Bessie Head

[Bessie with Patrick van Renberg and his wife Liz. Pat was the principal of the school I tacght in in 1968.]

Bessie Head is the most important writer Bostwana has produced. She was not born in the country but in South Africa. She was the product of a white mother an unknown black father. Her mother had mental problems and in the end she was raised by a foster mother who she thought was her real mother. This was at the time when the rules separating whites and coloureds were being tightened and Bessie became involved in politics. She managed to get a teaching certificate then ended up working as a journalist in Cape Town and Johannesburg.

As conditions became worse in South Africa she decided to leave with her son and became a refugee in Botswana in 1964. Her husband, from whom she was estranged, was banned from South Africa 6 months later and followed her to Bostwana. He continued on and sought refuge in several countries, eventually becoming a Canadian. Harold Head now lives in Ottawa.

One of the people who helped Bessie when she came to Botswana was Patrick van Rensburg, a voluntary exile from South Africa, who was the founder and principal of Swaneng Hill School where I taught in 1968. He also began a system of vocational training “brigades” to teach skills (farming, building, cattle raising, printing, crafts) to youth who did make it to secondary school.

In 1969, Bessie, who had been writing stories and her first novel When Rain Clouds Gather, had money enough to settle down. Patrick arranged to have a small plot of school land transferred to her. The Builders Brigade built her house.

It was a little unsettling for me a few days ago to be sitting in the courtyard reading the following from Bessie Head’s biography (by Gillian Eilersen) while the subject of the paragraph was singing at the computer not 20 feet from me:

About this time Bessie made another new friend. Tom Holzinger was a young American draft-resister who had moved to Serowe in 1967. Having read When Rain Clouds Gather and being inspired by it, he sought Bessie out when she arrived in Serowe and was something of a match for her in ideas and enthusiasm. Perhaps there was some physical attraction as well, but she gave the friendship a platonic direction by pointing out that she was nearly ten years older than him and calling him her son. “My son,” she said, “will you take care of me?” So he said, intensely: “Willingly.”

Bessie’s subsequent writings came from her small house, and it is a room in this house that Tom and I are re-creating in the museum. I have just reread her next novel, A Question of Power, which I found quite challenging, (of course, says Tom, it is meant to be difficult!), but I know that a couple of members of my book club would enjoy the challenge.

As Bessie’s writings became known, she travelled to Europe, Australia, and North America (including 2 days in Québec) for conferences and interviews. Her life was not easy. Throughout she suffered from mental problems which made relationships difficult. She died in Serowe in 1986.