Latest News |
Back to contents || Back to top
2 April 2008. The fourth President of the Republic of Botswana, Lt.-Gen. Seretse Khama Ian Khama, was sworn in on 1st April. He had previously been Vice-President, and became President upon the retirement of the previous President, Mr Festus Mogae. President Khama is the son of the country's first President, Sir Seretse Khama.
Back to contents || Back to top
14 August 2007.
Prof. Leonard Ngcongco, a former head of the UB History Department, and a greatly
loved and respected scholar of African history, has died.
Among his other contributions to African history Leonard Ngcongco was
a contributor to the UNESCO General History of Africa.
Update 18 August: The week since Prof. Ngcongco's passing revealed the
very wide esteem in which he was held. The Requiem Mass on Friday 17th
was attended by the former President of the Republic, Sir Ketumile Masire,
and at the funeral on the 18th a personal message was read from former
Archbishop Desmond Tutu. For further information
see more detailed obituary page.
Back to contents || Back to top
9 June 2007. A complete catalogue of the papers of Bessie Head, Botswana's greatest writer, has just been completed. It was compiled by Ruth Forchhammer, working in stages. The papers are deposited at the Khama III Memorial Museum in Serowe, along with such papers as the Khama III papers and Tshekedi Khama papers, making it one of the most important research sites in Botswana. Details of how to order the catalogue will be posted on the Bessie Head website.
Back to contents || Back to top
20 April 2007. The Department of Media Studies recently launched a campus newspaper by and for UB students (but also of interest to the general public!), UB Horizon. This now has a website, www.ubhorizon.com.
Back to contents || Back to top
20 March 2007. Dr Kenneth Koma, the veteran opposition leader, has died at the age of 83. He founded the Botswana National Front, the current main opposition party in Botswana, and for many years was the dominating figure in opposition politics.
Back to contents || Back to top
11 November 2006. A collection of letters to a Setswana-language missionary newspaper in the 19th century has been published. It is translated and edited by Prof. P. T. Mgadla and Stephen C. Volz. The book, Words of Batswana: Letters to Mahoko a Becwana, 1883-1896 (Cape Town: Van Riebeeck Society, 2006) prints the documents with Setswana and English facing text.
Back to contents || Back to top
4 September 2006. Dr C. J. Makgala is publishing a new book, Elite Conflict in Botswana: A History (Pretoria: Africa Institute of South Africa, 2006). (See publisher's page on this book.)
Back to contents || Back to top
25 May 2006. Back issues of the University of Botswana's journal Pula: Botswana Journal of African Studies can now be accessed online. Access is open. See special page on this new development.
Back to contents || Back to top
29 April 2006. In its annual human rights report (issued in March), the United States State Department described the deportation of Prof. Good in 2005 as a restriction on academic freedom. See special page on the Ken Good case for more detail.
Back to contents || Back to top
10 April 2006. The University of Botswana (which closed on 29 March, see previous reports) has reopened and classes have resumed.
Back to contents || Back to top
30 March 2006. The University was closed yesterday (Weds 29 March). That is, the students have been sent home - the staff are still here. This follows the failure to resolve the recent student strike over food prices. It had seemed that an agreement had been reached, but disruption continued.
Back to contents || Back to top
24 March 2006. Students at the University of Botswana have been boycotting classes since last Friday (17 March) over a rise in the price of refectory meals. Yesterday the Minister of Education addressed students and called on them to negotiate a settlement.
Back to contents || Back to top
23 March 2006. Prof. Julian Cobbing, of Rhodes University, Grahamstown, South Africa, is visiting Botswana. Today he addressed a History Department seminar on the subject of the controversies over the Mfecane / Difaqane which sprang from his famous article in 1988. (Julian Cobbing, "The Mfecane as Alibi", Journal of African History, 1988.) (See also commentary by Neil Parsons, 1999.)
Back to contents || Back to top
9 June 2005. Prof. P. T. Mgadla has been appointed Head of the History Department.
Back to contents || Back to top
A new web-site has been launched, dedicated to the life and writing of Bessie Head, 1937 - 1986. The site has been planned for students, researchers, and the general public alike.
