This article examines the paradox of Botswana’s twin reputations: first, successful
national development and second, premature death from the HIV/AIDS epidemic.
While locating these reputations in the capital city, Gaborone, the article
analyzes reflections of people who are themselves the audience for, and participants
in, the country’s development. Ethnographic data reveal a dramatic shift
in discourse by generational cohort in terms of explaining the apparent contradiction
of successful development in the midst of tragedy. The article shows
how official discourses of development and death are appropriated by a younger
generation in Gaborone, in ways unanticipated in a meta-narrative of modernity.
The emotional anguish of an older generation is absent in a younger generation’s
expectation that development goes hand-in-hand with funerals. The shift
in perspective that is instantiated in Gaborone, reflects a profound transformation
in the relationship between the production of knowledge and the state’s
expanding capacity since independence in 1966. This study contributes to the
literature on development, modernity, African cities and the HIV/AIDS epidemic.