reserves were, as Map 1 shows, of highly unequal size, territorially and population-wise. The vast areas denoted ‘crown lands’ were extremely sparsely populated by people living scattered in small villages, hamlets and mobile bands. The Tswana-centred native reserves, mainly located in the Eastern part of the Protectorate, were ethnically mixed to a very different extent, with the four largest ones – the Bangwato, the Bakwena, the Bangwakets and the Batawana – comprising vast groups of different origins.
The respective Tswana dikgosi were located in the royal towns of, respectively, Serowe (Bangwato), Molepolole (Bakwena), Kanye (Bangwaketse), Maun (Batawana), Mochudi (Bakgatla), Ramotswa (Malete) and Tlokweng (Batlokwa). The small area in the extreme southeast denoted Barolong farms serving as agricultural lands for the Tswana people of Barolong-Tshidi centred in the royal town of Mafeking on the South African side of the border.
Map 1: Sketch map of Bechuanaland Protectorate
(source: Schapera 1970)
Map 2: Map of the Republic of Botswana
(based on an original map courtesy of the Department of Surveys and Mapping, Government of Botswana, Gaborone)
By comparing Maps 1 and 2 it is readily apparent that there is considerable correspondence between the colonial and postcolonial administrative divisions. This is most evident in the case of Central (Ngwato), Kweneng, Kgatleng, Ngamiland (Tawana) and Southern (which includes the Ngwaketse and the Barolong farms). The Tswana royal towns serve as district administrative centres in all these cases. The Batlokwa and the Bamalete are combined into the small South-East District, with Ramotswa as the district centre. Moreover, the Tswana royal towns host the postcolonial administrative centres – Maun (Ngamiland), Serowe (Central), Molepolole (Kweneng), Kanye (Southern), Mochudi (Kgatleng) and Ramotswa (South-East). The additional, most sparsely populated districts of Kgalagadi, Ghazi, Chobe and North-East do not fall into this pattern.
1. Key contributions include Colclough and McCarthy 1980; Harvey and Lewis 1990; Hillbom 2008; Isaksen 1981; Siphambe et al. 2005; Thunberg-Hartland 1978.
2. See Edge and Lekorwe 1998; Good 1994, 1999a, 2002, 2008; Gulbrandsen 1996a; Gunderson 1970; Holm 1985, 1988; Holm and Molotsi 1989; Maundeni 2002; Mbabazi and Taylor 2005; Molutsi and Holm 1990; Parson 1984; Picard 1985; Samatar 1999; Somolekae and Lekorwe 1998; Sebudubudu 2005; Taylor 2003, 2005; Tsie 1996; Vengroff 1977.
3. Kenneth Good has, in a series of articles and a recent book (Good 2008) represented a major, critical voice of Botswana's political development; this has cost him his residence permit and consequently his professorship at the University of Botswana.
4. E.g. Hansen and Stepputat (2001), Das and Poole eds. (2004) and Friedman (2011).
5. There is, of course, a well-established anthropological practice to approach of political systems in ways that take care of the ‘the local’ while also addressing assemblages of power of a larger scale. What is often recognized as the seminal work on political anthropology – African Political Systems (Fortes and Evans-Pritchard eds. 1940) – provides early examples of such an effort, as do a range of subsequent studies, including Leach (1954), Barth (1959), Geertz (1980), Claessen and Skalnik eds. (1978), Valeri (1985), Kapferer (1988), Trouilot (1990) and Hansen (1999).
6. E.g. Bratton and van de Walle (1997: 61ff).
7. See Ergas 1987: 9ff.
8. The other countries in which traditional authorities were given official recognition at their independence include Nigeria and Malawi beside Botswana.
9. I am, to be sure, not suggesting that diamonds have caused calamities everywhere else in Africa; other cases in point where diamonds have no such consequences include Namibia and South Africa.
