Unity Dow

Dow tackles a very tricky subject: the ritual murder of children to harvest body parts for use as muti, ingredients for "traditional medicine". We all know how (false) accusations of killing and torturing children have been used in the past to discredit whole cultures, so it's something you have to approach with extreme caution as an outsider, but of course Dow is very much an insider in the Botswana legal system, so we have to assume that this is based on real experience.

And the approach she takes is a very clever one: from the start, the crime is presented as a particularly nasty and perverted way that privileged members of society abuse the power they have over the poor and weak, to increase their own strength. The question of whether it is a genuine part of traditional tribal culture becomes irrelevant. The muti is effective because its existence gives confidence to the people using it and strikes fear into the hearts of their opponents. Even if you don't believe in magic, you're going to be scared of messing with someone that you suspect of being involved with this kind of thing. The more so if you are a government official in a country where everything runs on hierarchies of influence and patronage.

The very tangible horror of what has happened is always there in the background, but the main storyline focusses on the semi-comic story of the campaign to reopen the crudely buried police investigation into the disappearance of a young girl five years ago. The residents of the village where the girl lived are helped by Amantle, a student who has been assigned to them for a period of community service. Her selection for this out-of-the-way spot seems to have been due to a reputation for being a trouble-maker, gained during an earlier brush with the police over their inappropriate response to a protest march, but her experience of the way the police mind works — and her contacts in the legal system — that help the villagers to use their people-power to push the authorities into action. Dow puts what's obviously meant to be a comic version of herself into the story, the sophisticated Gaborone human rights lawyer scared out of her wits at the prospect of spending the night in a tent in the bush.

Dow's message is clear: as long as we accept that society should be run by powerful men who exercise patronage and influence on all those below them, we can't claim to respect human rights and the rule of law. True for eighteenth century England, equally true for twentieth century Africa.… (plus d'informations)

Monei is growing up in a small village in Botswana around the time of independence. At first glance, life in Mochudi seems to have little to do with the wider world, its rhythms defined by tradition and the demands of the agricultural calendar, but when we start to look closer we see the primary school, the Roman Catholic and Dutch Reformed churches, the young men going off to earn money in the Johannesburg gold mines. All of these bring along their own world-view and set of truths, and young Monei has to navigate her way through them, supported by her storytelling grandmother, her wise, pragmatic mother, and her uneducated but well-intentioned father. In the end it's the school that Monei recognises as giving her the best chance of making a life for herself on her own terms, and she sticks it out to take her exams, despite the ignorant and often sadistic teachers and the anglocentric curriculum.

Although this deals with a lot of tough facts of life — disease, cruelty, murder, unwanted pregnancy, people excluded from the community, and all the rest — it comes over for the most part as a warm and funny portrait of childhood and village life. Monei (who, despite her claims to have trained as an architect rather than a lawyer, sounds very like a self-portrait) is an endearing, lively narrator, a strong young woman who has a burning need to make sense of the world she is growing up into, but also a great respect for the traditions she has inherited from her family. And — naturally — for the importance of stories.… (plus d'informations)

This book recounts a girl's life experiences in a village in Botswana around the time of Independence. The title refers to the many versions of reality the girl, Nei, struggles to understand and reconcile, the mythic stories of her grandmother, the practical wisdom of her mother, the confusing and sometimes self-contradictory teachings of the Catholic and Reformed Churches, and the sometimes brutally imparted knowledge of the elementary school teachers. While the book deals with serious subjects and confusions that Nei must struggle with, the tone is light and Nei's observations are often wise, often funny and occasionally mischievous. Actually, the only reason I would not rate it more highly is what I would see as formal weaknesses. It reads more like a loosely constructed memoir than a novel. It can be frustrating at times when an idea or plot line is not followed through but simply dropped.… (plus d'informations)