Black Prince: A Biography of Tshekedi Khama by Michael Crowder

Here, in answer to several enquiries, is all that was found of his much-heralded biography of Tshekedi Khama in Michael Crowder's papers after his death in August 1988. There was no handwritten manuscript, only the computer diskettes covering six initial chapters, which are printed out below.

These pages were printed out for Michael Crowder's literary agent and literary executor, Andrew Best of the Curtis Brown agency, who then referred them to Prof. Isaac Schapera. Schapera pointed out the unfinished nature of the project, with these chapters barely covering up to 1937, and spotted a number of minor errors. The chapters also duplicate much of the history to be found in Michael Crowder's book The Flogging of Phinehas McIntosh (Yale University Press, 1988). Unfortunately Schapera's comments were only seen by Andrew Best, and were subsequently mislaid.

The typescript is presented "as is". Some pages and paragraphs are unfinished; there are repetitions and notes and some author's personal comments such as "DEVELOP" incorporated in the unfinished text. The typescript gives a good idea of a writer in progress, with more drafts yet to go before a satisfactory draft is produced. Unfortunately, Michael Crowder did not go first make a rough draft of a whole book, but preferred to draft one section after another.

Neil Parsons, 2002

On Easter Monday, 1926, Tshekedi Khama, twenty-year-old Regent of the Bangwato ordered three of his nephews, who were brothers, to attend his kgotla or court. On arrival he peremptorily sentenced them to a flogging for disrespect and refusal to obey his commands, even though all three were some twenty years his senior. When he ordered them to take off their shirts and lie down to be thrashed, they refused to do so. Instead the eldest brother admonished Tshekedi 'Chief, according to our tribal law princes of the royal blood are never beaten. If we have done something wrong we should be fined.' At this the kgotla broke into uproar, as the enraged Bangwato, who in Tshekedi's words 'did not want to see me being despised', set about the brothers with any weapon they could lay hands on. The eldest brother was seized and beaten, but the two younger brothers escaped from the crowd and fled home. Soon afterwards they returned to the kgotla, one with a Mauser rifle, the other with a pistol, and tried to shoot Tshekedi. As they fired at him, hitting his right side above the hip, attendants tried to hustle him to safety. Resisting their ministrations he cried out: 'If I must die I will do it in my father's kgotla'.

Tshekedi had been formally installed as Regent less than three months before the attempted assassination. And so began a turbulent career during which Tshekedi was to take on royal rivals and British overlords including the most senior of these, the Dominions Secretary himself. In 1951, his protests against the exile into which he had been sent by the British Administration nearly brought down the Labour Government of the day. And when he died in a London hospital on 10 June 1959, one distinguished campaigner for colonial freedom remembered him as the 'most outstanding' of the many African leaders he mad met.

he chieftaincy that he believed they might lead to violence. For this reason he reluctantly accepted that the Administration deal with the matter rather than bring it before his kgotla. But he was at pains to insist that normally this was a matter that should be dealt with by the Chief according to Native Law and Custom.

Tshekedi Khama was revising for his matriculation examinations in the South African Native College at Fort Hare when he received a telegram that that his half-brother Sekgoma had died on 15 November 1925. The news could have been no surprise to the twenty-year old student, since Sekgoma had been gravely ill since July. But for Tshekedi, the death of his fifty-five year old half-brother who had ruled the Bangwato of the Bechuanaland Protectorate for past two years had grave implications for his plans to pursue a University career. Sekgoma's heir, Seretse, was only four years old, and Bangwato custom was that the next adult male in line of succession should act as Regent for him. As the only surviving brother of Sekgoma, Tshekedi was therefore the natural choice to guide the affairs of the largest of the eight Tswana states that had been brought under British protection at the end of the nineteenth century.

Tshekedi was very reluctant to abandon his studies. His Principal, Alexander Kerr, was anxious that he matriculate and read for his Bachelor's degree since `it would appear to me to be a mistake if he were prematurely recalled to any position of responsibility in the life of the tribe.' Tshekedi's mother, Semane, widow of Khama III who had presided over the Bangwato for fifty years before his death in 1923, was also concerned that her only son should continue with his studies and do some travelling before he took on what she well knew would be the very onerous duties of the Regency. The British Resident Commissioner of the Bechuanaland Protectorate, Jules Ellenberger, put no pressure on the young man either way. In the long letter he addressed to `Prince Tshekedi Khama' on 24 November he described the tense political situation in the capital following the death of his brother and told him that the Bangwato had agreed that he should act as Regent until Seretse was old enough to take on the Chieftaincy. While Tshekedi made up his mind about the Regency, Ellenberger informed him that his cousin, the one-eyed Gorewan, would act for him. Since Gorewan had shown himself a weak man, and had panicked during the disturbances that followed Sekgoma's death, the Bangwato had agreed to appoint a Council of Headmen to assist him. Should Tshekedi decide to stay at Fort Hare Gorewan and the Council would administer Gamangwato for him until he graduated.

The young prince seems to have been more concerned with revising for his matriculation examinations than coming to a decision about the Regency. It was not until the middle of the following month that he set off by train for Serowe, the capital of Gamangwato. On the way he called in to see Ellenberger at the Headquarters of the Bechuanaland Protectorate, which were situated in a special reserve in the South African town of Mafeking, fifteen miles outside the Protectorate border. Tshekedi told him that he planned to return to College, and seemed happy with the arrangements that had been made with regard to Gorewan and the Council. In turn Ellenberger assured him that when he decided `personally to take over as Acting Chief I would not object to the Council being abolished if he and the tribe desired it.'

From Mafeking Tshekedi left for Serowe. He had not spent more than two days in the troubled capital before he decided to abandon his University career and assume the Regency. He quickly appreciated that if he did not immediately grasp control of affairs in the faction ridden capital, he would never be able to do so. To the surprise of many, both Bangwato and British, the slightly built and wistful looking young man, who was only five foot five inches tall, and still had a slight stutter, showed himself to be one who made quick and firm decisions, and was not afraid to reject the advice of others whether Bangwato or British, or however important they might be. For Tshekedi it was a great wrench to have to abandon his studies, but in his eyes there was no alternative if he were to protect his young nephew's inheritance. And in protecting that inheritance he was to clash on many occasions with both the Bangwato royal family and the British Administration, whose representatives he took to task right up to the level of Whitehall and Westminster.

The birth of Tshekedi Khama on 17 September 1905 when his father was in his late sixties added a new dimension to the intense rivalries that had torn the royal family apart over the past decade. Although Khama had married three times, only his first wife, his much loved Mma Bessie, had born him a son, whom he named Sekgoma after his own father. But when Sekgoma attained his majority he proved as strong willed as his father and the two began to clash over issues affecting the administration of the state. In 1898 Sekgoma acccused his father of grooming his son-in-law, Ratshosa Motsetle, the husband of his eldest daughter Bessie, to succeeed him. Khama denied that he was contemplating such a flagrant violation of the Ngwato laws of succession which held that as his only son Sekgoma was his lawful heir. But Sekgoma continued to see Ratshosa as a rival, especially as it seemed that his imperious sister, Bessie, was determined to exploit his estrangement from their father to seek the succession for herself and her children. Khama entertained such a possibility and even threatened Sekgoma with it, though there was no precedent either for the succession of a woman to the office of kgosi or of sucession through the female line. On that occasion Khama had declared `And to you Sekgoma I swear that you will never get the chieftaincy...I must warn you that I can deny you the chieftaincy and pass it to the Ratshosas if I like.' Sekgoma's apprehensions cannot have been diminished when Ratshosa replaced him as his father's Secretary. Eventually relations between father and son became so strained that Sekgoma went into exile taking a number of followers and their cattle with him. He set himself up as an independent ruler and was recognied as such by the British administration.

At the time Sekgoma went into exile, disowned as he was by his father, there was naturally considerable concern in the morafe or nation about the succession. Khama's first two wives had died, while the third he had divorced. All his other children by them had been daughters. But his marriage in 1900 to a young new wife, Semane, gave prospect to the birth of a second son and real rival to Sekgoma. In September 1901, a year after their marriage, Semane gave birth but it was to a daughter, Victoria Bonyerile. It was not until four years later that she bore Khama the son who could, if he reached his majority before his father's death, prove a real threat to Sekgoma's chances of succession and provide a further focus for factionalism within the state.

The basis of this factionalism was the rivalry between Khama and a group of relatives led by his half-brothers, Raditladi and Mphoeng. The ostensible origin of their quarrel was over Khama's claim to be head of the Church in Gamangwato. Khama was a devout Christian, who had been converted in 1860. When he finally became ruler of Gamangwato in 1875, he had made Christianity the official religion of the state, and had given the London Missionary Society a virtual monopoly of proselytisation in his country. But he insisted that in return the missionaries should accept his authority in matters spiritual as well as temporal. In their challenge to his claim to supremacy in the Church, Raditladi and his followers were supported by the local representative of the London Missionary Society, James Hepburn, with whom Khama had recently fallen out over what Khama considered Hepburn's usurpation of his overall authority in matters affecting the state. As far as Hepburn was concerned this was a classic struggle between Church and State with Khama interfering in matters which should be the exclusive concern of the former. Raditladi and Mphoeng shared Hepburn's point of view : but the crisis between ruler and missionary presented them, as it were, with a God-given opportunity to challenge the authority of their elder brother and further their own political ambitions either to replace him or to hive off, in the classic pattern, and set up their own state. The latter proved to be the solution and the Raditladis seceded, eventually being granted land in British South Africa Company Territory. Among those who rejected Khama's authority was Mphoeng's son, Phethu, who two years before Tshekedi's birth, was among the first of the exiles to return to Gamangwato where conditions for Africans where infinitely preferable to those in Rhodesia. Meanwhile Raditladi and old Mphoeng kept up the feud with their brother.

