Botswana's culture: one national name over many peoples

Who counts as a Motswana

Setswana builds its names with prefixes, and the country's name is one of them. Wikipedia's country article sets out the pattern: Bo- for the land, Ba- for the people, Mo- for one person and Se- for the language, so Botswana is the land of the Batswana, one citizen is a Motswana and the language is Setswana. The same word, Batswana, names both the citizens of the republic and an ethnic group that lives on both sides of the border with South Africa, where Wikipedia's article on the Tswana people places the larger number of them.

How many citizens are ethnically Tswana depends on the source and the year. Britannica gives some two-thirds of the population in the twenty-first century; Wikipedia's article on the Tswana people gives about 85% in 2011; Wikipedia's country article gives about 79% in 2024, with the Kalanga at 11% and the San at 3%. Part of the difference is a matter of definition, and Britannica explains why. The Khalagari of the south-east have been incorporated so far that they are hardly distinguishable from the Tswana, and the Ngwato, the largest of the old Tswana states, are by Britannica's estimate probably less than one fifth Tswana by origin, having absorbed Khalagari, Tswapong, Birwa and Kalanga people.

The constitution recognises eight major Tswana groups, which the BTI lists as the Balete, Batawana, Bangwaketse, Barolong, Bangwato, Bakwena, Batlokwa and Bakgatla. The BTI counts at least 37 other ethnic groups beside them, among them the Bakalanga, Baherero, Basarwa, Bayei, Babirwa and Basubiya. In the north-west most of the people of the old Tawana state are Yei and Mbukushu by origin, related to the river peoples of Angola, the Caprivi and Zambia, and the Herero and Mbanderu have closer kin in Namibia. White settlement totalled fewer than 3,000 people in the colonial period, according to Britannica.

Which languages are spoken and taught

English is the official language and Setswana the national language, in Britannica's terms, and the two are mixed and alternated in towns and in official life. Other languages spoken in the country include Kalanga, Sekgalagadi, Herero, Mbukushu, Yei, Tswapong, !Xóõ, Ndebele and in some places Afrikaans, and the Khoisan peoples speak languages classed as Khoe and San.

Setswana was written early. The London Missionary Society's Robert Moffat set up the Kuruman mission in 1824 and worked in the language without interpreters, the Gospel of Luke appeared in Setswana in 1830, and Wikipedia's article on the Tswana people records the complete Bible printed in 1857 as the first in a sub-Saharan African language. After independence the government standardised Setswana alongside English, and Wikipedia's history notes that this came at the expense of other languages, which Seretse Khama defended as a means to unity.

The other languages organised in response. The Bakalanga Students Association became the Society for the Promotion of Ikalanga Language in 1980, and the academic Lydia Nyati-Ramahobo formed the Kamanakao Association in 1995 to defend the rights of the Yeyi. In August 2018 the United Nations Special Rapporteur on minority issues called on Botswana to protect minority rights, including the use of minority languages in education.

What the kgotla and botho ask of people

Wikipedia's article on the culture of Botswana places botho, the Setswana form of ubuntu, at the centre of its values: people are understood as part of a community living in relationships and interdependence. The kgotla is where that idea took institutional form. Wikipedia's article on the Tswana people cites the proverb Mmualebe o a bo a bua la gagwe, even the one who speaks badly must be allowed to speak, and describes the kgosi gathering the views into a decision the community can accept. The same article notes that the kgotla historically excluded women from formal debate.

Life stages were marked through the same institutions. Boys were enrolled in age regiments, mephato, through the initiation called bogwera, and girls through bojale. Both declined under colonial rule, Christianity, schooling and wage work. Linchwe II of the Kgatla reinstated bogwera in 1975, to the government's irritation, and the Bakgatla and Balete have since revived it. Marriage has traditionally been confirmed by bogadi, bridewealth paid in cattle. Wikipedia's article on the Tswana people describes the old regimental initiation in some detail: boys of about sixteen were taken to a remote place and circumcised, then brought back to the kgotla, given a regimental name and presented with weapons as warriors and citizens. Female regiments were formed on their own in some places, where a move of settlement or the installation of a chief called for women to be recognised.

Rain carries a weight of its own in a semi-arid country. Traditional belief centred on Modimo, a creator not always imagined in human form, and on badimo, ancestral spirits thought to influence the weather and above all the arrival of rain. The word for rain, pula, is also the name of the currency. Tswana tradition places the origin of people and animals at Lowe near Mochudi, where the first man, often named Matsieng, is said to have left giant footprints in the sandstone while the earth was soft. The sky had its own names: the Milky Way was Molalatladi, the place where lightning rests, the stars of Orion's sword were dogs chasing the three pigs of the belt, and Venus was Mphatlalatsana, the brilliant one.