Already available on the site is a detailed timeline of Bessie Head's life; more material will follow including information from the Khama III Memorial Museum where her papers are kept.
The web-site is hosted on thuto.org and can be accessed at www.thuto.org/bhead, but the main address is www.bessiehead.org (www.bessiehead.com and www.bessiehead.info also work).
Back to contents || Back to top
3 March 2005. Prof. Q.N. Parsons is now Acting Head of the History Department.
Back to contents || Back to top
20 February 2005. Prof. Ken Good, a professor of political science at the University of Botswana, has been declared a prohibited immigrant. This was announced to the University by the Vice Chancellor on the morning of Saturday 19 Feb. It has been reported by Botswana TV that lawyers have since then obtained a court order delaying deportation pending a hearing. [See more detailed report on separate page for subsequent events.]
Back to contents || Back to top
7 February 2004. The Reverend Dr Gabriel Molehe Setiloane died on 12 January 2004. A Methodist minister, he helped establish the Department of Theology and Religious Studies at the University of Botswana and Swaziland (1975-78). (Source: UB Public Relations office.)
Gabriel Setiloane is especially noted for his important book The Image of God among the Sotho-Tswana (Rotterdam: A. A. Balkema, 1976), an essential work for all students of Botswana religious history.
Back to contents || Back to top
11 November 2003. Caitlin Davies has published a new book on The Return of El Negro. See longer report.
Back to contents || Back to top
29 July 2003. Isaac Schapera, a great founding scholar of Botswana studies, has died aged 98.
Isaac Schapera, born 23 June 1905; died 26 June 2003 (date from Guardian report). See Schapera Project site for obituary.
Back to contents || Back to top
29 July 2003. The thuto.org web-site has been off-line for some time due to the collapse of the web-hosting company on which it was hosted. Thuto.org is now hosted by atlantic.net.
Back to contents || Back to top
3 April 2003. Professor B. K. Otlhogile has now taken up duties as Vice-Chancellor of the University of Botswana, succeeding Prof. Sharon Siverts. Prof. Otlhogile studied law at the University of Botswana and Swaziland and later at Cambridge, and taught in the Law Department of UB.
Back to contents || Back to top
19 Feb. 2003. Due to major technical problems, the thuto.org site has been down for over a week. All the web-pages on the server were lost, and so after the problem was fixed it was then necessary to restore the site from back-up.
So far we have restored the "ubh" and "Schapera Project" parts. Other parts will follow. There may be a few pages accidentally missed - if you find any (i.e. pages missing in parts that seem otherwise to have been restored) please let us know.
Back to contents || Back to top
9 December 2002. Students are boycotting the end-of-semester exams in protest at what they say is an impractical exam timetable, and other problems.
Back to contents || Back to top
28 November 2002. UB's academic and support staff unions have called a strike, seeking a pay increase. At the same time, the students have protested against the Examination Timetable for first semester exams, which they believe is impractical.
Update, later the same day. The University administration has issued a statement that it has successfully applied to the Industrial Court for an order that all staff should return to work. It appears that the end of lectures and the start of exams have been put back by one week.
Back to contents || Back to top
20 November 2002. The History Department has put new source materials for Botswana history on-line, including the long-awaited unpublished manuscript (unfinished) of Michael Crowder's biography of Tshekedi Khama, (see Schapera Project site) and the list of Bechuanaland Protectorate colonial officials from 1884 to 1965 assembled by Neil Parsons and Glorious Gumbo.
Back to contents || Back to top
29 September 2002. The UB English Department has re-launched its web-site as part of thuto.org. The home page is at www.thuto.org/english
Back to contents || Back to top
19 June 2002. Following the completion of the term of Dr J. Tsonope, it has been announced that Dr N. Rasebotsa, of the English Department, will become the next Dean of Humanities from the start of July 2002.
Back to contents || Back to top
23 May 2002. Lady (Ruth) Khama, former First Lady of Botswana, died this morning. She was the wife of Sir Seretse Khama, the first President of the Republic of Botswana. Seretse Khama met Ruth Williams in England and married her there in 1948. The marriage, which outraged the South African apartheid government, led to Seretse being excluded from the Ngwato chiefship and was a major event in the late-colonial history of the Bechuanaland Protectorate.