These factions were struggling for control of what was the largest of the eight Tswana states that had been brought under British Protection in 1885 to form the Bechuanaland Protectorate. Nearly half of the two hundred thousand inhabitants of the Protectorate lived within the borders of the Bamangwato Reserve as the British designated Gamangwato. These borders stretched from the Limpopo river in the East deep into the Kalahari desert in the West. To the North the Reserve was bounded by the self-governing colony of Southern Rhodesia. To the South it was bounded by the lands of the Bakgatla and of the Bakwena, from whom the Bangwato were said to have broken away under their eponymous leader, Ngwato, in the sixteenth century. It was not until the mid-nineteenth century that `the people of Ngwato' moved to their present territory after Khama's father, Sekgoma I, had driven the Bakaa from the Shoshong hills in the 1840s. Like all the other Setswana-speaking peoples in the area they were cattle-keepers. They successfully survived the difiqane, the massive and bloody upheavals of the early nineteenth century in southern Africa that followed the wars of conquest led by Shaka, the Zulu king.

By the 1850s the Bangwato had established a recognisable state with its capital at Shoshong. They subjugated the various peoples living in the area, ruling them through district governors appointed by the king. Most important of all, they expanded westward into the Kalahari thirstlands where there was grazing for their cattle and plentiful game which they hunted with the aid of the Basarwa, more often known by the derogatory name of Bushmen. Demand from traders at Cape Town for ostrich feathers, ivory and skins for the European and American fashion trade brought considerable profit as did the strategic position of Shoshong astraddle the road to the North along which wagons passed from the Cape into the interior.

From the time he came to the throne in 1875 Khama set about transforming Gamangwato into a Christian state. That year was the last the bogwera or male circumcision rite was held in Gamangwato. And when Khama was installed in the kgotla as ruler of the Bangwato, it was not the priest-doctors who officiated but his missionary, James Hepburn. Thenceforth all meetings in the kgotla were preceded by Christian prayers and Khama encouraged his headmen to follow his innovation in their ward and village dikgotla. He also discouraged polygamy and did his best to restrict the practice of medicine by Bangwato priest-doctors. He did effectively neutralise their role at the national level, but he was unable to do so at the local level since the one missionary doctor could not hope to attend to everyone's needs. He forbade brewing of beer. He also outlawed the practice of giving bogadi or bridewealth for marriage.

By the time of Tshekedi's birth the Ngwato state was formally a Christian one presided over by a monarch who enjoyed an international reputation as `one of those miracles of modern mission work.' Contemporary photographs of Serowe, the new capital to which the Bangwato moved in 1902 and in which Tshekedi was born, show a society that had adopted European dress almost to a man, the richer of them wearing dark suits with their women in bustles and black bombazines. The ruling classes sent their children to the local mission school while the wealthier among them arranged for the further education of their sons in mission schools in South Africa. Sekgoma, for instance, had been sent by his father to Lovedale, the Church of Scotland school for Africans in the Eastern Cape, to which Tshekedi was to be sent later. The social changes brought about the Khama's conversion of the state to Christianity were profound and were to be a formative influence on the young Tshekedi who was to be unswerving supporter of the London Missionary Society throughout his Regency. The political and economic changes that took place in the first years of Khama's rule were no less profound.

Tshekedi was born in his father's lolapwa or compound in the new capital. This was built in Tswana style, like the houses of every other Mongwato in Serowe, and consisted of a group of rondavels with thatched roofs enclosed within a stout fence of wooden poles. It was distinguished from other houses only by its size, the quality of its construction and its central position in the capital close to the kgotla at the foot of the Serowe hill. The only European-style houses in Serowe at that time belonged to the small group of white traders and the missionary. Later Khama was to build himself an imposing brick house, but Tshekedi's early childhood was passed in surroundings little different from those of a child of any other important Tswana family.

Serowe itself sprawled on open but undulating ground to the west of the twin Tswaneng hills, known as Rra and Mma, Sir and Madam. The kgotla was sited beneath a rocky outcrop, and the buildings of the mission station and church clustered round huge granite boulders. The kgotla, a wide open space fenced round with poles, was the focal point of life for the fifteen or so thousand inhabitants of the capital. There at dawn every morning Khama dispensed justice, fining miscreants or in cases of serious crimes sentencing offenders to a flogging. There, too, he dealt with disputes that could not be settled in the dikgotla of the headmen in the wards of the capital and the outlying districts or heard appeals against their judgements. It was in Khama's kgotla, too that administrative and political decisions affecting the state were made, with royal headmen and commoner alike allowed to express their opinion on the matter in hand.

Khama, now in his late sixties, was preoccupied with his work in the kgotla, his relations with the British administration, and the management of his extensive herds of cattle. He can have had little time for his small son. He must have seemed to Tshekedi more like a grandfather than a father, kindly and considerate, but of a totally different generation from Semane. That he was entirely devoted to his new son was made clear when he wrote a will in 19O7 disinheriting Sekgoma and making Tshekedi heir to what in its time was a major fortune largely vested in cattle. He did not, however, formally declare Tshekedi heir to the kingship or chieftaincy as the colonial rulers now designated it. Whether Khama liked it or not, Sekgoma was the legitimate heir, and there was little he could do to change the fact. For the Tswana kgosi is born, he is not chosen nor is he elected. Nevertheless, Sekgoma's position was not improved in January 1909, when semane gave birth to a second son, Ewetse, a sickly child who soon died.

For Tshekedi, day to day contact was with his mother and his sister, both of whom he adored. His mother brought him up much as any early Edwardian child of the upper classes in England would have been at the time. He may have been a prince but no special treatment was accorded him. As Bonyerile was later to recall, their mother believed in those old-fashioned virtues of `early to bed and early to rise' and `spare the rod and spoil the child'. Semane must certainly have instilled something of the Protestant work ethic in her young son, for though according to Bonyerile he disliked going to school, he became in his twenties what a later generation would describe as a workaholic and constantly sought further to educate himself through an amazingly wide range of books.

Although he was Khama's son, he does not seem to have set himself apart from his peers either at the local primary school or on the playing field. Those who remember him as a child all concur that he mixed freely with other boys of his age and was particularly good at football. They all recall his energy and especially that early love of cattle that was to dominate his later life. He would put his hands to anything and hated to fail in any task he set himself. Despite his humility, he early on showed qualities of leadership. But he did have a terrible handicap for one who would one day become a royal headman, if not chief, with the principal task of presiding over his kgotla. He stammered so badly that his fellow students never believed he would get over it. This stammering contributed to his shyness, which he combined with a politeness that rarely left him in his relations with his fellow men, senior or junior to him. In short he was indoctrinated with both the Christian and traditional Tswana virtues that held however important or wealthy a man might be, he should treat his fellow beings with unfailing courtesy.

Tshekedi was sent to the kgotla school founded by his father and sometimes known as the Serowe Public School. Tshekedi was seven years old at the time, starting school comparatively early in the context of a society that often did not send its children to school until they were ten or eleven. The school was run by Tsoegang Sebina, the first Mongwato teacher and cousin of Tshekedi's closest friend and adviser in later years, Peter Sebina. One of Tshekedi's teachers was Simon Ratshosa, son of Ratshosa Motswetle and Tshekedi's late half-sister, Bessie. Most weekends he spent at one or other of his father's cattle-posts helping herd his cattle. There he joined the Basarwa herdboys, eating and, as he was later to recall, sleeping with them and sharing the same blanket. From these Basarwa he must have also learnt some of his considerable skills as a hunter.

In 1916, Khama nearly died after falling from his horse and breaking his leg. When Sekgoma heard that his father was gravely ill, he came to visit him on his sickbed and the two effected a reconciliation that survived Khama's recovery, though Sekgoma continued to live in his place of exile. While Khama did not formally announce to the British administration that he and his son had become reconciled, the Resident Magistrate at Serowe reported to the Resident Commissioner that the two had resumed friendly relations. Nor did Khama alter his will in his elder son's favour.

It was not until he was eleven, then, that Tshekedi met his elder half-brother. A year later he was sent away to school at Lovedale, and can have thus seen little of Sekgoma, who was nevertheless said to have bcome fond of his young half-brother.

Tshekedi was accompanied on the journey to Lovedale by Peter Sebina. There they joined a number of other Batswana students, including his distant relative, Bathoen II, the young heir to the Bangwaketse throne, with whom he developed a life-long friendship. The majority of students came from South Africa. There were, however, other children from the High Commission Territories. Among these the most notable was Sobhuza II, the young King of the Swazi. Z.K. Matthews, the South African pupil teacher at Lovedale, who later came to the forefront of African nationalist politics in his country, had a grandfather who came from Serowe. He was to become a close friend, correspondent and mentor of Tshekedi. Z.K., as he was popularly known, recalled later that of the many young African chiefs at Lovedale `Tshekedi was the most impressive of them all. He was intelligent, quiet, modest of his behaviour, always neat and tidy, always a master of himself and of any situation in which he happened to be.'

Not long after Tshekedi got to Lovedale there was an outbreak of typhus in a neighbouring village. News of this got to Khama who decided to withdraw his son and other Bangwato students there despite assurances from the Principal that there was `no occasion at all for sending the pupils home'. Khama was not convinced and Tshekedi and the other Bangwato boys returned to Serowe to the regret of one of the teachers, Dr. Alex Roberts, who wrote to Khama that it had been a long time since I have had students so diligent and so quick as your children'. Henderson, the Principal, was furious that Khama had ignored his advice and informed him that it had been decided that none of the pupils who had been withdrawn should be allowed to return, though if they did so within a week an exception might be made. This concession did `not apply to Sebina, who will not be received back on any condition'. He regretted that if the pupils did not return this would be the end of the long connection between Khama and Lovedale. Khama wrote a pained letter in reply, stating that his primary concern was for the children's safety and that in his opinion the village where typhus had broken out was `a bit too near for safety'. Once Henderson let him know that the area was free from typhoid fever, then he would send the pupils back. Henderson relented and Tshekedi returned to his studies.

