In particular, the Tswana practices of ward organization, I have explained, were instrumental in capturing vast foreign communities, potentially challenging exterior forces, into mills of assimilation. Their consequent incorporation in the hierarchical order of the merafe was reflected in, on the whole, submitting to the overlordship of the Tswana ruling group. The capacity of these merafe to expand in strength and scale by capturing exterior communities into their sociopolitical structure is indicated by the fact that in due course, ‘about four-fifths of the Ngwato tribe…consists of what were originally foreign peoples, and among the Tawana the proportion is still greater’ (Schapera 1952: v).
Although this did not mean that all communities conquered or hosted were brought fully under the control of the Tswana merafe in focus here, their rulers were receiving the evangelizing missionaries and incorporated their churches in their respective merafe. They were granted monopoly to the exclusion of ‘independent’ African Christian movements. This venture added, in important respects, both a spiritual dimension to the dikgosi's authority and structures of societal control which meant they virtually assumed the character of ‘state church’, although there were occasionally rifts between missionaries and the kgosi. And despite the fact that the evangelizing missionaries required major shifts in some central ritual and societal practices that at the time set in motion processes that led to serious – but temporal – political divides in the royal centres, they were met with limited resistance (see Gulbrandsen 1993a, 2001). On the whole, they added strength to the bogosi, in spiritual as well as secular respects. In particular, the privileged missionary churches were highly instrumental for the Tswana ruling group's efforts to control people's spiritual life to prevent their engagement with all the African Christian movements in progress on the subcontinent.
In precolonial times the Tswana ruling groups managed only partially to capture outlying communities of different origins into their process of state formation. Brought under the British wing, they were able to fully assert their dominant position and to subject these communities to the Tswana hierarchies of authority. The immense significance of British overlordship to the selected Tswana dikgosi is underscored by the fact that any section of the royal families seceding from the royal centre and residing elsewhere within the ‘native reserve’ was by the British placed firmly under the authority of the dikgosi to whom the British had assigned supreme authority over the respective ‘native reserves’. There was thus no scope for creating an independent morafe or a second centre after the establishment of the colonial state. Although all the threats of annexation to one of the highly repressive, neighbouring European regimes were the apparent motivation of the three dikgosi's journeys to London to have the queen's protection asserted, the British empowerment of the dikgosi was probably also a significant factor underpinning their acceptance, if not appreciation, of being brought under the British wing.
Although the relationship between the dikgosi and the British was, as we shall see in the following chapter, progressively riddled by ambivalence, tension and, at times, serious conflicts, this relationship was nevertheless, as I shall argue, a matter of mutual dependency. Especially because of the British determination to govern the protectorate at minimal cost and maximal implementation of principles of indirect rule, the Tswana dikgosi were substantially empowered. And their respective ruling communities manifested increasingly their positions as judicial authorities and political leaders in respect of a steadily wider span of issues throughout the different merafe, also in relation to subject communities.
This development under the British wing lasted for no less than eighty years and naturalized to a great extent Tswana leadership. Through a gradualist, often nonconfrontational approach, the ruling Tswana groups were winning hegemony also in relation to subject communities and hence capturing them, to some extent, into their structures of domination by consent. However, as I stressed in the Introduction, to win hegemony in the sense of leadership by virtue of consent (dumela) is always a matter of degree. In the present case it is patently evident that Tswana domination relied upon coercive measures as well. And these measures were not only exercised within the limits of politico-jural order. They were also exercised in a wide range of social relationship through which dominant Tswana, often by means of subtle and tacit discriminatory measures, prevented minorities from rising against their overlords. Thus, only very rarely they represented openly challenging forces during colonial times. The extent to which Tswana repressive forces had been at work before the independent state of Botswana was established with declarations of social equity and liberal individualism, is perfectly confirmed by the fact that it would, I reiterate, as we shall see in Chapter 5, take some thirty years after the independence before minority voices gained significance in the public sphere (see Chapter 5).27
1. I am here referring to Bakwena, Bangwaketse, Bangwato and Batawana which were at the establishment of the Bechuanaland Protectorate (1885) officially recognized by the British and assigned territories – ‘tribal reserves’ – that comprised the vast majority of the population. The remaining three recognized merafe were Bakgatla, Batlokwa and Bamalete, all much smaller both in terms of population and territory, especially the latter two. In addition a small area in the southeast corner of the protectorate achieved a special status as ‘Barolong Farms’ – agricultural land occupied by BaTshidi of Mafeking beyond the South African border. Map 1indicates the location of the ‘tribal reserves’ dominated by these Tswana merafe.
2. The major interruption was caused by the Matabele raids known as difaqane between c. 1825 and 1840 (e.g. see Tlou and Campbell 1984: 101ff.).
3. The royal town itself probably had more than ten thousand people. Another important nineteenth-century missionary source mentions its large population: ‘Shoshong, the [royal] town of the Bangwato, contains a population of some 30,000’ (Mackenzie 1871: 365; cf. Okihiro 1976: ch. 2; Schapera 1935; Parsons 1982).
4. These campaigns should be seen in light of Mackenzie's strategy to make the country British in order to make it Christian (Dachs 1972: 652).
5. The political signifi cance of wealth has of course been recognized by the Tswana themselves: as an early observer noticed, ‘the word kosi [kgosi] in the Sichuana [Setswana] language signifi es rich, and is by metonymy therefore used to imply a chief, as riches seem in all countries…to have been the origin of power and importance’ (Burchell 1824: 272, 347).
6. Organization of the Tswana merafe by wards was already in operation in precolonial times (Okhiro 1976: 52; Ngcongco 1977: 34), and was described extensively during the colonial period (see Schapera 1935, 1984: 91ff; Kuper 1975); even now, far into postcolonial times, it remains significant (see Schapera and Roberts 1975; Kooijman 1978: 101ff; Gulbrandsen 1996a: 27).
7. There are conflicting stories about the time and circumstances of the divisions (see Schapera 1942a: 1, 1952: 9).
8. Because of limited space, I refer the reader to the archival and other sources I rely on in matters of evangelizing missionaries and the Tswana in my previous publications Gulbrandsen 1993a and 2001.
9. As a condition for baptism these Tswana rulers were required to abandon some of their central rituals such as initiation (bogwera [male], bojale [female]) and rainmaking. They also made it unlawful to marry more than one wife without the kgosi's consent and they put an end to the practice of levirate and sororate.
10. See Mackenzie 1871: 423 ff., 1883: 238ff.; Gulbrandsen 1993a: 52ff.
11. Chief Khama to Rev. Cullen Rees (4 Aug. 1890), Chief's Papers, Folder 4, Selly Oak Public Library,