Recent historical work on global health and the threat of infectious disease in Africa has
looked at the ecology of infections, disease trajectories, colonial interventions and the
impact of disease on local communities in varied geographic landscapes and cultural
responses. A particularly valuable avenue of analysis has explored racial prejudices of
colonial anti-syphilis programmes, largely looking at sexually transmitted syphilis. As a
point of departure from this work, this article examines the history of non-venereal
treponematoses in southern Africa with a focus on the ethnicisation of endemic syphilis, or
ritshuswa, in the Bakwena reserve (now Kweneng district) in colonial Botswana. The
article uses as its evidentiary basis colonial reports and letters located at the Botswana
National Archives and Records Services, World Health Organisation reports, early
missionary and travellers’ accounts and the thesis of Dr A.M. Merriweather, a local
clinician and researcher who addressed endemic syphilis in the Bakwena reserve. The aim
is to understand the human ecology of endemic syphilis through a critical analysis of
power relations between Tswana mainstream society and ethnic minorities within the
context of a history of socio-economic inequalities.

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