Author

Tom Holzinger
  • Van Rensburg: Southern African educator, social activist

    His biological parents never married and his mother left the country soon after his birth.  He was brought up a Catholic and enthusiastically attended mass every Sunday during his youth.  The home language was a mixture of English, French,...

  • A personal memoir of Patrick van Rensburg

    I found him with a pick in his hand. Pat was in hurry to finish the foundation trenches for a new science lab. He swung the pick furiously at the red soil and soft rock below him. “Rome wasn’t built in a day,” he panted, “but of course I...

  • Swaneng: Steady growth, local development, and conflict

    Before Swaneng, Bechuanaland had only six secondary schools, and four of them offered only the Junior Certificate syllabus. All were run by either tribal councils or missions. Only one of these schools, Moeng College, was in the Central...

  • Serowe at the dawn of the Swaneng era (Part 2)

    It is late 1962. A determined young white man confronts an ageing Kgosi Rasebolai Kgamane in Serowe’s tribal offices and asks for land one last time. “We are not beggars. We are not asking for land for ourselves. If you do not decide today, we...

  • Prologue: Serowe at the dawn of the Swaneng era

    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...

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