‘Doff white shirts, don overalls’: Urbanophobia, Rural Enterprise and the Ideal of Masculine Citizenship in Post-Colonial Botswana

Abstract

Historical studies of migration have largely ascribed the configuration of masculinities in Botswana to male labour migration. This discourse is beyond dispute. As a paradigm, however, it has obscured other histories of migration and their influence on cultural ideals of masculinity, where circular migratory patterns became central to the construction of national identity. In the first decade of independence, Botswana’s national policy and popular discourse centred around shaping a nation of farmers composed of masculine, rural citizens. Men were encouraged to go back to their lands to stem the tide of migration to urban areas, where they would purportedly become indolent and therefore wallow in poverty. This article analyses anti-urban rhetoric and valorisation of the virtues of farming as evidence of how rural enterprise was central to the construction of the ideal of masculine national identity in early post-colonial Botswana between the 1960s and 1970s. The attempt to construct national identity around manhood was a deliberate mechanism to sustain the patriarchy’s control over subordinated gendered categories, such as women, poor people and young men.

Keywords:

• citizenship
• farming
• masculinities
• migration
• urbanisation

Notes

1 J. Bakoni, ‘Farmers Have the Help but not the Dedication’, Kutlwano, Gaborone (May 1975), p. 29.

2 S. Gaseitsiwe, ‘Anti Beauty Contests’, Kutlwano (June 1972), p. 5.

3 When I grew up in eastern Botswana during the 1980s, men who lived in rural areas and did the ‘great’ works of farming were in the habit of gender profiling any man who worked in town, labelling them nurses, a derogation of the then female-dominated profession. The nurses’ predominantly white uniform was deemed too clean, feminine and therefore symbolic of a lack of physical strength.

4 M.M. Bagwasi and J. Sunderland, ‘Language, Gender and Age(ism) in Setswana’, in L.L. Atanga, S.E. Ellece, L. Litosseliti and J. Sunderland (eds), Gender and Language in Sub-Saharan Africa: Tradition, Struggle and Change (Amsterdam, John Benjamins, 2013), p. 65.

5 S.E. Ellece, ‘The “Tinto” Image in Contemporary Tswana Songs: Masculinities in Crisis?’, in Atanga et al., Gender and Language in Sub-Saharan Africa, p. 173.

6 P.P. Molosiwa and M.M.M. Bolaane, ‘A Peaceful Country’: Refugees, Masculinities and Anti-Radical National Identity in Early Post-Colonial Botswana’, Historia, 66, 2 (2021), pp. 48–73.

7 W.G. Morapedi, ‘Acculturation and Botswana Migrant Miners in South Africa, 1930–1980’, Afrika Zamani (CODESRIA), 15 & 16 (2007–2008), pp. 45–62. The word ‘Batswana’ (sing. Motswana) denotes national identity for the people/citizens of Botswana.

8 I. Niehaus, ‘Renegotiating Masculinity in the Lowveld: Narratives of Male-Male Sex in Compounds, Prisons and at Home’, in M. Steyn and M. van Zyl (eds), The Prize and the Price: Shaping Sexualities in South Africa (Cape Town, HSRC Press, 2009), p. 88.

9 T. Barnes, ‘Virgin Territory? Travel and Migration by African Women in Twentieth-Century Southern Africa’, in S. Geiger, N. Musisi and J. Allman (eds), Women in African Colonial Histories (Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 2002), pp. 164–90.

10 I. Schapera, Migrant Labour and Tribal Life: A Study of Conditions in the Bechuanaland Protectorate (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1947), p. 1.

11 Niehaus, ‘Renegotiating Masculinity in the Lowveld’, p. 88.

12 D. Magang, The Magic of Perseverance: The Autobiography of David Magang (Cape Town, Centre for Advanced Studies, 2008), p. 117. In Setswana this is go tsamaya ke go bona, which is not gendered masculine.

