University Botswana Journals
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Getting to Grips with Gatekeepers in African Migrant Research
Get PDFThis paper examines the methodological challenges and ethical dilemmas posed by gatekeepers inmigration research. Although the topic has been an issue of interest and debate among research practitionersglobally, it continues to attract fervent scholarly attention. This paper contributes to this growing bodyof scholarship by focusing on research in contentious terrains, particularly undocumented or irregularmigration. The paper explores how the negotiated transactions and interactions between researchers andgatekeepers have continued to colour the research discourse especially in the African context. It maintainsthat gaining access to research sites and (or) populations is an ever evolving, multi-layered and complexpower balancing art which is characterised by compromises and trade-offs as each party seeks to protectits own interests. As central elements to securing entry, access and consent, gatekeepers have a profoundcapacity to both enable and constrain data collection. Finally, the paper provides some suggestions forformulating strategies to assist researchers to manage gatekeepers
Tax and Customs Duty Administration in Botswana
Get PDFFor governments to effectively deliver on the social contract which includes providing physical infrastructureand social goods and services, they need adequate financial resources. Public financial resources comefrom taxes and customs duty. Sufficient public revenues require efficient and effective tax and customsduty administration. As the pressure to deliver the social contract increases in the face of the post-2007fiscal strictures, there is a need to continuously improve tax and customs duty administration. The aim ofthis paper is to discuss tax and customs duty administration in Botswana. The study on which this paperis based used a qualitative research approach and a case study method. It concluded that while there aresuccesses in tax and customs duty administration, there are problems such as low tax effort. To ensureeffective tax and customs duty administration, the system requires some improvement
From Prospecting to Jewellery: The Story of the Botswana Diamond Pipeline
Get PDFIn this paper I describe the different components that make up the Botswana Diamond Pipeline today –being the supply chain of diamonds, ranging from diamond prospecting to mining, to diamond processingand recovery, to rough diamond sorting, valuation, sales and marketing, to diamond polishing and cutting,and finally to diamond jewellery manufacturing and retail. In Botswana, we can now truly witness thejourney of the diamond from ‘Rough to Finger’ or from ‘Mine to Store’ as illustrated in Figure 1 below
Tracking Down the Genesis of the Trinity Church in Gaborone
Get PDFThis correspondence was put together for Botswana Notes and Records some time ago but somehow gotlost! It had its origins in my ‘discovery’ that Trinity Church was regarded by some of the more knowing asone of Gaborone’s most architecturally distinguished buildings. I had not even been aware! I was surprisedthat the name of its architect was not known and indeed that no attempt had been made to find out. Theresult was this correspondence, mainly with Revd. Alan Butler
‘Bushirified’: New media as ‘alternative’ spaces for performing religious identities online
Get PDFWhile it is no news that new media technologies continue to permeate various aspects of life on the continent, it is useful to examine what the adoption and appropriation of these technologies, particularly social media platforms, by religious leaders and their followers might mean for the performance of religion online. As pastors and churches go online, there seems to be the creation of a ‘new community’, a subculture, who not only worship and satisfy religious appetite on these spaces but also appropriate the identities of religious leaders and express these as part of their online identities. This study takes its root in Campbell’s (2010) Religious -Social Shaping of Technology approach, to interrogate how religious communities negotiate and contest their appropriation of social media as a site of religious expressions of identity, and in this case the ‘Bushirified’ identity. The study deploys ‘Bushirified’ as an anchor through which it interrogates how online members of religious communities use these spaces as platforms for expressing dissent towards ‘unsupportive’ authorities and support for their religious leader through this renaming on social media, as well as what these might mean for the performance of religious identity online. Using a combination of digital ethnography of the pages of Shepherd Bushiri’s ministry on Facebook and Critical Discourse Analysis of the comments of ‘Bushirified’ members on the page, the study finds that the creative appropriation of new digital technologies is giving rise not only to congregations without ‘borders’ but also shaping identity formation online, one click at a time
The Church as a Place and Instrument for Reconciliation and Peace-building
Get PDFBeing a sign and instrument of God’s intention and plan in the world, the Church is called to play a prophetic role and exercise the ministry of reconciliation that has been entrusted to it by the Lord Jesus Christ. Because of its trustworthy nature, the Church is identified to be a place and also an instrument of reconciliation. The role of the Church goes beyond the reconciliation of sinner and God through Jesus Christ. It addresses reconciliation more broadly in society. The critical role of the Church is also ensuring that voices of voiceless reverberate in the hall of public policies. The church’s initiative for reconciliation should be anchored on the concept that peace is the tranquillity that flows from right order mutual understanding between its members and with the environment
Reaching Out, Making Public:The Jamiat ul-Ulama South Africa and its Online Newsletter
Get PDFThe main objective of this essay is to reflect upon the contents of one of JUSA’s newsletters to establish how JUSA or more specifically the editor manages these. In addition to issuing a variety of print magazines on various socio-political and religious matters, the Jamiat ul-Ulama (JUSA/JU) found the need to publish a weekly online newsletter for its audience. So far, it has issued its 14th volume with an average of 50 newsletters per year. This essay reflects on the contents of one of JUSA’s newsletters to establish how JUSA in general, and the editor specifically, manages content. It notes that the newsletter, with a global reach, covers religious issues and comments on selected socio-political events. Couched and expressed in conservative language, these issues seem to find support among the public particularly those with internet access
‘Mind Your Language’: Tribal Bigotry and the Spectre of Rwandan Genocide in Peaceful Botswana
Get PDFIn just a period of 34 years (1966-2000) nation-building in Botswana resulted in a peaceful and relativelyunited society despite the imposition of Tswana linguistic hegemony on the country’s ethnic ‘minorities’.Since the country’s independence in 1966 there had been sporadic and ineffectual campaigns by the elites ofthe ethnic minorities for constitutional recognition at the same level as Tswana-speaking groups. However,in 2000 the government of Botswana finally constituted a Commission of Inquiry to consult Batswanaon the old grievance that sections 77, 78 and 79 of the Republican Constitution discriminated againstethnic minorities. The consequence was heated and often inflammatory public debate by those against thecited sections of the Constitution and those supporting the status quo. The debate soon degenerated into aBangwato-Kalanga skirmish characterised by vicious accusations and counter-accusations of tribal bigotry,name calling, and war talk. The 1994 Rwandan genocide was often evoked as likely to be repeated inBotswana. This paper, analyzes the dynamics and magnitude of this discourse through detailed exchangesin Botswana media. It concludes that repeat of Rwandan genocide was unlikely in Botswana thanks to thecountry’s democratic tradition, and multiple and layered ethnic identities that seem to sustain peace. Notleast the executive’s stranglehold on the legislature seems to have also cowed ruling party legislators fromthe so-called minority groups into acquiescing to the status quo