Botswana

Tuesday

Oliver Soden

Thoughtful fantasy: Travel Light, by Naomi Mitchison, reviewed

From our UK edition

Naomi Mitchison is now renowned for being the author of ‘lost classics’ – famous for being forgotten. She lived to be 101 and wrote nearly as many books. She supported anti-Nazi movements in 1930s Vienna, ran a sexual health centre for women, became an octogenarian campaigner for nuclear disarmament and an ‘adviser and mother of the Bakgatla tribe in Botswana’. Despite two biographies and attempts to revive her masterpiece, The Corn King and the Spring Queen, she remains undervalued – perhaps because of her refusal to settle into one genre and her determination to venture into the territory of historical epic spiced with mythic ritual and dark magic. Travel Light was originally published in 1952 as a children’s book.

Friday

Dave Seminara

Southern Africa is full of surprises

Picture yourself lying in bed in a restored vintage railroad car parked on a bridge overlooking the Lower Sabie River in South Africa’s Kruger National Park. Outside your window, there’s a gigantic herd of elephants, ranging in size from pint-sized babies to Brobdingnagian behemoths marching purposefully by as though auditioning for a National Geographic documentary. The first herd has perhaps a dozen members, but more of them, attracted by the riparian setting, will stomp by until you can see perhaps 50 of them from the comfort of your bed – or, if you prefer, the bathtub. It’s almost time for afternoon tea and cakes. Later, during your drive, a leopard will amble so close to your vehicle that you could grab his tail.

Friday

Margaret Mitchell

Botswana’s President: elephant hunting isn’t cruel, it’s necessary

From our UK edition

Last month, Botswana’s Minister for Environment and Tourism Dumezweni Mthimkhulu threatened to send 10,000 elephants to Hyde Park. This week, Botswana’s President Mokgweetsi Eric Keabetswe Masisi went a step further and suggested sending 20,000 elephants to Germany. These are strange and not entirely plausible threats, yet they reflect the frustration that Botswanan politicians feel over western governments lecturing them about animal rights. The United Kingdom and Germany are both in the process of passing laws to block the importing of hunting trophies.