consequent reenforcement of the dominant position of the Tswana was gaining further momentum by the ever-more-present, larger world that impelled the dikgosi to secure societal control by means of legislation. Prior to legislation the dikgosi consulted extensively with their bagakolodi, dikgosana and the merafe at large in the context of the kgotla. Schapera's (1943b) extensive survey of the laws (melao) framed by Tswana rulers since the mid-eighteenth century shows how legislative activity intensified progressively during the colonial era. This development had a significant bearing on the dominant Tswana groups' exercise of authority in relation to subject communities as the legislative debates in the royal kgotla also included their leaders. Patently, they were brought into a discourse governed by the dominant Tswana which was leading up to the kgosi's decision, anchored in the Tswana royal ancestorhood.
The intensified exercise of Tswana domination in the discursive field of the kgotla was even more pervasive in the conduct of jurisprudence in the merafe's hierarchy of courts according to mekgwa le melao ya Setswana – the highly inclusive normative repertoire of ‘Tswana custom and law’ (see Schapera 1984; Comaroff and Roberts 1981: 70ff; Chapter 4, this volume). The gradual commoditization of the economy and, in particular, the extensive labour migrations to farms and mines in South Africa which took off with the exploitation of the diamond mines in Kimberley in the early 1870s (Schapera 1947a: 25), had a profound impact on family and community life and increased progressively the number of disputes and other conflicts. Such cases were usually initiated at the lowest court level – that of the descent-group kgotla. If unresolved there, the case was appealed to the ward level and, if still unresolved, ultimately to the royal kgotla where the kgosi made the final judgement.26 As I shall explain in Chapter 4, people's recognition of the kgosi as supreme judge follows from being perceived as the ultimate, living custodian of morality vested in the royal ancestorhood.
The everyday exercise of jurisprudence at all levels involved a mill of cultural assimilation that worked most powerfully in relation to immigrants distributed on wards in the royal towns. By the British instalment of the Tswana dikgosi as supreme authority of the various ‘reserves’, the Tswana royal kgotla also became the court of appeal for all lower-ordered courts, including those of outlying subject communities. Seen in retrospect, this practice had certainly a strong impact upon the establishment of Tswana domination in the sense that members of minority communities – without question – have become highly accustomed to bring their unresolved cases forward to one of the Tswana dikgosi (see Chapter 4). This goes even for people in Kgalagadi communities beyond the Tswana merafe in western Botswana who still – some thirty-five years after independence – call upon the kgosi of the Bangwaketse to judge their appeal cases. In view of the existentially important issues involved in many of these cases, minority communities' readiness to appeal their cases for judgement by a Tswana kgosi is obviously a major confirmation of how Tswana domination took hold during colonial times amongst people far beyond those incorporated in the royal towns.
In conclusion, the British wide-ranging authorization of the Tswana dikgosi to deal with all vital issues evolving amongst their respective subjects, perfectly matched the ways in which relations of authority are generated and reproduced amongst the Tswana: through the exercise of authoritative leadership in the discursive field of the kgotla under an imaginary cosmological guidance of the royal ancestorhood. Virtually obsessed by dispute settlements and very devoted to debating rules and notoriously concerned with social control and order, the British had at hand practices and structures that proved highly instrumental to implement principles of indirect rule. Just as the missionaries saw the kgotla as a secular field, the British had probably little idea about the extent to which their authorization of the dikgosi gave the latter prerequisites conducive to strengthening their authority and expanding the domination of the officially recognized Tswana merafe in accordance with their cosmological centrality.
Conclusion
The Tswana merafe of present Botswana is not a colonial creation; their strength, structure and practices were in many respects well established at the arrival of the British (see Comaroff and Comaroff 1991: ch. 4 for a corresponding account of the Southern Tswana within South Africa). I have explained with a particular focus upon the three major merafe – the Bakwena, the Bangwaketse and the Bangwato – that their growth in strength and scale resulted from transformations propelled by interaction with global and regional forces at succeeding historical stages. The external forces seem to have been so decisive that their growth in strength and scale might be seen as culminations of regional processes (see Gulbrandsen 1993b). As I have explained in this chapter, royal cattle herds that grew fast under the favourable ecological conditions and immense benefits from fur and ivory trade involved aggregation of vast symbolic and material wealth. By virtue of the ruler's agency these conditions proved highly conducive to major transformations by which the bogosi was fortified by the amalgamation of power structures at the centre.
In particular, the Tswana practices of ward organization, I have explained, were instrumental in capturing vast foreign communities, potentially challenging exterior forces, into mills of assimilation. Their consequent incorporation in the hierarchical order of the merafe was reflected in, on the whole, submitting to the overlordship of the Tswana ruling group. The capacity of these merafe to expand in strength and scale by capturing exterior communities into their sociopolitical structure is indicated by the fact that in due course, ‘about four-fifths of the Ngwato tribe…consists of what were originally foreign peoples, and among the Tawana the proportion is still greater’ (Schapera 1952: v).
Although this did not mean that all communities conquered or hosted were brought fully under the control of the Tswana merafe in focus here, their rulers were receiving the evangelizing missionaries and incorporated their churches in their respective merafe. They were granted monopoly to the exclusion of ‘independent’ African Christian movements. This venture added, in important respects, both a spiritual dimension to the dikgosi's authority and structures of societal control which meant they virtually assumed the character of ‘state church’, although there were occasionally rifts between missionaries and the kgosi. And despite the fact that the evangelizing missionaries required major shifts in some central ritual and societal practices that at the time set in motion processes that led to serious – but temporal – political divides in the royal centres, they were met with limited resistance (see Gulbrandsen 1993a, 2001). On the whole, they added strength to the bogosi, in spiritual as well as secular respects. In particular, the privileged missionary churches were highly instrumental for the Tswana ruling group's efforts to control people's spiritual life to prevent their engagement with all the African Christian movements in progress on the subcontinent.
In precolonial times the Tswana ruling groups managed only partially to capture outlying communities of different origins into their process of state formation. Brought under the British wing, they were able to fully assert their dominant position and to subject these communities to the Tswana hierarchies of authority. The immense significance of British overlordship to the selected Tswana dikgosi is underscored by the fact that any section of the royal families seceding from the royal centre and residing elsewhere within the ‘native reserve’ was by the British placed firmly under the authority of the dikgosi to whom the British had assigned supreme authority over the respective ‘native reserves’. There was thus no scope for creating an independent morafe or a second centre after the establishment of the colonial state. Although all the threats of annexation to one of the highly repressive, neighbouring European regimes were the apparent motivation of the three dikgosi's journeys to London to have the queen's protection asserted, the British empowerment of the dikgosi was probably also a significant factor underpinning their acceptance, if not appreciation, of being brought under the British wing.
Although
