The Pumamouse Website: Botswana

AN INVITATION FROM THE PUMAMOUSE
If anyone out there knows the complete or partial history of this radio service, or if you have fond memories of it, and if you wish to share your knowledge and recollections with me and with the world via this website, please contact me! Your tutelage would be greatly enjoyed and appreciated. Squeak!

NOSTALGIC
OLD-TIME RADIO

SA BROADCASTING AND
"THE BACK ROOM BOYS"

The following informative essay was written and provided by Colin Miller.
It was originally published in the Monitoring Times, and it is now included here for your enjoyment with Mr. Miller's knowledge and consent.
Thank you, Colin!

BOTSWANA
By Colin Miller

Botswana is located in Southern Africa. It has an area of 220,000 square miles, somewhat smaller than Texas. Its population of 1.2 million consists mainly of the Tswanas (70%), of which there are eight main tribes. The rest consists of minority Bantu people, Bushmen and Europeans. Most of the population is confined to the eastern border, where the only railroad line links South Africa with Zimbabwe. The Kalahari Desert, supporting nomadic Bushmen and wildlife, spreads over the southwest. The Bushmen speak more than 40 languages and dialects. There are swamplands and farming areas in the north, and rolling plains in the east, where livestock are grazed. However, drought and famine are commonplace.

First inhabited by Bushmen, then by Africans, the region became the British Bechuanaland Protectorate in 1886, halting the encroachment by the Boers and Germans from the south and southwest. Bechuanaland became fully independent on 30 September 1966, changing its name to Botswana. Cattle raising is the chief economic activity. Many workers have become migrant labourers on the gold mines in South Africa, and much of Botswana's export meat is destined for that country. Botswana has one of Africa's most stable governments, and is working hard to lessen dependence on South Africa for trade and employment.

Bechuanaland had the distinction of being administered from outside its own borders, from the former South African town of Mafeking, now part of the South African homeland of Bophuthatswana and renamed Mafikeng, and located a few miles across the southern border. The town was originally a kraal of the Baralong tribe, who gave it the name meaning "among the stones". It gained world fame through its successful defence under General Sir Robert (later Lord) Baden-Powell in the Anglo-Boer War of 1899-1902. Baden-Powell was the founder of the Boy Scouts movement.

Station ZNB Mafeking

Mafeking once was the site of a small radio station with the call letters ZNB. The transmitter was owned by the Bechuanaland Police and operated from the Imperial Reserve. ZNB was never intended to be a public radio station. It was built purely and simply to provide a means of communication
for the Bechuanaland Protectorate Government through the largely telephoneless territory. The engineers who installed the equipment tested the transmission with a few borrowed records. The records must have hit the right spot, for hundreds of requests from radio listeners as far away as Japan, Norway and the United States poured in by mail asking for a fixed series of programs.

A snag came however in the form of performing rights for broadcast material, and ZNB temporarily went off the air. There was an immediate howl of protest from many parts of South Africa. Within a matter of weeks the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) offered to assume financial and administrative responsibility for providing programs, and so ZNB was back in business. It broadcast music programs for about an hour at lunch time and 3 hours during the evening in the 49 meter band with a power of only 1 kW. News was relayed from the SABC twice a day. When the station was not broadcasting, it was used to carry police messages and other traffic.

Officials of the Bechuanaland Protectorate administration cast around for a suitable announcer and tested, among others, a young Mafeking pharmacist, Wally Coombes. Then came the war. The popularity of ZNB zoomed, and shy, self efacing Wally Coombes became the country's first heart-throb disc-jockey.

The popularity of ZNB declined after the war. One reason was that its relatively weak signal strength was pretty well drowned by the big stations that came to dominate the short wave bands.

ZNB finally closed on 30 September 1963, three years before independence. The seat of administration moved from Mafeking to Gaberones (now Gaborone) in 1965.