At Lovedale Tshekedi was smaller than many of the boys of his age. He still stammered terribly especially when angry and sometimes could not even utter a word. Before sending his son to Lovedale, Khama had recalled a Tswana proverb for him: `Tlou fha utodile molape ke tlotswana' - `when an elephant has crossed a river it is smaller' - suggesting that while he was away from home he was no longer of particular importance among his fellows. But when the students rioted in August 1921 against the poor food they were receiving at Lovedale, Tshekedi reluctantly gave his support to his fellow Batswana, saying `as the son of a brave chief and leader of a big tribe he would be regarded as a coward who left his people in trouble and he himself remained free'. The riot was so violent that the school was closed down. Some students were arrested by the police, sent for trial and fined. But Tshekedi was just expelled. Khama was furious with his son but he did not neglect his education therafter, sending him to study privately under Mrs. Clark, the former Miss Johnston, who had taught for the L.M.S.,and to whom Tshekedi was later to entrust his nephew Seretse's early education. Her school, where Tshekedi was a boarder, was at Moijabane on the edge of the Kalahari, a day's journey by wagon from Serowe. For Tshekedi this was tantamount to exile and he did not see his father for a year.

While he was away at Lovedale a momentous development had taken place in the politics of the morafe. In 1920, Khama called a pitso or general assembly of the people at which he formally presented Sekgoma to his people as his heir. Then on 18 August of the same year Khama formally introduced Sekgoma to the Resident Commissioner, Sir James Macgregor, as his rightful heir. Sir James reported this to Prince Arthur of Connaught, the Governor-General of South Africa, to whom in his capacity of High Commissioner for the Bechuanaland Protectorate, Basutoland and Swaziland, he was directly responsible. `I was never in any doubt about the succession, as that, in the last resort, is always decided by the people the bulk of whom would surely support the heir; but if the Chief had died before having taken the action I am now reporting, a good deal of trouble and bickering which might well have serious consequences would have been inevitable', he wrote to the Prince. He also informed him that Khama and Sekgoma were on their way to Cape Town to see him for the same purpose.

Then one month before he returned to Serowe from Lovedale a development of even greater import for Tshekedi took place. On 1 July 1921 Tebogo, the young third wife of Sekgoma, gave birth to his first legitimate son, Seretse. Khama was so delighted that he presented the infant to the kgotla declaring : `Your king has been born'. In May 1922 Sekgoma and his followers settled back in Serowe. The reconciliation was complete. Tshekedi, now fifteen years old, was thus removed from the immediate burden of having to succeed to the kingship. His elder brother was fully restored to his father's favour and formally acknowledged as his successor with the infant Seretse proclaimed his successor in his turn.

During his holidays from Mrs. Clark's school, Tshekedi no doubt accompanied his father on some of his tours of inspection of his cattle posts, just as later his own children were to accompany him. The elderly Khama was an indefatigable horse rider, even in his eighties, and used his frequent visits to his cattle posts which were strung along the borders of his sparsely populated territory to supervise his district governors in their work and keep an eye generally on the affairs of a domain the size of Holland. We cannot be sure which of Khama's cattle posts Tshekedi visited, but it is certain that he rode with him along the Tswapong hills to Moeng, due East of Serowe, where Khama had an orange grove. For Tshekedi Moeng, set in a bowl of hills, lush with grass and well watered by a stream, in stark contrast to Khama's cattle posts on the edge of the Kalahari, was the corner of Gamangwato that he most loved. In later years he was to realise his greatest dream, the building of a National College there for his people which would be the equal of Lovedale. NO DOUBT TALKED OF ENGLAND - MODEL FOR TK

It was not until he was eighteen that Tshekedi went back to formal schooling, when on February 14 1923 he boarded the train at Palapye Road station and set off in a specially reserved second class coach for Alice to attend the South African Native College at Fort Hare, near Lovedale. Travelling with him as scholar attendants were the two sons of Headman Leburu.

Just over a week after his arrival in Fort Hare, Tshekedi received the news that his father was dead. Khama had caught a chill as a result of being drenched in a downpour while on a long distance ride. On the 16 February he began to have stomach pains which were put down to gastritis. No great importance was attached to this. But on the eighteenth his heart began to give him trouble. Two European doctors attended him and from Sunday onwards his collapse became rapid. He passed away peacefully at 7.45 in the morning of the 21 February. There was some discussion as to how the venerable chief should be buried. Traditionalists argued that he should be buried in the royal cattle kraal next to the kgotla itself. In the end he was buried in neither fashion, but appropriately for one who had been a great innovator a grave was hewn out of the solid rock of the hill overlooking the kgotla, while plans were made to erect a monument fitting for a king who had reigned over the Bangwato for nearly half a century and had brought to them an international fame that many African peoples much larger in population did not enjoy. Sir James Macgregor, the Resident Commissioner, attended the funeral and concluded his speech with a warning to the new ruler, Sekgoma: `He who remains with the orphans should never get angry'. This of course, as he explained in his report to Prince Arthur, was an allusion to Sekgoma's step-mother, Semane, and her young children, `who as far as I have yet been able to gather, are left dependent on his bounty'.

As it was, Sekgoma II treated his step-mother and half-brother well. Indeed he seems to have been fond of Semane, whom along of his close women relatives he allowed to nurse him during his later illness, while he encouraged Tshekedi to continue his studies at Fort Hare. In any case Khama had provided handsomely for both his children by Semane. He had set up a fixed deposit account for Tshekedi which was worth the considerable sum for those days of £2957.19.Od., while Bonyerile's was worth £999.l.6d., again a handsome sum especially for women who before Khama changed the law did not inherit from their fathers. Semane herself received between two and three thousand pounds as well as eight cattle posts according to Sekgoma. The will Khama wrote in 1907 was not executed. Had it been Tshekedi would have become a very wealthy young man indeed. When the will was brought to Sekgoma's attention in 1924 he stated that it had been verbally amended by Khama in kgotla when he allotted his cattle and horses to his elder son. As far as the new Resident Commissioner, Jules Ellenberger, who had been brought up in Basutoland and spoke fluent Setswana, was concerned the matter appeared to be one for the Chief and Tribe to deal with. Traditionally, all the property of the king devolved on his heir and the cattle he owned were essentially part of a royal herd that passed to his successor rather than personal property that could be disposed of as the monarch liked. But one of the major changes that the penetration of Gamangwato by the capitalist economy had brought about was in attitudes towards private property and its disposition. Khama had accumulated a great deal of wealth for himself as distinct from the state and for some time had backed a trading company to compete with the largest European trading company, the B.S.A. Co until the Administration, under pressure from the latter, deemed it improper for the ruler of the Bangwato to be involved in trade. The issue of the will was not entirely resolved by Sekgoma before his death, but it was to prove a bitter legacy twenty-five years afterwards when Seretse took his uncle to court over the ownership of Khama's herds.

Tshekedi returned home to Serowe in time for the funeral of his father and spent some days there comforting his mother and his sister. He had lost a father to whom he had not been particularly close because of the great difference in their age and the heavy burdens of state the old man carried until his death, but whose life had been an inspiration to him and whose example would influence him throughout his regency. Whenever he was in doubt as to what he should do he would ask himself what his father would have done in similar circumstances. He became as a result a student of the history of his father's life and times. Mary Benson tells the story that when women began to wail in the traditional fashion at his father's funeral, Tshekedi told them to stop for he knew that at the funeral of his twins Khama had similarly reproved people: `God has given and God has taken away and you must be quiet'.

Tshekedi was away at Fort Hare pursuing his studies when Sekgoma was formally installed as Chief of the Bangwato. Sekgoma had, however, been effectively recognised as Chief by his people from the time of his father's death. His appointment nevertheless had to be ratified by the British authorities. Accordingly, Sekgoma's installation on 19 April was carried out by his Uncle Mphoeng, assisted by his cousins,including Gorewan and Phethu, in the presence of Sir James Macgregor, the Resident Commissioner. Sekgoma cut a regal figure, being tall like his father though much more heavily built. He was fifty-four years old and apparently in good health. There was no reason for his people to anticipate anything but a long reign.

The first months of Sekgoma's reign passed peacefully and he proved a popular monarch with both his people and the British administration. The local European traders held him in their affection too, but not so the missionaries, who found him less fervent a Christian than his father and less supportive of their interests. Indeed in an LMS sponsored biography of Khama by John Charles Harris, Sekgoma had been described as `weak in character, easy-going in disposition'. Harris had gone on to write that `his lack of strong principle has been a great grief to his father, while his moral laxity has been a scandal in the tribe... those who know him best are most apprehensive for the future of the tribe under his chieftainship'. Sekgoma had been deeply offended by these remarks and, not surprisingly, instead of using the local missionary as his chief adviser as his father had done, he kept his distance from him. Even despite his anger with the missionaries, all seemed set for a peaceful reign. And in 1924 his succession was doubly secured with the birth of a second son, Botswaletse, to his Queen, Tebogo. Tshekedi, still away at Fort Hare, was now third in line of sucession to the throne.