13 Schapera, Migrant Labour and Tribal Life, p. 116; C.J. Makgala, ‘Discourses of Poor Work Ethic in Botswana: A Historical Perspective, 1930–2010’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 39, 1 (2013), p. 47.

14 Molosiwa and Bolaane, ‘A Peaceful Country’, pp. 48–73; D. Durham, ‘Empowering Youth: Making Youth Citizens in Botswana’, in J. Cole and D. Durham (eds), Generations and Globalization: Youth, Age, and Family in the New World Economy (Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 2007), p. 104.

15 Molosiwa and Bolaane, ‘A Peaceful Country’.

16 See, for example, L.A. Lindsay, Working with Gender: Wage Labor and Social Change in Southwestern Nigeria (Portsmouth, Heinemann, 2003).

17 B. O’Laughlin, ‘Missing Men? The Debate Over Rural Poverty and Women-Headed Households in Southern Africa’, Journal of Peasant Studies, 25, 2 (1998), p. 13.

18 J. Holston, Insurgent Citizenship: Disjunctions of Democracy and Modernity in Brazil (Princeton, Princeton University Press, 2008); V. Crapanzano, Imaginative Horizons: An Essay in Literary Philosophical Anthropology (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 2004); O’Laughlin, ‘Missing Men?’, pp. 1–48.

19 A.I. Samatar, An African Miracle: State and Class Leadership and Colonial Legacy in Botswana Development (Portsmouth, Heinemann, 1999); R.P. Werbner, Reasonable Radicals and Citizenship in Botswana: The Public Anthropology of Kalanga Elites (Indiana, Indiana University Press, 2004).

20 K. Good, Diamonds, Dispossession, and Democracy in Botswana (Woodbridge, James Currey, 2008); Ø. Gulbrandsen, Poverty in the Midst of Plenty: Socio-Economic Marginalization, Ecological Deterioration, and Political Stability in a Tswana Society (Bergen, Norse Publications, 1996).

21 For a critique of the miracle thesis, see J. Livingston, ‘Suicide, Risk, and Investment in the Heart of the African Miracle’, Cultural Anthropology, 24, 4 (2009), pp. 652–80.

22 G. Bauer, ‘Update on the Women’s Movement in Botswana: Have Women Stopped Talking?’, African Studies Review, 54, 2 (2011), pp. 23–46.

23 C. Cockerton, ‘Slipping through Their Fingers: Women’s Migration and Tswana Patriarchy’, Botswana Notes and Records, 34 (2002), pp. 37–53; L. Mafela, ‘Batswana Women and Law: Society, Education and Migration, c. 1840–c. 1980’, Cahiers d’Études Africaines, 47, 187/188 (2007), pp. 523–66.

24 S.P. Dudink, K. Hagemann and A. Clark (eds), Representing Masculinity: Male Citizenship in Modern Western Culture, 2nd edn (New York, Palgrave Macmillan, 2012); B. Herzog and J. Adams, ‘Women, Gender, and the Revocation of Citizenship in the United States’, Social Currents, 5, 1 (2018), pp. 15–31.

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26 See, for example, J. Seely, E.D. Diouf, C.A. Malischewski, M. Vaikath and K. Young-Burns, ‘Second-Class Citizens? Gender in African Citizenship Law’, Citizenship Studies, 17, 3–4 (2013), pp. 429–46.

27 D. Jacobson, Rights Across Borders: Immigration and the Decline of Citizenship (Baltimore, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996); A. van Klinken, ‘Pentecostalism, Political Masculinity and Citizenship’, Journal of Religion in Africa, 46, 2–3 (2016), pp. 129–57.

28 Pailey, ‘Women, Equality, and Citizenship’; E. Hunter, ‘Dutiful Subjects, Patriotic Citizens, and the Concept of “Good Citizenship” in Twentieth-Century Tanzania’, Historical Journal, 56, 1 (2013), pp. 257–77.

