Ukraine marked 35 years of restored independence in Gaborone with an art exhibition on resilience, days before Botswana marks its own 60th anniversary.
GAZETTE REPORTER
GABORONE — Ukraine marked 35 years of restored independence in Botswana on Monday evening with an exhibition at Thapong Visual Arts Centre celebrating resilience, freedom and national identity, as Botswana prepares for its own 60th independence anniversary later this month.
The exhibition, Resilience: The Unbreakable Human Spirit, was presented by the Embassy of Ukraine in Botswana and curated by Thabo Kgatlwane in partnership with TSW. It brings together Botswana creative practitioners working across visual art, sculpture, photography and fashion, and was hosted by Ukraine’s Ambassador to Botswana, H.E. Dr Oleksiy Syvak.
DIPLOMATIC GUESTS
Guests included Assistant Minister for State President, Defence and Security Hon. Maipelo Mophuting-Dikoloti; newly appointed Minister of Transport and Infrastructure Hon. Keoagile Atamelang; Deputy Speaker Hon. Helen Pushie Manyeneng; and former First Lady Neo Jane Masisi.
TWO ANNIVERSARIES
The exhibition deliberately connects Ukraine’s 35th anniversary with Botswana’s Diamond Jubilee celebrations on 30 September. Botswana approaches 60 years as a sovereign state after six decades of largely uninterrupted peace. Ukraine, by contrast, marks its anniversary while continuing to defend its sovereignty following Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022, against a background of conflict dating to the seizure of Crimea and fighting in eastern Ukraine in 2014.
ART WITHOUT TRANSLATION
Ambassador Syvak said Ukraine should not be understood internationally only through the war; its identity also rests on language, culture, history and tradition. Art, he said, provides a language capable of being understood without translation.
The works displayed explore resilience through identity, perseverance, struggle, transformation, hope and human connection. Botswana artists were invited not to reproduce the Ukrainian experience, but to interpret resilience through their own perspectives.
A DIPLOMATIC MESSAGE
Speaking on behalf of the Botswana Government, Mophuting-Dikoloti reaffirmed Botswana’s commitment to international law, sovereignty and territorial integrity, principles she said matter particularly for smaller states whose security depends on an international system in which borders are respected.
BOTSWANA’S DIAMOND JUBILEE
On 30 September, Botswana will commemorate 60 years since independence from Britain in 1966, a picture of peace and stability starkly different from Ukraine’s, where independence is being actively defended. The contrast gave the exhibition particular significance: one country marking six decades of peace, another commemorating 35 years while fighting to preserve its sovereignty.
Through paintings, sculpture, photography and fashion, the exhibition carried a message beyond Ukraine itself, that independence is not simply a historical event on a calendar, but a condition inherited and safeguarded by successive generations.