THE FUSE

When Farouk Essop Ismail's father arrived in Botswana from Gujarat, India, sometime in the 1960s, he did not arrive with capital or connections. He arrived in a wave of South Asian migration that washed across southern Africa in the colonial and post-colonial decades, dropping families onto the plains of Botswana, into the cane fields near Durban, into the trading towns along the Limpopo. Most of these migrants ended up labouring on the sugar cane fields near Durban. Chopdat senior had tried his luck inland, working his way up until he was the proud owner of his own shop. The shop was called Wayside Supermarket. It was in Lobatse, a border town in southeastern Botswana, approximately 60 kilometers south of Gaborone. When Chopdat senior died, his three sons inherited the shop, the debts and the obligation not to let him down.