President Mokgweetsi Masisi did the right thing by paying a special visit to the home of the five children who met a tragic end at a Moshupa river. Unfortunately, like his predecessors, he is doing the wrong thing by failing to negotiate our co-existence with a supernatural world that established itself many, many centuries before there was a republic of Botswana.
We can’t pretend to not know that there is a whole world, invisible to us, that affects our daily lives. We can’t pretend to not know that certain incidents, some tragic, occur as a result of this not always harmonious co-existence. If the people who create language for us and franchise it into public consciousness experience this world as intensely as we do, they probably have created another term: “human-spirits conflict.” That would be after the fashion of “human-animal conflict” to refer to the wildlife that we look after for them under an undeclared and unilateral mafisa clientage. And indeed, incidents of human-spirits conflict happen on a regular basis in Botswana. Part of the reason they do is because while officialdom know about this conflict, their efforts to mitigate it are half-hearted.
During a 2013 visit to Tsodilo Hills, Mathebe Sekora, a tourist guide instructed the writer and those he was visiting with that if a snake suddenly slithered into view out of nowhere, the last thing anyone wanted to do was pick up a rock and attempt to kill it.
“Just say, ‘Mong wame intshwarele’ [‘Master, please forgive me’]; it will just move on past and not attack you,” he said.
Through the Department of National Museum and Monuments, the Hills are under government custodianship and the etiquette in place, the ones that Sekora followed, have been implemented by that same government. The question is, if the government can take measures to mitigate human-spirits conflict at some mystical places with mystical creatures (mostly snakes), why is it not doing the same thing with all other mystical places around the country?
In the Moshupa case, word in the ether is that the part of the river where the five children met a tragic end has always been known to be mystical, with a variety of shape-shifting animals having been sighted in the area over an extended period of time. The Monitor reports that not too ago, a security guard on his way either to or from work was viciously attacked by a goat that wounded him when he passed through the area in question. The Midweek Sun also reports that another resident who somehow offended the river’s Spirits started vomiting frogs upon arrival at home. Last year, on the Batswapong Facebook page, some people from a Tswapong village shared stories of encounters with a mystical donkey in the dead of night. You will hear stories of this nature from all across Botswana from people with a level head on their shoulders.
One understands the importance of building a super-luxurious resort in the Okavango Delta and keeping Steve Harvey employed but why is there no public education about mystical places? If the resort is not built or the Harvey deal falls through, no one will die. However, somebody will certainly die if s/he strays onto a no-go area in a mystical place. Why are such places not marked out and sign-posted to keep people out of danger? Why is the curriculum silent on critical indigenous knowledge about the supernatural world, information that students certainly need? Part of the reason there is vandalism and robbing of graves across Botswana is that the typical culprits are completely clueless about the immense power that the dead have over the living. If they knew that, they wouldn’t even think of picking up the coins they find strewn on the headstone of a grave because those are offerings to Guardian-Spirits (Badimo in Setswana).
A phrase we use in the introduction might sound strange to some but the government has actually negotiated our co-existence with the supernatural world. As Mmegi has reported in the past, the building of a tourist resort in the village of Goo-Moremi in Tswapong was preceeded by lengthy negotiations between Guardian-Spirits and their mediums, who were acting on behalf of the village’s trust and the Botswana Tourism Organisation, a government-owned entity. The negotiations bore fruit and the result is that the resort and the thousands of visitors it attracts, now co-exist with the Guardian-Spirits of the Tswapong Hills.
In appreciating this issue, it is important to remember that we are a democracy, whose most relatable definition is government of the people by the people for the people. The human traffic at an Asian-owned shop at the Gaborone station that does roaring trade shop in traditional herbs shows that one too many Batswana people want harmonious relations with the spiritual world. Why is the government not assisting this effort?
There is some oddity that attends this issue. For more than a decade now, the government has been saying that it wants Botswana to become a knowledge-based society. Before we get to the commercial aspect, it is interesting to observe that we are not building systematic knowledge about an invisible world that we know co-exists with ours, a world more powerful than ours could be ever be. In terms of commerce, a Botswana that has built systematic knowledge about the spiritual world would be well-positioned to sell such knowledge to other countries, especially those in the SADC region.
Such lofty goals can’t ignore another world that we co-exist with and not always harmoniously – Christendom. Already some Christians are dismissing stories about what happened at the Moshupa river as “superstition”, the word having originated as a class insult that English aristocracy used to describe beliefs held by the lower classes. Colonial missionaries used in both a classist and racist dimension. The use of this word by Christians is oddly ironic because the primary text of their religion features a talking snake that gives relationship advice to a human couple. To be clear, the word Christians would use is “miracle” but all biblical miracles have the same character as what they would otherwise describe as superstition in the context of African Traditional Religion (ATR).
Christianity and what the Bible says are not useful with regard to mitigating human-spirits conflict. Some of these spirits have been around much longer than Christianity, which is only 2000 years old. It is more than likely that those who lived in the Moshupa 20 000 years ago, also had to figure out how to maintain good relations with spirits that lived in the part of the river in question. Long before there was Christianity, Batswana had established bilateral relations with the omnipresent spiritual world – something white colonial missionaries were completely unaware of. The bilateral relations between Batswana and the spiritual world was defined by very well-defined diplomatic processes, processes which predate Christianity and what is stated in the Bible. Our own society may have changed when white people came but nothing suggests the spiritual world also did on account of such development. The sooner we acknowledge this elemental fact, the better. Christianity has not changed the way that Guardian-Spirits communicate with the living via dreams – in highly complex metaphor that no Bible verse can help decipher. If a floating bird orchestra strikes a tune above you while you sleep, the meaning is not in any John or Mathew verse. To understand the message being communicated, you will need the services of traditional doctors or prophets who have been trained in dream analysis.
The important point to make though is that this should be an ATR vs Christianity contest and that Christianity shouldn’t, as it typically does, seek to arrogate superior status to itself. Officially, Botswana is a secular country but somehow the government has incorporated Christianity into its operational systems and processes. By the same token, it should indulge citizens who align with ATR in service of strengthening bilateral relations with the supernatural world.