Unfortunately Sekgoma, who was much less assiduous in his duties than Khama had been, left much of the business of state in the hands of the capable Ratshosa brothers a factor that was to cause yet another great rift in the royal family and have a dolorous influence on the early years of Tshekedi's regency. Sekgoma confirmed the eldest Ratshosa brother, Johnny, as his Tribal Secretary, while Simon, his son-in-law and now headmaster of the Khama Memorial School, as the Serowe Public School had been renamed in a curiously anticipatory way in 1922, was in and out of his house and often helped with state papers. With the youngest Ratshosa brother, Obeditse, acting as `native clerk' and interpreter for the Resident Magistrate and therefore the principal intermediary between the British and Bangwato administrations, the Ratshosas had entrenched themselves in key positions of power in the Ngwato state. They also profited from their position as royal advisers and relatives to amass cattle and build fine European style houses which were lavishly furnished. It was little wonder then that they became the object of resentment, especially on the part of members of the royal family who were closely related to Sekgoma but felt themselves cut off from their traditional role as advisers to their ruler. One who felt most bitter at the monopoly of power acquired by the Ratshosas, was Phethu Mphoeng.

Phethu, like the Ratshosas, had married into the immediate royal family, when he took Khama's daughter Millie as his wife in 1911. Khama had made him governor of the important district of Mmadinare. When Sekgoma succeeded to the throne, Mphoeng understandably `stood in dread of losing the assurance of patronage on Khama's death'. His apprehensions were fully justified when Sekgoma, at the instigation of the Ratshosas, accused Phethu and his younger brother, Oteng, as well as two other cousins, Lebang and Keletlokhile Raditladi, of plotting to assassinate him while he was going to the bioscope as cinemas were known. He further accused Phethu of trying to kill him through witchcraft.

Back in Serowe the Ratshosas consolidated their power in such a way that even Sekgoma began to resent their all-pervading influence. Though Sekgoma had been sent to Lovedale by his father, he had done little more there than learn to speak English and to read and write a little. But as Chief he was impatient with paper work and left this to Johnnie. Simon also had had access to his father-in-law's papers, which were kept in his brother's house, and helped with the secretarial work involved in running Gamangwato. The growing tension between Sekgoma and the Ratshosas came into the open when Phethu sought, in Sekgoma's own words, `to come and give in'. Phethu had met Simon at Francistown, a modern settlement in the Tati District just outside the Bamangwato Reserve. There he told him of his desire to make peace with Sekgoma. According to reports Sekgoma had received - no doubt from Phethu - Simon asked Phethu why he did not go to Serowe anyway since no one would stop him as `there is no chief in Serowe'. Sekgoma also advised the Resident Magistrate that he could no longer trust Johnnie as an interpreter and that letters should not be sent through Obeditse since `John, Simon and Obeditse are one thing'.

Phethu was forgiven by Sekgoma who was now clear that the Ratshosas were at the bottom of his trouble with his cousins. `When trouble does begin it will be through the Ratshosas (sic)', he wrote to the Resident Commissioner prophetically. In particular he denounced his son-in-law, Simon, who `is in the habit of reviling me to the people wherever he goes and wherever he writes to them from...' Phethu duly made submission to Sekgoma and promised among other things not to brew beer and to come whenever Sekgoma sent for him.

For the Administration this was as a matter of great concern, as it was for the morafe since Seretse, Sekgoma's heir, was only four years old while Tshekedi, who would normally act as regent for him as the adult male closest in line of succession to him, was only nineteen and away at Fort Hare. For the next two months, therefore, doctors were in constant attendance on Sekgoma, doing their utmost to keep him alive. They diagnosed that he was suffering not from Jacksonian epilepsy but from grand mal, complicated by an acute urethral stricture that was of gonococcal origin. They dismissed ideas that he might be suffering from cerebral syphilis and this was confirmed for them by the negative reaction of his Wassermann test. Above all they felt he needed a rest from his administrative duties and family worries. He had been particularly burdened by the arrangements for the recent visit of the Prince of Wales.

Worst of all the effect of the bromide with which Sekgoma was being treated dulled his brain and led to mental confusion and amnesia. There was considerable relief among the British administration and some of his headmen when he agreed to go to Cape Town for treatment and a rest. He left on 9 September accompanied by Dr. Drew. Meanwhile in Serowe, concern about the health of their ruler had led to divisions among both the headmen and the people. The majority believed that the only explanation for the illness was that Sekgoma had been bewitched, for traditionally the Batswana attributed illness and misfortune to witchcraft - as Tshekedi was to confirm shortly after he came to power when he protested to the High Commissioner about the recently introduced Witchcraft Proclamation. Though the attitude of the Tswana to medicine was an eclectic one and whichever available method of treatment proved successful was accepted, Western medicine was not proving effective as far as the Chief was concerned and there was a growing feeling that he should be treated by the dingaka or priest-doctors. His immediate family, in particular his daughter and son-in-law, as well as his step-mother Semane, who nursed him for most of his illness, were adamant that he should continue to be treated exclusively by the British doctors. Matters only came to a head when he returned from Cape Town where the doctors had failed to get him to appreciate the pain and lengthy recuperation that would be involved in an operation to relieve his urethral stricture. They were also very frightened that he might die on the operating table. This would prove a major setback for Western medicine in the eyes of the common people in Serowe, and embarrass the Administration which had given full backing to treatment of the Chief by Western doctors. Though the Resident Commissioner was prepared to take the political risk of an operation on the Chief in Cape Town he wanted the onus for the decision to be placed on the Headmen attending him and also his daughter and son-in-law who had travelled from Serowe to his bedside in Cape Town. Oratile, however, expressed the wish that her father return to Serowe and be operated upon there. So he set off by train for Serowe accompanied by two European male nurses and Dr. Drew.

The British were by now becoming convinced that Sekgoma would never be able to resume his duties as Chief. Simon seemed both to share this view and be preparing the ground for the power struggle that must ensue on Sekgoma's death or abdication. Before he left for Cape Town he had written an article for the Johannesburg Star undermining the position of his uncle-in-law, the one-eyed Gorewan, who had been acting for Sekgoma during his absence. `Khama's country, the only portion of South Africa that knew complete prohibition, has reverted to the debauchery of beer-drinking', he declared.

Factions in the Tribe now began to jockey for power as it seemed their Chief might not live. Some said he was being bewitched, others said the European doctors were trying to kill him. In the circumstances the Administration agreed with Dr. Drew's suggestion that Sekgoma be asked to abdicate. Apart from the fact that it seemed that he was now permanently deranged, abdication would put an end to the scheming in the royal family. This was also the view taken by Semane, whose enemies believed she was poisoning Sekgoma so that Tshekedi might succeed him. The immediate question was, of course, who would act as regent for Seretse if Sekgoma did agree to abdicate? In a lucid moment Sekgoma had told Major Hannay that if anything happened to him he would like Tshekedi to act for him. `I do not want to force him on the tribe', the Resident Commissioner wrote to the High Commissioner, `but I think it will be generally admitted by the headmen and people that in the circumstances he is the proper person to take charge of the tribe'.

There were others interested in the Regency, however. Oratile, no doubt urged on by her husband and anxious to keep power in her own house rather than let it go to that of her step-mother during the minority of her half-brother, Seretse, asked her father to name her as his immediate successor. This he refused to do. Similarly, Baboni, his half-sister, pressed the claim of his illegitimate son, Gasetshware, to succeed him. This again he rejected. It looked, then, as though Tshekedi would soon have to take over control of tribal affairs.

The Tribe was not yet convinced that Sekgoma was dying or irretrievably insane or indeed that he could not be cured. Epilepsy was not viewed with the dread it was amongst some African peoples. It was believed that it could be treated and its cause was ascribed to a pigeon in the victim's head which produced the fits. Dingaka claimed to be able to remove the cause of the epilepsy. Thus early in the morning of Thursday 29 October a kgotla was held in the presence of Major Hannay, Dr. Drew and the local missionary, Rev.R. Haydon Lewis. Some eight to nine hundred men were present along with many headmen. The business before them was the treatment of their ruler. Despite the Magistrate's warning that` if anything happens while under the treatment of the Witch Doctor, you and your alone, Gamangwato, will be to blame', the majority of headmen urged tratment of their chief by the dingaka.

When the Magistrate concluded the kgotla by calling on all those in favour of treating the Chief by traditional medicine to step back, only the Ratshosas, Acting Chief Gorewan and a few other headmen held their ground. They were later referred to in the Cape Argus as `the fearless and enlightened eight who strongly opposed the replacing of the European doctor's services by those of the native medical men'. For their part the Ratshosas had merely increased their unpopularity within the Tribe while Phethu, who had backed the traditional doctors, conversely increased his influence.

Under the treatment of the Native Doctors Sekgoma appeared to make a rapid recovery and the decision to ask him to abdicate was put into suspension. Only four days earlier Dr. Drew had recommended that he be certified insane. Now he was attending to his duties, and was even having letters written for his signature up until the 10 October. Resident Commissioner Ellenberger attributed the sudden improvement to the fact that the `use of a native doctor to remove any spell which Sekgoma might think had been cast over him through witchcraft would naturally relieve his mind and this would produce a change for the better in his condition but it is very doubtful that such a change will be of a permanent character'. Ellenberger and Drew were soon proved correct in their prognostications. On Friday 13, after nearly two weeks of treatment by Native Doctors, Sekgoma sent for Rev. Lewis, with whom he had mended relations. Lewis found him 'prostrate and in the condition in which he was before his visit to the Cape'.

