Bechuanaland

“ These proceedings opened the eyes of the British government to the policy upon which the South African Republic had entered—to annex Bechuanaland and close the way of British communication [183] with regions still farther north in which the nation had become interested. To check these designs in time, a military expedition under Sir Charles Warren entered Bechuanaland toward the end of 1884, expelled the Africanders without bloodshed, and proclaimed the whole region a crown colony under the name of British Bechuanaland. This territory was annexed to Cape Colony in 1895. ”

“ BECHUANA, a South African people, forming a branch of the great Bantu-Negroid family. They occupy not only Bechuanaland, to which they have given their name, and Basutoland, but are the most numerous native race in the Orange River Colony and in the western and northern districts of the Transvaal. It seems certain that they reached their present home later than the Zulu-Xosa [Kaffir] peoples who came down the east coast of the continent, but it is probable that they started on their southward journey before the latter. ”

“ When Bechuanaland was invaded by the Republican forces at the outbreak of the Boer War, the British Police Force in the Bechuanaland Protectorate, finding themselves hopelessly isolated in that far-away region, decided to evacuate Gaberones and effect a junction with Colonel Plumer's force which was then coming south from Rhodesia. The British Commissioner, before leaving Gaberones, advised the Native Chiefs of the Southern Protectorate to make the best terms possible with the invaders until the Transvaal Republic was conquered by the advancing British Army. ”

“ British Bechuanaland consists of vast tracts which have been set apart for the Bechuana clans, large sections occupied by European farmers, and a great extent of country still unoccupied. [Pg 264]
The country is well adapted for grazing grounds, or cattle runs. Agriculture is a success only in limited localities, owing to the scarcity of surface water. With the exception of salt, no mineral wealth has been discovered, hence there is nothing to attract the fortune seeker or adventurer to the country. ”

“ 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. ”

“ We may dismiss the Crown colony of Bechuanaland with a few words. It differs little from any [7] other such colony in South Africa, and the natives and their chiefs have little or no identity left to them. Even the once famous Montsoia, chief of the Ba-rolongs of Mafeking, has sunk into the lowest depths of servile submission; he receives a monthly pension of 25l., which said sum he always puts under his pillow and sleeps upon; he is avaricious in his old age, and dropsical, and surrounded by women who delight to wrap their swarthy frames in gaudy garments from Europe. ”

“ 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. ”

“ If we exclude the arid tracts of Bechuanaland, these Locations appear to have been granted on such a small scale that each of them got so overcrowded that much of the population had to go out and settle on the farms of white farmers through lack of space in the Locations. Yet a majority of the legislators, although well aware of all these limitations, and without remedying any of them, legislate, shall we say, "with its tongue in its cheek" that only Natives may buy land in Native Locations. ”

“ Of one British territory outside the two colonies, viz., Basutoland, I shall have to speak fully hereafter. A second, Bechuanaland, including the Kalahari Desert, is of vast extent, but slender value. It is a level land lying entirely on the plateau between 3,000 and 4000 feet above the sea, and while some of its streamlets drain into the Limpopo, and so to the Indian Ocean, others flow westward and northward into marshes and shallow lakes, in which they disappear. One or two, however, succeed, in wet seasons, in getting as far as the Orange River, and find through it an outlet to the sea. ”

“ As this is along the great trade route to the interior of the country, it thus brings a large area under the protection of the British flag.
At a distance considerably north of Bechuanaland lies a tract under British protection, and named, not inappropriately, the British Protectorate.
All white people within its borders are under the guidance of magistrates appointed by the high commissioner. The native tribes, in their relations to each other, are all under the control of the same government; yet the rule of each chief over his tribe is seldom, if ever, subject to interference. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It is built on the open veld, at an elevation of 4194 ft., by the banks of the Upper Molopo, is 9 m. W. of the western frontier of the Transvaal and 15 m. 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ After the Bechuanaland Rebellion, Sir Gordon Sprigg, then Premier of Cape Colony, referred in a public despatch to the warning he had addressed to the people of Pondoland: "If they were disobedient and raised their hand in rebellion, they would be swept from the country and other people would be planted upon the land." ”

“ 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. ”

“ The principal main transport road from the Cape Colony and Diamond-Fields runs direct to Taungs in a north-east direction to Maceby’s and then north, which has by the late Convention with the Transvaal been preserved. There are no very lofty hills in this part of Bechuanaland. The principal ones are those at Kuruman, those near Taungs and Swaatberg. The average elevation is about 4600 feet above the sea-level. The northern portion is more open, extensive plains and forests of the mimosa tree; and has many brack-pans, where in the summer wild geese and ducks come in great numbers. ”

“ 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. ”

“ A primitive pastoral people, they found themselves isolated, surrounded—'shut in a kraal for ever,' as Kruger is reported to have said,—while the stranger was growing in wealth and numbers within their gates. Expansion of territory, once the dream of the Transvaal Boers, as their incursions into Bechuanaland, into Zululand, and the attempted trek into Rhodesia, all testify, was becoming daily less practicable. ”

“ The pursuit of the military Bantu is directed to the successful cultivation of a bare sufficiency of corn and cattle, and he pays little attention to anything which is beyond his immediate requirements. The Kaffirs, the Zulus, and the Matabele Zulus are among the warlike tribes of this dark-skinned race; but the chief seats of the industrial tribe are Bechuanaland and Basutoland, and it is with the peaceful Bechuanas, with whom are identified the Baralongs, that we propose to deal. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Chamberlain said he would speak in my place, and did so.
'May 26th or 27th. We decided at the Cabinet to keep Basutoland.
'June 13th. As to South Africa, the Colonial Office told us that they hoped to induce the Cape to take Bechuanaland. A little later on the whole of their efforts were directed in the opposite direction— namely, to induce the Cape to let us keep Bechuanaland separate from the Cape. It was announced that Reay had accepted the Transvaal Mission.
'June 23rd. We decided that Reay was not to go out, because the
Transvaal people preferred to come to us. ”

“ This process of disintegration has been going on for a century, and the result is a clearly marked division. We have the tribal natives, who are still more or less strictly under the rule of a chief, and subject to tribal laws sanctioned and enforced by the Governments. The native population of the Transkeian territories in Cape Colony, such as the Pondos, the Amaxosas, and the Tembus; Bechuanaland, with the people of Khama, Bathoen, Sebele, and Linchwe; Basutoland; Zululand; the northern and eastern parts of the Transvaal under such chiefs as Magata, ’Mpefu, and Siwasa; Swaziland ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ These are the slaves of the Bechuanas. Those natives (the Bechuanas) who come down to the diamond fields to work, every one of them has a master, and twenty or thirty of them have to stay in those dry countries and hunt ostriches for their masters. Going farther from south to north one meets, north of the Bakwenas, two tribes of the Bamangwato—the Eastern and the Western Bamangwato, or as I call the Eastern according to their capital, Shoshong, the Shoshong Banmangwato, and the Western ones, which I call, on account of the residence of their king lying near to the Lake N’Gami, Bamangwatos. ”