as Makgalagadi, who were mostly scattered among small hamlets, there were groups which gathered under the leadership of a kgosana and formed Tswana-style settlements, centring on compact villages divided into lekgotla.
I lived for a year in such a village in southeastern Bangwaketse that had been established at a small lake in the southern part of the ‘reserve’ and brought into the political order of the Bangwaketse at the time of Kgosi Seepapitso III (c. 1915). In 1946 his son, Kgosi Bathoen II, moved the people of this community some 15 kilometres towards the north and placed it under the authority of one of his dikgosana who were located there in a separate ward with five descent groups from different wards in the royal town. They were, without question, compelled by the kgosi to move in order to give the kgosi's representative a substantial support group. The group of people brought from the south were identified by the Bangwaketse of the royal town as X; their actual name I do not relate for reasons that will be obvious shortly. This group met this reorganization with considerable ambivalence, if not resistance.17 On the one hand, it linked them more closely to the hierarchical order of the Bangwaketse, thus clearly ranking them above those who were, as one of their elders put it, still living in the bush. Moreover, the position of their leader (to whom I was able to speak shortly before he died in 1977) was strengthened within his own community, and he asserted that he worked well with Kgosi Bathoen's kgosana. On the other hand, the Bangwaketse group from the royal centre – constituting the senior ward in the village – never accepted X as Bangwaketse ‘proper’.18 When I came to the community thirty years after it was established, there had been – with one exception – no intermarriage between the X and those who claimed to be bona fide Bangwaketse. Yet the X insisted to me that they were Bangwaketse ‘just like everybody else in the village’, and they made every effort to appear indistinguishable from them. The story of the X offers a perfect illustration of how the dominant Tswana group had inculcated their holistic ontology of an all-embracing hierarchical order – there was nothing else to aspire for than belonging to the dominant Tswana.
Similarly I have come across other groups of ‘Bakgalagadi’ Tswana in a number of small provincial communities in Eastern Botswana who were hiding their perceived stigmatized identity and asserting their belonging to the dominant Tswana (see Solway 1994; Chapter 5 below). This aspect came out in an intriguing way at Botswana's independence when the ruling group of the postcolonial state embarked on constructing a ‘nation’ principled upon nondiscrimination and other virtues of equality (see following chapter). It became a matter of offence that could be prosecuted to address minorities by the degrading prefix of ‘Ma’, as in Makgalagadi and Masarwa, the stigmatising Setswana label of Makalaka for Kalanga, or even by the use of their distinct group name if they themselves perceived it humiliating, as in the case of the X above. This and many other communities insisted on being identified by the name of the morafe that claimed ownership to the territory in which they were living.19 I was told by people who identified themselves as Bangwaketse proper in the village in which I was living that if ‘if you call them X, they might hit you or take you to court!’ Tswana hegemony had obviously been forcefully at work. I shall pursue the issues of domination and pressure for assimilation in Chapter 5.
While many groups thus submitted rather quietly to Tswana overlordship, there were some occasions on which ambivalence, tension and uneasiness turned into open conflicts and confrontation. Although not so many in number, they are significant because they show that the dikgosi of the colonial era began to rely less on amicable incorporation and more on coercion. A case in point is the Kalanga, living scattered in a number of small communities in a region of northeast Botswana into which the Bangwato expanded. Werbner has compared the Kalanga to the Tswana, describing both as ‘super-tribes’: having ‘neither political community nor territory, [they] emerged as the broader category of culturally related people, widely spread in tribes and their diasporas, both rural and urban’ (Werbner 2002b: 733). In addition, both contained peoples of diverse origins from the outset (e.g. Ramsay 1987: 74). Sociopolitically, however, the Kalanga and the Tswana appear to have differed radically from one another. During the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the northern Tswana were organized in increasingly centralized polities while at the same time expanding their territories; Kalanga-speaking groups by contrast formed small ‘headmanships’ scattered throughout the northeast of present-day Botswana.20 In the Tswana manner of expansion, these settlements were incorporated into the Ngwato morafe in the latter part of the nineteenth century as a result of refugee movement and conquest.21 They thus came under the rule of the Ngwato kgosi Khama III (r. 1872/5–1923), who accommodated them peacefully for a long period of time (van Binsbergen 1994: 675) and included their leaders in his government.
A major shift came with the regency of Tshekedi (r. 1926–1949). Whereas Kgosi Khama III had allowed the Kalanga a measure of self-government, Tshekedi installed his own retainers as governors of the region and diminished significantly the existing Kalanga authority figures. This move initiated a protracted struggle, during which the Bangwato ruling group used considerable violence in their efforts to subjugate the Kalanga. Indeed, their treatment of the Kalanga was so harsh that at times British support was given only reluctantly (see Ramsay 1987: 77ff.). The British saw all too well that continued resistance by the substantial Kalanga minority22 within the Bangwato-controlled morafe threatened the interests of the colonial state and, especially, their practice of indirect rule.
The shift by the Tswana ruling groups to exercise more coercion while under British protection, engendered resentment among many subject communities. The vast majority, however, were too small and weak to react by resistance.23 Even the larger ones reluctantly submitted to Tswana rule – for example the BaKaa, who were located in the ‘native reserve’ ruled by the Tswana community of BaKgatla (baga-Kgafela). Kooijman (1978: 13–14) explains that ‘[a]lthough they felt resentment, the Kaa feared the consequences of ignoring the Kgatla chief's call too much to demur openly’, except on one occasion in 1927 when a young man, Phesudi, was installed as their leader. During the ceremony he wore a leopard skin, a true symbol of supreme authority, and expressed his intent of claiming ‘full independence from the BaKgatla’. However, shortly afterwards Phesudi died, and this was perceived as an occult attack effected by the personal involvement of the BaKgatla kgosi: ‘to the Kaa it was a stern warning that they were to obey Kgatla authority or otherwise suffer consequences of dire misfortune’ (Kooijman 1978: 15).
These events substantiate the growing strength of the ruling Tswana communities during the colonial era. Calls for British intervention were required only in a few special cases such as the Kalanga-Ngwato conflict mentioned above. Another such case involved the BaKgatla-baga-Mmanaana in the Bangwaketse ‘native reserve’. This large Kgatla community had moved around the region for many decades without being able to gain control of a separate territory. Finally they were taken in by the Bangwaketse and installed at Moshupa some fifty kilometres north of the Bangwaketse royal town (Kanye). A series of conflicts between their leader and Kgosi Bathoen II of the Bangwaketse, initiated in the early 1900s, culminated with the senior section of the Bakgatla ruling dynasty and many followers being exiled in 1933 to the neighbouring Kwena ‘native reserve’ when the British intervened with physical force (see Schapera 1942a: 21 and 25, cf. 1942b; Tselaesele 1978: 35). This particular intervention was no doubt due to the tenacity of the Kgatla leader at the time. However, the progressive polarization that brought the relationship to the brink of physical violence (Tselaesele 1978: 40) also reflects a growing tendency towards authoritarianism among Tswana rulers (see the following chapter).
A third case is that of the Babirwa whose leader tried, in the 1920s, to challenge the authority of Kgosi Khama III to remove them from their area, the background being that Khama had given this area to the British for sale of land to white farmers. The Babirwa resisted, only to experience that a Bangwato regiment (mophato) forced them out of their area and put fire to their houses. Their subsequent efforts to bring the case to court were jeopardized by the British
