Reasonable Radicals and Citizenship in Botswana: The Public Anthropology of Kalanga Elites (African Systems of Thought)

268 Pages·2004·12.82 MB·English

by  Richard P. Werbner

Reasonable
Radicals
and
Citizenship
in
Botswana
African Systems of Thought
General Editor
Ivan Karp
Contributing Editors
James W. Fernandez
Luc de Heusch
John Middleton
Roy Willis
Reasonable
Radicals
and
Citizenship
in
Botswana
The Public Anthropology of Kalanga Elites
Richard Werbner
indiana university press bloomington and indianapolis
This book is a publication of
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© 2004 by Richard P. Werbner
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of American National Standard for Information Sciences—
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Manufactured in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Werbner, Richard P.
Reasonable radicals and citizenship in Botswana : the public
anthropology of Kalanga elites / Richard Werbner.
p. cm. — (African systems of thought)
Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index.
isbn0-253-34402-6 (cloth : alk. paper) — isbn0-253-21677-x (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Kalanga (African people)—Botswana—Politics and government.
2. Elite (Social sciences)—Botswana.
3. Botswana—Politics and government—1966–
I. Title. II. Series.
dt2458.k35w47 2004
968.83'004963975—dc22
2003023837
1 2 3 4 5 09 08 07 06 05 04
to pnina
just for you

CONTENTS
Acknowledgments ix
Introduction: Reflections and Frontiers 1
part 1. citizens negotiating power
Elites, Minorities, and Tribal Bureaucrats
1. Postcolonial Wisdom: The Post–Civil Service and the Public Good 13
2. The Minorities Debate 32
3. The Politics of Recognition and “Pressure Groups” 48
4. Cosmopolitan Ethnicity, Entrepreneurship, and the Nation 63
5. Official Blundering and the Discredited Commission 86
6. Land, Clients, and Tribal Bureaucrats 109
part 2. the rise of public man
Elders
7. Bringing Back the Dead 133
8. Public Officer, Public Officer Emeritus 146
9. The Making of a Reasonable Radical 162
Epilogue: Postcolonial Wisdom, Beyond Afro-pessimism 188
Notes 205
References 221
Author Index 235
Subject Index 239

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I wish to acknowledge the warm conviviality and intellectual stimulation
I enjoyed in Botswana over the years of my fieldwork and, among many
friends, I want to thank in particular Mbiganyi and Pinkie Tibone, Gobe and
Daisy Matenge, Tjakabaka and Zola Matenge, Richard, Rosina, and Changu
Mannathoko, Sam and Sesai Mpuchane, Phineas and Pauline Makepe, Isaac
and Pelonomme Mazonde, Francis and Henrietta Nyamnjoh, Sebata and
Boithomelo Gaseitsiwe, Timon and Elizabeth Mongwa, and Gaseitsiwe and
Alice Moatlhodi.
I am grateful to the Nuffield Foundation for a grant in support of my
urban research among Kalanga in 1999, to the International Centre for Con-
temporary Cultural Research and the University of Manchester for support
from August to November 2000, and to the Economic and Social Research
Council for partial support for my project, “The Rural-Urban Continuum
in Botswana,” from November 2000 to January 2002. The conference,
“Challenging Minorities, Difference and Tribal Citizenship,” which I con-
vened with Isaac Mazonde at the University of Botswana, Gaborone, in May
2002, was a revelatory moment for my views in this book, and I am grateful
also to the Wenner-Gren Foundation, the Journal of Southern African Studies,
the University of Botswana, and the International Centre for Contemporary
Cultural Research for supporting the conference.
Parts of the book appeared in Werbner 1981, 2002b, 2002c, and 2002d,
and are cited with permission. Earlier versions of several chapters were pre-
sented as keynote addresses to “Manchester 99: Visions and Voices,” the fifti-
eth anniversary conference of the Manchester Department of Social Anthro-
pology, to “Africa 2000,” the millennial conference of the African Studies
Association (Germany) in Leipzig, and to “Challenging Minorities, Differ-
ence and Tribal Citizenship in Botswana,” and as papers presented at the
Charles University, Prague, the University of Chicago, the University of Cali-
fornia, San Diego, Macquarie University, the University of Oxford, the Uni-
versity of Tel Aviv, Basel University, the Satterthwaite Colloquium on African
Religion and Ritual, the Sixth Biennial Conference of the European Asso-
ciation of Social Anthropologists in Krakow, the 1999 Meetings of the Amer-
ican Anthropological Association, and the Nordic African Institute’s con-
ference “Violence, Poverty, and the Politics of Identity in African Arenas,”