WHEN THE LIVING HAUNTS THE DEAD: TRAUMA AND HEALING IN BESSIE HEAD’S REMEMBRANCE OF FANTISI GAOTHOBOGWE

Abstract

This article is a timely reflection of how five young volunteers who died on the 12th of September 1976 while working on behalf of the Botswana University Campus Appeal affected Bessie Head as a writer and as a person. The deceased were four students of Swaneng Hill and the bus driver of the Serowe cooperative, Fantisi Gaothobogwe. This paper unpacks a letter that Head wrote to Betty Fradkin, who was in New York at the time, a month after the car accident. The letter focuses mostly on the young driver, Fantisi Gaothobogwe. It is through Bessie Head’s recollections of this soul that we learn the power of humanity that is not clothed in racial or ethnic accoutrements. The letter becomes an echo of Bessie Head’s own writings and psychological distress of how society still views individuals on physical attributes rather than aspects of personality. Hopefully, as we celebrate 40-years of teaching and learning at the trendsetting University of Botswana, we may reflect on existentialist lessons of what our purpose on earth is and create some form of immortality for our mortal souls.