About the History Department |
Sir Seretse Khama on the importance of studying the past:
A nation without a past is a lost nation, and a people without a past is a people without a soul.
Sir Seretse Khama, 1921 - 1980, first President of the Republic of Botswana. (See brief biography)
Thabo Mbeki on the importance of studying the past:
...we will seek to educate both the young and ourselves about everything all our forebears did to uphold the torch of freedom...
We will also work to rediscover and claim the African heritage, for the benefit especially of our young generation.
From South Africa to Ethiopia lie strewn ancient fossils which, in their stillness, speak still of the African origins of all humanity.
Recorded history and the material things that time left behind also speak of Africa's historic contribution to the universe of philosophy, the natural sciences, human settlement and organisation, and the creative arts.
Thabo Mbeki, President of the Republic of South Africa, first inaugural speech, 16 June 1999. (The Star, Johannesburg, 17 June 1999 p. 4.)
The Department of History was one of the first university departments to begin teaching in Gaborone in 1971. It is the second largest department, in staff and student numbers, in the Faculty of Humanities. The Archaeology Unit within the Department of History conducts one of the few teaching and research programmes in Archaeology and Museum Studies in Africa.
The first head of department was Prof. Thomas Tlou, author of A History of Botswana (Macmillan, 1984) and Seretse Khama, 1921-1980 (Macmillan, 1995), who went on to become Vice-Chancellor of the University of Botswana. The second head was Prof. Michael Crowder, an eminent historian of Africa and of West Africa in particular, and former editor of the magazine History Today. The third head was Prof. Leonard Ngcongco, former director of the National Institute for Research and contributor to the UNESCO History of Africa project. He retired at the end of 1997. Since then, the department has been headed by Dr P. T. Mgadla (1997 - 2000 and 2005 - present) and Prof. G. Sekgoma (2000 - 2005).
Previous members of the department include David Kiyaga-Mulindwa, now President of the Pan-African Association for Prehistory and Related Studies; Fred Morton, author of The Birth of Botswana (Longman, 1987); Kevin Shillington, author of History of Africa (Macmillan, 1989) and biographer of Museveni of Uganda; Paul Lane, now Director of the British Institute for Prehistory and Archaeology at Nairobi, and Chipasha Luchembe, now attached to the University of California at Los Angeles, who established Latin American History in our curriculum.
The Department is noted for its student research essays in History and Archaeology, of which about two hundred have been written since 1976, and some of which have been published. The Archaeology Unit has ongoing Stone Age, Iron Age, and historic research projects in Kweneng, Central District, and Ngamiland.
The Department provides a course for the Diploma in Archives and Record Management, in the Department of Library and Information Studies. The Archaeology Unit also works closely with, and services courses in, the Department of Environmental Science.
The Department is one of the five largest History departments south of the Zambezi-the others being at the Universities of Cape Town, Natal, Pretoria, South Africa (Unisa), and Zimbabwe. But among them we have the longest record of Africanized curriculum and staffing. We are therefore uniquely situated for cooperation with universities in neighbouring Commonwealth countries.
Such cooperation has begun with the University of North West at Mafikeng. We have also been involved in the development of new secondary school curricula and text materials-in the past in Botswana, Lesotho, and Swaziland, and today in other countries too.
Many of us are presently engaged in writing a series of booklets called "How We Lived"-aimed at the rapidly changing History and Social Studies curricula in Botswana, Lesotho, Namibia, Swaziland, and particularly Curriculum 2005 in South Africa.
The series is designed to inject historical understanding and African context not only into the Learning Area of Human & Social Sciences, but also into Language & Communication, Technology, Mathematics, Natural Science, Economic and Management Sciences, and Life Orientation.
Some already published titles of "How We Lived" are displayed here. Other titles in production by our staff and other teachers i