The Inheritance of Silence: Secrecy as Cultural Legacy

The Chambers We Escape To

For those who share this quiet misery, we retreat into endless chambers of thought - vast in appearance but bounded by walls you can’t see. These are theoretic prisons, full of possibility yet barren of action, where we philosophize freely but change nothing in the material world.

I have spent years in these chambers, trying to make sense of who we are as Batswana. Why does it feel as if our greatest instinct is not to speak, but to swallow our words and thoughts and feelings and our very selves?

The culture of Batswana has always felt like something that escapes my grasp, even though it flows through my veins. This paradox fascinates me: how can one belong so fully and yet understand so little? When I search for the philosophy that truly governs our lives - not the ones we aspire to, but the ones that shape our instincts - I find no clear doctrine. We speak of Botho, Boikobo, and other noble-sounding principles, but their definitions dissolve under scrutiny, morphing into whatever shape suits the occasion: a regime’s propaganda, a workplace slogan, a church sermon, an elder’s decree.

Beneath these lofty ideals lies something far more consistent, far more binding than Botho itself: secrecy.

The Illusion of Our Philosophies

On paper, Botswana appears to have an ethical foundation in Botho, a term embedded in our national vision documents, corporate codes of conduct, and ceremonial speeches. Botho, roughly translates to “humanity”. It is presented as the moral glue of our society. It speaks of compassion, mutual respect, and communal care - values we would all love to be known for.

But like most national myths, its beauty lies in its vagueness. Ask ten Batswana what Botho means and you will receive ten variations, each righteous, each nebulous. This elasticity is no accident; it makes Botho a versatile instrument of power. It can sanctify authority when the government invokes it, enforce compliance when a company demands it, and silence dissent when elders weaponize it.

We imagine Botho as an ethical inheritance, but in practice, it often serves as a rhetorical veil – concealing scars within. We pride ourselves on humility, yet gossip flourishes like vultures in times of drought. We claim harmony, yet exclude through rigid hierarchies. We insist on respect, yet rarely extend it to those without status.

It is in this contradiction that secrecy thrives: quietly governing where proclaimed virtues fail.

The Inheritance of Silence

Secrecy in Botswana is not a glitch in the system; it is the system. It is a legacy cultivated across generations, enforced first in the family before it ever reaches the state.

Every Motswana knows the red-hot sensitivity of asking certain questions at home. Questions that pierce the most tender bits.

“Is she really my mother? Does my father have another child I’ve never met? Why did we suddenly stop visiting that side of the family?”

These are not idle curiosities; they shape identity, inheritance, and belonging. Yet the act of asking is treated as rebellion. In most households, seniority is law - children do not question parents, women do not confront men, the young defer to the old. And so, from the earliest age, we learn that knowledge is rationed, and curiosity is dangerous.

This conditioning scales upward, shaping villages, workplaces, and eventually the nation-state. Our political life reflects our domestic one: information hoarded, accountability hushed, power guarded by a legacy of silence.

This hierarchy mirrors older structures. Before colonialism, Tswana chieftaincy operated under the principle of kgosi ke kgosi ka batho,  “a chief is a chief by the people”, yet information flowed downward like gravity. Chiefs held councils (kgotla), but ultimate decisions were made behind closed doors. When British indirect rule arrived, it deepened this pattern: a dual system where traditional authority and colonial administrators maintained power by controlling information.

Fast-forward to independence: the postcolonial state inherited these habits. We boast of being Africa’s “longest-running democracy,” but our political culture is steeped in the same code of silence. Cabinets deliberate in secrecy. Corruption cases vanish from headlines like mist in morning sun. And the ordinary citizen, trained from childhood to swallow questions, rarely challenges the silence. 

Fear and Conformity: The Cost of Silence

Botswana is celebrated as one of Africa’s most peaceful nations—a beacon of stability in a turbulent region. But what we call peace may, in truth, be fear dressed in in its Sunday best.

Batswana live in a state of quiet terror. Ask them what they fear and they will struggle to name it, yet its presence is everywhere: in the hushed tones of political critique, in the coded complaints of civil servants, in the evasive answers of politicians asked about government funding.

We even have a word for this passive resistance: go nguna-nguna - to murmur under one’s breath. To complain privately, never publicly. Go nguna-nguna is not harmless; it is a cultural reflex that keeps us docile. It makes us endure the intolerable rather than risk confrontation.

Consider politics: we whisper about corruption, yet seldom march. We grumble about rising unemployment, yet rarely organize. We mock leadership in taverns, then vote for the same names. Go nguna-nguna is the soundtrack of a silenced society.

And the silence costs us more than political progress; it suffocates the self. In a conservative, Christian society obsessed with what is “acceptable,” deviation feels dangerous. So we compress ourselves - our loudest dreams, brightest colors, wildest loves - into the smallest chambers of the psyche. We shrink until we fit.

Historical Echoes: Christianity and Colonial Shadows

The roots of this fear dig deep into colonial history and missionary morality. Christianity, introduced as salvation, supplanted native belief systems and imposed a code of shame - a doctrine of sin that policed bodies and silenced desires Missionaries insisted on obedience, humility, and discretion, virtues that meshed almost seamlessly with pre-existing hierarchies. Colonial administrators, in turn, perfected secrecy as governance: extracting wealth in silence while maintaining a façade of order.

After independence, these logics remained. We built a state celebrated for good governance while quietly practicing what Foucault (1977) might call “governmentality” - a system where power operates not through open force but through the internalization of norms. The result? A society where people police themselves long before the state needs to.

If secrecy is our true national philosophy, then freedom begins with rupture—with unlearning the reflex to hide, to hush, to murmur instead of roar. But what would that look like?

It would look like families dismantling hierarchies of fear, allowing questions to bloom. It would look like artists refusing the safety of ambiguity, daring to name what others fear to. It would look like citizens realizing that their power does not lie in go nguna-nguna but in collective noise - the kind that can shake walls, topple chairs, and rewrite history.

Botswana has mastered the art of silence, but silence is not peace—it is paralysis. And as long as we remain trapped in these chambers, endless but not limitless, we will continue mistaking stillness for stability, and fear for harmony.

I do not write this as an outsider peering in, but as a son of the soil who has choked on his own swallowed words. I have lived the weight of unspoken questions. I have felt the tension between what I dream and what I dare to say aloud. Perhaps this essay is my own small rupture—my way of turning murmur into voice.

Because the question is not whether Botswana can speak. The question is: When will we stop whispering?