29 L. Ouzgane and R. Morrell (eds), African Masculinities: Men in Africa from the Late Nineteenth Century (New York, Palgrave Macmillan, 2005); L.A. Lindsay and S.F. Miescher, Men and Masculinities in Modern Africa (London, Heinemann, 2003); G. Reid and L. Walker, Men Behaving Differently: South African Men Since 1994 (Lansdowne, Double Storey, 2005).

30 Seely et al., ‘Second-Class Citizens?’

31 D.O. Babtunde, ‘Women and Political Power in Africa: Belonging and Isolation’, Gender and Behaviour, 19, 3 (2021), pp. 18366–74; Pailey, ‘Women, Equality, and Citizenship’; Burchardt, ‘Masculinity, Sexual Citizenship and Religion’.

32 B. Carton, Blood from Your Children: The Colonial Origins of Generational Conflict in South Africa (Charlottesville, University of Virginia Press, 2000); R. Morrell, ‘Of Boys and Men: Masculinity and Gender in Southern African Studies’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 24, 4 (1998), pp. 605–30.

33 F. Morton, When Rustling Became an Art: Pilane’s Kgatla and the Transvaal Frontier, 1820–1902 (Claremont, David Philip Publishers, 2009); A.F. Isaacman and B. Isaacman, Slavery and Beyond: The Making of Men and Chikunda Ethnic Identities in the Unstable World of South-Central Africa, 1750–1920 (Portsmouth, Heinemann, 2004).

34 S. Khama, ‘A Statement of Progress and Policy’, Kutlwano (May 1970), p. 6.

35 Kutlwano, ‘Editorial: Botswana Surges Forward’ (April 1972), p. 3.

36 S. Khama, From the Frontline: Speeches of Seretse Khama, edited by G.M. Carter and E. Philip Morgan (Stanford, Hoover Institution, 1980), pp. 322–4.

37 J. Taylor, ‘The Reorganization of Mine Labor Recruitment in Southern Africa: Evidence from Botswana’, International Migration Review, 24, 2 (1990), pp. 250–72.

38 M. Kinsman, ‘“Beasts of Burden”: The Subordination of Southern Tswana Women, ca. 1800–1840’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 10, 1 (1983), pp. 39–54.

39 For a comprehensive review of the literature on Botswana women in the early years of independence, see P. Peters, ‘Gender, Development Cycles and Historical Process: A Critique of Recent Research on Women in Botswana’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 10, 1 (1983), pp. 100–22.

40 Taylor, ‘The Reorganization of Mine Labor Recruitment’.

41 M. Chakalisa, ‘The Role of a Citizen’, Kutlwano (February 1972), p. 12.

42 O.B Mmolawa, ‘Include Agriculture in Education’, Kutlwano (September 1972), p. 3.

43 A. Mbembe, On the Postcolony (Berkeley, University of California Press, 2001).

44 D. Scott, Conscripts of Modernity: The Tragedy of Postcolonial Enlightenment (Durham, Duke University Press, 2004).

45 S. Khama, ‘A Statement of Progress and Policy’, Kutlwano (May 1970), p. 7.

46 Bakoni, ‘Farmers Have the Help’, p. 29. See also K.S. Raborokgwe, ‘We Remain What We Are, Modern or No’, Kutlwano (October 1974), p. 31.

47 C. Bryant, B. Stephens and S. MacLiver, ‘Rural to Urban Migration: Some Data from Botswana’, African Studies Review, 21, 2 (1978), p. 85.

48 T. Otlogetswe, ‘Botswana National Anthem & its Terrible English Translation’, Setswana Blogspot, 29 January 2006, available at http://setswana.blogspot.com/2006/01/botswana-national-anthem-its-terrible.html, retrieved 23 March 2020.

49 S. Volz, ‘Words of Batswana: Letters to the Editor of Mahoko a Becwana, 1883–1896’, History in Africa, 34, 1 (2007), pp. 349–66.

