In popular imagination, a powerful kgosi is a kgosi who provides kagiso for the morafe at large because he is perceived as being on good terms with the principal custodians of the morafe's moral order, the royal ancestorhood (badimo ya kgosi). A kgosi's authority – as the incumbent of the bogosi – thus springs to a significant extent from his exclusive access to the royal ancestorhood. Yet, I reiterate, it also depends on his actual ability to act with strength and determination to the benefit of the morafe as proof of ancestral support. In terms of Tswana cosmology, if he does well, he will, at his death and subsequent inclusion in the royal ancestorhood, add to the popular perceived strength of the ruling dynasty (see Gulbrandsen 1993b: 566ff.).
The preceding section illuminates how Tswana dikgosi attempted to amalgamate the expanding networks of power that enabled them to prevail as forceful rulers of a morafe that expanded in strength and scale. For example, the Bangwaketse extraordinarily powerful hero-king Makaba II features, even today, prominently in popular consciousness about the force vested in the ruling dynasty's ancestorhood. His great significance is currently most apparent in the symbolism in the royal kgotla of the hierarchical order of bogosi: the senior living descendants of the senior male line descending from each of his wives are, in ranked order according to the ranking of the wives, situated on the right-hand side of the kgosi in the royal kgotla, with the most senior descendant next to the kgosi.
Tswana dikgosi are not to be classified as ‘sacred kings’ (e.g. of the kind analyzed by de Heusch (1982) in Central African contexts). But their responsibility for their people's overall health, prosperity and welfare instilled them with major tasks that could not easily be taken care of solely through the stratagems of amalgamating and expanding networks of power. Their spiritual leadership is required for providing rain and preventing the influx of pests and plagues, depending on a range of ritual practices. That is, practices which are, on the one hand, directed towards satisfaction of the royal ancestorhood (see Chapter 4) and, on the other hand, involving deployment of powerful ‘medicine’, ideally provided by the strongest doctors/diviners (dingaka, singl. ngaka) available. They are often of foreign origin, reflecting a belief in their capacity to convey constructively highly potent, potentially dangerous spiritual forces prevailing beyond the limits of the morafe.
It is in the light of this obsession with empowerment and fortification by spiritual means as well as more tangible forces that we should understand why a number of Tswana dikgosi were, unlike many other African rulers, amongst the first to be baptized, engaging extensively with evangelizing missionaries who were often attracted to establish a church in the royal town and subsequently in outlying villages.8 David Livingstone of the London Missionary Society was the first to be stationed in what would become the Bechuanaland Protectorate. The Bakwena (see Map 1), amongst whom he worked and lived for about ten years from 1842, were at that time under repeated attack by the Boers, and missionaries were ostensibly helpful both with strategic information and arms (Sillery 1954: 110).
On the other hand, missionary requirements that the dikgosi impose radical changes in several important ritual and social practices9 gave raise to major conflicts at the royal centres (see Gulbrandsen 1993a: 50 ff). For example the missionaries obliged the dikgosi to abandon all but one of their wives, famously illuminated by the aftermath of Livingston's baptism of Kgosi Sechele I of Bakwena (r. 1831–92, see front cover of this book) in 1848 involving major conflicts with some of his senior dikgosana (see Livingstone 1857: 13ff.; Schapera 1960: 298ff.). Amongst the Bangwato, tension and conflicts emerged in 1860 when Kgosi Sekhoma – who was highly ambivalent, if not hostile, to the evangelizing missionaries – and his son and heir Khama became bitterly divided as the latter refused to participate in the initiation ceremony (bogwera) after having been baptized. There were violent confrontations around the royal town of Shoshong between Sekhoma's and Khama's supporters (see Illustration 2), before a process of reconciliation (tetlanyo) started and ultimately led to the enthronement of Kgosi Khama III (r. 1872, 1875–1923, see front cover of this book).10 However serious, these conflicts were in due course resolved; after the Khama had taken full control of the bogosi, he was never seriously challenged by anti-Christian or anti-missionary factions.
Illustration 2. ‘Battles outside Shoshong’ as rendered by LMS missionary John Mackenzie (1883: 246)
While it is true that the missionary-kgosi relationship could, at times, become tense and even conflict ridden, in some important respects the kgosi was the stronger party because the evangelizing missionaries depended on his permission to establish a church in his morafe. Usually, the dikgosi allowed only one missionary church to be established (Schapera 1970: 122), which they attempted to capture into their polity. That the dikgosi and their close retainers functioned as the church elderhood epitomizes the extent of their engagement. As I have argued elsewhere (Gulbrandsen 1993a: 49ff.), this meant that the missionary churches tended to take on the character of a ‘state church’. Landau (1995: 51) emphasizes the missionaries' dependency on the dikgosi, one of whom pointed out that ‘[i]n a very true sense Khama is head of the Church as well as head of the State’. Likewise, during a celebration in the royal kgotla, a prominent man asserted that Kgosi Khama ‘reigns through the Church. His reign is established by God’ (Landau 1995: 52). Echoing European notions of church-monarchy relations, Khama himself declared that ‘[t]he Lord Jesus Christ…made me a chief, and He knows how I try and have always tried to rule my people for their good’.11
By these constructions, several dikgosi hence attempted – to a great extent successfully – to add a new spiritual dimension to their respective bogosi. For example, when Kgosi Bathoen II of the Bangwaketse (r. 1928–1969) played the organ during church service, he was both asserting his divine connection and naturalizing Western idioms of eminence into Tswana hierarchical thought. This did not conflict with the kgosi's centrality in indigenous cosmology which was continuously reproduced in the discursive field of the kgotla – the locus of ancestral morality – into which also the missionaries were drawn, e.g. in the conduct of Christianized ritual practices, like praying for rain (see Gulbrandsen 1993a: 68–70).
The consequent close relationship between dikgosi and the evangelizing missionaries was the prevailing pattern amongst the Northern Tswana – to the extent that the missionary church assumed the character of being a ‘state church’. To a very limited extent ‘the spiritual aspect of the chieftainship’ drew a wedge between ‘religion and politics, chapel and chieftainship’ as Comaroff and Comaroff (1986: 4–5) report in the case of the Southern Tswana. But there were a few exceptions, as for example in the case of Kgosi Kgama who ran into a serious conflict with the missionary resident in the royal town that instigated the formation of a challenging faction (in 1894), entailing a major controversy which also involved the protectorate administration (Chirenje 1978: 35ff.). However, Khama prevailed as a Christian kgosi. Amongst the Bakwena a controversy over the initiation ceremony of bogwera also entailed factionalism and a major conflict at the royal centre that implicated the missionaries; I shall discuss this case in the following chapter.
In the case of the Bangwaketse, an indigenous LMS priest, Mothowagae, came acutely at odds with the resident missionary and he established an independent church – King Edward BaNgwaketse Church. This gave rise to a major divide amongst the Bangwaketse, manifesting itself in a serious conflict between Kgosi Bathoen I (r. 1889–1910, see front cover of this volume) who was attached to the missionary, and important dikgosana who supported Mothowagae. Their support was largely influenced by an emerging rivalry between Bathoen and his younger brother, Kwenaetsile. As I explain extensively elsewhere (Gulbrandsen
