Bechuanaland Protectorate Research Articles

‘The Root of All Evil?’: Cash Boom, Trader Misfeasance, and Poverty in World War II Bechuanaland Protectorate

ABSTRACT Told here is a story of the manifestations of cash money’s unseen and unpredictable power in the expropriations of Bechuanaland Protectorate Africans by store owners or traders during World War II. Failure to secure essential commodities in a period when cash dominated the market and had become the motif of the colonial economy surprised even the colonial officials who had thought that the ensuing ‘cash boom’ would bring prosperity across the social divide. This article mines the extant war archives to retrieve the neglected history of the repercussions of the first-ever cash boom the Bechuanaland Protectorate experienced since the advent of cash during the nineteenth century. As many people gained access to more cash, traders of predominantly foreign descent hiked prices unduly, in most cases using the war as an excuse. The article addresses two mutually inclusive forms of trader misconduct. First, it explores the trajectory of profiteering as it spread from the urban areas to impact the initially unaffected rural peripheries during the war. Secondly, it demonstrates the differentiated ways in which a tripartite of conditional selling, price differentials, and food rationing became the driving forces of the ‘evil’ that was profiteering.

The British and the transfer of power in the Bechuanaland Protectorate: Neo-colonialism or passive revolution?

Deploying the theoretical framework of Italian Marxist thinker, Antonio Gramsci, this article argues that rather than a neo-colonial arrangement, the transfer of power from the British to locals in the Bechuanaland Protectorate (Botswana) could be conceptualized as a passive revolution. This passive revolution, which was triggered by demands for independence by radical nationalists, entailed the formation of a pro-British political party, the Botswana Democratic Party, and transferring power to it in a carefully managed decolonization process. The passive revolution aimed not just at preserving British economic interests in the protectorate but also at state formation for purposes of expanding the capitalist mode of production in the newly independent state. Thus, the transfer of power took place concurrently with the creation of a legitimate capitalist state that served the interests of both the British and the cattle-owning Botswana Democratic Party elite that assumed power at independence. Post-independence, the cattle bourgeois class at the apex of the Botswana Democratic Party embarked upon the construction of hegemony through the creation of an interventionist developmental state that addressed the narrow interests of other classes and groups constituting the post-independence historical bloc. Such hegemony has allowed the Botswana Democratic Party to retain power to the present day.

Reflections on the Contributions of Sir Charles Rey to the Development of Financial Control and Accountability in the Bechuanaland Protectorate (1929-1937)

This essay examines the diaries of Sir Charles F. Rey, Resident Commissioner of Bechuanaland, covering the years 1929-1937. The paper summarizes and reviews the accounting thoughts, activities and practices during a period of British colonial rule in Bechuanaland Protectorate. It illustrates early accounting and budgetary practices, as well as their role in influencing and shaping political and socio-economic development. The paper reveals that nuances of accounting history are contained in literary and archival documents, and that accounting practitioners and researchers should explore these scripts in order to understanding the introduction and development of accounting in the African continent. It further suggests that Sir Charles Rey’s memoirs show him to be a financial manager and administrator of note, albeit one who used financial management techniques to maintain control over natives, European businesses, and colonial administrators. This notwithstanding, this paper encourages researchers and practitioners to locate accounting history from such writings.

Indian Settlement in Bechuanaland Protectorate: Immigration, Trade and the Limits of Colonial Government, 1880–1935

ABSTRACT The history of people of Indian origin in southern Africa has been dominated by the history of the large and influential populations of South Africa. The neglect of other parts of the region has meant that the particularities of Indian settlement and its relationship with the colonial governance and local populations, especially in the poorest and most marginal colonies, have in turn been neglected. I argue that the fact of the Bechuanaland Protectorate’s late colonisation, strong chieftainships and lack of obvious resources meant that Indian settlers were more able to subvert colonial officials’ attempts to duplicate the types of wholesale racial exclusion found in South Africa. The Protectorate’s marginality meant that, unlike the more politically and diplomatically powerful dominions, they were unable to sidestep central ideological justifications for the broader imperial project itself – the protected status of subject peoples. Indian settlers were able to combine the fact of a small and relatively weak colonial authority with the threat of political embarrassment to subvert and undermine efforts at their exclusion. The conflict that ensued forged the small but influential and deeply embedded ‘Batswana-Indian’ community in Botswana.