50 S. Khama, ‘Why I Gave Up My Throne’, Ebony (June 1951), BWGovernment Facebook page (1 July 2017), available at https://www.facebook.com/BotswanaGovernment/posts/why-i-gave-up-my-throne-by-seretse-khama-published-in-ebony-magazine-june-1951-3/1372211906194797, retrieved 31 January 2020. See also Molosiwa and Bolaane, ‘A Peaceful Country’, p. 66.

51 D. Mosarwe, ‘Kutlwano is the Magazine for Botswana’, Kutlwano (January 1970), p. 13.

52 Magang, The Magic of Perseverance, pp. 212–13 and 352.

53 J. Comaroff, J.L. Comaroff and D. James (eds), Picturing a Colonial Past: The African Photographs of Isaac Schapera (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 2007).

54 J.L. Comaroff and J. Comaroff, ‘Postcolonial Politics and Discourses of Democracy in Southern Africa: An Anthropological Reflection on African Political Modernities’, Journal of Anthropological Research, 53, 2 (1997), pp. 123–46; ‘Kgotla: The Public Sphere’, in Comaroff et al., Picturing a Colonial Past, pp. 181–96.

55 Comaroff and Comaroff, ‘Postcolonial Politics and Discourses of Democracy’, p. 138.

56 P. Peters, ‘Manoeuvres and Debates in the Interruption of Land Rights in Botswana’, Africa, 62, 3 (1992), p. 417.

57 Molosiwa and Bolaane, ‘A Peaceful Country’, pp. 65–70.

58 P. Rantao, ‘Taaibos Rabasotho: Farming in Botswana as a Growing Business’, Kutlwano (October 1974), pp. 2–8.

59 Mmegi Online, ‘Letter to the Minister of Lands and Housing’ (Friday 16 December 2011), available at https://www.mmegi.bw/opinion/letter-to-the-minister-of-lands-and-housing/news, retrieved 29 January 2020.

60 Rantao, ‘Taaibos Rabasotho’.

61 Khama, ‘A Statement of Progress’, p. 6.

62 Rantao, ‘Taaibos Rabasotho’.

63 Durham, ‘Empowering Youth’, p. 114.

64 See, for example, J.L. Comaroff, ‘Class and Culture in a Peasant Economy: The Transformation of Land Tenure in Barolong’, Journal of African Law, 24, 1 (1980), pp. 85–113; J.L. Comaroff, The Structure of Agricultural Transformation in Barolong: Towards an Integrated Development Plan (Gaborone, Southern District Council of Botswana, 1977).

65 B. Head, When Raid Clouds Gather (London, Heinemann Educational Books, 1972), p. 12.

66 L. Phillips, ‘History of South Africa’s Bantustans’, in Oxford Research Encyclopaedia of African History (2017), available at https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190277734.013.80, retrieved 23 January 2020; L. Evans, ‘South Africa’s Bantustans and the Dynamics of “Decolonisation”: Reflections on Writing Histories of the Homelands’, South African Historical Journal, 64, 1 (2012), pp. 117–37.

67 Raborokgwe, ‘We Remain What We Are’, p. 31.

68 M. Crowder, ‘Tshekedi Khama’s Opposition to the British Administration of the Bechuanaland Protectorate, 1926–1936’, Journal of African History, 26 (1985), p. 204.

69 Crowder, ‘Tshekedi Khama’s Opposition’.

70 Schapera, Migrant Labour and Tribal Life, p. 61.

71 Government of Botswana, ‘Selebi Phikwe Town Planning Report for 1970, Appendix 2’ (Gaborone, Government of Botswana, 1970); M. Bernard and K. Darkoh, ‘Socio-Economic Impacts of Mining in Botswana: A Case Study of the Selebi-Phikwe Copper Nickel Mine’, Eastern Africa Social Science Research Review, 17, 2 (2001), pp. 17–18.

