Several Setswana-speaking chiefdoms tried to resist the hardship imposed on them by the trekkers, and this frequently led to direct armed confrontation. The best-known incident is that of the attack on the baKwena and Livingstone at Dimawe in Botswana, an event that had direct implications for Moiloa’s baHurutshe living close by. The confrontation, however, had its origins in the Transvaal when Mosielele, the kgosi of the baKgatla ba Mmanaana at Mabotsa, and neighbour to Moiloa, decided to flee the Transvaal and seek refuge with Setshele’s baKwena after repeated demands to provide labour which he had ignored. The Marico Boers decided it was time to punish such ‘impertinence’. Commandant A Stander advocated sending a commando against Setshele, but Jan Viljoen initially opposed the idea. The general Boer determination to punish the baKwena was, however, unstoppable and a commando attacked Setshele and Mosielele in 1852. The attack was a disaster for Africans living alongside the western Transvaal’s border. The baHurutshe under Mangope living at Borutwe were forced to assist the commando, as was a contingent of Moiloa’s men who headed the commando sent to torch Setshele’s town.
After this incident Moiloa decided to abandon Dinokana. He sought protection first among Setshele’s baKwena themselves and then with the baNgwaketse under Senthufe, further west in today’s southern Botswana. This was in itself an indication of the ‘diplomatic’ contacts Moiloa had forged with the independent western baTswana. Viljoen encountered him in January 1853 at Chonwane, Setshele’s former capital, about eighty kilometres north of Mathebe, and asked him why he had fled during the raid, to which he replied that other dikgosi around him had also fled, and that furthermore he ‘was looked upon as a traitor because he lived among whites’.23 Moiloa nevertheless affirmed that he wanted peace, and Viljoen asked him to return to the Transvaal. The meeting ended with an interesting exchange: Viljoen insisted that Moiloa observe the labour regulations (that dikgosi render up men for Boer work parties) to which he reportedly replied, ‘No, don’t ever ask me for people, I have too much to do myself, but keep the road of peace open and I will see to it that people come to you as before.’ By August, most of Moiloa’s followers had returned to Dinokana, although he personally was still resident with Senthufe, and only returned after another appeal from Viljoen.
The attack on Dimawe and its consequences also signalled the end for the LMS in the Transvaal. The missionaries Edwards and Inglis remonstrated with the authorities of the South African Republic about the incident and Edwards criticised it in a local newspaper. The Boers were incensed and charged the missionaries with high treason (for allegedly supplying guns to the Africans). After rather comic opera court proceedings the two men were found guilty and expelled from the Transvaal.24 This left Moiloa stripped of the potential backing of the LMS although, given the antagonistic relationship between the British missionaries and the trekkers, this may have been a blessing in disguise.
By this time the Setswana-speakers in the western Transvaal were beginning to understand that they were dealing with a society that was far more powerful than even the amaNdebele had been, and that it would be difficult to retain a hold on the crucial resources of land and labour, as well as to retain a semblance of political autonomy. Coupled with this was the clear military and technological superiority of the whites. This realisation led Moiloa to make the disconsolate observation in 1852 that he was nothing but a ‘dog of the Boers’.25
But the trekkers had by no means created the conditions for exercising supreme control in the Marico district. In 1849 they convened a meeting at Deerdepoort to try and establish a government of unity for the Transvaal, but Potgieter stood aloof from the meeting. Provision was, however, made for a Volksraad (parliament), and some officials were appointed to key positions such as commandant-general to oversee African affairs. Despite this, the state was administratively weak and financially bankrupt and remained so even after the formation of the South African Republic in 1852. African leaders like Moiloa realised this and began to see that they could avoid the worst cases of Boer authority.
The Dimawe affair has been fully recorded, largely because their missionary David Livingstone was himself a victim and widely publicised it. But subsequent events in the bushveld are less well known. Once the commando had been disbanded and returned home laden with booty, the Marico Boers were at the mercy of reprisal attacks from the baKwena and the baRolong (who had also been attacked) who wanted to recapture their stolen cattle and children. Among those captured was Setshele’s son Kgari, and the failure of the Boers to return him was a source of ongoing anger to the baKwena. During 1852 and 1853 three Boers were killed in minor skirmishes, the Marico farms were abandoned, and the Boers went into laager. In January 1853 James Chapman, the English explorer, hunter and trader, encountered 200 wagons headed for the security of Potchefstroom. Hunting was suspended and several Boer farms were looted. The attack, moreover, divided the Boers. Viljoen, representative of the ‘hunters faction’ was openly critical of Commandant Scholtz who had led the commando, accusing him of having caused the ‘ruination of the inhabitants by his wanton proceedings’.26 In fact the Marico Boers almost abandoned the district, a misfortune which befell other trekker frontier outposts in the Transvaal such as at at Ohrigstad and Schoemansdal. It was left to Viljoen and his ‘hunters faction’ to negotiate peace terms with Setshele. Although the meeting was successful it took several years before the trekkers returned to their Marico farms.
It was not only the Boers who felt the insecurity of the Marico. Some of Mangope’s baHurutshe at Borutwe (Mangope’s Siding) fled the Transvaal and took refuge with Setshele.This kind of ‘protest migration’ was made possible by the proximity of the Transvaal border with the independent and frequently related Setswana-speaking chiefdoms living just across the line. Even after the formal restoration of peace, instability continued as a result of the murder of three Boers and retaliatory attacks on groups of baKwena living in the Transvaal; Viljoen established that the culprits were subjects of Makopane’s Nzundza or Transvaal Ndebele in the Waterberg district. The borderland between the Transvaal and the baKwena remained intermittently unsafe for all, although peace, largely as a result of Viljoen’s efforts, was finally restored. For several decades, relations between the South African Republic and the independent baTswana merafe became what has been characterised as a ‘diplomatic game’ between the two leading figures, Setshele and Jan Viljoen, who has been portrayed as a peacemaker along the Marico frontier.27 There certainly is good reason to include a third player in Moiloa, who assumed the role of intercessor between the two men.
The Dimawe affair and its consequences was revealing to the more capable African leaders in the region such as Moiloa. It became evident that the trekkers were unable to bring the western Tswana chiefdoms under their control (or to expand in their direction) and that they were thus not as all-powerful as they at first appeared. In addition, in order to keep the important ‘hunters road’ to the north open, the trekkers had to rely on certain African allies. Moiloa, one such ally, realised he could buy some breathing space by offering support to the Boers when convenient. This mutually dependent relationship bears a strong resemblance to that which developed elsewhere in the Transvaal between factions of trekker and African society.28 Thus it was, for example, that negotiations between a number of African leaders and the Boers took place at Dinokana; that Moiloa acted as a messenger between them; and that he reported any incidents which might threaten the peace of the district. During the troubles between the South African Republic and Setshele’s baKwena, Moiloa and his entire council held meetings with Viljoen on his farm at Vergenoeg, where Moiloa offered ‘to make further enquiries into the rumours [of impending war] and to punish the guilty’.29 The extent of the support Moiloa was prepared to give the authorities is suggested by a statement he made in 1856 to Pretorius that ‘if a fly falls in the milk from my side I will take it out so you [Pretorius] can punish the culprit’.30 By adopting a cooperative position, Moiloa was in fact making himself indispensable to the Boers, and was later able to make certain demands on them.
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