‘What has Ghana Got That We Haven't?’ Party Politics and Anti-Colonialism in Botswana, 1960–66: A Response to James Kirby

ABSTRACTThis short piece is a response to James Kirby’s article entitled ‘“What has Ghana Got That We Haven't?” Party Politics and Anti-Colonialism in Botswana, 1960–66’. Contrary to Kirby, who is oblivious of the political economy of colonialism, and how this reality informed the decolonisation processes, we argue that the transfer of power in the Bechuanaland Protectorate was designed to preserve British economic interests under the pro-British Bechuanaland Democratic Party. The British were very uncomfortable with the radical Bechuanaland Peoples Party, whore rhetoric threatened core British interests, hence their preference and support for the Democratic Party.

‘What has Ghana Got That We Haven't?’ Party Politics and Anti-Colonialism in Botswana, 1960–66

ABSTRACTThis article offers a re-examination of the period leading up to independence in Botswana, formerly known as the Bechuanaland Protectorate, between 1960 and 1966. With the use of original archival material from Botswana and the United Kingdom, it aims to explain why the Bechuanaland Democratic Party overwhelmingly defeated the Bechuanaland People's Party in the March 1965 elections for self-government. Botswana's post-colonial transition was unusual for being without a mass, social movement for national self-determination. The Democratic Party, led by Seretse Khama, favoured close cooperation with the British colonial authority and a gradualist transition to independence, while the People's Party closely adhered to the ideology of anti-colonialism and demanded immediate independence. This article will argue that the Democratic Party won independence due to its sacrifice of anti-colonial credentials, in the short term, in favour of a political platform that addressed the long-term challenges of Bechuanaland's quest for viable statehood. The research helps to explain why Botswana was slow to develop closer relations with fellow independent African states. As a provincialised history of decolonisation, this article shows the potential for variance within the wider anti-colonial movement, which incorporated diverse actors, agendas and geopolitical conditions.

To Die For: Inherited Leadership (Bogosi) Among the Tswana Before 1885

Standard interpretations of inherited leadership (bogosi) among the varied Tswana-speaking peoples, undertaken in the mid colonial era by Isaac Schapera, and followed by more recent scholars, have been preoccupied with the constitutional restrictions and obligations of this office and its rules of succession. This framework has served also as a generic characterisation of pre-colonial bogosi, suggesting continuity over time. An examination of the pre-colonial period, which this article has undertaken with a purview commencing with the mid 18th century, suggests otherwise. Rather than an institution that esteemed sharing, accountability, service, and even-handedness, bogosi in earlier times was heavily tilted towards fighting, raiding, and authoritarian acts. The levels of violence and heavy-handedness is reflected by high mortality rates among inherited leaders (dikgosi), mostly in battles and at the hand of assassins. Such was the case among the many Tswana-speaking entities or clusters in the eastern, southern and western regions of Tswana territory, until the Pedi, Kololo, Ndebele, and Trekkers arrived in train. After 1840, a period of uneven recovery commenced, and surviving dikgosi turned to alliances of varying sorts to revive their authority. The nature of bogosi as understood by Schapera, and others who have followed his assessment, took shape much later, after the 1880s: that is, at the point when colonial structures legitimised individual dikgosi and accorded them a governing role in the Bechuanaland Protectorate. Most probably, notions of the dikgosi’s powers and obligations that cast bogosi as a repository of civic virtues are colonial phenomena, and certainly of little help in explaining the realities faced by Tswana leaders at previous times and in varying circumstances.

Disappearance and Displacement: The San, the Bamangwato, and the British in the Bechuanaland Protectorate, 1943–1945

One of the enduring historical mysteries of the Kalahari Desert of Southern Africa is that of the disappearance of two Royal Air Force cadets during the Second World War. Eight Tshwa San (Bushmen) were arrested and tried for the murder of the flyers. The trial took place in the High Court of the Bechuanaland Protectorate (BP) in September to October, 1944, and resulted in a verdict of not guilty. Despite their exoneration, repercussions followed for the San. These included the resettlement of those who had been acquitted and their families, followed by the intentional displacement of hundreds of other Tshwa San from their traditional homelands in the Northern Crown Lands region of Bechuanaland. This paper explores the circumstances under which the RAF flyers disappeared and assesses the complex interactions among the San, the Bamangwato, and the British in 1943 and the years following. It also addresses the colonial perceptions, prejudices, and cultural misunderstandings that led to the large-scale displacement and the impacts of these events on Southern African peoples and states.

Brenda Mary Slavin

Brenda Slavin (nee Stewart) was educated at Whalley Range High School, Manchester. Her family emigrated to South Africa in1948, cutting short her school certificate. Times were hard, and she was...

