| This dissertation explores the progress of a hidden epidemic of disability and the effects of an aging population in Botswana over the course of the twentieth century. I describe the epidemic as “quiet” or “hidden” because most disability in Botswana is out of public view. Despite this quiet character, however, an estimated one in six rural households is home to a disabled family member. What remains invisible as a collective problem is quite visible to many Batswana as they move within their networks of friends and relatives. The high incidence of disability has arisen out of and occurred within a changing historical context. Though there have always been disabled Batswana. In the 1930s as men began migrating to work on the South African mines, many returned home debilitated by industrial accidents and tuberculosis. Improved nutrition and the spread of bio-medical services, since the 1960s, enabled increasing numbers of people to survive disabling illness or trauma and many more to experience the frailties of age. Beginning in the 1980s, an alarming number of road accidents began damaging limbs and spines, further adding to the epidemic. Starting in the wake of World War II, however, safety nets which historically protected the aged, the sick, and the disabled from destitution began rapidly reconfiguring, while able-bodiedness took on new significance as people became increasingly dependent on wage labor. Many Batswana refer to this growing incidence of disability, its origins and shifting meanings when making moral commentary on historical change. This dissertation explores why this is so, arguing that misfortune and suffering are key themes in popular Tswana historical analysis. Batswana commonly discuss major historical transformations: colonization, independence, regional industrialization, and post-colonial “development”, through an examination of the shifting moral underpinnings of society. Thus, the story of this epidemic tells us not only about situations which affected large numbers of people, but also offers a window into local experiential dimensions of broader historical change. |
