Seswaa: Botswana national dish

The cultural significance is that historically Batswana scraped a living rearing cattle and growing crops.

Botswana is self sufficient for its beef. This is epitomised in the growing number of cattle at 3 million to the population of 2.3 million in the southern African nation. Beef is the most significant sub-sector of the coutry’s declining agricultural economy. Botswana cattle are also famed for milk, that can also be traditionally fermented to make the popular and tasty madila, or sour milk.

Meat is traditionally cooked in three-legged iron pots over an open wood fire. Usually the meat is beef but in some cases it can be goat or sheep. It is usually boiled until it falls from the bones and flavoured with only salt, usually by men. As seen in one of the pictures, it is then pounded with a long wooden stick directly from the pot until it’s well-shredded. It is well known that the elderly prefer seswaa as they don’t have to use their few teeth excessively.

It is impossible to attend a wedding, funeral or any kind of event in Botswana and not be offered the mouthwatering seswaa, as an accompaniment to bogobe, rice and or setampa or samp (as in one of the pictures).