Botswana: Choice and Opportunity: A Memoir 1963 to 2018

Mochudi is in the Kgatleng District, where novelist and campaigner Naomi Mitchison was the adopted mother of Chief Linchwe II. Mochudi, the ninth biggest town in Botswana, is the home of the fictional Mma Ramotswe, of the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency. Mochudi is where Sandy Grant, escaping a desk job in a London publishing house, arrived in 1963, three years before independence, and before either Mitchison, from her journalism in the 1960s, or Mma Ramotswe, in the millennial years, raised the profile of this new country. In Mochudi he found a community in the midst of a famine, one whose life-style had changed little during the previous 20 or 30 years and where the ox-drawn sledge and wagon were commonly in use. He describes the beginnings of his forty-three years working understanding with the young Chief Linchwe and the oppressive weight of apartheid South Africa. When Independence came in a rush, the government of the new Botswana was technically bankrupt, and its very survival seemed in doubt. In its newly created capital, Gaborone, Sandy worked to provide relief and to foster local development initiatives and combat social injustice. As a long-standing newspaper columnist, he comments on the country as it emerged from poverty. His account describes elements of tribal life, rain hills and rain making, the initiation of young males and his conversion of an abandoned hilltop school into a multi-faceted museum. As a hands-on participant, he describes with a deft hand, his involvement with the democratic process, a range of intriguing personalities and events, amusing, personal, perplexing and disturbing.

About the Author :
Sandy Grant lives in Botswana with his wife, Elinah, and two sons in Odi, a village midway between Mochudi and Gaborone.

Review :
'Throughout his career in Botswana, Sandy has championed the cause of history, and in particular the lived history of people in the everyday. It is this humanity and eye for others and appreciation for humility and magnanimity in others that forms a central theme in his study of Botswana.' Professor dr. Jan-Bart Gewald, Director Africa Studies Centre, Leiden; 'You have an important story to tell and I very much doubt that there is anyone else who comes close to having your experience over such a long period - from pre-Independence to today. Bite the bullet and do whatever is necessary to get all this important material into the public domain.' Trevor Bottomley, Botswana's First Registrar of Cooperative Societies; 'Sandy's Botswana memoir is a structured and eclectic collection of reminiscences. There are bits that are funny, many that are inspirational, and others which are disturbing. Sandy has provided many insights into the human condition, culture, and the political situation in Southern Africa.' John Speed, Former director of the European Court of Auditors, District Officer (Development) in Mochudi 1972-74 and Planning Officer (Land) in Government of Botswana 1975-77.