Despite the departure of the European nursing orderlies, Semane had continued to attend Sekgoma, though according to Lewis the traditional doctors had made her life a misery. Sekgoma asked the missionary for medicine, which he gave him. But after he had left, the traditional doctors returned. But the next afternoon Sekgoma took a turn for the worse, sent the traditional doctors away and called for Lewis and Dr. Drew. They arrived to find him in a critical condition. His kidneys had ceased to function and he suffered a further series of fits. At 2.45 the next morning, a Sunday, some Headmen called in Dr. Drew, who asked them why they did not send for their own doctor. They did not reply. Drew nevertheless went with them and found the Chief having a fit. From then on until 11.40 a.m. he had one fit after another in rapid succession. Finally he died attended in his last hours by the practitioner of western medicine.

The word went out almost immediately that the Whitemen had killed the Chief. The distraught Bangwato punched, shoved and cursed Dr. Drew and Rev. Lewis. Neither was in fact hurt. Gorewan, whom they threatened with his life, fled to the police camp for protection. Semane who had so conscientiously nursed Sekgoma even though she stood most to gain by his death, was openly accused of poisoning him and her house was attacked. The Ratshosas helped save her from the wrath of the hysterical women, led by Sekgoma's sisters Baboni and Mmakhama, who were bitter that she had prevented them from seeing their brother while she was nursing him. The Ratshosas' efforts on Semane's behalf only served to increase resentment against them for, as proponents of the treatment of their Chief by Western Doctors, they were also objects of the vengeance of a mob that had clearly been little affected by Khama's hostility to dingaka. They escaped it only by firing rifles above the crowd's head when their house was attacked. Worse violence was averted by a downpour of rain and Semane was able to take refuge in the mission with the Lewis's. Thereafter, Captain Neale, the Resident Magistrate, who had only just returned to duty, restored order. Meanwhile Resident Commissioner Ellenberger, alerted about the situation by telegram, set off from his headquarters at Mafeking for Serowe to sort out the problem of who would act as Regent for the infant Seretse. He also sent a telegram to the Principal of Fort Hare asking him to advise Tshekedi of his brother's death.

Despite the attacks on him, Dr. Drew had managed to make the necessary arrangements to preserve Sekgoma's body until the funeral. Early in the morning of Tuesday 17 November, after a service in the LMS Church, he was buried alongside his father. The mourners numbered some two to three thousand. In the afternoon, the Resident Commissioner accompanied the frightened Gorewan into the kgotla. There he asked the people whom they looked on as their Chief. They `unanimously declared that, by virtue of his birth and rank, Gorewan was the proper person to lead them until Khama's son, Tshekedi, could take over from him and until Sekgoma's son .... could himself occupy the Chief's chair'. Because the Resident Commissioner and indeed many of the headmen considered Gorewan a weak man - a weakness he had so patently demonstrated in the hours of crisis following Sekgoma's death - he proposed that a Council be formed by the best men of the tribe to assist him. This would be responsible to Government for the management of Tribal affairs and the maintenance of peace and good order in the Tribe 'until Tshekedi could assume duty as Regent'. The twelve members of the council included the two elder Ratshosa brothers as well as Phethu Mphoeng. On 24th November, Ellenberger wrote formally to Tshekedi at Fort Hare, giving him a full account of events in Serowe and informing him that the Tribe wanted him to act as Chief. Meanwhile Gorewan, assisted by the Council, was occupying the Chief's chair until his arrival.

Tshekedi had not proved a particularly brilliant scholar at Fort Hare. His final `Report on Progress and Proficiency' for his Matriculation Year issued in December 1925 had him failing History, Latin, Mathematics and Science with a `Good' in English and a `Very Good' in Bantu Languages. He had, even so, impressed Kerr as a student who was `sincere and I believe absolutely single-minded in the performance of his duty ... modest and gentle of speech. But that will not in the eyes of the discriminating observer mislead as to the firmness of character beneath'.

Back in the capital the two factions awaited his arrival with apprehension, both determined to be the first to secure his ear. Simon Ratshosa set off to welcome him at Palapye Road, the station where passengers for Serowe normally alighted before taking a horse, a car or ox-drawn transport to complete the twenty-five mile journey. Phethu and his collaborators had been more cunning. They had sent Headman Golekanye as an emissary, or as he later described himself, `spy', to Mafeking to escort Tshekedi to Serowe and, as the Ratshosas were convinced, to poison his mind against them. Golekanye was to make sure Tshekedi got off the train at Mahalapye, a station some thirty miles to south of Palapye Road, and some sixty miles from Serowe. The pretext for this was that there were robbers on the road from Palapye to Serowe. Golekanye was subsequently more frank about the real reason: `I was afraid of the troubles he might meet here from these people'. From Mahalapye Tshekedi would be driven by car to Serowe. Tshekedi thus arrived in Serowe while Simon Ratshosa was still waiting for him at Palapye Road. Undoubtedly Golekanye had made good use of the long hours on the journey from Mafeking to Mahalapye to recount the recent turbulent developments in Serowe from the point of view of Phethu and his allies, though Tshekedi later stoutly denied that this had been so. For all their formidable intelligence the Ratshosas in their bid to be the chief advisers to Tshekedi - as they had been to his father and half-brother - were outmanoeuvred by their rivals' skilful manipulation of the rudimentary colonial communications system.

Tshekedi was away at Fort Hare pursuing his studies when Sekgoma was formally installed as Chief of the Bangwato. Sekgoma had, however, been effectively recognised as Chief by his people from the time of his father's death. His appointment nevertheless had to be ratified by the British authorities. On 10 April 1923 he sent some royal spears and a kaross to the Resident Commissioner for presentation to George V, making it more than clear that he would be as loyal a subject of the King-Emperor as his father had been:

When Khama became the Chief of the Bamangwato he found that Assegais were no match for Martini Rifles and Maxim guns, he therefore made up his mind that loyalty to the Great White Queen was his only duty and safe position and ever since these Spears have been lowered down and ordered to sheath their bloody blades which for many years had terrified other tribes. And though might African Princes had foolishly opposed the British Supremacy, he, wiser than they, acknowledged it and remained Chief; as Chief he ruled his people in the fear of God, and encouraged truth, devoutness, and Loyalty to His Majesty The King.... This kaross marks unswerving loyalty that his heirs and people may be still protected with this warm blanket down to the remotest generations of mankind.

Sekgoma's installation on 19 April was carried out by his Uncle Mphoeng, assisted by his cousins, including Gorewan and Phethu, in the presence of Sir James Macgregor, the Resident Commissioner. It was filmed by Albert Carrick of African Films Productions Ltd. Sekgoma cut a regal figure, being tall like his father though much more heavily built. He was fifty-four years old and apparently in good health. There was no reason for his people to anticipate anything but a long reign.

The first year of Sekgoma's reign passed peacefully and he proved a popular monarch with both his people and the British administration. The local European traders held him in their affection too, but not so the missionaries, who found him less fervent a Christian than his father and less supportive of their interests. Indeed in an LMS sponsored biography of Khama by John Charles Harris, Sekgoma had been described as 'weak in character, easy-going in disposition'. Harris had gone on to write that 'his lack of strong principle has been a great grief to his father, while his moral laxity has been a scandal in the tribe... those who know him best are most apprehensive for the future of the tribe under his chieftainship'. Sekgoma had been deeply offended by these remarks and not surprisingly, instead of using the local missionary as his chief adviser as his father had done, he kept his distance from him. Soon after he became kgosi he wrote a bitter letter to the LMS accusing them of interfering in education in his country. 'I understand that you are anxious to further Education amongst my people. Do you mean to carry it out on the same base of abuse and insult as you have painted in your book edited by the Revd. Mr. Harris.... The Schools are mine. I have never asked a help from you. You have your own school at Tiger Kloof and you will never see me interfering in its administration as you have built it with your own money. Therefore let us alone in our own things'. Even despite his anger with the missionaries, all seemed set for a peaceful reign. And in 1924 his succession was doubly secured with the birth of a second son, Botswaletse, to his Queen, Tebogo.

Unfortunately Sekgoma, who was much less assiduous in his duties than Khama had been, left much of the business of state in the hands of the capable Ratshosa brothers. He confirmed Johnnie as his Tribal Secretary, while Simon, his son-in-law and now headmaster of the Khama Memorial School, as the Serowe Public School had been renamed in a curiously anticipatory way in 1922, was in and out of his house and often helped with state papers. With the youngest Ratshosa brother, Obeditse, acting as 'native clerk' and interpreter for the Resident Magistrate and therefore the principal intermediary between the British and Bangwato administrations, the Ratshosas had entrenched themselves in positions of power in the Ngwato state. They also profited from their position as royal advisers and relatives to amass cattle and build fine European style houses which were lavishly furnished. It was little wonder then that they became the object of resentment, especially on the part of members of the royal family who were closely related to Sekgoma but felt themselves cut off from their traditional role as advisers to their ruler. One who felt most bitter at the monopoly of power acquired by the Ratshosas, was Phethu Mphoeng. Phethu, like the Ratshosas, had married into the immediate royal family; he was the powerful governor of the important Mmadinare district; and after his reconciliation in 1903 had enjoyed the favour of his uncle and father-in-law, Khama. He, therefore, 'stood in dread of losing the assurance of patronage on Khama's death', as Neil Parsons has put it. His apprehensions were fully justified when Sekgoma, at the instigation of the Ratshosas, accused Phethu and his younger brother, Oteng, as well as two other cousins, Lebang and Keletlokhile Raditladi, of plotting to assassinate him while he was going to the bioscope as cinemas were known. He further accused Phethu of trying to kill him through witchcraft.

