Who is taking care of our rivers?

There is a Kalanga expression that says “shangu icha li nyolo “which talks of times when our earth was “wet” thus reminiscing of the good old days when everything reflected the image of God. This expression is usually said when decrying the present situation that is gone out of hands and mirroring a hopeless future hoping that those with ears, will and resolve would intervene to secure the situation.

I grew up in Mahalapye attending what was then known as Mahalapye African school which being one out of three in the village with a learning enrollment up to standard Seven. Classes from one to three were all taught under trees full time and you could imagine the winter breeze during those times when climate change was not an issue. Those times weather conditions were never mild, the weather was either hot, windy, rainy or cold. This primary school was close to the river and in winter it was just too cold within the river vicinity, ironically on the river bed temperatures were not that extreme and it was at these times that all outdoor classes moved into the river. Classes would be socially distanced at such intervals that there was not audio- interference between adjacent classes. This was just one of the many uses of the Mahalapye river beside its primary use of directly or indirectly being a source of water for human use. During the dry season the river bed was just sand meandering with the river course as it traverse its journey to eternity.

In the seventies I moved to Francistown to do my secondary education at Mater Spei College and there we have the Tati river. Unlike Mahalapye, Francistown was much developed with a mall, townships and locations and all schools were well resourced for full time indoor teachings. The town had its colonial architecture with all non- blacks residing on the eastern side of the Tati river together with a few blacks in institutional houses though some in reality were mere shelters. The western side accommodated all blacks from shanties of Mazibalori, Maipaahela to moderate structures in Kgaphamadi, Bluetown, Monarch and Somerset to mention a few. During those days there were very few private vehicles and transport was only limited to business logistics. In the early mornings one could see the river sprawling with scores of people crossing to the eastern side which was the only place that harbored economic activities, others would be students crossing over to schools such as Mater Spei, Our Lady, Setlalekgosi and Nyangabgwe primary schools. The river offered the shortest cut from where people resided to the then CBD. There were only two bridges by then being the one along Maun road and the other for Gaborone road along the old gravel road. Just like the Mahalapye river, Tati river was such a marvel of sand meandering through populated areas which offered many activities during dry season. The river was a cool place for outing where couples would spend their weekends trading their intimate feelings. It was a grand hangout for us lads where we used to wait for lasses coming out of studies so that one could present his credentials far away from teachers’ eyes because those days courting a school mate was not a matter of show off, discipline was quite some few bars up. It was a place where we used to have our afternoon picnics with our rock music LPs and cassette players.

There were perennial ponds scattered along the river which became useful for the Bazezuru community as it offered them a laundry facility where they did their washing in elaborate numbers. Other ponds became spiritual shrines where there were frequent cleansing and baptism of the born agains. This was the multi- functionality of the Tati river.

Upon completing my secondary I later went to work at Shashe dam that had cut across the Shashi river to create a huge reservoir of water for use by Phikwe mine, Power Station and the township use. Just like the other two rivers mentioned before, Shashe river navigated through the sparsely settled villages of Semotswane, former TC ( now called Tati Bridge) and Borotsi. This had a different landscape as at some parts of the riverbed rocks intercepted sand stretches and this made it cool for hanging out too. I used to jog along the river from the dam site halfway to the Tonota old Bridge. Night partying in the river sand was quite fashionable especially under the old Tonota bridge where we would occasionally replenish our stock at the nearby Highway bar. All my experiences with the three rivers mentioned here are no more and I am cognizant of the fact that life has changed over the years and there are now better ways of doing things that the rivers facilitated in the yesteryears. Nevertheless rivers are natural phenomena that would maintain their natural characteristics

over time until intercepted by external forces such as mankind, disasters like earthquakes and volcanoes but it pains to see them degrading into something else just as is the case with the three rivers I have labored on. These have now lost their natural state and sand has been replaced by swampy vegetation that disturbs the geodynamics of a river with overgrowth that clogs waterways resulting in stagnancy that attracts all sorts of waterborne problems. The vegetation also provides cover for all social ills and crimes in the thick growth not to mention dumping mutilated bodies, new born babies and waste of all imaginations. Unfortunately in these rivers we have lost the beautiful spacious dry season river bed that used to be covered with massive million tonnes of sand. This is now replaced by the vegetation rendering sight of sand within these areas none existence. Future generations growing around these areas may have to travel far places to see and walk over sand filled rivers. Passing through these rivers one just laments the beautiful riverian past that has gone wrong and wonder if there are any institutions charged with the responsibility to nurse our waterways. I once attended a workshop on conservation of natural resources and on the sidelines I asked an official about government’s position concerning the state of these rivers, the response was a lukewarm guarded answer that they are aware of the situation and he didn’t elaborate any further to show concern.

What we know as a nation is that issues on environment are globally topical these days for everything that we do as nations. I am not an environmental science expert but I could be a common sense environmental expert to deduce that we as a nation has contaminated these rivers in many ways while our environmental institutions went into a deep sleep. It is not uncommon in our beloved Botswana that we habitually let things degrade under our watchful eyes only to engage expensive studies and consultancies whose recommendations we will not implement until we venture into another expensive expenditure known as benchmarking, this happens while we have sector decorated gurus syphoning scarce skill allowance from public purse. The question that arises is in reality where the scarce skill is, is it with those getting the allowances here at home or is the skill with those we benchmark at? I could also be wrong in that some studies may have been done about these rivers only to get dust at the normal dust enclave or kept somewhere codified as security threats as these days it’s very blurry to know what constitutes our security threats as none has so far been disclosed to the nation.

The situation in which our rivers are, makes one to ask if some of our rivers are not classified as strategic national resources to an extent that they are periodically monitored to ensure conformity to sustainable standards which forms part of the global covenants. This should be so because some of our rivers feed into our national dams and thus conditions of these rivers have impactful bearings to our dams which are key resources for both economic and human survival, it doesn’t stop there, most large rivers are intra- nationals resources that should be subjected to international codes.

Currently we have rivers such as Nata and Boteti that feed into highly sensitive environmental areas of Makgadikgadi where we have birds sanctuaries and soda mine, one can only imagine what would become of these sensitive areas should these villages develop into towns or industrial villages with no mitigating strategies in place as evidenced by the three rivers highlighted above, environmentalists the world over will scream at us. Recall when we were delisted for financial shortfalls, to me that was a wakeup call for us as a nation to visit all our international codes and compliance standards to ensure conformity across all governance structures unless this time we are waiting for another delisting on environmental conventions.

Can we as deserving citizens of this

country be appraised of these eyesore and worrisome developments that we see mutilating our once beautiful rivers. Surprisingly we are so vocal and inspirational at various global podia about environmental issues yet we dismally fail to do the bare minimal needful at our doorsteps.