Kevin Shillington, Patrick van Rensburg: Rebel, Visionary and Radical Educationist. A Biography

Abstract

Whatever you thought you knew about Patrick van Rensburg will be a small fraction of the life so thoroughly
documented here. Biographer Kevin Shillington, familiar to these parts as an Education and History
lecturer at the University of Botswana in the 1980s, publisher of key works on the nineteenth century
Batlhaping, and author among others of the long-selling History of Africa (Macmillan, Red Globe, now
in its 4th edition) brings his research skills and knowledge of the region to deliver a first-class rendition of
one of Botswana’s signal figures in the late colonial and early postcolonial period. Shillington’s account is
based on extensive familiarity with persons who knew or worked with Van Rensburg, his autobiographical
and other writings, and a firm grounding in the major events unfolding in Southern Africa when Patrick
made his mark. The publication is sponsored by The Foundation for Education with Production (FEP),
among Van Rensburg’s many progeny.