Black Landlords, their Tenants, and the Natives Land Act of 1913

This article uses an important family archive – that of the Molemas, educated and influential Barolong notables – as a key source in analysing the relations between black landlords and their tenants in the Molopo Reserve. Silas Molema was one of the most influential Barolong chiefs, whose territories spanned ‘British Bechuanaland’ (incorporated into the Cape in 1895) and the Bechuanaland Protectorate. The Molopo Reserve had negotiated a status guaranteeing a substantial level of autonomy at the time of incorporation. Molema, like other members of the Barolong nobility, included white settlers among his tenants; and the family papers contain a wealth of detail about leasing arrangements and social relations between the parties. In 1903 the Divisional Council of Mafeking imposed a Dog Tax on residents of the Molopo Reserve, a measure contested in court by the Barolong chieftaincy. The case concerned the imposition of the tax but, more broadly, the powers of the Cape/Union government over the Reserve. In 1904, the court found in favour of Barolong; the Cape colonial government responded with proclamations intended to make the Molopo Reserve subject to the control of the Divisional Council, and therefore the government. The article argues that this litigation impinged directly on the set of interests and manoeuvres that culminated in the passage of the Natives Land Act in 1913 – a story hitherto unobserved by historians. It argues further that the Natives Land Act of 1913 was a cornerstone instalment towards territorial segregation in South Africa. Its proposition is that the Natives Land Act of 1913 was intended to demarcate and fix the geographical boundaries of countryside that the colonial government wished to make ‘black’ in a context of racial fluidity in the early 20th century. The Act effectively installed the colonial government as the ‘supreme chief’ and principal landlord in the territory the Act defined as ‘Scheduled Areas’. This enabled it to intervene in African reserves directly as a sphere of ‘native administration’.

Potential for Diversification? The Role of the Formal Sector in Bechuanaland Protectorate's Economy, 1900–65

While Botswana since independence has experienced impressive economic growth and development this progress has not been accompanied by economic diversification and endogenous growth. In this article we focus on the colonial period and investigate to what extent the formal sector of Bechuanaland Protectorate (colonial Botswana) had the potential to constitute the basis for a diversification of the dominating cattle economy away from its dependency on exporting a single natural resource good – beef. We base our study on colonial archive sources and anthropological evidence which we use to: examine labour market structures; estimate welfare ratios and surplus; and discuss government spending. We find that the demand for skilled labour and human capital development was low throughout the colonial period and that the private sector generally lacked the economic strength and dynamics to develop alternative and/or complementary sectors. Further, we find no evidence of demand driven diversification, neither stemming from private sector consumption and investments, nor from government spending on economic activities outside the cattle sector, infrastructure and human capital development.

White man’s disease, black man’s peril?: Rinderpest and famine in the eastern Bechuanaland Protectorate at the end of the 19th century

During the late nineteenth century, a pandemic of Rinderpest exterminated large numbers of cattle in Southern Africa. Although in the Bechuanaland Protectorate the disease killed cattle only for two years between 1896 and 1897, its effects were to last until the very end of the century. The loss of cattle disrupted subsistence production, disintegrated the social fabric and caused famines. This paper examines the subsistence crisis caused by the loss of cattle and the multiple coping mechanisms that people employed to negotiate the ensuing famine. Despite being thrown into a state of desperation, the paper argues, rural communities in the eastern Bechuanaland Protectorate appropriated and reconstituted certain features of their cultural and social life to negotiate the hardships and, when these failed, they invented new strategies appropriate with specific situations.

In service of two masters: a political history of radio in pre-independence Botswana

This study identifies and critically analyses the major imperial (global and regional) political and economic factors and decisions that influenced and shaped the development of pre-independence radio broadcasting in the Bechuanaland Protectorate. With little or no consideration of the needs of the local population, two duelling imperialist powers – Great Britain and the Union of South Africa – negotiated, disagreed, and eventually virtually co- established a centralised, administrative radio network that reflected their own regional ambitions. Based primarily on key official British Protectorate, High Commission and Union government documents obtained from extensive archival research in the Botswana National Archives, a detailed picture emerges of two duelling imperial powers planning for their own divergent regional futures, via the establishment of administrative and political dimensions of radio policies, for a territory which both wished to control for their own purposes. Once Britain had decided against allowing South Africa's annexation of Bechuanaland, radio politics and policies fell more into line with those in other British colonial African and Asian territories, primarily managing perceived anti-colonial nationalist challenges and deterring the perceived threats posed by apartheid- and Cold War-inspired communist influences.

