Searching for Appropriateness in Social Work Education in Botswana: The Process of Developing a Master in Social Work (MSW) Programme in a ‘Developing’ Country

Developing a tertiary academic programme in Botswana is not only an intellectual activity but also an institutional process that must be balanced to satisfy different stakeholders and contending claims. This paper focuses on the intellectual and institutional processes of developing a Master in Social Work (MSW) programme at the University of Botswana. It discusses the intricacies of identifying the need for a MSW and the consultative process of designing the programme and course objectives, titles, and course content. The paper takes the view that institutional and intellectual issues are significant factors of the exercise of searching for appropriateness in social work education in an African context.     

Safaris into Subjectivity: White Locals,Black Tourists,and the Politics of Belonging in the Okavango Delta,Botswana

The elite safari lodges in Botswana's Okavango Delta provide an intriguing site through which to explore processes of identity construction, as people from vastly different backgrounds meet and explore ontological possibilities through and against each other. Drawing on a dinner table dispute between an African American tourist and his white Motswana guide, I explore contested notions of what constitutes African identities. The encounter shows that colonial histories and the racialization of space continue to be central to African identity politics, and I describe how white citizens' claims to belonging are challenged on these grounds. In response to such challenges, white Batswana assert a strongly nationalistic identity, distancing themselves from other southern African white populations and their colonial histories. They staunchly defend their claims to belonging through mobilising a partial view of Botswana's history and contemporary sociopolitical conditions, which has made possible a deep sense of emplacement within the social and natural environments of the Okavango.     

HIV/AIDS and Home Based Care in Botswana

SUMMARY

The extent of the AIDS pandemic in Africa (and specifically in Botswana), and the lack of institutional frameworks to address concomitant issues, have necessitated the adoption of home based care for sufferers as national policy. The practice is beset by problems, given the severe symptomatic nature of the disease and the general lack of human and material resources to address the needs of patients and care-givers.

A study of one such programme in the Kweneng District of Botswana highlighted gender imbalances, poverty, lack of appropriate skills, over-involvement of the elderly, deficient specialised facilities, need for volunteer capacity building, inadequate income generating activities, insufficient counseling services, and culturally determined cognitive processes as areas requiring urgent attention. It is apparent that the programme needs strengthening through appropriate support mechanisms and that alternative strategies should be devised for those whose circumstances demand them.

The international hospice movement, represented in Botswana, exemplifies a philosophical and service model for multisectoral consideration and implementation on a nationwide scale. The article discusses, inter alia, day care centres and residential units for the terminally ill; a system of highly trained volunteers to work with patients and their families; consistent, skilled nursing services in home based care situations; and halfway houses for training of care-givers as possible solutions to the problem.

The contextualization of such measures will undoubtedly assist in bolstering Botswana's unchallenged record of high standards in governance and social development.     

‘A town new and modern in conception’: non-racial dreams and racial realities in the making of Gaborone,Botswana

ABSTRACT

Botswana has long been praised for its financial and political achievements. High economic growth rates and uninterrupted democratic governance since independence in 1966 have led to Botswana's labeling as the ‘African Miracle’. Long before Botswana's emergence as a darling of Western development agencies however, Tswana elites and colonial officials also saw Botswana as exceptional: surrounded by states divided along racial lines, these individuals sought to construct a nation organized around principles of racial and tribal unity. Aspirations of non-racialism were to be exemplified in Botswana's newly constructed capital city, Gaborone. At the same time, underlying the planning vision for Gaborone was a competing set of narratives, practices and aspirations that undercut these lofty ideals and resulted in the creation of a city highly stratified by racial segregation. This essay identifies three complementary urban planning rationales that produced urban exclusion in Gaborone: the desire to build Gaborone as an administrative capital, borrowing from both colonial and indigenous Tswana traditions that privileged spatial divisions related to status and race, and the goal to build a ‘modern’ urban center to lead Botswana into the future. These tensions divided the city in ways both familiar and unexpected and set the parameters determining who counts as a legitimate resident of the city. The paper, therefore, seeks to explore how a city founded on an ideal of racial unity instead became a site of stark division(s).     

