leader being banished from the protectorate (see Ramsay 1987: 64ff.). This case illuminates that the British were quick to support the dikgosi when harsh physical violence was seen necessary, but there were very few occasions of this kind.
The dikgosi's heavy-handed behaviour was not only a matter of imposing their will on the subject communities within the merafe. It also owed a great deal to the authoritarian style and structure of the colonial state, which made the dikgosi responsible for extracting taxes and enforcing British rules and regulations. These were responsibilities they willingly took on since they were given a percentage of the tax collected. Imposed colonial state rules and regulation only reinforced their dominant position in relation to subject communities (see following chapter). Although these measures, perceived as oppressive, originated from the colonial state, subject communities reacted against the dikgosi rather than the British. In fact, the Bakgatla-baga-Mmanaana, the Bakaa, the Bayee and others wanted to eliminate Tswana kgosi domination by obtaining a direct relationship with the colonial power. The British always refused to accept such requests.
In conclusion, under the circumstances of the colonial state, the repressive character of the dominant Tswana intensified. Despite subject communities' resistance, the Tswana rulers prevailed because they could always appeal for British support and were provided violent measures if required. A multitude of – often tacit – repressive practices that developed during colonial times have, as we shall see in Chapter 5, been sustained in important respects under postcolonial conditions and have become integral to the modern state structures of social control. However, under these circumstances, I shall explain, major conflicts are emanating from contradictions of, on the one hand, Tswana domination and repressive practices in relation to minority communities, and, on the other hand, the modern state's virtues of equality and liberalism.
Reinforcing of the Tswana Merafe within the Colonial State
That the domination of the Tswana merafe triggered minority protest as late as some thirty years after independence, I take as an indication of how forcefully Tswana hegemony has been working at all times. The ways in which these protests manifested and were countered by agents of the state are a major issue of Chapter 5. Here I am concerned with the ways in which the dominant position of the ruling communities of the Tswana merafe recognized by the British was reinforced during colonial times by virtue of extensive delegation of power. The British had after all promised at the inception of the protectorate that the selected Tswana dikgosi 'might be left to govern their own tribes in their own fashion'.24
Always wanting to run the protectorate at minimal cost, the British established a very small colonial administration, headed by a resident commissioner whose office was in fact located outside the country – in the township of Mafeking, some twenty kilometres beyond the South African border. (The resident commissioner was referring to the British High Commissioner residing in Cape Town.) This meant that the day-to-day government of much of the country was left with the dikgosi and their respective ‘tribal administration’. The British authorized, I recall, the dikgosi to govern all the peoples (except Europeans) in their ‘reserves’. Moreover, in several official statements (see Schapera 1970: 51–52) the British asserted from the outset that the colonial administration should ‘respect any native laws or customs’ regulating ‘civil relations’. The secretary of state actually instructed the high commissioner to ‘confine the exercise of authority and the application of law, as far as possible, to whites, leaving Native Chiefs and those living under their tribal authority almost entirely alone’ (Schapera 1970: 52, italics added). When the colonial administration wanted to establish laws and other regulations, the high commissioner had the power of doing so in the form of ‘Proclamations’. Crucially, however, the British rather preferred to encourage the dikgosi to frame laws for their subjects (see Schapera 1943b: 9; 1970: 53). It is true, as we shall see in the following chapter, that around 1930 the British took a more active and critical line in relation to the dikgosi, being worried about their ostensibly ever-more-autocratic style of rule. Nevertheless, throughout the colonial era the British depended much upon the executive power of the dikgosi in relation to the population within their respective ‘reserves’ and continued to feature as authorities with wide-ranging executive powers.
The increasing array of activities undertaken by the dikgosi and their respective governments is reflected in systematic written records of their decision making. For example, Kgosi Seepapitso III of the Bangwaketse (r. 1910–1916) compiled comprehensive accounts that later on were published by Schapera (1947b) and examined by Roberts (1991: 173). Roberts has identified the various fields in which dikgosi exercised their authority, including: ‘the agricultural cycle; control over access to agricultural land; the regulation of population densities in residential areas; the regulation of family life; the management of education; the organisation of public works such as roads and construction, and the eradication of noxious weeds; attempts to control Christian sects; regulation of the activities of the Ngwaketse medico-religious specialists (dingaka); control of money-lending; and the management of stray cattle’.
As this suggests, many of the dikgosi readily operated as agents of Western modernity, extensively confirmed by Schapera's (1970) ‘Tribal Innovators’. In the dikgosi's effort to conduct the administration of their respective ‘reserves’, they also developed a small administration, staffed with clerks who, amongst others, made written records of political decisions and court judgements. This was, however, not a radical break with the past. As Wylie (1990: 55) states, the northern Tswana dikgosi changed to ‘govern with the aid of salaried bureaucrats who were accountable to him alone’. The point is that the dikgosi could only operate powerfully in the interest of the British (and themselves) by maintaining their authority in relation to the morafe. This meant that they had to exercise authority continuously in the context of the kgotla and cultivate networks of political support amongst powerful dikgosana and other authority figures. A kgosi who repeatedly acted in disagreement with his subjects would not last long (see Chapter 6). That the two most prominent indigenous rulers during the colonial era – Kgosi Bathoen II of the Bangwaketse and the regent Tshekedi of the Bangwato – developed particularly forceful leaderships did not depend upon British support alone. As we shall see in the following chapter, the relationship between these two dikgosi and the British was at times ridden by serious conflicts and was always ambivalent.
Of course, it is questionable the extent to which the popular meetings in the kgotla (lebatla, pitso) under the presidency of the kgosi- with a highly inclusive assemblage of the adult male sections of the population (see Schapera 1984: 82) – were operated in a ‘democratic’ way in a modern, Western sense (see Chapter 6). It is nevertheless crucial that vast sections of the population were regularly gathered in the royal kgotla and exposed to the exercise of kgosi authority as the apex of the hierarchical structure of royal councillors (bagakolodi, singl. mogakolodi) and dikgosana25 of all the wards comprising the morafe. This exercise of authority was, to missionaries and other Westerners, readily conceived as mundane, secular practices of public debate ended by the kgosi's concluding statement. But, as I shall explain in Chapter 4, the process itself – in the discursive field of the kgotla – had significance far beyond resolving pragmatically the issue at hand in a straight forward Western sense. In brief, the debates in this discursive field – which often go on for hours and even days – ritualized the rich symbolism underpinning the hierarchical order of the merafe. They hence asserted the eminence of the Tswana ruling group surrounding its apex – the kgosi – who, as the incumbent of the bogosi and the principal custodian of ancestral morality, gave this particular hierarchy a cosmological anchorage.
