Botswana's capital was poured as a brandy-glass city in three years
When Bechuanaland chose a capital, Lobatse seemed too small. Planners instead built beside Gaberones—named for Chief Gaborone of the Tlokwa—because of fresh water, the Pretoria rail line, and no tribal ownership claim. Mid-1964 construction produced a garden-city layout Geoffrey Cornish compared to a brandy glass.
The Tlokwa settled nearby around 1880 at Moshaweng; Gaborone literally means it does not fit badly. Europeans shortened Gaborone's Village to Gaberones, and the Government Camp nickname GC still lingers. Cecil Rhodes sited a fort here in 1890 while planning the Jameson Raid. The capital shifted from Mafeking to Gaberones in 1965; Botswana became independent on 30 September 1966, with Reverend Derek Jones as first mayor, and the spelling changed to Gaborone in 1969.
Early buildings—assembly halls, power station, hospital, schools, more than a thousand houses—were meant for about twenty thousand people and rose within roughly three years. Labourers' illegal southern camps became Naledi, the star. Surveys at Bontleng in 1971 and a New Naledi in 1973 failed to meet demand until President Seretse Khama rezoned Old Naledi for low-income housing in 1975. Population leapt from 3,855 in 1964 toward nearly 18,000 by 1971 and about 138,000 by 1992.
The 2022 census counted 246,325 in the city—about a tenth of Botswana—and 534,842 in the metro, with growth near 3.4 percent, among the world's fastest. Main Mall stretches from business strip to Civic Centre and Pula Arch; the Government Enclave holds the National Assembly and Ntlo ya Dikgosi. The city hosts the Botswana Stock Exchange and SADC headquarters between Kgale and Oodi Hills, about fifteen kilometres from South Africa and 1,010 metres above sea level.
Source: Gaborone
