Intro Words of Batswana

This reading is about the increased interest that people today are taking in primary sources written by Africans during colonialism in southern Africa. Many Batswana primary sources written during the period of colonialism were not written about Europeans, but were written about family and community life. In other words, many African primary sources were centered around their own lives rather than the Europeans. This gives us the clue that the Batswana people wanted to continue living their own lifestyle and were not completely occupied with their relations with Europeans. These primary sources show many African perspectives that are absent from second hand accounts by Europeans. This supports the idea that primary sources provide many details about societies that secondary sources leave out, thus making primary sources important documents for present day people trying to put together a picture of the relations between Africans and Europeans during southern African colonialism. This document also touches on southern Africans learning how to read and write; a major change for Batswana people.