These include their idioms and proverbs, both of which are imprinted in their culture.

This is the form that this chapter is going to follow, which is to confirm that the Batswana, as an African nation, have forms of communication that are peculiar to them. The highest good of a people is protected and transmitted to young ones because a group is agreeable on how its members should behave in order to ensure prosperity.įrom the three definitions above, it is safe to say that each culture or society produces images and forms which are unique and peculiar to it. It does not deviate from the previous definition since it also emphasises ways of life by a group of people. ‘It consists of the patterned, repetitive ways of thinking, feeling and acting that are characteristic of the members of a particular society or segment of a society’. The third definition of culture is that it is the total socially acquired lifeway or lifestyle of a group of people. If a group does not agree on principles of survival, they will not be able to have a collective mind or group thinking, which are needed to impart the values of that group. The saying ‘It takes a village to raise a child’ corroborates this thought. What is key in the description of culture in the above definition is shared meaning. Once again, culture is embedded in learning, which implies the ability to be taught, and therefore, the capacity to implement. Each of the above groups or philosophies had to be preserved for posterity and the young ones taught the principles of survival, which were in line with each highest good.Ĭulture can also be characterised as a learned activity, which is associated with groups of people and whose content embraces a wide range of phenomena, among others, norms, values, shared meanings and patterned ways of behaving. The highest good of Christians is purity that should lead to eternal life after death. The Greeks on the other hand believed in mental power, much in agreement with Des Cartes’ famous maxim, ‘I think, therefore I am’.

A true citizen had to be strong enough to protect his family and the state. The highest good of the Romans was physical strength and power hence, they regarded disability as the lowest form of human development. Each community or era has its highest good that ensures a smooth transition of behavioural patterns that lead to sustenance and productivity. Central to this definition are development, learning and generation. Margaret Mead defines culture as a tapestry of traditional behaviour, which has been developed by the human race and is successively learned by each generation. The logical way of defining culture consists defining and representing the culture of the targeted community, in this case, the Batswana. There will also be a discussion of other proverbs, which serve the same purpose. The next section will be a discussion of the meaning of the proverb, manong a ja ka ditshika, its origin, as well as its role in the unification of the Batswana as a nation. This will be followed by an in-depth discussion of the theory of structuralism, mainly because the theory accounts for the systemic nature of discourse, written and spoken. These will be defined because they are the underlying concepts around which the chapter revolves. The terms culture and identity will be defined, and a working definition of each will be extrapolated from the several that would have been identified. In this regard, the complementary role of proverbs, metaphors and folktales play a pivotal role of uniting the community and keeping it glued together. Culture, history and civilisation all belong to a community conscious of its existence and way forward. In short, the Setswana proverb is a collective of direct and indirect statements that cover, among others, idioms, myths and folktales, all of which form the folklore of the community.

At the outset, the chapter intends to clarify the relationship between the Batswana as a ‘ volk’ (nation) and their ways of applying social control as evident in their proverbs, idioms, metaphors and folktales (all part of their folklores).

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