… this wonderful wide valley with Linokana just about in the centre. The land brings enormous amounts of corn as the people concentrate more on agriculture. Linokana is surrounded by many large vegetable gardens. The Bahurutsi already know how to irrigate. They are generally well off, some even really wealthy, because they have their cattle farming as well as good lands. They have bought many wagons and ploughs.39
FIGURE 3: The Dinokana valley with Gopane village in the distance
Source: The authors
A few years later, W Behrens, the HMS supervisor for Bechuanaland missions, reported approvingly of conditions in the town, noting that:
The baHurutshe have so much corn as they have not had for years. Here in the town of Moiloa there are about five wagons and 200 oxen. You can easily imagine how much work can be done with them. In addition, chiefs, deputies and all who own oxen use the plough, and sow wheat, like the Boers. They hunt in great numbers and shoot wild meat and ostriches and bring back on their pack oxen, meat skins and feathers … for their own use as well as for sale. Here in Moiloa’s stad are several thousand guns; a man without a gun is a poor man.40
Hunting declined in the mid-1870s owing to competition from white hunters, a decline in the numbers of animals locally, and a restriction by the authorities limiting the baHurutshe to hunting within their reserve. But there was no such reduction in agricultural activity if the reports of literate observers are to be believed. In 1875 the Austro-Hungarian botanist, Emile Holub, recorded that the baHurutshe ‘gathered in as much as 800 sacks of wheat, each containing 200 pounds and every year a wider area of land is brought under cultivation … beside wheat they grow maize, sorghum, melons and tobacco.’41 He also noted that irrigation had become a widespread practice.
The use of wagons indicates that much of this produce was transported elsewhere for sale, and that wealthier producers were investing their profits from agriculture to increase their share in the trading economy. Wagons assumed great significance in the period before white and Indian traders settled in the reserve and bought up locally produced goods. They became all the more crucial from 1869 when a significant new market was opened up at Kimberley by the discovery of diamonds. Holub wrote in 1872 that the baHurutshe ‘sold what they did not require for their own consumption in the markets of the Transvaal and the diamond fields’.42 The diamond fields opened up opportunities for Africans in the western Transvaal bushveld, and from even further afield, to seek the higher wages offered there.
This economic growth benefited many Hurutshe cultivators who were transformed into a thriving peasantry, much as happened among nearly all African societies that engaged with the colonial economy. It also allowed for personal accumulation by Moiloa himself – it is absolutely clear that from his position as kgosi he entrenched his own wealth and power through control over land, production and trade among the baHurutshe. He ensured that missionaries and traders purchased grain directly from him (his death, according to the local landdrost, had a ‘negative effect on trade with the white population’).43 In addition, he was paid £25 per annum by the state to collect taxes from his followers, a task normally entrusted to the landdrost, but perhaps a form of reward to Moiloa for his considered loyalty. Possibly the most visible sign of Moiloa’s power was the fact that he married eleven women; in the opinion of Holub, who travelled extensively through the bushveld, this was more than most Batswana dikgosi at the time. He also formed six new Hurutshe mephato (age-regiments) during his period of rule, the largest, Matshelaphala, under his direct control – an indication of chiefly control and political stability.
It should be borne in mind that Moiloa was a ‘pretender’ to the chieftainship of the baHurutshe. We raised this point in the Introduction, when discussing Moiloa’s reluctance to return immediately to his former homeland in the later 1830s, but the issue is complicated and requires repeating; and in addition some of the circumstances prevailing in the earlier period had changed. Sebogodi, the rightful kgosi, had been killed in action against the baNgwaketse. He had three sons: Menwe, Motlaadile and Moiloa. But Sebogodi’s rightful successor, Menwe, had predeceased his father so Sebogodi’s brother Diutlwileng assumed the chieftainship. He, in turn, died during the disturbances of the difaqane. This is when Sebogodi’s youngest brother Mokgatlhe took over the reins of power. Strangely, Motlaadile seems never to have made a bid for chieftainship and was eclipsed by the Mokgatlhe/Moiloa faction (this may be because when the majority fled Kaditshwene in 1821-22 Motlaadile had remained and became a tributary of the amaNdebele, thus losing support). According to Hurutshe genealogies, Motlaadile had no children. However, to complicate matters Mokgatlhe had married the appointed ‘great wife’ of Menwe and according to custom had ‘raised up seed’ of behalf of his nephew. Mokgatlhe’s sons Lentswe and Gopane were thus considered by many to be the rightful line of succession once Moiloa died. Others, however, claimed that Moiloa’s son, Ikalafeng, should become the kgosi.
Even though the laws of succession were neither fixed nor binding among the baTswana, Moiloa could not ignore the fact that he lacked a really legitimate claim to leadership of the merafe, and it was a source of obvious concern for him. He countered it by gathering around him diverse groups of supporters on whom he counted to balance the scales of power in his chiefdom. First among these were the Griqua converts whose support he had sought and acquired during the late 1830s and early 1840s. As Moiloa probably anticipated, they offered a ready link with the missionaries and other African converts, and provided a number of services through their agricultural and linguistic (Dutch-speaking) skills. Moiloa allocated them two separate wards in Dinokana where they enjoyed a measure of autonomy and gave him their support.44 Interestingly, a number of so-called ‘coloured’ families, presumably descendants of these original Griqua, assumed his name, which they still bear today. He also drew support from converts, and from a number of non-baHurutshe immigrants, who came to settle in the reserve during the 1850s. When Moiloa died, the authorities of the incoming British administration considered that the ‘pure’ baHurutshe were the followers of Gopane, and that it was the immigrants who enjoyed status at Dinokana. This development indicates also that the ethnic composition of the baHurutshe was constantly changing and was never fixed or immutable – certainly the ethnic face of the predifaqane and post-difaqane Hurutshe merafe was quite different, though there was probably a significant core of ‘pure’ baHurutshe among it. The region had been occupied by different groups of people in the years of Hurutshe displacement, some of whom did not trek away with Mzilikazi, and would have most likely been incorporated into baHurutshe society as the Tswana ward system allowed for the incorporation of ‘foreigners’ or strangers, who were semi-independent. However, the prevailing trend among minority factions from the mid to late nineteenth century (and perhaps beyond) was to seek for incorporation into the expanding Hurutshe chieftaincy rather than establishing an independent identity.
Though dependent on a number of different sections of baHurutshe society, Moiloa tried at the same time to weld his community together through a process of political involution, (around the person of himself as the kgosi). It was therefore essential to maintain and even strengthen key social practices and institutions. His refusal to convert perhaps indicates his desire not to alienate traditional elements of baHurutshe society, as does the re-formation of former mephato and the introduction of new ones. In addition, during his time no marriages (save Christian ones) were considered legal without the passing of bogadi cattle (bridewealth payment).45 Moiloa’s ‘domestic policy’ therefore was a dual (though perhaps contradictory) one of strengthening support among ‘non-traditional’ elements among the morafe while at the same time rebuilding the essential props of traditional society that had broken down during the difaqane.
Moiloa’s external policies were geared to ensure stability with neighbours and with the authorities of the South African Republic. He had a difficult relationship with Setshele’s baKwena across the border, who initially regarded Moiloa as a vassal and tool of the trekkers, but he sent Setshele