Botswana Blue sets the stage for Golden Jubilee

Mantlwaneng hosted a number of the performing artists on Thursday under Arts and Media Company, Campus Group’s Botswana Blue. Botswana Blue is a series of more than 20 performance arts events created to celebrate the 50th Anniversary of Botswana’s independence.

These events range from a stream of performing arts including theatre, fashion shows and poetry. Paving the way for the main event was Barwa Kgodumo ya Leselesele traditional group. They started by dancing tsutsube then made a subtle transition to incorporating the playing of marimba and singing songs while playing it. After their performance, the MC for the night tried his luck at dancing much to the delight of the audience. The next performance, which had a lot of Kalanga traditional dance was Hosanna Wosana.

It was a play which showed a Kalanga chief who had embraced the Christian religion at a time when his daughter was supposed to go for initiation as a Hosanna. Although the Chief was a Christian, the community did not embrace the religion nor did it agree with his decision not to allow his daughter to initiate as the rain intercessor. Because of his refusal, rain did not come to the village no matter how long or how hard the Chief prayed for it.

In the end he returned to his Kalanga tradition, allowed his daughter to be the rain intercessor for the community and rain fell thereafter. During the play, KTM choir was in charge of the hymnal and western section of the music, singing popular gospel songs such as Michael W. Smith’s ‘Halleluyah’ and ‘Sweet Jesus.’

According to the writer and director of this film, Shabba Kgotlaetsho, giving this play that particular theme was a way of showing people that Africans are doing themselves injustice by adopting the Western ways of doing things because of ignorance and are losing their cultures in the process.

He said the next part of the series will be a musical theatre production celebrating the life of Kgosikgolo Sechele 1 of the Bakwena. It will be held in February 2016.