Inevitably, the nature of our ownership of the 'new music' will derive from our ethnic, political, social and, above all, the class determinants that influence our artistic sensitivities.

Some of the modern luminaries of this movement are Ndingo Johwa, who will be criticised for the apparent tribal parochialism of his ethnic music, but never for lending the nuances of the Ikalanga rhythmn and nuance to the larger amalgam of Botswana culture.

The original Maxy brought recognition to the modern female voice and to shameless recognition of the contribution of San or Sesarwa culture to the wider Botswana culture.

They borrowed, vicariously if not deliberately, from the precedent set by the likes of Bachoni, in the case of Ikalanga, and Ratsie, in the case of the politically dominant Setswana-speaking groups.

Speech represented the Bakgalagadi well. Stiger seems to want a more urban articulation of the troubles of the peoples of Ngamiland but nevertheless retains the core nuances of the languages of the northwest in terms of both intonation and rhythmn.

The market - and general appreciation unadulterated by the profit motive - clearly shows that the music that draws from the traditional and folk tradition of Botswana is doing far much better commercially, artistically and spiritually, than the stuff that is borrowed from American and South African television.

Needless to say, the predominant group of radio announcers and disco record players tend to favour the American and South African Kwaito, adulterated American R&B and corrupted Congolese (DRC) kwasa kwasa.

Despite all the institutional and psychological obstacles posed by the state and pseudo-private voice and image based media, the Botswana traditional groups emerge as the inevitable victors in the long run.

There is not a day that passes without a date in southern Africa or Europe, or some mention of the possibility of such an occurrence. Matsieng have recently taken over the best-seller charts in Botswana and they are destined to conquer South Africa and every other place where Setswana speakers live very soon. There is no going back!

Thirty years ago it made sense that mbaqanga should have been the music of resistance and the liberation struggle against a racist, sexist and undemocratic southern Africa.

The Batswana of South West Africa, South Africa and Botswana descended upon the mines of South Africa to join other bands of victims of apartheid and cultural segregation to create the unifying mbaqanga.

It was then culturally and politically appropriate that mbaqanga should serve as a vehicle for the articulation of the goals and aspirations - at home and abroad - of the African peoples of southern Africa. It worked.

The immediate challenge thereafter would have been to recognise the ethnicities of the peoples that contributed to that struggle and to reshape the contemporary music of the region in such a way as to recognise the relevance of the contribution of all the people to the regional good.

The ascendancy of the Botswana folk and traditional idioms to the pinnacle of the commercial and popular ladder - in spite of the debilitating neglect by the government of Botswana - marks a crucial turning point.

What it does is to refine the messages of resistance that freed the states of southern Africa by focusing on the plight of the peoples that make up the larger community of southern African nations.

That means that there can not be a meaningfully free southern Africa without proper cultural, political and economic recognition of the Basarwa, the Bakgalagadi and the other belittled groups, who, ironically, were the original inhabitants of the land.

This means full recognition of the Shangaan in South Africa and the Shona in Zimbabwe who suffered cultural segregation at the hands of the larger groups who grew closer to the colonising Europeans.

So, even as we applaud the refinement of the messages of the liberation movement or the anti-colonial struggle, we must also welcome rigorous debate about the condition of the large majority on whose behalf we claimed proprietorship of the battles for independence.

In other words, the new vernacular songs must not only offer Botswana languages for their own sake, but they must debate the difficult questions posed by the struggle for the ultimate emancipation of the body and the soul.