Tim's Story

Under the orange glow of the full moon, while sipping tea by the campfire, I asked our safari guide, Tim, about his story.  Tim is in his 40’s and is originally from Zimbabwe.   He can trace his family’s roots in Zimbabwe/Rhodesia back about 8 generations.  In the late 1960’s, Tim’s father decided he wanted to become a minister.  He wasn’t able to enter a seminary in the newly independent Rhodesia (I didn’t ask why), so he moved his family to South Africa.  They settled in Cape Town, where Tim’s father studied, and then ministered to the black and colored families in District Six.  If you have heard of District Six, you may know that in the late 1960’s, the South African government  declared the district a whites-only area under an Apartheid policy, with removals starting in 1968.  Some ‘removals’ happened under the cloak of darkness, by bulldozers, as families slept.  You can well imagine that Tim’s father was not too popular with the Apartheid government.  Tim recalls being followed to school  by the secret police, and his family receiving a letter bomb in the mail (that fortunately, did  not detonate).  One day, they were presented with a notice that they had 48 hours to leave the country, or his father would face imprisonment.  Since Tim’s family had been away from Rhodesia for more than 2 years, they had lost their citizenship and could not return.  So, they packed up their car, drove to Botswana, and settled here, in an environment more supportive of racial integration.