The Sowetan – Jumping the Border for Water

The Sowetan - Jumping the Border for Water

The Sowetan newspaper reports Botswanan women routinely jump the border with South Africa in order to collect water for their families.  You may be able to access it here at The Sowetan e-edition: http://www.pressdisplay.com/pressdisplay/viewer.aspx

This is an artificial border first erected in 1933, which divided a community called Mabule in Botswana .  Now half of Mabule is in South Africa, but the other half is still in Botswana. And they need water. They cross the barbed wire border every day to get it. 

I don't remember hearing about this in The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency.   

As you may know, during the European colonisation of Africa, many artificial borders were set up and they often divided communities. There are people in Mabule in Botswana who are now living in a different country from their relatives – all because of an artificial border.

Similar things have happened all over Africa. And this is still affecting people to this day.

Think about the devastation that is being wrought by Boko Haram in Northern Nigeria and reflect on how much of this can be traced to the fact that areas which are now banded together nationally as Nigeria were once separate territories, with their own poitical and economic systems. These existing systems were either eroded or destroyed in order to facilitiate the agendas of the European colonisers. For more about this, check out my blog post:  Invasion 1897.  

For more about the devastating long-term effects of the European colonisation of Africa, see: Black People in the First World War. 

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