Sekgoma was so convinced that his life was in jeopardy that the British Administration (which after exhaustive enquiries could not share his conviction) reluctantly agreed to Sekgoma's request that the Mphoeng and Raditladi brothers be sent into exile. For them this was a crippling blow. Like the Ratshosas they had large herds of cattle in the Reserve and had taken advantage of the opportunities provided by British rule: they had been educated in South Africa and Oteng Mphoeng ran a prosperous creamery. The root of the problem seems to have been Phethu's resentment of the Ratshosas' interference in his administration of Mmadinare district where he was accused of setting himself up almost as an independent ruler. At the back of Sekgoma's and many others' minds must have been the recent assassination in his kgotla of Seepapitso II of the Bangwaketse by his younger brother in 1916. Assassination traditionally had been one way a brother or son could secure the succession for himself. But far from succeeding to the throne Seepapitso's brother had been hanged for murder by the British. In any case, as Sekgoma himself pointed out, Phethu was not genealogically very close to the throne. Phethu, for his part, strenuously denied that the had any intention of killing his chief. 'As for witchcraft, I do not believe in it', he declared. Rather he saw the whole affair as a plot by the Ratshosas to rid themselves of the main threat to their control of Sekgoma. In a petition to the Resident Magistrate the exiles accused the Ratshosas among other things of trying to monopolise education in Serowe. In particular Kelethokile felt bitter about a case he had lost against Simon Ratshosa because 'Chief Sekgoma always favoured the Ratshosas'. Phethu was clear in his own mind that the 'talk of banishing us from the Country is not the Chief's words they are Simon Ratshosa's words'.

Back in Serowe the Ratshosas consolidated their power in such a way that even Sekgoma began to resent their all-pervading influence. Though Sekgoma had been sent to Lovedale by his father, he had done little more there than learn to speak English and to read and write a little, though contrary to later malicious missionary propaganda, he had comported himself well, showing, according to the Acting Principal, 'superior intelligence'. He was also considered 'careful and earnest' with 'good sense and modesty'. But as Chief he was impatient with paper work and left this to Johnnie. Simon also had had access to his father-in-law's papers, which were kept in Johnnie Ratshosa's house, and helped with the secretarial work involved in running Gamangwato. The growing tension between Sekgoma and the Ratshosas came into the open when Phethu sought, in Sekgoma's own words, 'to come and give in'. Phethu had met Simon at Francistown, a modern settlement in the Tati District just outside the Bamangwato Reserve. There he told him of his desire to make peace with Sekgoma. According to reports Sekgoma had received - no doubt from Phethu - Simon asked Phethu why he did not go to Serowe anyway since no one would stop him as 'there is no chief in Serowe'. Sekgoma also advised the Resident Magistrate that he could no longer trust Johnnie as an interpreter and that letters should not be sent through Obeditse since 'John, Simon and Obeditse are one thing'.

Of course Phethu's account of his meeting with Simon at Francistown may have been no more than calumny. If it had been intended as such it fell on fertile ground for Phethu was forgiven by Sekgoma who was now clear that the Ratshosas were at the bottom of his trouble with his cousins. 'When trouble does begin it will be through the Ratshosas (sic)', he wrote to the Resident Commissioner prophetically. In particular he denounced his son-in-law, Simon, who 'is in the habit of reviling me to the people wherever he goes and wherever he writes to them from...' Phethu duly made submission to Sekgoma and promised among other things not to brew beer and to come whenever Sekgoma sent for him.

The Administration lifted the banishment order on the Mphoengs and Raditladis on 24 July at what proved to be politically a strategic moment for their faction. In the early afternoon of 30 July Sekgoma had an epileptic fit outside Parr's store in Serowe, the first of four that day. Dr. Drew, the local doctor was instructed by the Principal Medical Officer of the Protectorate to keep him under close observation. Less than four weeks later he had further fits at one of his cattle posts some thirty miles from Serowe and when Dr. Drew brought him into Serowe concern began to develop about his long term health. For the Administration this was as great a worry as it was for the morafe since Seretse, Sekgoma's heir, was only four years old while Tshekedi, who would normally act as regent for him as the adult male closest in line of succession to him, was only nineteen and away at Fort Hare. For the next two months, therefore, doctors were in constant attendance on Sekgoma, doing their utmost to keep him alive. They diagnosed that he was suffering not from Jacksonian epilepsy but from grand mal, complicated by an acute urethral stricture that was of gonococcal origin. They dismissed ideas that he might be suffering from cerebral syphilis and this was confirmed for them by the negative reaction of his Wassermann test. Above all they felt he needed a rest from his administrative duties and family worries. He had been particularly burdened by the arrangements for the recent visit of the Prince of Wales, whom one missionary had unflatteringly described to his sister as having 'the appearance of an assistant grocer'. The Prince had opened the Khama Memoria but generally was indifferent to his Bangwato hosts and all the arrangements they had made for him.

Worst of all the effect of the bromide with which Sekgoma was being treated dulled his brain and led to mental confusion and amnesia. There was considerable relief among the British administration and some of his headmen when he agreed to go to Cape Town for treatment and a rest. He left on 9 September accompanied by Dr. Drew, since 'his own attendants get into an absolute panic when there is anything wrong with the Chief'. Meanwhile in Serowe, concern about the health of their ruler had led to divisions among both the headmen and the people. The majority believed that the only explanation for the illness was that Sekgoma had been bewitched, for traditionally the Batswana attributed illness and misfortune to witchcraft - as Tshekedi was to confirm shortly after he came to power when he protested to the High Commissioner about the recently introduced Witchcraft Proclamation. Though the attitude of the Tswana to medicine was an eclectic one and whichever available method of treatment proved successful was accepted, Western medicine was not proving effective as far as the Chief was concerned and there was a growing feeling that he should be treated by the dingaka or priest-doctors. His immediate family, in particular his daughter and son-in-law, as well as his step-mother Semane, who nursed him for most of his illness, were adamant that he should continue to be treated exclusively by the British doctors. Matters only came to a head when he returned from Cape Town where the doctors had failed to get him to appreciate the pain and lengthy recuperation that would be involved in an operation to relieve his urethral stricture. They were also very frightened that he might die on the operating table. This would prove a major setback for Western medicine in the eyes of the common people in Serowe, and embarrass the Administration which had given full backing to treatment of the Chief by Western doctors. Though the Resident Commissioner was prepared to take the political risk of an operation on the Chief in Cape Town he wanted the onus for the decision to be placed on the Headmen attending him and also his daughter and son-in-law who had travelled from Serowe to his bedside in CapeTown. Oratile, however, expressed the wish that her father return to Serowe and be operated upon there. So he set off by train for Serowe accompanied by two European male nurses and Dr. Drew.

The British were by now becoming convinced that Sekgoma would never be able to resume his duties as Chief. Simon seemed both to share this view and be preparing the ground for the power struggle that must ensue on Sekgoma's death or abdication. Before he left for Cape Town he had written an article for the Johannesburg Star undermining the position of his uncle-in-law, the one-eyed Gorewan, who had been acting for Sekgoma during his absence. 'Khama's country, the only portion of South Africa that knew complete prohibition, has reverted to the debauchery of beer-drinking', he wrote. His original report was said to have been full of scurrilous abuse of Sekgoma, which the editors deleted leaving only his allusion to the 'shameful and humiliating conditions which have arisen since his unfortunate illness'.

On his return Sekgoma looked much worse, and this gave further ammunition to those who wanted him treated by the traditional doctors. Accordingly a delegation consisting of the Acting Chief and several headmen called on the Acting Resident Magistrate, Major Hannay, and in the presence of Dr. Drew asked whether the Chief could be handed over to traditional doctors for treatment. Major Hannay said he would have to refer their request to the Resident Commissioner. But, he warned them, they would have to realise that once a Mongwato doctor was called in the Administration would abandon all responsibility for their Chief's treatment. As Dr. Drew wrote afterwards, 'I hope they will not get an opportunity for if they overdo things, I shall get the blame'. Meanwhile Simon Ratshosa, though still committed to Dr. Drew treating his father-in-law, was adding to the sense of crisis by going round the town 'giving it out to certain members of the tribe that to all intents and purposes the Chief is as good as dead'. Factions in the Tribe began to jockey for power as it seemed their Chief might not live. Some said he was being bewitched, others said the European doctors were trying to kill him. In the circumstances the Administration agreed with Dr. Drew's suggestion that Sekgoma be asked to abdicate. Apart from the fact that it seemed that he was now permanently deranged, abdication would put an end to the scheming in the royal family. This was also the view taken by Semane, whose enemies believed she was poisoning Sekgoma so that Tshekedi might succeed him. The immediate question was, of course, who would act as regent for Seretse if Sekgoma did agree to abdicate? In a lucid moment Sekgoma had told Major Hannay that if anything happened to him he would like Tshekedi to act for him. 'I do not want to force him on the tribe', the Resident Commissioner wrote to the High Commissioner, 'but I think it will be generally admitted by the headmen and people that in the circumstances he is the proper person to take charge of the tribe'.

The Tribe was not yet convinced that Sekgoma was dying or irretrievably insane or indeed that he could not be cured. Epilepsy was not viewed with the dread it was amongst some African peoples. It was believed that it could be treated and its cause was ascribed to a pigeon in the victim's head which produced the fits. Dingaka claimed to be able to remove the cause of the epilepsy. Thus early in the morning of Thursday 29 October a kgotla was held in the presence of Major Hannay, Dr. Drew and the local missionary, Rev.R. Haydon Lewis. Some eight to nine hundred men were present along with many headmen. The business before them was the treatment of their ruler. The Magistrate opened the proceedings by telling the assembled Tribe that he understood that there had been a Native Doctor, Mathobe, present at the Cattle post the second time Sekgoma had had his epileptic fits.

