Qualla: Three Dikgosi Monument https://qualla.com/three-dikgosi-monument en-us © 2026 Bendyline Mon, 20 Jul 2026 10:21:25 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_m/k/e/d/7/three-dikgosi-monument-wp/hero-small.webp Qualla: Three Dikgosi Monument https://qualla.com/three-dikgosi-monument Three Dikgosi Monument: Introduction https://qualla.com/three-dikgosi-monument/ Photo credit w:Russell & Sons, Baker Street, Public domain. In 1895, three African chiefs got on a ship to argue with an empire, and they won. The Three Dikgosi Monument in central Gaborone freezes that improbable victory in bronze: Khama III, Sebele I, and Bathoen I, each standing 5.4 metres tall, gazing out over the Central Business District of the capital they helped make possible. Botswana calls them Founders of the Nation. The story they carry is not one of battlefields but of speeches in English town halls, of alliances with temperance ladies and anti-slavery campaigners, and of a refusal, delivered politely and persistently, that changed the map of southern Africa.

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Image: w:Russell & Sons, Baker Street | Public domain

]]> Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/k/e/d/7/three-dikgosi-monument-wp/ked7-three-dikgosi-monument-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Three Dikgosi Monument: The Mission to London https://qualla.com/three-dikgosi-monument/ Photo credit w:Russell & Sons, Baker Street, Public domain. By the 1890s, Cecil Rhodes wanted the Bechuanaland Protectorate folded into the territory of his British South Africa Company, the same machine then assembling Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) to the north. For the Tswana, company rule meant losing their land and their chiefs. So Khama II...

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]]> Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/k/e/d/7/three-dikgosi-monument-wp/ked7-three-dikgosi-monument-the-mission-to-london.mp3 0:06 2 full Three Dikgosi Monument: A Refusal That Echoed https://qualla.com/three-dikgosi-monument/ Photo credit w:Russell & Sons, Baker Street, Public domain. The timing proved the chiefs right almost immediately. Within months of their return, the Jameson Raid - a botched private invasion of the Boer republics launched at the very end of 1895 from Bechuanaland soil - collapsed and disgraced Rhodes, ending his political career. Had the...

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]]> Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/k/e/d/7/three-dikgosi-monument-wp/ked7-three-dikgosi-monument-a-refusal-that-echoed.mp3 0:06 3 full Three Dikgosi Monument: Cast in Pyongyang https://qualla.com/three-dikgosi-monument/ Photo credit w:Russell & Sons, Baker Street, Public domain. The monument's making carries its own knot of history. After years of proposals and delays stretching back to 1990, the contract went to Mansudae Overseas Projects, the international arm of a Pyongyang art institute that has produced colossal statuary across Africa. Botswana and ...

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]]> Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/k/e/d/7/three-dikgosi-monument-wp/ked7-three-dikgosi-monument-cast-in-pyongyang.mp3 0:06 4 full Three Dikgosi Monument: Whose Founders? https://qualla.com/three-dikgosi-monument/ Photo credit w:Russell & Sons, Baker Street, Public domain. Not everyone reads the monument the same way, and Botswana has let that tension stand in public. Some minority communities see three Tswana chiefs elevated as national founders and feel written out of the story. Batsani Ndaba, a Kalanga leader and advocate for the Ikalanga langua...

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]]> Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/k/e/d/7/three-dikgosi-monument-wp/ked7-three-dikgosi-monument-whose-founders.mp3 0:06 5 full Three Dikgosi Monument: Reading the Plinths https://qualla.com/three-dikgosi-monument/ Photo credit w:Russell & Sons, Baker Street, Public domain. Six inscribed plinths ring the statues, walking visitors through Botswana's history from the early nineteenth century to independence. They begin in the turbulent Mfecane era, when wars across southern Africa sent refugees into expanding Tswana kingdoms, then trace the decades of...

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]]> Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/k/e/d/7/three-dikgosi-monument-wp/ked7-three-dikgosi-monument-reading-the-plinths.mp3 0:06 6 full