Extending Budgetary Participation beyond Budget Pitsos in Botswana

Waves of budget reforms are sweeping unremittingly across Africa with an overarching objective of democratising the budgetary process, mainly by increased popular participation. In this connection, Botswana introduced reforms in 2010 in the form of pitsos (opinion‐gathering meetings) to enable citizens to participate more in the budget. This article attempts to answer the question, ‘Are pitsos enough to enhance budgetary participation?’. Relying on both primary and secondary sources, the answer is in the negative. Even though the pitsos can enhance participation, there is a need for thoroughgoing reforms, for example a Budget Act and a strong Parliament, to complement them.     

Life after institutional care: Implications for research and practice

This study sought to investigate the lived experiences of care leavers from institutional care facility in Botswana. The study objectives were to explore the challenges faced by children after leaving the institutional care and to identify services that can be offered to them in preparation for life in a society in general. The study adopted a cross‐sectional qualitative research approach, and data were collected through in‐depth interviews that were qualitatively analysed. Thirty participants was sampled, and there were divided into 2 sections comprising care leavers and key informants who were part of the institutional care staff. They were selected using purposive and snowball sampling methods. The findings confirm that institutional care has both positive and negative effects on care leavers in the sense that it provides children with educational opportunities, family, and strong interrelation skills. Furthermore, the study findings show that during children's stay in the institutional care, they are sometimes neglected by housemothers that affect their transition into mainstream society. Moreover, the study findings reveal that care leavers encounter many challenges ranging from finance management to unemployment, discrimination from the society, and poverty. Lastly, future research, policy direction, and implications are discussed.     

Intergenerational Practices and Possibilities Related to the HIV/AIDS Pandemic in Botswana and Nigeria

Abstract

The future of Botswana and Nigeria hangs precariously on the balance of life and death. In recent years, the latter seems to be winning as both countries face the devastation of their middle generation due to the HIV/AIDS pandemic. Neither country can afford to simply watch their populations be depleted at such an alarming rate. This paper seeks to propose how an intergenerational framework might be applied to this situation with the hope that intergenerational policies and approaches might ameliorate this social crisis.     

The pipeline: Botswana’s reception of refugees, 1956–68

This paper covers Botswana’s emergence as a place of refuge from its troubled white‐ruled neighbours. Botswana’s reception of refugees is seen as a symptom of, and as a catalyst for, its growing identification as a distinct nation in the region. From 1956, Bechuanaland colonial authorities distanced themselves from apartheid South Africa, and from 1957–58 the country received significant influxes of political refugees. The paper pays particular attention to the ‘pipeline’ that took refugees north across the Zambezi. This was initially protected from local police interference probably by Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service (MI6). Nelson Mandela, alias ‘David Motsamayi’, used the pipeline ‘down’ as well as ‘up’ to re‐enter South Africa. Such arrangements continued through independence in 1966 but were almost terminated when guerrilla fighters tried to use Botswana as a refuge in 1966–67. Revaluation of policy towards refugees within Botswana government circles resulted after 1969 in more overt moral support for liberation movements and, boosted by new economic strength, more self‐confident assertion of national sovereignty against neighbouring countries. This set the scene for Botswana to receive a huge influx of refugees as a result of the Soweto rising of 1976.     

Urbanised soundtracks: youth popular culture in the African city

This article interrogates the participation of youth in constructing and defining the African urban landscape. It seeks to examine youth popular culture and performance practices that combine indigenous sound aesthetics with enactments of cultural memory to construct the urban landscape of Botswana. Particularly, the article examines youth cultural and expressive forms such as hip-hop and Kwaito musical genres, popularised traditional music, and the satirical dramatic impersonations of radio personality Dignash Morapedi. These performances elaborate African syncretic formations that underscore the power of African popular culture to integrate, reinvigorate, and transform various social spaces and identities. Urban youths use these performance forms to demonstrate how innovative practices could be used to interrogate social realities such as unemployment, poverty, and HIV/AIDS. Using the notion of “urban noise,” the article teases out a strategy of critique that articulates the various ways that the youth acoustically construct, produce, and navigate the African city.