Zim, Bots share common links

HISTORICALLY, Zimbabwe and Botswana share common links and have always benefited from the rich cultural ties between them.

There is an area in Zimbabwe, Mphoeng Reserve, which is inhabited by Batswana, the Bangwato, who, according to historians, settled there a century ago.

Historian Professor Neil Parsons maintains that the residents are descendants and supporters of Raditladi and Mphoeng, who broke away from the main group following a dispute in the 1890s. Therefore, the people of Zimbabwe and Botswana are related through marriage and cultural background.

Indeed, we are one people, and whatever we work on should be mutually beneficial. Historically, also, Zimbabwe’s liberation struggle cannot be fully captured without reference to the brotherly intervention of the people of Botswana through the pragmatic and far-sighted Sir Seretse Khama and the Frontline States.

Notwithstanding the newly independent Botswana’s own burdens from 1966, because as a landlocked country it had to rely on apartheid South Africa, and Southern Rhodesia (a South African ally) for essential imports, exports and infrastructure, and the fact that it had no army until 1977, Sir Seretse Khama, the first president of independent nation state, helped Zimbabwe’s liberation fighters to cross into their territory en route to Zambia, and later Mozambique where there were military bases.

Because the border between Botswana and Rhodesia was long and porous, people could easily cross from one side to the other and vice versa, as such there were many Batswana on either side of the border.