Provision of Local Services by Tribal Administrations in Bechuanaland Protectorate, 1900–1966

This paper demonstrates how the tribal administrations in Bechuanaland Protectorate (now Botswana), despite severe logistical, financial and personnel constraints, played a significant role in the provision of the much needed local services from as early as 1900. In some East and West African colonies this began only in the 1950s after the Second World War and towards independence. Moreover, the tribal administrations in Bechuanaland were able to do this in spite of constrains of inefficiency and conservatism of some Chiefs, and the ill-treatment of the subject tribes. Therefore, it is argued that the tribal administration in Bechuanaland had a developmental thrust which may explain the uniqueness of post-colonial Botswana, which took a completely different route to that of other Sub-Saharan African countries in terms of service delivery.

Botswana's Muslims in the Towns of Ramotswa and Lobatse: Their Arrival, Settlement and Current Demographics

Individual Muslim traders entered and settled in the Bechuanaland Protectorate (now Botswana) more than a century ago. As a result of their early arrival in the region, they unknowingly planted the seeds of Islam that has become part of Botswana's religious landscape. However, not enough information is available on this early period. This article is thus written to complement three earlier studies that throw some light on the early history and current demographics of Botswana's Muslim communities in the towns of Ramotswa and Lobaste. It aims to do so by re-narrating aspects of the Muslim community's social history thus assessing the development and demographics of those Muslim communities that reside in the towns of Ramotswa and Lobatse and have been now acknowledged as the early centers of Islam in Botswana.

Limitations of British Territorial Control in Bechuanaland Protectorate, 1918–1953*

This article argues that the Kalahari desert region of the Kwena tribal reserve quietly slipped out of the imperial command from 1930–1950, at a time when British colonial authorities achieved territorial control of the tribal areas of Bechuanaland Protectorate (now Botswana) through the chiefs. The British had reluctantly colonised Bechuanaland and initially left the chiefs to their own devices. However, with a new generation of chiefs in office in the 1920s, numerous ‘ugly’ developments in the tribal areas, and lack of regulation of chiefly powers, forced the colonial government to tighten control. By the mid-1940s this appeared to have been achieved in most parts of the country. But the lack of resources and logistical difficulties, combined with weak tribal leadership at the Kwena tribal headquarters made the Kalahari desert impossible to police. Hence, it became a safe haven for alleged criminal elements, such as tax evaders and game poachers for example. The remote and isolated village of Tsetseng proved to be a particular problem for the colonial authorities and this ‘lawless’ area was only brought back into effective imperial control in 1953 after a difficult campaign. The article also argues that consultation and Tswana succession through primogeniture made indirect rule in Bechuanaland operate differently from other parts of British Africa.

Ngwato attitudes towards Zimbabwean immigrants in the Bechuanaland Protectorate in the 1950s

(2006). Ngwato attitudes towards Zimbabwean immigrants in the Bechuanaland Protectorate in the 1950s. Kleio: Vol. 38, No. 2, pp. 191-206.

4 - How Britain Underdeveloped Bechuanaland Protectorate: A Brief Critique of the Political Economy of Colonial Botswana

Britain declared Bechuanaland a ‘protectorate’ in 1885 in a move largely driven by military strategic considerations rather than by the availability of economic resources. This can give the impression that in Botswana the process of eco- nomic underdevelopment, that is often associated with colonialism, never took place in this British ‘protectorate’. This article reveals that even in the so-called ‘protectorate’, the British colonial state policies subverted indigenous economic interests and stifled opportunities for indigenous private capital accumulation, while actively promoting the economic interests of a small white settler capitalist class.

Note on two cases of Krukenberg's operation

Journal Article Note on two cases of Krukenberg's operation Get access Bernard T Squires Bernard T Squires Bechuanaland Protectorate Medical Service Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar British Journal of Surgery, Volume 25, Issue 98, October 1937, Pages 464–466, https://doi.org/10.1002/bjs.1800259829 Published: 05 December 2005

Fixity and fluidity: chiefly authority and settlement movement in colonial Botswana

This article proposes that anthropologists and historians of colonialism, landscape and the colonial construction of chieftaincy in Africa should examine particular case studies in more detail to elicit the complex social and material processes implicit in such notions. In particular it focuses upon the colonial conflation of the notions of settlement nucleation and sedentism in the period of the Bechuanaland Protectorate in Botswana (1885–1966), processes of material change, and the position of Tswana chiefs with regard to settlement and authority. The perceived “failure” of the Tawana chiefs in Ngamiland District to exert settlement control over the dispersed population is analyzed through detailed colonial records of conflict to argue that what failed was the colonial construction of chieftaincy itself, as well as the colonial imagination of landscape in Africa. The article’s emphasis upon the materiality of dwelling in the landscape also seeks to convince historians and anthropologists alike of the vast research potential of material culture in the analysis of colonial histories, social and cultural change, and indigenous notions of modernity.