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Bamangwato
The Bamangwato (more correctly BagammaNgwato, and also referred to as the BaNgwato or Ngwato) is one of the eight "principal" Tswana chieftaincies of Botswana. They ruled over a majority Bakalanga population (the largest ethnic group in Central District), with minorities including the Basarwa, Birwa and Tswapong. The modern Bamangwato formed in the Central District, with its main town and capital (after 1902) at Serowe. The paramount chief, a hereditary position, occupies one of the fifteen places in Ntlo ya Dikgosi, the national House of Chiefs. The core population of the Bamangwato are an 18th-century offshoot of the Bakwena people, but members in the Bamangwato kingdom came from many sources, as was the case with all of the major 19th-century African kingdoms. Sir Seretse Khama's paternal forebears, the chiefs of the Bamangwato, had built several prior capitals including Shoshong and Phalatswe, also known as Old Palapye (Before the advent of colonial administration and fi ...
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Sir Seretse Khama
Sir Seretse Goitsebeng Maphiri Khama, GCB, KBE (1 July 1921 – 13 July 1980) was a Motswana politician who served as the first President of Botswana, a post he held from 1966 to his death in 1980. Born into an influential royal family of what was then the British protectorate of Bechuanaland, he was educated abroad in neighbouring country of South Africa and then in the United Kingdom. While in Britain, he married an Englishwoman named Ruth Williams, a decision opposed by the white-minority government of South Africa and which led to a controversy resulting in the British government making him stay in England in exile so as to not sour Anglo-South African relations. After the end of his exile, Khama led his country's independence movement and transition from British rule into an independent nation. He founded the Botswana Democratic Party in 1962 and became Prime Minister in 1965. In 1966, Botswana gained independence and Khama was elected as its first president ...
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Seretse Khama
Sir Seretse Goitsebeng Maphiri Khama, GCB, KBE (1 July 1921 – 13 July 1980) was a Motswana politician who served as the first President of Botswana, a post he held from 1966 to his death in 1980. Born into an influential royal family of what was then the British protectorate of Bechuanaland, he was educated abroad in neighbouring country of South Africa and then in the United Kingdom. While in Britain, he married an Englishwoman named Ruth Williams, a decision opposed by the white-minority government of South Africa and which led to a controversy resulting in the British government making him stay in England in exile so as to not sour Anglo-South African relations. After the end of his exile, Khama led his country's independence movement and transition from British rule into an independent nation. He founded the Botswana Democratic Party in 1962 and became Prime Minister in 1965. In 1966, Botswana gained independence and Khama was elected as its first presi ...
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Serowe
Serowe (population approximately 60,000) is an urban village in Botswana's Central District. A trade and commercial centre, it is Botswana's third largest village. Serowe has played an important role in Botswana's history, as capital for the Bamangwato people in the early 20th century and as birthplace of several of Botswana's presidents. More recently it has undergone significant development as the town and as Botswana continues to grow. History Serowe has a memorial to Khama III, chief of the Bamangwato people in the late 19th-early 20th century, who in 1903 founded the town as a new capital of the Bamangwato. It is also the birthplace of Seretse Khama, Botswana's first president, and the traditional center of the Bamangwato tribe. Swaneng Hill School was the first of the Brigades Movement schools founded by educationalist Patrick van Rensburg. Geography Serowe is located in a fertile area, well-watered by the Lotsane River. It lies west of the Gaborone– Francistown roa ...
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Shoshong
Shoshong is a town in Botswana, formerly the chief settlement of the eastern Bamangwato. Physical location Shoshong is located just north of the Tropic of Capricorn at , in the Central District of Botswana, about west of Mahalapye. The town is situated above sea level in the valley of the Shoshong, an intermittent tributary of the Limpopo. Nearby villages are Tobela, Ikongwe, Kalamare, Mmutlane, and Mosolotshane. Shoshong is encircled by hills used for grazing cattle, and is a windy place. The central kgotla is located by the mouth of the steep valley (kloof) which used to be the source of water for the village. History Shoshong was initially inhabited by BaPhaleng, who were later joined by Bakaa, and later BaNgwato under King Sekgoma I. Oral traditions from the village points that the Baphaleng chief invited Bangwato from Mosu where they were continuously harassed and vulnerable to Matebele attacks. The site of Shoshong was chosen as being easily defensible against the ...
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Palapye
Palapye is a growing town in Botswana, situated about halfway between Francistown and Gaborone ( from Francistown and from Gaborone). Over the years its position has made it a convenient stopover on one of Southern Africa's principal north–south rail and road routes. Located here is the Morupule Colliery coal mine, which supplies Morupule Power Station, Botswana's principal domestic source of electricity. The power station has undertaken an expansion project to increase its generation capacity in an effort to meet the country's increasing demand for electricity. Construction began in 2010. , Morupule A plant produces 132 MW of electricity, while Morupule B produces 600 MW. In 1997 Palapye was said to be the fastest-growing village in Africa, and was expected to expand its population from 30,000 to 180,000. History The Bamangwato people, under Kgosi Khama III, are widely believed to be the first people to have settled near present-day Palapye. Their capital was the settlemen ...
