to have turned full circle since 1962 when, with his wife, Liz, he told the youth of Serowe that if they wanted a secondary school, they had better start building it.

Yet any sort of activity, and there was almost none at the time, prompted the immediate interest of both South African security agents and this country's very own special branch. Today the government has created a bureau of state security, which is so cocooned from public view that it is almost illegal to suggest that it even exists. Then, Ian Smith's Rhodesia was a major threat to this country.

Today, Mugabe's Zimbabwe is an even bigger one. Then, the establishment of Mmegi in Serowe, and of other news attempts in Mochudi and Selebi-Phikwe ensured that there was a degree of press freedom and variety. Today that freedom seems to be under severe threat with both the Minister and the representatives of the commercial media claiming that they stand for an improved free press.

How weird that, with such common interests, they have been unable or unwilling to discuss them!  So much of this country's history revolves around extraordinary coincidences and about the most unexpected of human relationships and partnerships, whether it be Moffat with Mzilikazi, Tshekedi with Guy Clutton Brock, Seretse with Ruth and so far overlooked, Patrick van Rensburg with Seretse.

Both had taken the first dangerous step in rejecting apartheid and were now engaged in the second step of trying to provide an alternative to it - something which was probably even more dangerous.  In 1966 Seretse spelt out his vision of a democratic, non-racial state and society in the midst of countries whose ideals were entirely different.

But he needed a very different kind of personality, to match his words with deeds. Spectacularly there emerged a most unusual partnership of sorts between two individuals whose personal backgrounds could hardly have been more different - the aristocratic, wealthy, chief of a major tribe whose marriage provided headline stories for newspapers all over the world for 10 years or so;

and an Afrikaner who had once served in the South African diplomatic service, had resigned in protest, denounced apartheid in a best selling paper back and helped to organise the first boycott of South African goods.
In the Botswana of 1966 there was a politically spelt out vision, but little idea as to how that vision could be realised in terms of education, the acquisition of practical skills, and the stimulation of local economies.

Van Rensburg filled that gap - and the youth of the western world responded to his idealism and challenge and hot-footed it here to engage with their local counter-parts, and contribute to the new utopia.

At Swaneng, an attempt at educational and social engineering, backed by Leapeetswe and Lenyeletse Khama, was initiated by Van Rensburg, which not only took on apartheid South Africa face to face but rejected outright systems of education, which gave everything to a few and nothing to the many.

It was hugely ambitious but Van Rensburg, now so little recognised, gave Seretse a practical formula to add to his visionary words and together they went a long, long way to shaking the very foundations of apartheid. Quite a man!