OPINION

Malema, Rian, Mandla and me

Fred Morton explains the sources he uses in his studies of Batswana history

“[Rian] Malan does not say whether the historians he uses to make his point used primary or secondary materials – I suspect they used secondary materials, like our historians might, one hundred years henceforth, in the scenario I constructed earlier. The difficulty is that, whatever their personal integrity, we have to wonder how much trust can be placed on the materials they used. If the political imperative which framed early African historiographies was the need to obscure indigenous land ownership, and in places to deny it plainly, the least we can do, in trying to use such materials, is to demonstrate that they are free from that defect.” - Mandla Seleoane, Politicsweb, 17 November 2016.

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I was on the sidelines reading Rian Malan’s response to Julius Malema’s rhetoric on land and Mandla Seleoane’s rejoinder … and enjoying it, that is, until Rre Seleoane declared his suspicions that the historians Rre Malan cites, including me, had used “materials” that are not to be trusted. As a published historian, I’ve long been resigned to the legions uninterested in reading, much less buying, my work or that of others. But when it is dismissed out of hand, I feel the sting. So here I am, popping a painkiller and wanting my say.

Enough self-pity; let’s do an introduction. Right now, I’m an elderly, American-born, permanent resident of Botswana, professor at the University of Botswana, with an interest in the Batswana of South Africa and Botswana for the period roughly between 1650 and 1900. In distant years’ past, when fast accumulating my biases, I grew up in an extended family in all-white rural southwestern Ohio as the only son of a great story-teller (he was also the headmaster of my school, but that’s another matter).

At family reunions, my father gathered young and old to spin (usually hilarious) tales of the good old days when he and his eight siblings grew up poor in a female-headed household in a tiny village aptly named Pleasant Hill (true…it’s on the map). My cousins and I were all envious of our aunts and uncles’ upbringing and loved to relive their naughtiness, like toppling outhouses at night with a hapless old soul inside.

In my teens, when I had Dad alone in one of his reflective (read depressed) moments and did some probing, he sometimes gave me a glimpse of a skeleton or two in the “P’Hill” closet. Such as. My great-grandfather, championed by the family as a Civil War hero (Union side) committed suicide (twelve-gauge shotgun) behind the barn rather than live on with elephantiasis of the testicles. Oh, until then he had had a black servant (probably an ex-slave). And, a great uncle it turned out was serving a life sentence in the Ohio State Penitentiary for murder. I could go on.

While enjoying ever since my youth a privileged life devoid of want or personal tragedy, my family’s checkered past helps explain why I’m seldom surprised by the misdeeds of my fellow human beings and sceptical of notions of idyllic pasts and, by extension, claims of blanket victimhood. [I’m also unqualified to suggest how land ownership is to be reordered justly in South Africa, though I can testify to the complicated nature of farm ownership]

My aim here is to tell Rre Seleoane about my sources (“materials” in Mandla’s eyes), which I have used to chart the ins and outs of Tswana communities before and during the dispossession of land by white, Dutch- and English-speaking immigrants into the then Transvaal.

Over past thirty-five years, I’ve done my share of archival research in government and missionary records, at repositories in Gaborone, Mochudi, Pretoria, Johannesburg, Cape Town, Harare, and London, read many 19th-century travellers’ accounts and interviewed quite a few knowledgeable male and female elders.

But the richest sources of early Tswana history are found in oral histories and maboko (self-praises) recited by Tswana historians and written down between 1925 and 1968, both in South Africa and Botswana (then Bechuanaland Protectorate). The bulk were recorded and translated by Isaac Schapera, Paul-Lenert Breutz, and Vivien Ellenberger (grandson of Frederick, who wrote extensively on Sotho history).

When land is discussed, what the Tswana in last mid-century remembered about their ancestors should perhaps be kept in mind. Briefly:

Tswana moved around a lot. With the exception of the Bafokeng and the Bakwena Mmatau, other Tswana-speakers shifted their capitals fairly regularly, usually for obvious reasons—grazing and soils play out, water sources dwindle, towns turn foul. Movement from place to place varied from short to considerable distances. Certain areas (especially those with reliable water like Lindleyspoort) were occupied by different merafe over the space of a century or so.

Batswana recalled the place names and physical location of their past capitals, often even including the registered farm names. Historians and archaeologists have linked some of their stonewall settlements to given groups. Yet, though the landscape occupied by early Tswana is strewn with stonewalling, connecting each of them with any confidence to historic merafe will be difficult, expensive, and time-consuming.

Tswana make-up changed over time. No Tswana morafe was homogenous at any point, rather each contained an assortment of old timers, newcomers and various totemic groups. Some wards (dikgoro, dikgotla) took up residence, others left. Merafe independent at one point could at another become the subjects of an unrelated kgosi or shed members who adopted new homes elsewhere.

Before the disrupters showed up (Makololo, Amandebele, Voortrekkers), Tswana merafe were having a bit of a challenge getting along with one another. A lot of jostling was going on. Heretofore such regional powers as the Bahurutshe were losing their grip, while others, such as the upstart Bangwaketse, were expanding, borrowing cattle on the long term with no interest payable, and creating havoc.

When the Dutch-speakers pitched up and claimed much of the land between present Zeerust and Pretoria for themselves, some Tswana collaborated with the Transvaal Boers. The latter had entered the scene when the many Tswana dispersed by Mzilikazi’s Amandebele were returning to their old haunts. They quickly learned that staying meant being squeezed for space and accepting terms dictated by veldkornets and kommandants.

Rather than put up with it, many left for new territories (Botswana was a popular destination). For those who stuck around, the best terms were had by kapiteins who supplied the Boers with auxiliaries on commando raids on the fringes of the Zuid-Afrikaansche Republiek for cattle and slaves. Among them was kgosi Kgamanyane APilane of the Bakgatla baga Kgafela, whose own leboko boasts of his assistance to (and duplicity while under) the maburu, whom he despised.

If you care to have more detail, Rre Malan cited my book on the Bakgatla, and some articles on other, early Tswana can be found online here.

As for addressing the sources related to the Tswana enslavement of the peoples of the Kalahari, that’s a job for my son Barry Morton, who has documented this historical process. I can mention here, however, that one childhood experience of his might explain why Barry took up the matter during his doctorate field work in Ngamiland. It happened in late December 1976. He was 9, sitting with his younger brother, mother and me having lunch in the dining room of the Tshwaragano Hotel, Serowe, built by the local brigade.

There, Barry and the rest of us witnessed a hot debate among the ten or so Bangwato men arguing nearby over beef and pap. The flap lasted, as I recall, for about a half an hour. The controversy was over how to regard the Bushmen (Basarwa), as human beings or animals?