72 C. Kerven, ‘Botswana: A Synopsis’, in Migration in Botswana: Patterns, Causes, and Consequences: Final Report of the National Migration Study (Gaborone, Botswana Central Statistics Office, 1982), pp. 13–14.

73 Kerven, ‘Botswana: A Synopsis’. For insights on colonial Batswana female migrancy, see Cockerton, ‘Slipping Through their Fingers’, pp. 37–53.

74 Botswana National Archives Records and Services (hereafter BNARS) DC 02/76, District Commissioner, Serowe to Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Local Government and Lands cc. Office of the President, 9 February 1976; Government of Botswana, ‘Annual Report, District Commissioner Central District’ (Gaborone, Government of Botswana, 1975), p. 5.

75 Ibid.

76 Bakoni, ‘Farmers Have the Help’, p. 29.

77 Raborokgwe, ‘We Remain What We Are’, p. 31.

78 P. Peters, Dividing the Commons: Politics, Policy, and Culture in Botswana (Charlottesville, University of Virginia Press, 1994).

79 T. Morapedi, ‘… And Reward’, Kutlwano (October 1971), p. 2.

80 G. Moshabi, ‘Farming an Advantage’, Kutlwano (October 1971), p. 12.

81 M. Sekgoma, ‘Change is For the Better or For the Lesser’, Kutlwano (January 1975), p. 31.

82 D. Mahloane, ‘A Hit at Beauty Contests’, Kutlwano (March 1972), p. 10.

83 See P.P. Molosiwa, ‘White Man’s Disease, Black Man’s Peril? Rinderpest and Famine in the Eastern Bechuanaland Protectorate at the End of the 19th Century’, New Contree, 71 (2014), pp. 12–13.

84 J.M.J. Legwaila, ‘A Message of Goodwill to the Youth of Botswana’, Kutlwano (November 1970), p. 19.

85 Legwaila, ‘A Message of Goodwill’, p. 19.

86 Republic of Botswana, Botswana Gazette Vol XIX, No. 18, Government Notice no. 131 of 1981, 10 April 1981, p. 345.

87 P.M. Ramogapi, ‘The Causes of Juvenile Delinquency’, Kutlwano (March 1972), p. 12.

88 Legwaila, ‘A Message of Goodwill’, p. 19.

89 Legwaila, ‘A Message of Goodwill’, p. 19.

90 D.L. Hodgson and S.A. McCurdy (eds), ‘Wicked’ Women and the Reconfiguration of Gender in Africa (Portsmouth, Heinemann, 2001).

91 Gaseitsiwe, ‘Anti Beauty Contests’, p. 5.

92 P. Rantao, ‘Effects of Towns’, Kutlwano (December 1971), p. 11.

93 Ramogapi, ‘The Causes of Juvenile Delinquency’, p. 12.

94 P.P. Molosiwa, ‘The Tragedy of the Ababirwas: Cattle Herding, Power and the Socio-Environmental History of the Ethnic Identity of the Babirwa in Botswana, 1920 to the Present’ (PhD thesis, University of Minnesota, 2013), p. 256; A.C. Campbell, ‘The 1960s Drought in Botswana’, in M.T. Hintchey (ed.), Proceedings of the Symposium on Drought in Botswana (Gaborone, Botswana Society, 1979), pp. 98–109.

95 Ramogapi, ‘The Causes of Juvenile Delinquency’, p. 12.

96 In Tswana parlance, the word bashi (plural bobashi) denotes a man of little worth.

97 Ramogapi, ‘The Causes of Juvenile Delinquency’, p. 12.

98 ‘Editorial: Rathuto o Tlhalosa Mathata a Thuto E kgolwane’, Kutlwano (March 1972), p. 10.

99 P. van Rensburg, Education and Development in an Emerging Country (Uppsala, Almqvist and WikseIls Boktryckeri Aktiebolag, 1967), p. 10.

