Jeff Ramsay
Dr Frederick Jeffress Ramsay is the Principal and teaches history at Livingstone Kolobeng College in Gaborone, Botswana. He is also a Research Associate with the Department of History of the University of Botswana and Vice-Chairperson of the Botswana Society. He has published numerous articles on Botswana's history in popular print and social media as well as in academic publications. From 2003 to 2018, he was a senior official working in Botswana's Office of the President
Address: P.O. Box 403388 Gaborone, Botswana
Address: P.O. Box 403388 Gaborone, Botswana
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“Epidemics – the unusually high prevalence of lethal human disease in a town, country or region – loom small in accounts of South Africa’s past, almost in inverse proportion to the anxious attention they attracted while they raged. In part this is because, until quite recently, historians have not known how to incorporate them into their versions of history, dominated as they were by political, economic social and cultural issues…In this short-sightedness, they failed to recognise that, far from existing outside of these frameworks, in some separate medical paradigm, epidemics (and disease generally) are integral to every aspect of life, death and society.”
As a contribution to the broader study of disease as a factor in the consolidation of imperialist hegemony, this chapter focuses on the impact of invasive pathogens in the underdevelopment of Kweneng or the Bakwena Tribal Reserve as it was gazetted under colonial rule, where virtually the entire population suffered severe material losses and a consequent decline in livelihoods. The abruptness of this change gave rise to domestic turmoil as people struggled to recover their welfare and sense of social order.
Ironically, the BNF was able to achieve its early upward trajectory, as an amalgamation of disparate groups, only to suffer its most significant split in 1998 when the movement had seemingly achieved internal consensus through its post-Cold War embrace of a reformist centre-left “Social Democratic Programme.” Given this paradox, some have suggested that the underlying cause of the Front's post-1994 difficulties was rooted in individual failings on the part of its collective leadership rather than ideological struggle. Such analysis downplays the salience of contradictory understandings among its membership over the nature and continued relevance of its founding vision as a multi-organisational front, prior to its external affiliation with the Umbrella.