Bechuanaland Protectorate

“ S. of the southern boundary of the Bechuanaland protectorate. The Madibi goldfields are some 10 m. south of the town. Mafeking is thus an important trading and distributing centre for Bechuanaland and the western Transvaal. Here are, too, the chief railway workshops between Kimberley and Bulawayo. The headquarters of the administration for the Bechuanaland protectorate are in the town. The chief buildings are the town-hall, Anglican church, Masonic temple, and hospital. ”

“ On 30 Sept. 1885, when a protectorate was formally proclaimed over Bechuanaland, Shippard was appointed administrator and chief magistrate of British Bechuanaland, and president of the land commission which was charged with determining the complicated claims to lands between the natives and concessionaires ”

“ In case there shall be a surplus for any territory, such surplus shall in the first instance be devoted to the repayment of any sums previously advanced by any other territory or by the Union Government to make good any deficiency in the revenue of such territory.
14. It shall not be lawful to alienate any land in Basutoland or any land forming part of the native reserves in the Bechuanaland Protectorate and Swaziland from the native tribes inhabiting those territories. ”

“ Mackenzie arrived in Bechuanaland as British Resident, for the purpose of giving effect to the newly proclaimed Protectorate which had been established over the country outside the south-western boundary of the Transvaal by the consent of the delegates from the Republic, who had visited London to obtain certain modifications of the Convention of Pretoria. An extraordinary state of things awaited the arrival of Mackenzie, for the volunteers in the service of the Bechuana chiefs, Moshette and Massou, had established two independent communities, the "republics" of Land Goshen and Stellaland. ”

“ Population about 10,000, half of whom are whites.
Bearer Company.—Company of Royal Army Medical Corps for the removal of the wounded from the field of action to the dressing station or hospital.
Bechuanaland.—A protectorate containing the territories of various native chiefs. The Crown Colony of British Bechuanaland was annexed to Cape Colony, November 1895. It is bounded on the north by the Motopo River, beyond which is the country known as the British Protectorate.
Belmont.—A station on the railway from Cape Town to Kimberley, 591 miles from the former and about 54 miles from the latter. ”

“ The aim of the different Governments has always been to keep the tribal organisation intact, and, after eliminating certain tribal laws and customs which are inconsistent with the ideas of white men, to give their sanction to the remainder. Basutoland is a Crown colony; the Transkeian territories are a native reserve; Bechuanaland is a native protectorate; in Rhodesia a number of native chiefs control large tracts of land under the Chartered Company’s administration. Elsewhere the tribes live in Government reserves, or in certain cases in locations situated on private land. ”

“ What he could do he did: he protected with scrupulous care not only the missionaries, but other Europeans at his kraal, and, after the war had broken out, he sent envoys to treat, two of whom, by a deplorable error, were killed by the advancing column of Bechuanaland imperial police, for as the Company's officers were not at the moment prepared, either in money or in men, for a conflict, the imperial government sent a force northward from Bechuanaland to co-operate with that which the Company had in Mashonaland. ”

“ He remained in the country for nearly a year arranging for its permanent pacification and government, and as a result of his occupation, on the 30th September 1885, all the territory south of the Molopo River was declared to be British territory, and made into a quasi crown colony, the entire extent of land, including the districts ruled over by Khama, Sechele, and Gasitsive, being about 160,000 square miles in area. I believe that the new colony of British Bechuanaland is proving a very considerable success. Every provision has been made for native wants, and its settlement goes on apace. ”

“ The Bechuana inhabit, for the most part, towns of considerable size, containing from 5000 to 40,000. Politically they live under a tribal despotism limited by a council of elders, the chief seldom exercising his individual authority independently, though the extent of his power naturally depends on his personality. ”

“ Of these four chiefs Montsioa and Mankorane sought the protection of the Imperial Government, while Moshette and Massou acknowledged the sovereignty of the Transvaal. European volunteers or freebooters who would be rewarded for their services by grants of land, assisted each of the four chiefs. At this juncture the Imperial Government changed its policy of administration in relation to the natives of Bechuanaland, and the result was that the High Commissioner of the Cape became supreme chief of the natives outside the Republic and the territories of foreign powers. ”

“ This isolated action of the Bakhatla Chief and people in a remote corner of the Empire, on the boundaries of the late Boer Republic, had its moral and material value. The Boers, who virtually owned the whole of Bechuanaland to the south, except Mafeking town, found that it would pay them better to adopt a friendlier attitude towards the other Bechuana tribes. Thereby a Dutch Field Cornet pronounced all the Bechuana Chiefs as the original Afrikanders — with the exception of Lentsue of the Bakhatla, and Montsioa of the Barolong in Mafeking. ”

“ Partially civilized Hottentots still live grouped together in their kraals and are members of Christian churches. The Bechuana hold their own in several centers; one is in Basutoland, west of Natal, where a number of tribes were welded together under the far-sighted Moshesh into a modern and fairly well civilized nation. In the north part of Bechuanaland are the self-governing Bamangwato and the Batwana, the former ruled by Khama, one of the canniest of modern rulers in Africa.
Meantime, in Portuguese territory south of the Zambesi, there arose Gaza, a contemporary and rival of Chaka. ”

“ Great Britain does not go very far back into the history of the native tribes of Bechuanaland. We are the later agents of a new civilisation, but we have yet to undo many wrongs to the lawful possessors of this proud heritage, to adjust many intricate questions, and to grapple, without fear and hesitation, with the problems which confront us—problems upon which it is surely not too much to say the effectual solidarity and stability of this great African Empire depends. ”