100 P. van Rensburg, ‘Brigades: Some of the Constraints and Experiments’, Kutlwano (December 1972), pp. 28–32.

101 Rantao, ‘Effects of Towns’, p. 11.

102 K. Shillington, Patrick van Rensburg: Rebel, Visionary and Radical Educationist, a Biography (Johannesburg, Wits University Press, 2020).

103 ‘Editorial: New Approach to Primary School Work’, Kutlwano (August 1964), p. 3.

104 Molosiwa, ‘White Man’s Disease, Black Man’s Peril?’, pp. 12–13.

105 N. Mitchison, ‘Brigades at Mochudi’, Kutlwano (December 1974), pp. 29–30.

106 Van Rensburg, Education and Development, p. 10.

107 Van Rensburg, ‘Brigades’, pp. 28–32.

108 P. van Rensburg, ‘A New Approach to Rural Development’, Botswana Notes and Records, 3 (1971), p. 213.

109 BNARS, Colonial Development Welfare Fund: Application of Grant for African Agriculture, Ten Year Plan, 1946–1956.

110 J.M. Moulton, ‘Animation Rurale: Education for Rural Development’ (EdD, University of Massachusetts, 1977).

111 W.G. Morapedi, ‘The State, Crop Production and Differentiation in Botswana, 1947-1966’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 32, 2 (2006), pp. 351–66.

112 J.C. Ward, ‘Education for Rural Development: A Discussion of Experiments in Botswana’, Journal of Modern African Studies, 10, 4 (1972), pp. 613–4.

113 ‘Editorial: Lobatsi Builders’ Brigade Works a 12-Hours Day’, Kutlwano (May 1968), pp. 22–4.

114 D. Durham, ‘Passports and Persons: The Insurrection of Subjugated Knowledges in Southern Africa’, in C.C. Crais (ed.), The Culture of Power in Southern Africa: Essays on State Formation and the Political Imagination (Portsmouth, Heinemann, 2003), pp. 154–67.

115 Van Rensburg, ‘A New Approach to Rural Development’, p. 206.

116 ‘Editorial: Barutwana ba Sekole sa Temo Ba Etela Palamente’, Kutlwano (June 1968), p. 19.

117 ‘Editorial: Graduation Day at BAC’, Kutlwano (August 1969), p. 2.

118 Ibid., p. 3.

119 S. Bagnall, Sheila Bagnall’s Letters from Botswana, 1966–1974 (Oodi, Botswana, Leitlho Publications, 2001), p. 68.

120 Ibid.

121 ‘Editorial: Lobatsi Builders’ Brigade’, Kutlwano.

122 See, for example, L. White, ‘Work, Clothes, and Talk in Eastern Africa: An Essay About Migrancy and Masculinity’, in E.S.A. Odhiambo and B.A. Ogot (eds), African Historians, African Voices: Essays Presented to Professor Bethwell Allan Ogot on his Seventieth Birthday (Basel, P. Schlettwein, 2001), p. 70.

123 J. Higginson, ‘The Formation of an Industrial Proletariat in Southern Africa: The Second Phase, 1921–1949’, in I.M. Wallerstein (ed.), Labor in the World Social Structure (Beverly Hills, Sage Publications, 1982), pp. 130–2.

124 P. Rantao, ‘Elijah Learned to Build Houses and With Them His Country’, Kutlwano (September 1974), pp. 5–8; P. Rantao, ‘South Africans Volunteer Help for Serowe School-Building Scheme’, Kutlwano (February 1963), pp. 18–19.

125 Rantao, ‘Elijah Learned to Build Houses’, p. 5.

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Phuthego Phuthego Molosiwa

Phuthego Phuthego Molosiwa Senior Lecturer, School of Social Sciences, Botswana Open University, Private Bag BO 187, Gaborone, Botswana; Faculty Affiliate, History Department, University of Botswana, Gaborone, Botswana; Research Fellow, History Department, University of the Free State, Bloemfontein, South Africa. Email: [email protected] https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7381-7714