Some of these groups tried to evade the orbit of the dominant Tswana by escaping to the fringe of the reserve or even beyond. This was particularly the case amongst the Bakwena, whose central power was eakened as a consequence of a long-term dynastic dispute (see Chapter 2). This is illuminated by what was reported in ‘law-less’ Bakgalagadi community in the extreme western part of Kweneng (see Makgala 2010). Yet this tendency of evading the colonial state and the dominant Tswana merafe represented no potentiality of rhizomic forces and, on the whole, it represented only a marginal problem from the point of view of their point of view
24. BPP C.4588, Stanley to Robinson, 13 Apr. 1885, quoted in Ramsay 1998: 68.
25. A mogakolodi might or might not be a kgosana, vice versa.
26. The British opened up for further appeal to their district commissioner, stationed in each of the royal towns, but this option was very rarely used.
Chapter 2
TSWANA CONSOLIDATION WITHIN
THE COLONIAL STATE
Development of a Postcolonial State Embryo
In view of the ways in which the British established supremacy as a rather distant power, it is not surprising that the peoples of the Bechuanaland Protectorate did not develop any strong notion of colonial power as repressive. Of course, the imposition of tax and levies and other requirements were received negatively. Yet many of my old friends and acquaintances on labour migration to South Africa (which was very substantial for almost a hundred years, until the mid-1980s1) recalled a strong contrast between the protectorate and the increasingly repressive, racist regime of South Africa. This difference finds one of its most important expressions in the fact that while peoples of the surrounding states had to engage in violent freedom fights to get rid of the respective racist regimes, the peoples of the protectorate received independence long before the others in a highly smooth and nonviolent way. The colonial state faded out in 1966 as nonviolently as it had captured the population into its structures of domination some eighty years earlier.
This disparity illuminates that, as John Comaroff (2002: 126) reminds us, there is nothing like the colonial state in Africa: ‘colonial regimes contrasted widely’. He argues that instead of conceiving such regimes in terms of ‘generic properties’, we should envisage ‘an ensemble of generative processes’ (2002: 124). Such a processual approach will help to identify, with a much higher degree of specificity, the diversity of colonial regimes. Within the present limits I shall pursue this approach from the point of view that the colonial state in the Bechuanaland Protectorate was not reducible to the British Administration, although it relied, as we have seen, on some dominant coercive powers under its command. Rather, the colonial state should be seen as an assemblage of interrelated regimes in which the officially recognized dikgosi held a key position.
As shown in the preceding chapter, each of the merafe might be seen as a hierarchy of regimes, centred in the respective lekgotla, with the royal office at its apex. The royal office was in turn subject to the British Administration. However, the latter depended on the chain of command vested in the hierarchies of authority within the merafe. At the same time the former depended on the administration should their authority ever be seriously challenged. In what follows I shall first pursue the argument initiated in the preceding chapter: that on the whole this situation had the effect of strengthening the structures of authority relations and domination within each of the merafe recognized by the British. In fact I shall identify significant processes that worked to amalgamate the power structures of the merafe – structures that proved, as we shall see in the following chapter, also to be very sustainable under the conditions of the modern, postcolonial state of Botswana.
However, this is not to say that consent and harmony prevailed throughout the eighty years of the protectorate's existence. In this chapter I shall explain how conflicts and tensions evolved both between the dikgosi and the British and between the dikgosi and their subjects. These conflicts and tensions developed greatly under the impact of Western modernity and raise a major conundrum: under these circumstances, how could a quite unified group of people emerge, often at odds with the dikgosi, which was capable of negotiating decolonization and establishing firm political control over the postcolonial state? Furthermore, I want to answer this question: how could such a group, strong adherents of Western liberalism, the market economy and electoral democracy, succeed in curtailing the powers of the (mostly resistant) rulers of the Tswana merafe and incorporating them into the structures of the postcolonial state, far more tightly and powerfully than the British had ever attempted to do?
Colonial State Transformations: Conflicts and Mutual Dependency between the Dikgosi and the Colonial Power
It is true that with the establishment of British overlordship the rulers of the Northern Tswana merafe lost their absolute sovereignty, since some limitations were placed on their judicial and legislative powers. Nevertheless, Schapera has asserted that ‘the events of 1895–96 greatly enhanced the personal powers of traditional rulers in the Bechuanaland Protectorate’ (quoted in Parsons 1998: 254). The long-term significance of these developments has also been noted by Gillett, who maintains that ‘under the Protectorate the Tswana chiefs [dikgosi] enjoyed almost unchallenged power’ (Gillett 1973: 180).2 Such statements reflect the British policy of leaving the dikgosi to govern their respective merafe with minimal interference until some forty-five years after the establishment of the colonial state.
The extensive practice of indirect rule over such a long period of time amply demonstrates the capacity of the dikgosi and the hierarchies of their respective merafe to keep the population in the societal fold. Nevertheless, in due course the relationship between the dikgosi and the colonial administration became increasingly ambivalent and at times riddled by serious conflicts. Although the authority of the dikgosi and the strength of their polities still enabled the British to run the protectorate at minimal administrative and financial cost, the dikgosi were increasingly perceived as dictatorial. They were seen as operating highly autocratically in relation to their subjects. The trend on the British side in relation to their possessions was, by contrast, to introduce Western principles of legal rationality and state of justice. These strongly conflicting orientations came out fully around 1930.
For example, in 1929 an important resident commissioner stated in his diary: ‘[The dikgosi] practically do as they like – punish, fine, tax and generally play pay hell. Of course their subjects hate them but daren't complain to us; if they did their lives would be made impossible’ (Parsons and Crowder 1988: 4). Other contemporary statements by representatives of the colonial administration similarly portray these rulers as rather autocratic. For example, a resident magistrate stationed in the Bangwaketse capital of Kanye reported that Kgosi Bathoen II of the Bangwaketse (r. 1928–69)
is very obstinate and inclined to be antagonistic in matters connected with the Administration…Morally, Bathoen is rather a low type of native…being legally married to an educated woman, and at the same time living openly with his concubine. He is disinterested in matters beneficial to the tribe unless he, personally, can benefit thereby, and considers everything from his own pecuniary standpoint. His councillors are young and inexperienced headmen of the Communist type; he takes little heed of his older and more reasonable me.3
Furthermore,
he is very selfish. If he requires labour for his own work, such labour is forthcoming, but if for the benefit of the Tribe he is apathetic.4
The