'Why, if you have so much faith in your Native Doctors', the Magistrate asked them accusingly, 'did you send for the White Doctor? I admit that some Native Doctors have a good knowledge of various herbal remedies and are able with the help of these to cure wounds, colds, stomach troubles etc. But I know your doctor is going to make use of the "Bones" and in this I have no faith whatsoever and am strongly opposed to it. I warn you that the day a Native Doctor enters the Chief's house Dr. Drew leaves and the two European nurses are withdrawn. And please understand that if anything happens while under the treatment of the Witch Doctor, you and your alone, Gamangwato, will be to blame'.

Gorewan, the Acting Chief, replied by trying to appease both factions. He reported that Oratile was still strongly opposed to the use of traditional doctors. Moreover he and the Magistrate had together seen the Chief, who 'made us to understand that to him, all doctors, whether White or Black, were the same, but if the Magistrate were not willing to have a Native Doctor called he was quite willing to remain in the hands of Dr. Drew. Personally, I have nothing against Witch Doctors but I do not wish to have the Chief treated solely by a Native doctor'.

Other speakers were less equivocal. Headman Baipedi wanted to know who had 'spoilt matters' for he had been under the impression that at their earlier meeting with Major Hannay the latter had agreed that the Chief could be treated by a Native Doctor.

Headman Disang Raditladi, bravely going against the majority view of the assembly, declared: 'I have great faith in European doctors and very little in Native Doctors'. Thus he joined hands with those who had sent his brother and son into exile, whether on principle alone or because he was married to a sister of the Ratshosa brothers.

His view was shared by the Mongwato ordained minister, Rev. Baruti Kalaakgosi, who declared that native doctors were useless. Then the senior Ratshosa brother, Johnnie, also defied the general consensus when he lamented:

'I do not know what has happened to us Bamangwatos. In Khama's time no Witch Doctors were allowed in the place but today not only are they allowed among us but they are allowed to practice. I have been brought up by Khama and know that he hated Native Doctors. As a boy when I fell ill he placed me in the hands of European Doctors'.

'Your words are false, for I Boiditswe, was once called by Khama to treat the Chief's children who were suffering from ear-ache - the Chief's wife can bear me out in this. What is more, I am firmly convinced that I am able to cure the Chief himself. I have treated similar cases before and have been successful

When the Magistrate concluded the kgotla by calling on all those in favour of treating the Chief by traditional medicine to step back, only the Ratshosas, Acting Chief Gorewan and a few other headmen held their ground. They were later referred to in the Cape Argus as 'the fearless and enlightened eight who strongly opposed the replacing of the European doctor's services by those of the native medical men'. But Native Doctor Boiditswe had won the day. For their part the Ratshosas had merely increased their unpopularity within the Tribe while Phethu conversely increased his influence.

Under the treatment of the Native Doctors Sekgoma appeared to make a rapid recovery and the decision to ask him to abdicate was put into suspension. Only four days earlier Dr. Drew had recommended that he be certified insane. Now he was attending to his duties, and was even having letters written for his signature up until the 10 October. Resident Commissioner Ellenberger attributed the sudden improvement to the fact that the 'use of a native doctor to remove any spell which Sekgoma might think had been cast over him through witchcraft would naturally relieve his mind and this would produce a change for the better in his condition but it is very doubtful that such a change will be of a permanent character'. Ellenberger and Drew were soon proved correct in their prognostications. On Friday 13, after nearly two weeks of treatment by Native Doctors, Sekgoma sent for Rev. Lewis, with whom he had mended relations for some time now. Lewis found him 'prostrate and in the condition in which he was before his visit to the Cape'.

Despite the attacks on him, Dr. Drew had managed to make the necessary arrangements to preserve Sekgoma's body until the funeral. Early in the morning of Tuesday 17 November, after a service in the LMS Church, he was buried alongside his father. The mourners numbered some two to three thousand. In the afternoon, the Resident Commissioner accompanied the frightened Gorewan into the kgotla. There he asked the people whom they looked on as their Chief. They 'unanimously declared that, by virtue of his birth and rank, Gorewan was the proper person to lead them until Khama's son, Tshekedi, could take over from him and until Sekgoma's son .... could himself occupy the Chief's chair'. Because the Resident Commissioner and indeed many of the headmen considered Gorewan a weak man - a weakness he had so patently demonstrated in the hours of crisis following Sekgoma's death - he proposed that a Council be formed by the best men of the tribe to assist him. This would be responsible to Government for the management of Tribal affairs and the maintenance of peace and good order in the Tribe 'until Tshekedi could assume duty as Regent'. The twelve members of the council included the two elder Ratshosa brothers as well as Phethu Mphoeng. On 24th November, Ellenberger wrote formally to Tshekedi at Fort Hare, giving him a full account of events in Serowe and informing him that the Tribe wanted him to act as Chief. Meanwhile Gorewan, assisted by the Council, was occupying the Chief's chair until his arrival. Tshekedi had meantime written to Ellenberger to announce that he would be visiting him at Mafeking, the Protectorate capital, on Monday 14th December.

The young man who set off by train from Alice to see the Resident Commissioner was not yet sure whether he would take on the regency. Semane, contrary to those who believed she was ambitious for the power the regency would bring her house, wanted her son to continue his studies, obtain his B.A. and travel a little before taking up the burdens of office. As soon as he had heard the news of Sekgoma's death, Tshekedi's Principal at Fort Hare, Alexander Kerr, had written to the Resident Commissioner that it would appear to him 'to be a mistake if he were prematurely recalled to any position of responsibility in the life of the tribe'.

Tshekedi had not proved a particularly brilliant scholar at Fort Hare. His final 'Report on Progress and Proficiency' for his Matriculation Year issued in December 1925 had him failing History, Latin, Mathematics and Science with a 'Good' in ENglish and a "very Good' in Bantu Languages. He had, even so, impressed Kerr as a student who was 'sincere and I believe absolutely single-minded in the performance of his duty ... modest and gentle of speech. But that will not in the eyes of the discriminating observer mislead as to the firmness of character beneath'.

At the age of twenty Tshekedi was a slenderly built young man, unlike the more familiar thickset figure he was to become a few years later. His eyes had a somewhat wistful look and there was little indication of the powerful personality that would impose itself on opponents, British and Bangwato alike, over the next thirty years. Although he had not travelled outside his continent, his education in South Africa had broadened his horizons and given him insights into the politics of the powerful neighbour with which as both a Motswana and Mongwato he would have to deal throughout his regency. As a student in the Cape, the only Province in the Union where blacks, albeit only the few with the appropriate educational and financial qualifications, still had the franchise, he was acutely aware of the attempts to deprive them of the vote. Before he left Fort Hare, General Hertzog's Nationalist Party with its allies from the Labour Party had defeated Smuts' South Africa Party and formed the 'Pact' Government. Hertzog had come to power with the openly declared intention of consolidating the segregationist policies of his predecessor and removing the Cape Franchise for Africans. Fort Hare, where there was much discussion of 'segregation', was a nursery for the future black politicians and professional classes of South Africa. These groups had been particularly incensed by the Native Urban Areas Act which Smuts introduced in his last full year of office. This complemented the Natives Lands Act of 1913??? which had forbidden blacks to own landed property outside their reserves which constituted less than 10% of the Union. Under the terms of the new Act Africans were herded into locations in the cities and again were forbidden to own property there. Anger at this further act of segregation had led to widespread protests by, among other political organisations, the South African Native National Congress which changed its name that year to the African National Congress. Throughout his life, Tshekedi was to have close contacts with the leadership of the Congress, and his experiences at that early age informed him with a deep loathing of the segregationist system he encountered in South Africa while studying there. It helps to explain the uncompromising stand he took from the beginning of his regency against any proposal for the incorporation of his country into the Union, whatever the apparent economic benefits might be.

For Resident Commissioner Ellenberger and the other officials with whom Tshekedi had to deal, the contrast between this shy youth of twenty and his brother, the tall and strong-willed Sekgoma, or the equally tall and venerable Khama III, was dramatic. And their natural tendency was to treat him in patronising terms despite the fact that he was educated where his father had been illiterate and his half-brother nearly so. He must have seemed to them little more than a schoolboy and their approach to him may be understood if not condoned. It was to take some officials many years before they appreciated, as Principal Kerr and his staff had quickly done, that they were dealing with a young man who was very much the son of his father. Nevertheless Ellenberger received him in Mafeking in the manner that befitted the potential Regent of the largest of the Tribes with which he had to deal. At the time Tshekedi himself seems to have been anxious to return to College, and Ellenberger merely advised him that when he eventually did take over as Acting Chief, he would not object to the abolition of the Council he had established to help Gorewan. But his own advice was that he should retain its services.

After his interview with the Resident Commissioner Tshekedi left for Serowe by train. Back in the capital the two factions awaited his arrival with apprehension, both determined to be the first to secure his ear. Simon Ratshosa set off to welcome him at Palapye Road, the station where passengers for Serowe normally alighted before taking a horse, a car or ox-drawn transport to complete the twenty-five mile journey. Phethu and his collaborators had been more cunning. They had sent Headman Golekanye as an emissary, or as he later described himself, 'spy', to Mafeking to escort Tshekedi to Serowe and, as the Ratshosas were convinced, to poison his mind against them. Golekanye was to make sure Tshekedi got off the train at Mahalapye, a station some thirty miles to south of Palapye Road, and some sixty miles from Serowe. The pretext for this was that there were robbers on the road from Palapye to Serowe. Golekanye was subsequently more frank about the real reason: 'I was afraid of the troubles he might meet here from these people'. From Mahalapye Tshekedi would be driven by car to Serowe. Tshekedi thus arrived in Serowe while Simon Ratshosa was still waiting for him at Palapye Road. Undoubtedly Golekanye had made good use of the long house on the journey from Mafeking to Mahalapye to recount the recent turbulent developments in Serowe from the point of view of Phethu and his allies, though Tshekedi later stoutly denied that this had been so. For all their formidable intelligence the Ratshosas in their bid to be the chief advisers to Tshekedi - as they had been to his father and half-brother - were outmanoeuvred by their rivals' skilful manipulation of the rudimentary colonial communications system.

