‘Certainly not! … It is a disease of the Makgalagadi’: The Ethnicisation of Endemic Syphilis in the Bakwena Reserve, Bechuanaland Protectorate

Abstract

Recent historical work on global health and the threat of infectious disease in Africa has looked at the ecology of infections, disease trajectories, colonial interventions and the impact of disease on local communities in varied geographic landscapes and cultural responses. A particularly valuable avenue of analysis has explored racial prejudices of colonial anti-syphilis programmes, largely looking at sexually transmitted syphilis. As a point of departure from this work, this article examines the history of non-venereal treponematoses in southern Africa with a focus on the ethnicisation of endemic syphilis, or ritshuswa, in the Bakwena reserve (now Kweneng district) in colonial Botswana. The article uses as its evidentiary basis colonial reports and letters located at the Botswana National Archives and Records Services, World Health Organisation reports, early missionary and travellers’ accounts and the thesis of Dr A.M. Merriweather, a local clinician and researcher who addressed endemic syphilis in the Bakwena reserve. The aim is to understand the human ecology of endemic syphilis through a critical analysis of power relations between Tswana mainstream society and ethnic minorities within the context of a history of socio-economic inequalities.