The Botswana Society

Gaborone

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The city of Gaborone, sprawling on flat land next to hills, has been compared to a miniature version of Los Angeles, and indeed it is twinned with the Burbank suburb of Los Angeles. (The twinning goes back to friendship between President Seretse Khama and a Burbank-based NBC television producer in the 1960s.) There is even a section of Gaborone that can be referred to as "Kgalewood", i.e. the film lot constructed for The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency in 2007, facing Mount Kgale.

Fans of that film and the subsequent television series, and the original novelettes, may find Mma Ramotswe's office facing Kgale at "Kgalewood". But they will find that "Zebra Drive" is a fictional combination of Zebra Road with adjacent Nyerere Drive. There are garages with names like Speedy Motors in both Tlokweng and Mogoditshane, but the old garage at Kgale Siding used in a Scottish television documentary on McCall Smith has now been converted into the "No 1 Ladies' Opera House". Typing schools now often double as internet cafes. As for old colonial houses under corrugated iron roofs, of the type that Mr Matekoni lived in, there's barely one un-demolished or un-"converted" left standing in the old Village suburb of Gaborone. But Mokolodi game reserve and other sites around Gaborone, including the "cultural village" (Majaka-thata Community Development Trust) bookable through Mokolodi, remain as they were.

Colonial Gaborone in the 1950s, including Bonnington farm where the Grand Palm hotel now stands, is portrayed in Carolyn Slaughter's otherwise very painful memoir Before the Knife. Cosmopolitan expatriate life in Gaborone during the 1980s is evoked in Norman Rush's short stories collected as Whites. A more up to date picture of Gaborone's rich and poor was given in the 13-part television series Re Bina Mmogo, featuring an adult dance troupe, in 2007.

Guide to Gabs Guide to Greater Gaborone
Alec Campbell & Mike Main
ISBN 99912-5113-8 Soft cover, 292 pp, 230mm x 200mm

The Botswana Society co-publishes the definitive Guide to Gaborone, which covers the city, surrounding villages, and much of southeast Botswana. Places to visit (with routes identified on maps with GPS references) have been carefully chosen for their historical or natural interest, and almost all are accessible by saloon car. There is a wealth of detail about historic settlements, and about subjects such traditional hunting and rainmaking, 19th century wagon-travel, missionary and trading endeavour.

GABSCITY.COM is a useful up-to-date web-site guide to shopping, restaurants, entertainment etc. in Gaborone today.