Ukraine, Botswana strengthen ties through art and academia
On 24 August, as Ukraine marked 35 years of independence, its Embassy in Botswana turned the occasion into a bridge between nations — unveiling two landmark initiatives that will run through to Botswana’s own 60th independence on 30 September.
The first is a multidisciplinary art exhibition, Resilience: the Unbreakable Human Spirit, and the second a research partnership with the University of Botswana exploring Botho, resilience, and identity across both countries.
Speaking in an interview in Gaborone, Ambassador of Ukraine to Botswana, Dr Oleksiy Syvak, said the two initiatives were designed to tell a fuller story of Ukraine than the Russian war that currently dominates global headlines. Dr Syvak said the initiatives are rooted in heritage, shared values and a common vision for the future of both nations.
'We now tell the story in a challenging time, in the time of the war of Russia against Ukraine. But the story we want to tell is not only about the war, we don't want our story to be reduced to the war,' Dr Syvak said.
'We want to tell the story about our past, about what made us who we are, about our identity, our heritage. We also want to tell the story about our collective future and how we see this future together.'
‘Resilience: the Unbreakable Human Spirit’ is a joint production of the Embassy of Ukraine, curator Thabo Kgatlwane and the TSW App, bringing together ten of Botswana's leading creative practitioners across four disciplines: three visual artists, two sculptors, three photographers and two fashion designers.
The exhibition is expected to open at the Thapong Visual Arts Centre, Gaborone, on 31 August and run from 1st to 13th September. Rather than treating resilience as a single, uniform experience, it approaches the theme from multiple artistic perspectives, examining identity, perseverance, hope, struggle, transformation and human connection, themes the Embassy says resonate as strongly in Botswana as they do in Ukraine.
'What makes us unbroken? What makes us resilient, what makes us ready to go further?' Dr Syvak said, recalling his experience at a recent SADC event that he described as defined by unity and a readiness to move forward despite hardship. 'We want to demonstrate it through the presentation of artworks.'
For Dr Syvak, the choice to communicate through art rather than policy statements alone is deliberate, and reaffirms his belief in art's reach and its ability to evoke emotion.
'We shouldn't underestimate the power of art, because the language of art is what we all understand without translation,' he said. 'When you come, you look, you experience, and you have the emotion, positive or negative. If it makes you feel something, if it takes you out of indifference, that is true art.'
He said the exhibition is ultimately meant to hold up a mirror to ordinary Batswana. 'We want many people in Botswana to recognise themselves in this. I'm struggling in the morning to get my kids ready for school. I'm trying to achieve more as a professional, trying to provide more for my family, for my community,' he said. 'We want them to recognise their own achievement, and be ready to do more.'
Alongside the exhibition, the Embassy is developing a medium-term research initiative with the University of Botswana examining Botho: resilience and identity in both Botswana and Ukraine, an academic paper the Ambassador said is intended to set out an understanding of Botho for the world.
Dr Syvak said the project is envisioned as the work of a collective of authors combining academic and traditional-knowledge approaches, with input sought not only from academics but from Members of Parliament, the Speaker of Parliament, the Clerk of Parliament, and traditional leaders and chiefs.
'We would like to have different perspectives on what Botho is, what resilience is, what identity is, which is very much intertwined and allows us to see how Ukrainian identity and Botswana identity compare: how we are similar, and how we are diverse, in our common values and cultures,' he said.
The University of Botswana's Faculty of Humanities will lead the research on the Botswana side, with Professor Thapelo Otlogetswe among the academics involved, while the Embassy will provide input from the Ukrainian side.
'It's not only for the Botswana side, but for the Botswana and Ukrainian side; we will provide our input, but the umbrella will be the University of Botswana,' Dr Syvak said.
He linked the effort to a broader diplomatic philosophy of mutual understanding, invoking a paraphrase of words attributed to Nelson Mandela on language and connection.
'If you speak the language I understand, you speak to my mind. If you speak my language, you speak to my heart,' he said. 'I want both our nations, both our peoples, to be able to speak to the hearts of each other. It requires a lot of work, of course, but we need to make these steps.'
Meanwhile, Dr Syvak also announced a personal project timed for Botswana's 60th independence celebrations: the first Setswana-language textbook prepared for Ukrainian learners, written by himself and proofread by University of Botswana academic Professor Otlogetswe, along with several Ukrainian professors, and approved for publication by Ukraine's Diplomatic Academy.
'It's a huge work, but more than that, it's a door to the knowledge of what makes Botswana be Botswana,' he said, adding that he hopes to have copies ready to present to the public around the time of Botswana's independence celebrations.
According to Dr Syvak, Ukraine's statehood traces back beyond 1991: an independent Ukrainian People's Republic was first proclaimed in 1918 but was short-lived.
He said Ukraine maintained a government and embassies, including on the African continent, during that period, and made further attempts to restore independence during the Second World War, efforts he said were crushed first by Nazi forces and later suppressed under Soviet rule.
He linked Ukraine's eventual restoration of independence to a wider international current, referencing the 1975 Helsinki Accords and a Ukrainian Helsinki group that, in the Soviet era, advocated for the rights of suppressed nations to become free states. Independence was finally restored in 1991 with the breakup of the Soviet Union.
Dr Syvak showcased a facsimile of a replica notebook used by some of the drafters of Ukraine's 1991 independence declaration, in which early ideas for the act were first sketched out. 'That's actually the copy of what it was,' he said. 'As some great ideas and businesses start on a napkin, that's a general story: some bright ideas started with drawings on the back of a notebook.'