“ Upington and Sprigg, members of the Cape Government, hastened to Bechuanaland to effect a settlement before the arrival of Sir Charles Warren's force. This settlement, though it might have been agreeable to the fillibusters and the anti-Imperialists generally, was disallowed by Her Majesty's Government as unsatisfactory, and Sir Charles Warren was ordered to occupy Bechuanaland. This he accordingly did, taking Mr. Mackenzie with him, very much against the will of the anti-English party, and, be it added, of Sir Hercules Robinson. Indeed, if we may accept Mr. ”

“ But, when the so-called passion for independence became an aggressive passion for territorial acquisition, and the love for license to do as he liked with his own colored population was lost sight of in a widely manifested desire to acquire control over outside native tribes, the issue became an Imperial one, and raids upon Basutoland, Bechuanaland, Zululand, Mashonaland and Tongaland marked the direct pathway to present developments. ”

“ Many of these Bechuanas are rich in cattle, sheep, and goats. They have their cattle-posts away in the bush, where the stock is looked after, cows milked, and once or twice a week a pack-ox is loaded up with skins of milk and taken to the kraal for use. These “vieh-posts” are in charge of their slaves, called Vaalpans. They are the Bushmen of the country kept in subjection by the Bechuana tribe, and are a very harmless and quiet people, the only drawback to their liberty being they cannot leave their masters’ service; otherwise they have full liberty of action. ”

“ With respect to the question of the future status of Bechuanaland, Swaziland and Basutoland, we are disturbed by the slow pace of political, constitutional, economic and social progress of our fellow Africans in these territories It is incumbent upon Great Britain to apply the same wisdom it had applied to its former colonies in Africa and Asia and likewise to speed up the political and constitutional advance of the African inhabitants of these territories so as to assure their early accession to independence. ”

“ In Bechuanaland one great personality dominates the social horizon. Khama, king of the Ba-Mangwato nation, next to the Ba-Rotse the most powerful section of the Be-Chuana, may be described as a true father of his people, a Christian legislator in the better sense of the term, and an enlightened reformer even from the secular point of view. ”

“ And besides all these, offers of service also came from the Zulu chiefs and headmen, from Chief Dalindyebo of the Tembus, Marelana of the Pondos, and from Griffiths of Basutoland. In Bechuanaland, the veteran Chief Khama and other Bechuana chiefs offered the services of native warriors as scouts in German South West Africa, and the Swazi princes offered a Swazi impi, besides undertaking to help in any other manner, as they did in the campaign against Sekukuni in the 'seventies. ”

“ Whether it is paramount to any other or not, it is whether we shall be responsible for the government of the Philippines with the sovereignty and authority which enable us to guide them to regulated liberty, law, safety and progress, or whether we shall be responsible for the forcible and arbitrary government of a minority without sovereignty and authority on our part and with only the embarrassment of a protectorate which draws us into their troubles without the power of preventing them. ”

“ Control of Africa meant for her a big step toward world conquest. Paul Kruger, President of the Transvaal Republic, which touched the southern edge of this unclaimed domain, saw in it the logical extension of his dominions.
Down at Capetown was Rhodes, dreaming of a Greater Britain and determined to block the Kaiser and Kruger. It was largely due to his efforts while a member of the Cape Parliament that Britain was persuaded to annex Bechuanaland as a Crown Colony. ”

“ In the south-west was a huge area of which no actual annexation had been proclaimed, yet to the mind of our statesmen amply secured by being understood to be within the "sphere of British influence." Between it and the Transvaal Republic lay another unprotected area stretching across the Kalahari so-called "desert" and including Bechuanaland, the happy hunting-ground of missionaries and Matabele raiders. South-east of the Transvaal, stretching to the coast, was another unoccupied region comprising Tongaland and part of Zululand, with an excellent harbour on the east coast at St Lucia Bay. ”

“ On September 30 it became what it has since remained--a British possession, safeguarding the route into the interior and holding apart the Transvaal Boers from the contact with the Germans of Damaraland which could hardly fail to produce an explosion. The importance of the latter fact has already been made clear. The significance of the former will be apparent when we remember that Mr. Rhodes, in his later and better-known character of Empire-builder, was able from Bechuanaland as a base to extend the domain of his Chartered Company up to the southern end of Lake Tanganyika in the year 1889. ”

“ Montsioa fought for his rights, but the British Government lay torpid for some time. Finally it was goaded into action by a proclamation issued by Kruger annexing the territory to the Transvaal. He soon found it advisable to cancel the proclamation, and in 1885 the Republics of Goshen at Mafeking and of Stellaland at Vryburg were effaced by an expedition led by Sir Charles Warren. Bechuanaland was again annexed by proclamation, but on this occasion to the British Empire. ”

“ The colonies of British Bechuanaland and Basutoland were now taken into the customs union existing between the Orange Free State and Cape Colony. Pondoland, another native territory, was added to the colony in 1894, and the year was marked by the Glen Grey Act, a departure in native policy for which Rhodes was chiefly responsible. ”

“ They live chiefly by husbandry and cattle-rearing, and they work with some skill in iron, copper, ivory, and skins. They were led to seek British protection owing to the encroachments of the Boers. The southern portion of their territory was first placed under British protection in 1885, and subsequently the whole Bechuana country up to the Zambezi was annexed. In 1895 the [445] southern portion (then a Crown colony) was united to the Cape Colony; the remainder is still a protectorate partly under native chiefs. ”

“ The Bechuanas could never understand the changes which took place in their commandants. 'Why, one can never know who is the chief among these Boers. Like the Bushmen, they have no king—they must be the Bushmen of the English.' The idea that any tribe of men could be so senseless as not to have an hereditary chief was so absurd to these people, that in order not to appear equally stupid, I was obliged to tell them that we English were so anxious to preserve the royal blood that we had made a young lady our chief. ”