Thamaga is a large village located in the

Kweneng District Kweneng is one of the districts of Botswana and is the recent historical homeland of the Bakwena people, the first group in Botswana converted to Christianity by famed missionary David Livingstone. Various landmarks, including Livingstone's Cave, ...

Botswana Botswana (, ), officially the Republic of Botswana ( tn, Lefatshe la Botswana, label=Setswana, ), is a landlocked country in Southern Africa. Botswana is topographically flat, with approximately 70 percent of its territory being the Kalahar ...

and about 40 km west of the capital city

Gaborone Gaborone ( , , ) is the capital and largest city of Botswana with a population of 246,325 based on the 2022 census, about 10% of the total population of Botswana. Its agglomeration is home to 421,907 inhabitants at the 2011 census. Gaboron ...

. It is home to 19,547 inhabitants at the 2011 census. It is becoming year by year like a suburb part of the Gaborone agglomeration. The village is dominated by large rock formations, the largest being Thamaga Hill. Thamaga is third in the district to

Molepolole Molepolole is a large village in Kweneng District, Botswana. The people who reside in Molepolole are called Bakwena, who are one of the eight major tribes in Botswana. The Bakwena Kgosi (Chief), Sebele I was among the three chiefs who went to En ...

and

Mogoditshane Mogoditshane is a town located in the Kweneng District of Botswana. Population Its population was 14,246 at the 2001 census, and 57,637 at the 2011 census. Gaborone It is in conurbation to the capital Gaborone, whose agglomeration is now home ...

in both size and population. The majority of the residents are from the Bakgatla-ba-ga-Mmanaana Tribe, and their totem is the

vervet monkey The vervet monkey (''Chlorocebus pygerythrus''), or simply vervet, is an Old World monkey of the family Cercopithecidae native to Africa. The term "vervet" is also used to refer to all the members of the genus ''Chlorocebus''. The five distinct ...

(kgabo). The name Mmanaana come from the tan/white cow (Mmanaana coloring). A significant amount of archaeological research has taken place in the surrounding area over the last ~20 years, and current research is being conducted by a team from the

University of California-Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant univ ...

and the

University of Botswana The University of Botswana, popularly known as UB, was established in 1982 as the first institution of higher education in Botswana. The university has three campuses: one in the capital city Gaborone, one in Francistown, and another in Maun. T ...

. The Bakgatla-ba-ga-Mmanaana settled there in the mid-1930s and they are a break-away group and the same people as Bakgatla-ba-ga-Mmanaana in

Moshupa Moshupa is a large village in the Southern District of Botswana with a population of 20,016 per the 2011 census. The people of Moshupa are called the Bakgatla-ba-ga Mmanaana, a group also found in Thamaga. Along with the related Bakgatla-ba-g ...

, just 17 km to the southwest. Most of the old village wards where the tribes men settled from Moshupa maintained the same names as the wards in Thamaga. People of any particular wards between the two villages are related and commonly use similar surnames. Even the chiefs of the two villages are of the same blood and use common names of Mosielele and Gobuamang. The area was formerly inhabited by various groups or "Bakgalagadi" (earlier arrivals of

Bantu-speaking The Bantu languages (English: , Proto-Bantu: *bantʊ̀) are a large family of languages spoken by the Bantu people of Central, Southern, Eastern africa and Southeast Africa. They form the largest branch of the Southern Bantoid languages. The tot ...

farmers and herders) and hunter-gatherers ancestral to \he people today called San,

Bushmen The San peoples (also Saan), or Bushmen, are members of various Khoe, Tuu, or Kxʼa-speaking indigenous hunter-gatherer cultures that are the first cultures of Southern Africa, and whose territories span Botswana, Namibia, Angola, Zambia, ...

, and

Basarwa The San peoples (also Saan), or Bushmen, are members of various Khoe, Tuu, or Kxʼa-speaking indigenous hunter-gatherer cultures that are the first cultures of Southern Africa, and whose territories span Botswana, Namibia, Angola, Zambia, ...

. The history of these peoples in the Thamaga area, based on

radiocarbon dating Radiocarbon dating (also referred to as carbon dating or carbon-14 dating) is a method for determining the age of an object containing organic material by using the properties of radiocarbon, a radioactive isotope of carbon. The method was dev ...

, has been traced back at least 5000 years. Government and Infrastructure * Service Centre- for provision of government services. * There are three government clinics and one primary hospital. Education There are seven government primary schools: * Gobuamang Memorial School * Monare Memorial School * Rungwana Primary School * Western Primary School * Magalatladi Primary School * Nkoane Primary School * Kontle Primary School Three junior secondary schools: * Thamaga Junior Secondary School * Letlole Mosielele Junior Secondary School * Sekgele Junior Secondary School There is one private primary school * Highridge, and one private secondary school * Highridge Secondary School. There are numerous private creches and day care centres.

Gallery

File:ThamagaRocks.jpg, Rock formations in Thamaga

References

{{Coord, 24, 43, S, 25, 32, E, region:BW_type:city, display=title Populated places in Botswana Kweneng District

Gallery

See also

References