Their son, Ian Khama, has also entered politics and is Vice-President of Botswana.
See <http://www.uni-ulm.de/~rturrell/antho2html/Landau.html> for an interesting review by Paul Landau of the 1990 book A Marriage of Inconvenience: The Persecution of Ruth and Seretse Khama by Michael Dutfield, which discusses the extraordinary events triggered by Seretse and Ruth Khama's marriage. (There is an addendum by Mary Benson, the biographer of Tshekedi Khama.)
Back to contents || Back to top
27 Feb. 2002. It has been announced that the University of Botswana will re-open, with classes resuming on Monday 4 March. The University has been closed since 6 Feb. (see earlier report).
Back to contents || Back to top
26 Feb. 2002. In May 2000 the University of Botswana (Directorate of Research & Development) in collaboration with the University of Manchester (International Centre for Cultural Research) hosted a conference on "Challenging minorities, difference and tribal citizenship". A book based on the proceedings has now been published, Minorities in the Millennium: Perspectives from Botswana ed. Isaac N. Mazonde (Gaborone: Lightbooks, 2002). The price is P75.
Back to contents || Back to top
25 Feb. 2002. Dr Alinah Segobye has been given the international award of "Woman of the Year" by the American Biographical Institute. See report.
Back to contents || Back to top
7 Feb. 2002. The University of Botswana has been closed as from 6 Feb. 2002 following an indefinite class boycott by students over allowances and related issues. That is, the students have been sent home - the staff are still here.
Back to contents || Back to top
23 January 2002. The replacement textbook for H202, J.M.Roberts Europe 1880-1945, has arrived in the University Bookstore.
Back to contents || Back to top
6 December 2001. The first semester of the 2001-2 academic year is coming to an end. Lectures end on Friday 7 December 2001 and resume on Monday 7 January 2002.
Back to contents || Back to top
29 October 2001. The University of Botswana English Department is organizing an international conference on "Language, Literature and the Discourse of HIV/AIDS in Africa", to be held in Botswana in June 2002. Contributions are invited. See the conference web-site at <http://bwenglish.tripod.com>.
Back to contents || Back to top
Sat. 14 July 2001. Prof. Neil Parsons is now Acting Head of the History Department
Back to contents || Back to top
Mon. 28 May 2001. On Thursday 24 May a one-day conference was held at the University of Botswana on the repatriation of "El Negro" and related issues. It is hoped to publish the proceedings as a special issue of Pula: Botswana Journal of African Studies.
Back to contents || Back to top
Wednesday 21 March 2001. Anyone who tried to access this web-site circa 18 March 2001 would have found that it had disappeared. When we investigated we received the extraordinary message that the site had been deleted for violating the terms and conditions. We enquired at once as to what on earth this could mean. On 20 March we received a message from Tripod that this was an error: apparently a bug of some sort caused their system to delete a number of sites for no particular reason. Tripod have apologized for the error. So we are back!
Back to contents || Back to top
Friday 23 Feb. 2001. The Oral Traditions Association of Botswana (OTABO) will (after a period of inactivity) be relaunched in late March with a general meeting to be held at the University of Botswana. Details to follow. Open to everyone interested in oral traditions.
Back to contents || Back to top
The Botswana-Lesotho-Swaziland Theology & Religious Studies
Conference is being held this year at the University of Botswana, on
Monday 26th and Tuesday 27th of February, 2001.
Venue: Block 240, Room 11.
Monday:
Back to contents || Back to top
Tuesday 6 Feb. 2001. The UB student protests, which caused most classes last week to be cancelled, have ended following an agreement with the Administration on the issue of meal coupons.
Back to contents || Back to top
It has been announced that the new semesterized course system will not now come into effect this year. It had been planned to start the new system in the 2001 - 2002 academic year.
Copyright © 2000
University of Botswana History Department
Last updated 8 April 2008 [or see date of latest news item]
[PAGE ENDS]