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When Professor Isaac Schapera died on June 26, 2003, in London, a generation died with him. After the death of Raymond Firth the year before, he had been the last member of the famous Malinowski seminar at the London School of Economics (LSE). However, Schapera had previously been taught by Radcliffe-Brown, and that seems to have been a much greater influence on him. Still, Schapera resembled Malinoswki in leaving a body of ethnography, the richness of whose detail is of lasting value, regardless of the prevailing wind of theoretical fashion, whether in African Studies or in anthropology. He is read wherever there is an interest in the Tswana people, including Botswana itself, where he is venerated as the meticulous recorder of tradition. His cremation was attended by a member of the High Commission of Botswana, who did not know him personally taut was there to represent the Tswana people.
The more familiar one becomes with Schapera's life, the more one can appreciate the achievements of his career. He was born on June 23, 1905, in Garies, a small village in the remote countryside of South Africa's Cape Province, where his father was an unsuccessful shopkeeper. When young, he had a Hottentot nanny, and he claimed that his interest in the Khoisan-speaking peoples was stimulated by what he learned from her. The family was poor, but the adolescent Isaac was invited by the local doctor, an amateur ethnologist, to use his library; Schapera attributed his initial interest in anthropology to this opportunity. He went to secondary school in Cape Town, and then on to Cape Town University to read law. He was seduced from that initial choice by a series of lectures on anthropology given there by Radcliffe-Brown, although he retained a lifelong interest in law. When his brilliant academic performance earned him a doctoral scholarship to Britain in 1925, Schapera went to the London School of Economics (LSE) to do a Ph.D. in anthropology. His supervisor was C. G. Seligman, but like all fledgling anthropologists at the LSE, he attended Malinowski's weekly seminar, and on two occasions he was employed by Malinowski as a research assistant. He did not like Malinowski very much but paid him the tribute of saying he made one think, unlike...