We have lost our way of life

How sad that we have completely abandoned our ways in favour of foreign norms and mores! Culture is a people’s way of life. Yes, they say culture is dynamic and not static but we must place this within context. It’s not just an open-ended statement. Dynamism necessarily denotes getting rid of impediments and promoting enablers!

Now let’s consider how we have changed our culture. Growing up, visitors were very important people. And by visitors I don’t just mean strangers, but also relatives, family members, friends and acquaintances!

Whenever a visitor rocked up at our home for us young ones, we would know that it’s an opportunity for a sumptuous meal – this was in accord with our maxim – ‘Moeng goroga dijo di bonale’ – literally translated ‘Arrive visitor so that we can have food’!

Our forebears loved visitors. They would welcome you with a cup of tea and if you were sleeping over or visiting for a few days, a chicken would be killed or a goat slaughtered. Even the foodstuff normally reserved for special occasions would be taken out from where it had been hidden just so as to ensure the visitor had the best welcome.

But if you have observed trends these days, this way of life has disappeared and in its place we have become misers and hoarders. In fact, to put it mildly, we have grown greedy – we no longer want to share food, we would rather demand food from a visitor than welcome him or her with a cup of tea and a plate of food.

Have you noticed that when you go home to the village, your parents and family members frown when you don’t come carrying a Choppies plastic bag stuffed with groceries! If you can’t afford to buy stuff, they look at you as if you are something the cat has just dragged inside the house!

I have maintained from long back that culture is not just wearing animal skins and dancing in traditional troupes whenever there is a delegation of visiting heads of state! That is just a part of our culture. There is a lot more that distinguishes us as Batswana!

For example, have you noticed that it is becoming fashionable that whenever parents die siblings start fighting over inheritance. This is not our culture. We were never like this. Parents would grow into ripe old age, and when the time arrived for them to ‘sleep’, they would call all their children and divide the estate among them!

This would be done transparently with everyone present. It is unlike Wills and Testaments that are written under coercion by one or two of the children! Why are we abandoning our ways of life to run after things that we cannot defend?

Look at what the Land Boards are doing. They forget that land is communally owned and have privatised it into the exclusive ownership of the government. Sadly, by so doing they trample on the community’s ways of life.

Batswana continue to hold on to rituals that observe a rite of passage for boys and girls. Batswana revere these rituals because belonging to an age regiment inculcates in them a sense of community.

However, what we see now is that Land Boards have expropriated land that was reserved for these rituals and is allocating it without any consultation with the royal family to members of the community!

What we have to remember is that part of Batswana culture involves consulting traditional healers or diviners. This is to seek the blessings of the ancestors before they embark on any undertaking, especially if it is a communal one.

I attended a Kgotla meeting in Mochudi recently at which Kgosi Bana Sekai lamented at how Land Boards were not cooperating with the village leadership. He warned that the village has charms that repel evil hence the need for the Land Board to consult them whenever they allocate land lest they allocate someone on a place that has such charms!

In some instances, these charms appear in the form of gigantic snakes that protect the village! Now imagine if you share a piece of land with them? How do you sleep? How do you care for your yard?

Sadly, this is happening in Mochudi and it is gruesome torment for the victims. However, they are not to blame for their fate, it is the Land Board that bears all the blame. They have grown so arrogant that they think despising their culture makes them superior to the community!

There are also some projects in the village that were built by regiments way back before Botswana gained independence. For example, Bakgatla National School, which has since been turned into what is known as Phuthadikobo Museum, was built by regiments.

I remember my granny, Mmankgwana Motlalepula Gare, telling me how they built that school. They fetched sand from the ground below the hill in buckets and went up the hill to dump it! It was a labour of love for them because they knew the potential it had for them and their children.

But in later years she would lament that ‘such a beautiful school has now turned into a place where animal hides are kept!’ There is also Old Lentswe Primary School and the Dam next to Deborah Retief Memorial Hospital, just to mention a few.

Once again, the Kgatleng District Council has also joined the fray on the side of the Land Board and is busy expropriating these communal projects and turning them into Council properties or leasing them to businesses and then pocketing the proceeds!

Obviously this is daylight robbery. Council and Land Boards are not above the community. They exist for the community and serve the community. It’s not the other way round. The community does not work for the Land Board or the Council.

These institutions have been entrusted with properties of the community on behalf of the community. This means that everything that they do on behalf of the community, they have to make sure that the community is taken on board!

The way I see it, the Land Board and Council in Mochudi are headed on a collision course with BaKgatla ba Kgafela unless they turn back on the disastrous path they have taken, return all communal assets to the community and apologise to Morafe for their miscalculations and misdeeds!

Forewarned is forearmed, I trust someone is listening!