THE ‘TSWANA WARS’ AND THE DIFAQANE
The difaqane has been translated variously as ‘the crushing’ and ‘the time of troubles’. Prior to the 1970s, it was generally thought that these changes derived from the growth of the Zulu kingdom under Shaka in the south-east, and that the changes occurred from the end of the eighteenth century up to the 1820s. Such views were later challenged and, as a consequence, modified. The impact of the Zulu on their neighbours has been questioned and the geographic focus of the process has been widened to include the interior of South Africa (in particular the baTswana of the western highveld), and the beginning of the mfecane has been extended back from about the 1790s to the mid-eighteenth century.1
Earlier accounts and versions focused on events in the territory from the Thukela River to Delagoa Bay in the south-east. It was noted that from about 1780 certain African chiefdoms expanded in size and power, whereas weaker ones were displaced or incorporated. In response, most chiefdoms looked to bolster their military capabilities, and by 1818 two dominant forces had emerged: the Ndwandwe under Zwide in northern Zululand and the Mthethwa under Dingiswayo further south. Among Dingiswayo’s allies were the Zulu, whose leader, Shaka, had been installed by Dingiswayo. The Zulu subsequently established a powerful state. To avoid the growing conflict, several local leaders took their followers out of the Zululand region, across the Drakensberg and north to the present-day Swaziland/Delagoa Bay region, and west onto the central highveld. From the perspective of the baTswana on the western highveld, the most important of these leaders was Mzilikazi of the Khumalo, who led his followers out of present-day KwaZulu-Natal because he may have crossed swords with Shaka (as old-style historians have suggested) or because he simply sought a more peaceful and secure home for his followers.
The next obvious question asked by historians was why there should have been such a relatively sudden spate of upheavals and political realignments. Various ideas have been propounded: overpopulation, the effect of climate changes caused by drought, environmental degradation and competition for good pastures were among those put forward in the 1960s. In the next decade, the effect of the entry of new trade goods and the competition created for control of this trade, coupled with European demand for ivory, gold and slaves, were propagated as reasons for the sudden shift to more extreme military measures and organisation. In the 1980s, a group of historians led by Julian Cobbing, building on earlier ideas of Martin Legassick, shifted the debate away from the Zulu and other African communities to advance the idea that the ‘time of troubles’ was caused by expeditions and raiding parties who wanted to seize labour and slaves from Africans living in the interior. These were inspired, organised and conducted by whites (or colonial surrogates such as the Griqua and Kora) living at the Cape or in Portuguese Mozambique. While the evidence for such activities has not been consistently convincing, these scholars have reminded us that there were other actors apart from the Nguni states that were exerting significant influence on the affairs of South Africa’s interior regions several decades before formal colonisation.2
The baTswana were broadly affected by these developments at least two decades before the first ‘raiders’ arrived from Nguni land. Oral traditions point to ‘general restlessness and instability’3 (sometimes called the ‘Tswana wars’) among the various merafe from the late eighteenth century. These were caused by pressure on good pastures, raiding for cattle and the seizure of women as captives, and competition for control of trade items, especially ivory which was in great demand in the East.
NOTES
1For more detailed information on the ‘Mfecane debate’ see the contributions in C. Hamilton (ed.), The Mfecane Aftermath: Reconstructive Debates in Southern African History, (Johannesburg and Scottsville: Witwatersrand University Press, Natal University Press, 1995).
2For these developments see in particular J. Cobbing, ‘The Mfecane as alibi: Thoughts on Dithakong and Mbolompo’, Journal of African History, 18 (1977); and most chapters in Hamilton (ed.), The Mfecane Aftermath, and more recently N. Etherington, The Great Treks: The Transformation of Southern Africa 1815-1854, (Harlow, 2000).
3N. Parsons, ‘Prelude to the Difaqane in the Interior of South Africa, c. 1600-1822, in Hamilton (ed.) The Mfecane Aftermath, p. 323.
The career of Moiloa II
Moiloa was born in about 1796 and would have been a young man when these conflicts broke out. By 1821 his father, Diutlwileng, had been killed, probably by raiders under Sebetwane of the Patsa-Fokeng. When the LMS missionary John Campbell visited the Hurutshe capital at Kaditshwene, he reported that a ‘gloomy spiritlessness’ pervaded the townspeople and that Hurutshe regiments (mephato) were patrolling the perimetres of Kaditshwene.6 Moiloa’s uncle, Mokgatlhe, was acting as regent, but Campbell remarked on Moiloa’s popularity, and predicted (correctly) that he might ‘wrest control from [Mokgatlhe’s] hands’.7 Between April and September 1823, further raids led to the abandonment of the town and the baHurutshe fled westwards to the hills of Mosega. However, a new threat was emerging. Mzilikazi’s amaNdebele were now taking total control of the western highveld and expanding ever westwards. This forced Moiloa and Mokgathle to flee further southwards where they were found in a state of near destitution by a group of French missionaries of the Paris Evangelical Missionary Society, one of whom recorded that the baHurutshe, ‘in the interval of a day, found themselves reduced to a diet of meagre roots’.8 The French missionaries put their number at a paltry 700 to 800 souls, compared to the ‘thousands’ they had encountered at Mosega, just west of modern-day Zeerust.
Though invited by the missionaries to join them, Moiloa and Mokgatlhe chose to move, in 1834, to a place called Modimong on the Harts River. Here they attached themselves to the Kora, an independent Khoekhoe community under David Mossweu. The baHurutshe under Mokgatlhe and Moiloa then joined an aggressive Kora/Griqua alliance to try and force Mzilikazi out of the Madikwe region; thus in 1834 a commando sent against Mzilikazi contained within its ranks a contingent of Hurutshe men under Moiloa, who returned with a few hundred cattle.9 This alliance was strengthened by the arrival of a trekker party under Andries Potgieter, who had left the Cape Colony in 1836. In January 1837 the two groups joined forces to drive the amaNdebele out of their military fortresses. Once the amaNdebele had left the western highveld, Moiloa was quick to appreciate the power of the trekkers, and personally visited Potgieter soon after their arrival to ask if he could resettle in the former Hurutshe homeland, to which Potgieter agreed – however, over a decade was to pass before the move was finally made.
There were several reasons for this lengthy delay. First, there was a possibility that the amaNdebele might return, and there was no way of knowing if the trekkers would settle once and for all in the western highveld or if they would continue to hold power in the region.
Second, there was a power struggle among the baHurutshe over the succession. Moiloa and Motlaadile were the sons of the deceased kgosi Sebogodi. Their older brother Menwe had died before their father, but Mokgatlhe their uncle then ruled the chiefdom as they were both minors at the time of Sebogodi’s death. Mokgatlhe had in turn married Menwe’s main wife and had ‘raised up seed’ on behalf of his dead nephew and fathered a son named Lentswe. Thus there was a three-way rivalry for power between Moiloa, Motlaadile and Lentswe and this jockeying for the chieftainship seemed to preoccupy Hurutshe politics for several years. The alliance between Moiloa and his uncle did not fall apart, despite Mokgathle’s claiming of the right to leadership for his son Lentswe. Of the three men, however, Moiloa was the most politically astute, and grasped the realities of the time better than the others. He enlisted the aid of the militarised Griqua under their leader (or kaptyn) Waterboer, and requested his assistance in the relocation of the baHurutshe to the Madikwe region. Not only could the Griqua offer military support in times of need, but they could also provide other skills and services (for example literacy) which might stand the baHurutshe in good stead. Moiloa also approached Walter Inglis of the LMS in Griquatown in about 1838, and by all accounts the idea of a mission to the baHurutshe was discussed