Serowe by Bessie Head

Author:Bessie Head
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Botswana
Publisher: For the Benefit of Mr. Kite
Published: 1980-12-31T16:00:00+00:00

16

The Establishment of Pilikwe Village by Tshekedi Khama

Today, Pilikwe village is almost a ruin. A few old men sit under the shady trees near the kgotla. The children who attend the Pilikwe Primary School play games among the deserted homesteads. It is a village of the very young and the very old, and it lacks that feeling of other villages where life is lived at full tilt and there is a day-long bustle and business. Pilikwe was founded in 1953, about six years before the death of Tshekedi. One can still see signs of the vigour of its beginnings – each homestead has a neat pit toilet in the yard (which is something Serowe lacks; there are excreta all around the pathways and dongas in Serowe) and each Pilikwe hut or rondavel is just that much smarter and more distinguished-looking.

The families who made the big move with Tshekedi all belonged to the upper crust of Serowe society and this detail alone is an indication of the quality of African society. When men, who are rich, secure and in key positions in a society, break up their homes and jobs overnight to face the unknown, homeless – their motivations bear examining. This historical story was the last of the migrations in the old African tradition – a tradition established over the centuries to avert bloodshed in a crisis and underlying the basic non-violent nature of African society as it was then. This gives the lie to white historians who, for their own ends, damned African people as savages. The story has many twists and turns. When hostilities broke out in the Bamangwato clan over the marriage of their future chief, Seretse, to an Englishwoman, the source was Tshekedi’s opposition to the marriage. Men like Gabolebye Dinti Marobele had little to gain when they moved away with Tshekedi. They did it for a man they valued.

It is perhaps worth remembering in this context that it was during the last years of his life, at Pilikwe, that Tshekedi, with the help of Guy Clutton-Brock, made a first attempt, far ahead of its time, at a communal farm in the shape of the Bamangwato Development Association. The project came to an end after Tshekedi’s death, but it is an astonishing pointer to a modern development of the traditional concept of communal land under the chief.

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