The simple answer is "It is the name of the river partly forming the boundary between Botswana and Zimbabwe, and depositing its waters into the Limpopo river right next to Mapungubwe heritage site". But is that all? Why was the river named Shashe?
As I have written before, Kalanga language is largely composed of monosyllabic words which were combined to bring out various meanings: KA (meaning spirit)combined with NYO (meaning penis) to make NYOKA - a snake; WA/WE (meaning fall) combined with NGA (meaning resembling) to make WENGA - a parrot (which resembles the Illui (fallers)).
It would seem that the word SHA means residence, or domicile or living (place). This can be deduced from the word NSHA which means the open place where a family sits for meals or just chatter in their compound. Another word is SHAKA, which means a nest, i.e. SHA (residence) and KA (something alive, such as a bird).
The word SHE of course means KING. And so the composite word SHASHE (with high probability) means WHERE THE KING RESIDES. I believe the king referred to here is none other than King Anu himself.
I understand Sumerian records, as translated by Zecharia Sitchin, show that King Anu of the Anunnaki visited planet Earth sometime in the ancient past. Considering that man was engineered to work the gold mines of earth, and that some of those gold mines were, and still are in Francistown, it stands to reason that King Anu must have at least set foot at Mapungubwe, from where the Francistown mines are reachable by dry bed of the following rivers SHASHE, TATI (DATI), NTSHE.
The TATI is a tributary of the SHASHE, while the NTSHE is a tributary of the TATI. Indeed the gold mines are at the confluence of the TATI and the NTSHE.
And so the dry river bed path from Mapungubwe to the Francistown gold mines suggests that the correct names for the rivers SHASHE, TATI and NTSHE are SHASHE, TATE (father) and NTSHI (the digger). The "father" referred to was of course King Anu himself. These names must have been given to the three rivers in remembrance of King Anu's visit to earth.
It is for this reason that I think that there is no better fitting name for our Republic than Republic of SHASHE. Note that there is another SHASHE river near the North Western town of Maun. My research has so far not identified the reasons why that river was also named SHASHE, but I am working on it.
