Abstract

The continent of Africa is rich with rhetorical traditions that remain largely unexamined. One such African context is Botswana, which means literally “land of the Tswana people.” A look into two sites of Tswana rhetoric—the traditional village meeting place known at the kgotla and traditional Tswana praise poetry—reveals much about the discursive practices of the Tswana and what such practices convey about Tswana life.