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Ian Khama
Seretse Khama Ian Khama (born 27 February 1953) is a Botswana politician and former military officer who was the fourth President of the Republic of Botswana from 1 April 2008 to 1 April 2018. After serving as Commander of the Botswana Defence Force, he entered politics and was Vice-President of Botswana from 1998 to 2008, then succeeded Festus Mogae as President on 1 April 2008. He won a full term in the 2009 election and was re-elected in October 2014. Early life Ian Khama is the second child of Sir Seretse Khama (1 July 1921 – 13 July 1980), Botswana's foremost independence leader and its president from 1966 to 1980, and Lady Khama. He was born in Chertsey, Surrey, while his father was living in exile in the United Kingdom, due to the opposition by the colonial government and the emergent apartheid regime in South Africa to his marriage to a white woman. He is also the grandson of Sekgoma II (1869–1925), who was the paramount chief of the Bamangwato people, and the ...
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Tswana People
The Tswana ( tn, Batswana, singular ''Motswana'') are a Bantu-speaking ethnic group native to Southern Africa. The Tswana language is a principal member of the Sotho-Tswana language group. Ethnic Tswana made up approximately 85% of the population of Botswana in 2011. Batswana are the native people of south and eastern Botswana, and the Gauteng, North West, Northern Cape and Free State provinces of South Africa, where the majority of Batswana are located. History Early history of Batswana The Batswana are descended mainly from Bantu-speaking tribes along with the Khoi-San. Tswana tribe migrated southward to Africa around 600 CE, living in tribal enclaves as farmers and herders. Several Iron Age cultures flourished around the 900 CE, including the Toutswemogala Hill Iron Age settlement. The Toutswe were in the eastern region of what is now Botswana, relying on Tswana cattle breed held in kraals as their source of wealth. The arrival of the ancestors of the Tswana-spea ...
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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 Kalahari Desert. It is bordered by South Africa to the south and southeast, Namibia to the west and north, and Zimbabwe to the northeast. It is connected to Zambia across the short Zambezi River border by the Kazungula Bridge. A country of slightly over 2.3 million people, Botswana is one of the most sparsely populated countries in the world. About 11.6 percent of the population lives in the capital and largest city, Gaborone. Formerly one of the world's poorest countries—with a GDP per capita of about US$70 per year in the late 1960s—it has since transformed itself into an upper-middle-income country, with one of the world's fastest-growing economies. Modern-day humans first inhabited the country over 200,000 years ago. The Tswana ...
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Bakalanga
The Kalanga or Bakalanga are a southern Bantu ethnic group mainly inhabiting Matebeleland in Zimbabwe, northeastern Botswana and Limpopo Province in South Africa. They are historically related to the Nambya, Karanga, Bapedi and Venda. Current day BaKalanga people are descendants of the Leopard Kopje’s people who greatly influenced civilization in the Southern sphere of the African continent. BaKalanga history shows and tells us that they are the builders of the Mapungubwe Empire which was Southern Africa’s first uniform Kingdom. From Mapungubwe they were also part of the Karanga Kingdom of Great Zimbabwe (Nzimabwe,or Nzi we Mabwe-TjiKalanga language). Upon the fall of the Great Zimbabwe Kingdom they went on to build the Khami ruins found in today’s Matebeleland Province in Zimbabwe and lastly proceeded on to occupy the Domboshaba (Botswana) and Njelele (Zimbabwe) shrines. Kalanga people also believe in rainmaking rites like their BaLobedu and VhaVenda counterparts as w ...
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Central District (Botswana)
Central is the largest of Botswana's districts in terms of area and population. It encompasses the traditional homeland of the Bamangwato people. Some of the most politically connected Batswana have come from the Central District, including former President Sir Seretse Khama, former President Festus Mogae, and former President Lt. General Seretse Ian Khama. The district borders the Botswanan districts of Chobe in the north, North-West in the northwest, Ghanzi in the west, Kweneng in southwest, Kgatleng in the south and North-East in the northeast, as well as Zimbabwe also in the northeast (Matabeleland North and Matabeleland South Provinces) and South Africa in the southeast (Limpopo Province). As of 2011, the total population of the district was 576,064 compared to 501,381 in 2001. The growth rate of population during the decade was 1.40. The population in the district was 28.45 per cent of the total population in the country. Main population centers in Central include ...
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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, Zimbabwe, Lesotho and South Africa. In 2017, Botswana was home to approximately 63,500 San people (roughly 2.8% of the population) making it the country with the highest number of San people. Definition The term "San" has a long vowel and is spelled Sān (in Khoekhoegowab orthography). It is a Khoekhoe exonym with the meaning of "foragers" and was often used in a derogatory manner to describe nomadic, foraging people. Based on observation of lifestyle, this term has been applied to speakers of three distinct language families living between the Okavango River in Botswana and Etosha National Park in northwestern Namibia, extending up into southern Angola; central peoples of most of Namibia and Botswana, extending into Zambia and Zimbabw ...
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Birwa
Al-Birwa ( ar, البروة, also spelled ''al-Birweh'') was a Palestinian Arab village, located east of Acre (Akka). In 1945, it had a population of 1,460, of whom the majority were Muslims and a significant minority, Christians. Its total land area consisted of 13,542 dunams (13.5 square kilometers). The village was depopulated during the 1948 Arab–Israeli War. The settlement at Al-Birwa was started in the Roman era, and reached a peak in the Byzantine era. In the mid-11th century CE Al-Birwa was mentioned by the Persian geographer Nasir Khusraw and it was known to the Crusaders as ''"Broet"''. The village came under Mamluk rule in the late 13th century, and in the early 16th century, it was conquered by the Ottomans, who ruled it for four centuries. Travelers' reports from the late 19th century documented that al-Birwa had a mosque, a church and an elementary school for boys (a girls' school was built in 1942). During British Mandate rule in Palestine, al-Birwa was h ...
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