Gaborone

Gaborone exists because the Bechuanaland Protectorate was run from Mafeking, a town outside its own borders in South Africa. When independence approached, the Protectorate needed a capital inside the territory, and in 1964 a site was chosen on open bush beside the Notwane River, near the village of the Batlokwa chief Gaborone, after whom it was named. It had water, a railway line and no existing chiefdom capital whose authority a national government would have to share.

Construction was extraordinarily quick. A dam, a hospital, ministries, a Main Mall of shops closed by the parliament buildings, and housing for civil servants were built in about three years, and Botswana became independent on 30 September 1966 with Sir Seretse Khama as its first president and a town of a few thousand people as its capital. The plan was modest and low-rise, laid out in numbered extensions and loops around a pedestrian centre.

Diamond revenue from the 1970s onwards paid for the city that followed. Gaborone grew faster than almost any city in Africa, spreading north and west into Broadhurst, Gaborone West and the commuter villages of Mogoditshane and Tlokweng, absorbing people from the villages and beyond. Informal settlements such as Old Naledi, at first unrecognised, were upgraded and brought into the city. A new central business district of office towers was laid out from the 2000s, and the built-up area now runs well past the original boundaries.

Gaborone is where the country's public culture is made. The National Assembly, the House of Chiefs, the university, the national museum and the state broadcaster are all here, and so are the recording studios, theatre companies and galleries. The Maitisong festival fills the city's stages each year, choirs and gospel groups are followed closely, and local house, kwaito and hip hop scenes play in bars around Broadhurst and the centre.

Setswana and English are used interchangeably, often in the same sentence, and greeting properly before any business is a social rule rather than a courtesy. Although Gaborone is a modern city, most residents keep a home village — Kanye, Molepolole, Mochudi, Serowe — where family cattle are kept and where weddings and funerals take them at weekends. The kgotla survives in the older settlements that the city has swallowed, and Tlokweng still has its own chief.

Church is central for many on a Sunday, and the city fills with choirs in uniform. Football is the mass sport, with long-established Gaborone clubs drawing local loyalties. To many outside readers the city is best known through Alexander McCall Smith's No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency novels, set in and around it; residents regard the portrait with a mixture of amusement and pride, and the real Gaborone is a busier, more ordinary working capital than the books suggest.

About 245,000 people lived in the city at the 2022 census, and the wider built-up area including Mogoditshane, Tlokweng, Gabane and Mmopane is considerably larger and still growing. The economy is government first — ministries, parastatals and the diamond trade that moved its sorting and sales operations here — then banks, retail, construction, the university and the hospitals.

The day starts early. Combis fill from before dawn at the ranks, offices open around half past seven, and the midday heat slows everything before a long evening. Most residents live in single-storey houses on serviced plots, many built room by room over years; newer flats and gated estates have appeared near the business district, and Old Naledi remains the densest and poorest quarter. Housing costs and the long commute from the outer villages are constant complaints.

Water is the city's chronic anxiety: the Gaborone Dam has run close to empty in drought years, and supply is supplemented by pipelines from the north. Unemployment, especially among the young, and inequality between the suburbs and the informal areas are the other live issues, discussed freely in a country with a long habit of open political argument — sharpened after the 2024 election, when the party that had governed since independence lost power and an opposition coalition took over.

Gaborone eats the food of the Tswana south, cooked in quantity. Seswaa — beef or goat boiled with salt until it falls apart, then pounded in a wooden bowl — is the dish of weddings, funerals and national days, served with bogobe, a stiff porridge of sorghum or maize, and morogo, wild or garden greens cooked with onion and tomato. Dikgobe, samp and beans cooked together, and madila, soured milk, are everyday foods brought in from the villages.

Street food is straightforward and good. Magwinya, fried dough balls, are sold hot at breakfast from stalls and the back of cars, sometimes filled with polony or mince. At lunch, stalls around the Main Mall, the bus rank and the industrial areas sell plates of chicken or beef stew with pap, beans, rice and coleslaw for a few pula. Phane, the dried mophane caterpillars gathered after the rains in the north and east, are sold by the cup in the markets and fried with tomato and onion.

Cattle country means beef is central: a braai of steak, chops and boerewors sausage is the standard social meal, and biltong is sold everywhere. The malls hold South African supermarket chains and restaurant brands, along with Indian, Chinese and Portuguese-influenced kitchens run by the city's immigrant communities. Chibuku, a commercial sorghum beer sold in cartons, home-brewed bojalwa and South African lagers are the usual drinks.