10. Ambiguities and ambivalence in the relationship between postcolonial state and indigenous authority figures are clearly reflected in von Rouveroy van Nieuwaal's (1999) comparative discussion of what he refers to as the ‘hybrid role of chieftaincy in postcolonial Africa’. They are, moreover, reflected in a number of case studies, including Cameroon (Awasom 2005), Ghana (Lentz 1998; Rathbone 2000), Mozambique (Bertelsen 2003; Buur and Kyed 2006), Nigeria (Vaughan 2006), South Africa (Oomen 2005), Tanzania (e.g. Bienen 1970), Uganda (Karlstrøm 1996), and Zimbabwe (e.g. Ladley 1991). These ambiguities are interestingly illuminated by Western Zambia, where there has been an opposite trend: Van Binsbergen first explained that ‘state and chieftainships are closely interlocking aspects of modern Zambia’ to the extent that ‘the incumbents of positions of the state…, in their effective exercise of popularly supported power, simply cannot do without chiefs’ (1987: 191–92). Later he related that ‘[w]hereas in the first decades of the postcolonial era they [the royal chiefs] effectively expanded into formal administrative and representative bodies of the modern state, this process has now been reversed, largely as a result of regional ethnic conflict’ (1999: 129).
11. Cf. Kyed and Buur 2007 for a recent, comprehensive review; see also van Dijk and van Rouveroy van Nieuwaal 1999.
12. Weber did not speak of ‘patrimonial legitimacy’, but patrimonial domination and rule (Weber 1978 1020ff), the ruler's authority being predominantly – but not necessarily entirely – sourced by ‘traditional grounds’ for claim to legitimacy (ibid.: 215). Hence, it does not make sense to insist that ‘patrimonialism’ is ‘not a regime type’ but ‘a kind of legitimacy’ (Pitcher et al. 2009: 149). After all, notions of ‘patrimonial state’, ‘patrimonial administration’ and ‘patrimonial domination’ – i.e. ‘regimes’ – are indeed apparent in Weber's texts (e.g. Weber 1978: 1013ff.).
13. See Comaroff and Comaroff 1991: ch.1; Crehan 2002: 98ff ; Eagleton 1991: 112f.; Scott 1990: 77ff.
14. At Botswana's independence in 1966, there were about 550,000 people in the country; in 1975 c. 700,000, increasing to c. 1.3 mill. in 1990 and c. 1.58 mill. in 2000.
Chapter 1
THE DEVELOPMENT OF TSWANA MERAFE AND THE ARRIVAL OF CHRISTIANITY AND COLONIALISM
On 3 October 2005 Botswana's state president, Festus Mogae, unveiled what is known as the Three Dikgosi Monument in the capital, Gaborone (see cover of this book). The monument commemorates Kgosi Sechele I of the Bakwena, Kgosi Bathoen I of the Bangwaketse and Kgosi Khama III of the Bangwato, renowned for their diplomatic mission to London in 1895. The president asserted in his speech, ‘During the early years of colonialism these three distinguished monarchs played a leading role in ultimately ensuring our territory's independent future, by preventing its administrative handover to neighbouring white settler regimes’. In such terms the three dikgosi were declared as the founding fathers of the nation, ostensibly preventing the subjection of their countries to Cecil Rhodes's settler regime and the racist regimes of Rhodesia and South Africa. At the time of unveiling, which amounted to no less than a state act of establishing the principal national monument, there were minority voices in Botswana which saw this as an(other) expression of Tswana domination (Parsons 2006: 680).
Neil Parsons (1998: 255) has suggested that the best way to grasp the significance of the dikgosi's journey in 1895 ‘is to ask what would have happened if Khama, Sechele, and Bathoen had not gone to Britain’. Obviously, there were no other leaders in the country at that time representing polities of sufficient strength to engage with the British in efforts to prevent annexation to one of the settler regimes. In the first part of this chapter I shall approach this issue by identifying major historical transformations by which these merafe grew progressively in strength