How belief moved from Modimo to the churches

Christianity reached the Tswana states through the London Missionary Society from 1816, and by 1910 every Tswana morafe had adopted it. Sechele of the Kwena was baptised by David Livingstone. Britannica records that family rites, from birth to burial, were adapted to Christianity and remain important. Wikipedia's country article gives an estimated 77% of citizens as Christian, with Anglicans, Methodists and the United Congregational Church of Southern Africa as the main denominations, and about 20% with no religion. The 2001 census counted around 5,000 Muslims, mainly of South Asian origin, 3,000 Hindus and 700 members of the Baháʼí Faith.

The BTI describes the state as secular and neutral in religion, with freedom of worship in the constitution, and notes that the Evangelical Fellowship of Botswana campaigned against decriminalising same-sex relations before the election of 2024. Freedom House records that every religious organisation must register with the government.

What is cooked and eaten at home

The staple is porridge. Bogobe is made by stirring grain flour, usually sorghum or maize, into boiling water and cooking it slowly. Ting is the fermented form; with milk and sugar added it is a dish of its own, and plain it is eaten with meat or vegetables at lunch or dinner. Seswaa, beef or goat meat pounded or shredded, is called the national dish in both Wikipedia articles and is served at weddings and funerals among other occasions. Madila is a soured milk that was traditionally made and kept in a leather sack called lekuka. Segwapa is dried, cured meat.

Britannica's account of the everyday diet adds beans and other pulses, traditional spinach, and vegetables bought in stores. From the bush come phane, the mopane caterpillars eaten dried as a relish or snack, and the wild morula fruit, and beer has long been brewed from sorghum or millet. Meat became more common, in Britannica's account, as small butcheries selling beef opened.

Which crafts and music are on the record

UNESCO's intangible heritage register lists four elements for Botswana, all of them on the List of Intangible Cultural Heritage in Need of Urgent Safeguarding. Botswana ratified the convention on 1 April 2010 and sat on its intergovernmental committee from 2020 to 2024.

Britannica singles out basketry, most of it from the north-west, as a craft widely exported overseas, and Wikipedia's culture article names the Wayeyi and Hambukushu women of Etsha and Gumare, who weave baskets from mokola palm with local dyes in three forms: large lidded baskets for storage, large open ones for carrying on the head or winnowing threshed grain, and small flat plates for winnowing pounded grain. Thamaga Pottery and the Oodi Weavers work in the south-east. The rock paintings of Tsodilo, over 4,500 of them in UNESCO's count at the inscription of 2001, are revered by the Hambukushu and San as the home of ancestral spirits.

Tswana folk music is mostly vocal and often performed without drums. Its instruments include the setinkane, a kind of miniature piano, and the segaba or segankure, a violin-like string instrument. The moropa is the drum and the phala a whistle blown at celebrations, and men slap the phathisi, goatskin wrapped around the calf, for rhythm. Britannica says traditional music declined under colonial rule and revived after independence through radio; Wikipedia's culture article credits Ratsie Setlhako with bringing the segaba back in the 1980s after the guitar had nearly replaced it. Church choirs are found across the country, the National Music Eisteddfod is held each year in Selebi-Phikwe, and popular music runs from kwasa kwasa, a form of rumba, to Motswako rap and a small heavy metal scene.

Who writes about Botswana and in Setswana

The writer Bessie Head left South Africa for the protectorate in 1964 and lived in Serowe until her death in 1986, and her novels When Rain Clouds Gather, Maru and A Question of Power are set there. Unity Dow, judge and campaigner, has published three novels about the pull between Western and traditional values. Leetile Disang Raditladi, playwright and poet, founded the first political party in the protectorate in 1959. Britannica records a revival of fiction published in Setswana in the 1980s, a national museum and art gallery in Gaborone, district museums founded by communities and the Botswana Society, which holds lectures and publishes an annual journal. The government publishes a free daily newspaper, mostly in English, and runs radio and television, mostly in Setswana and English; Botswana Television was established in 2000. Private weeklies circulate in the eastern towns. Outside readers know the country through Alexander McCall Smith's The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency, first published in 1998 and set in Gaborone.

Which sports and clothes mark national life

Football is the national sport, played every Saturday on fields and in stadiums, in Britannica's description. Athletics brought the country its Olympic medals: Nijel Amos won silver in the 800 metres in 2012, a men's 4 by 400 metres relay team won bronze in Tokyo in 2021, and Letsile Tebogo won gold in the 200 metres in Paris on 8 August 2024 in 19.46 seconds. Amantle Montsho became world champion over 400 metres in 2011. Contract bridge has a following of its own: expatriate teachers taught it in secondary schools, it grew in the 1980s, and the Botswana Bridge Federation, founded in 1988, has over 800 members in Wikipedia's account.

Housing has changed as well. Britannica describes the older village compound as two or three small houses with round clay walls and conical thatch around an open fireplace, inside a low clay wall, and reed houses in the north-west; most houses built from the mid- to late twentieth century onward are rectangular with metal roofs.

Dress mixes the two heritages. Western dress has been general since the late nineteenth century, in Britannica's account, while the printed cotton called leteisi is worn at weddings and other celebrations, and women wear the mogagolwane, a small checked blanket, at baby showers, weddings, initiations and funerals.