Botswana: Camp captures history of southern Africa

At first glance, Dukwi looks like your usual African refugee camp, with children attending school, adults working in a weaving and tailoring project, neighbours chatting and babies playing happily in the mud. But probe deeper into Botswana’s only refugee camp and you’ll find that like no other place in the region, it captures the recent history of southern Africa in a nutshell. Dukwi refugee camp was once a place for exiles from countries like South Africa and Zimbabwe to meet and discuss strategies for a liberated southern Africa. The camp boasts former residents who are prominent leaders in the region today. Today, the camp is still home to some 3,500 people, the largest groups being 1,200 Namibians from the Caprivi Strip and 1,200 refugees from Angola. The rest come from elsewhere in Africa – Burundi, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Rwanda, Somalia, Sudan, Uganda, with a few cases from Kenya and Tanzania.