Radio Botswana

The year 1963 saw the inauguration of the forerunner of Radio Botswana. This was a 700 watt station with the call letters ZNE55, later ZND, which broadcast from a disused prison cell in Lobatsi, about 50 miles north of Mafeking. It is interesting to note from the 1965 edition of the World Radio TV Handbook that the station used 3356 kHz, one of Radio Botswana's current frequencies. ZND broadcast for about 2 hours each evening in English and Setswana.

Towards the middle of 1965 ZND was replaced by a higher powered transmitter of 2 kW, located at Sebele, near the present capital of Gaborone, which was upgraded to 10 kW in 1966. The antennas used were vertical incidence arrays consisting of two folded dipoles fed in phase, a quarter of a wavelength above the ground. A 1 kW medium wave transmitter and low power FM transmitter were also installed. In 1972 the medium wave transmitter was replaced by one of 50 kW. The 10 kW short wave transmitters were in use for over ten years, but were replaced in 1984 by four 50 kW units. An expansion program is now underway to extend FM coverage to the populated areas of the country.

Radio Botswana is on the air from 0350 to 2100 UTC in Setswana and English with the following frequency usage:

3356 kHz from 0350 - 0700 and 1700 - 2100
4820 kHz from 0350 - 2100
5965 kHz from 0700 - 1500
7255 kHz from 0350 - 1730
9720 kHz from 0350 - 2100

Look for their distinctive cow-bell interval signal at 0350 on either 3356, 4820 or 7255 kHz. Be careful with this last frequency, as it is used by Radio Nigeria later in the evening.

BBC Southern Africa Relay Station

Great Britain may have made a special arrangement with Botswana in late 1965, when the British Government established a powerful medium wave transmitter in Francistown near the then Rhodesian border. This installation, intended chiefly to make BBC programs easier to receive in Rhodesia, where unilateral independence had been declared, operated for three years. Apparently the British manoeuvre was effective, for Rhodesia jammed the Francistown transmitter whenever the BBC dealt with Rhodesian affairs. The station also used short wave frequencies in the 60 and 41 meter bands. The 10 kW transmitter was then relocated to Sebele to supplement the existing facilities there.

As already mentioned, this station is no longer on the air, but in 1981 the Voice of America installed a 50 kW medium wave transmitter at Selebi-Phikwe, not far from Francistown. This station is jointly owned by VOA and Radio Botswana, and relays the VOA African service from 0300 - 0430 and 1730 - 2200 UTC on 621 kHz. During the day Radio Botswana is relayed.

Voice of America

On December 6, 1991 the first two 250 kW short wave transmitters were inaugurated by VOA from Selebi-Phikwe. Further transmitters are planned. This expansion was made necessary following the irrepairable damage at the Liberia site in West Africa following the outbreak of civil war there in 1990. The frequency usage is as follows:

0300-0500 on 7265 in English
0300-0430 on 11940 in English
0430-0500 on 15370 in Portuguese
1600-2200 on 15445 in English
2200-2300 on 15370 in Portuguese
1630-1730 on 17705 in Swahili (Mon-Fri)
1730-1830 on 17705 in Portuguese
1830-2200 on 17870 in French (except Mon-Fri 2030-2100)
2030-2100 on 17870 in Hausa (mon-Fri)
2200-2300 on 17870 in Portuguese

LM RADIO

You are viewing
"Botswana"

SOUTHERN (NOT SOUTH)
AFRICAN RADIO SERVICES
(Introduction)

NRBC
(Northern Rhodesian
Broadcasting Corporation)

RADIO 540
BOPHUTHATSWANA

RBC
(Rhodesian Broadcasting
Corporation)

CAPITAL RADIO

SOUTHERN (NOT SOUTH) AFRICAN RADIO SERVICES LINKS:

SPRINGBOK RADIO

SOUTHERN (NOT SOUTH)
AFRICAN RADIO SERVICES
(Introduction)

ESSAYS:

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