Our beloved Mma Precious Ramotswe will soon be on television in a BBC-HBO mini-series. Precious Ramotswe is an inspired creation of Alexander McCall Smith. She is the proprietor of the No.1 Ladies’ Detective Agency in Gaborone, the capital of Botswana, and now the wife of that “most good natured and gracious of mechanics”, Mr J.L.B. Matekoni, proprietor of Tlokweng Road Speedy Motors. Mma, the local language equivalent of ‘Mother’ or ‘Mrs’, is ably assisted by Grace Makutsi (played by Dreamgirls star Anika Noni Rose), an impulsive ugly duckling with an Imelda-like fetish for impractical shoes, unsuitable men, and the exciting modern world. Grace, who wears large round spectacles and has ‘difficult skin’, is a graduate, with an unheard-of 97 per cent in the final exams, of the Botswana Secretarial College (a fact no one is allowed to forget). The series’s universal appeal stems from its theme: How can we adopt the best qualities of the new globalised era without giving up values from the old? For Mma, the answer is simple: follow old Botswana morality. “The rest of the world might become as rude as it wished, but this was not the way of things in Botswana and she would always defend the old Botswana way of doing things.” Old Botswana morality requires, for instance, that one should help a relative in need even if the connection was a distant one. What ought to be the relationship between means and ends and how might a moral balance be achieved? If the cleaning woman in the hospital inadvertently caused several patients “to become late” because of her tendency to unplug the ventilator so that she could polish the floor, should the police be informed? These delightful and unlikely sleuths solve such puzzles emerging from human foibles by using common sense, observation, folk wisdom, and Clovis Anderson’s Principles of Private Detection. Solutions invariably require brewing a pot of red bush tea (ordinary tea for Grace), and sipping it either at home or in the office “with two desks, two chairs and a typewriter,” while contemplating the ubiquitous acacia tree. McCall Smith displays an affectionate and humorous touch in bringing to life a small African town, and animates disappearing values. In a world fraught with selfishness, “a consequence of increasing prosperity”, Mma is a comforting figure who reassures us with her unassuming acceptance of old-world morality. Unlike most of us, she is sure of who she is. “Knowledge of this sort helped to keep society together and made it difficult to scrape the car of another without feeling guilty about it and without doing something to let the owner know.” And every morning Mma Ramotswe switches on Radio Botswana “in time for the opening chorus of the national anthem and the recording of cattle bells.” And Mma is far from being a hidebound conservative: witness her decisions to establish the first detective agency, to hire a female assistant, and to adopt two orphans. A moral and good life can be built by being neighbourly, loyal, honourable, generous, and loving one’s country. These traditional values, together with shunning the new deadly sins for a globalised world such as accumulating obscene wealth, causing social injustice, polluting the environment, among others, form the moral core of Mma and her team. Like the private detectives of Raymond Chandler and S. Dashiell Hammett, Ramotswe has a strong sense of right and wrong. “A good person would cut the doughnut into two equal pieces” but a shifty selfish person would divide into two pieces, one would be bigger than the other, and he would take that one himself. The appeal of the series also rests in our identification with the problems Mma Ramotswe tackles every day — petty thefts in the office or home, wives suspicious of their husbands’ fidelity, falsification of testimonials, and unsuitable grooms. Since they “do not usually get involved in cases where people have died” Mma hardly ever encounters the police. Mma’s solutions draw on old Botswanian morality. If there is bad behaviour, the quickest way of stopping it is to give more love. Jill Scott, who plays the lead, is an R&B singer and poet who had to put on pounds to fill Mma’s ample (though Ramotswe would prefer the term ‘traditionally built’) frame. One hopes that she will also be able to bring Mma’s unique moral core to the small screen. The writer is a fellow at The Centre for Policy Research, Delhi shylashris@gmail.com