Although Ratshosa remained in office as Tribal Secretary he began to hedge his bets by offering support to Sekgoma's house, to which he was affiliated

Tshekedi effectively took up his duties as Regent almost immediately after his arrival in Serowe on 19 December, but while the people accepted his authority as Regent for Seretse he had to be formally recognised as such by the British Administration. Accordingly that same day Gorewan, who was still Acting Chief as far as the British were concerned, requested that the Resident Commissioner should come to Serowe and instal Tshekedi as Regent. Meanwhile, Tshekedi had called a kgotla over which he, rather than Gorewan had presided. His purpose was to find out what the Tribe as a whole thought about the Council which had been formed to help Gorewan. He was left in no doubt that they were vehemently opposed to it. Only three spoke in support of keeping it and these included Johnnie and Simon Ratshosa. Then at 10 a.m. Tshekedi, accompanied by all the members of the Council including the two Ratshosa brothers and their enemy Phethu Mphoeng, went to see Captain Neale, the Resident Magistrate.

When Tshekedi informed Neale that the Tribe wanted the Council abolished, Neale advised caution:

`Let it be clearly understood that the Government has no wish to interfere in the government and customs of the Tribe, nor does it wish to weaken the power of the Chief or the acting Chief. Remember that your Chief is young and inexperienced and is therefore in need of such a Council from which he could obtain reliable advice'.

The Magistrate then asked members of the Council their opinions about it. Only one member, Simon Ratshosa, spoke in favour of retaining. He declared:

`I am a Councillor and I am a strong supporter of the Council because it answers my every wish and desire, and also because I am convinced that if run on the right lines it would prove a great help in the government of our country. The Council does not as some of you seem to think eliminate the Chief's power, but, in my opinion, it strengthens it'.

It soon became clear that others feared that the Council would in fact strengthen the power of the Ratshosas and reduce that of the young Regent. After objecting strongly to being interpreted to the Resident Magistrate by Johnny Ratshosa, Phethu spoke for the majority when he declared that the Council should have been formed when Tshekedi was present. He was supported by Headman Mathiba, the Chief Tax Collector, who without qualms for Gorewan's feelings said that as far as he was concerned the purpose of forming the Council had been `to protect and advise the acting Chief Gorewan. Gorewan as is well known is a weak Chief and was in dire need of such a Council'.

Unabashed, Gorewan confirmed that this was so. His grievance was that no one had ever explained to him what the functions and duties of the Council were : `Now that Tshekedi has come his wish and not mine is to be considered.'

Captain Neale concluded the meeting by telling Tshekedi that it depended on him `whether there shall be Council or not'.

Although Tshekedi had been careful not to reveal his intentions at the meeting, he had made up his mind that it should be abolished. In this course of action he had the support of Phethu and the majority of the Tribe who were persuaded that the Council would merely be a vehicle for the the Ratshosas to continue their domination of affairs in Gamangwato. Indeed rumour in Serowe had it that they were responsible for its formation in the first place, seeing it as a means to acquire a formal rather than just an advisory role in relation to their Chief. Simon Ratshosa later flatly denied this, and was supported by his elder brother Johnnie who he confirmed that it was the Resident Commissioner not they who had first mooted the idea. Indeed Johnnie had advised the kgotla meeting when the establishment of the Council was first mooted that it `should not be formed, but the people then said that it must be formed...' Likewise Simon alleged that although he had been elected to the Council, `I objected to be a member. I did not like to be among untruthful people'. Neither, however, denied that once formed they supported the continued existence of the Council not only as a means of helping Gorewan but of assisting the young and inexperienced Tshekedi. But as far as the people were concerned the real reason the Ratshosas were in favour of the Council `was a trick to break down the Chief's power, and that he would not have the same power as his forefathers, and that the power would be in the hands of the white men'.

Tshekedi was not as unaware of the political situation in the morafe as his absence at Fort Hare over the past two years might suggest. He had after all been in Serowe from 1920 to 1923, and while at Fort Hare spent his holidays at home. He was on good terms with his half-brother, Sekgoma II, while his mother, Semane, was an astute woman who had lived at the centre of palace politics and intrigue for a quarter of a century. Several headmen had personally instructed him in `native custom', while he himself had attended kgotla on a number of occasions and participated in regimental work. Tshekedi must also have been aware how Councils had been used by the British in collaboration with jealous royals to limit the powers of Sebele II, ruler of the neighbouring Bakwena state. If he were to maintain the Council set up to help Gorewan it would become a barrier between himself and the people in kgotla, and be resented as much by them as Councils had been by the Bakwena, who perceived them not so much as a means of limiting the powers of the chief but as vehicles for ambitious anti-democratic elements.

Though the Council could not be formally dissolved until the High Commissioner gave his consent, it ceased to exist after the meeting with Captain Neale since all its members except the Ratshosas resigned. Though Tshekedi insisted that he personally had nothing against the Council, and that in recommending its abolition he was merely following the wishes of the Tribe, there can be little doubt that he was only too glad to be rid of it. If he were to be effective ruler of the Bangwato rather than a puppet of the Ratshosas, they had to be broken. A first step towards achieving this was to abolish the Council in which they would be a dominant force. As far as the British administration was concerned Tshekedi seemed to giving into reactionary elements in the morafe, for as Captain Neale lamented, there were `many progressive Natives in the Bamangwato Reserve, who apart from the Ratshosas, wish the old style of autocratic rule to be definitely finished with. There seemed to be an excellent change for a more progressive system to be tried upon the young Regent's accession'.

While he was irritated that his advice about maintaining the Council had been ignored by Tshekedi, Resident Commissioner Ellenberger nevertheless agreed to come to Serowe and instal him as Chief Regent with all the powers of a hereditary Tswana ruler until the day Seretse was judged by the morafe to be old enough to take office. Shortly before for the installation, Sekgoma II's second son, Botswaletse, died from whooping cough. Tshekedi was now only a heartbeat from the throne.

On Tuesday 19th January 1926, the day chosen for Tshekedi's installation, the inhabitants of Serowe awoke to a steady downpour of rain. But the skies were beginning to clear when Colonel Ellenberger arrived in Serowe by motor-car. He was met on the outskirts of the capital by Tshekedi and an escort of mounted horsemen. The Chief was dressed in a peaked cap, a dark tunic with scarlet facings and gilt epaulettes and what the correspondent of the Johannesburg Star assured readers were well-fitting breeches. A few hundred yards on Ellenberger was greeted by the main body of the Bangawto regiments, each dressed in a different uniform freely modelled on those of British regiments, including some consisting of yellow tunics with blue facings, and scarlet riding breeches, topped by white busbies. Many of those who waited for the Resident Commissioner had been soaked by the rain, but this in no way worried them for rain on such a day was the best of omens in this drought stricken country where the very word for rain, pula, was the royal greeting.

The installation of Tshekedi took place in the kgotla at the foot of the hill in which Khama's grave had been dug. A canopy of white canvas had been erected above a table covered with a magnificent kaross of animal skins. Behind this sat the new ruler with the Resident Commissioner and the Resident Magistrate. The signal for the beginning of the hour-long ceremony was a call on the flute. Most of the inhabitants of Serowe and many from the outlying districts had assembled to see their young chief installed. Women, who usually had no place in the kgotla except as plaintiffs, defendants and witnesses, sat on the fringes of the crowd. The European community had also turned out in full force and were given special seating.

An elaborate programme had been drawn up for the installation. Tshekedi was first introduced to the Resident Commissioner by his uncle and future father-in-law, Moloi, a strikingly tall figure. Then speeches were made by Gorewan, the former Acting Chief, and by Tshekedi's cousins Edirilwe, Phethu and Baipedi. No formal place was found for a Ratshosa in the programme, but Simon took advantage of the custom that at the installation of a new ruler older people could stand up and give him free advice. He delivered an attack on the reactionary factions in the Tribe and urged the new Chief to put a spoke in their wheel by sternly repressing witchcraft and beer drinking. `If you are going back to those devilish tricks which are abolished by your father, then you will not rule us', Simon told his young Regent. `But if you enforce his laws, and practice them yourself, then you will certainly rule us'.

The European community played an important role in the morning's ceremony : an address was delivered by Mr. Kirkham on behalf of the local Chamber of Commerce while the Reverend A.J. Haile brought a message of good will from the directors of the London Missionary Society. Then the Resident Commissioner stood up before the huge crowd: `I thank you for asking me to come here today, but you must remember it is not my place to instal your chief. By your own ancient custom you must instal your own chief'. Ellenberger then called on Moloi to come forward. The old man took a fine leopard skin and wrapped it about the shoulders of Tshekedi at which a great shout of `Pula, Pula, Pula' rose from the people. Ellenberger then turned to Tshekedi and just as the headmen had done urged him to follow in his father's footsteps.

The final speech of the day was given by Tshekedi, himself, who made no extravagant promises, but hoped that he would indeed be able to follow in his father's footsteps as all the preceding speakers had urged. Then, as chiefs by custom always did at their installation, he assured the kgotla that he would `be led by the wise counsels of the older men of the tribe and the assistance of the government to rule the nation rightly. Great honour had been done him by placing the skin on his shoulders, but it must be remembered that this really belonged to his young nephew'.

Tshekedi had been installed with panoply of a full chief and it was a full chief that he intended to reign until the time came to hand over to Seretse.

Tshekedi was simultaneously made leader of the new Regiment formed for his age group, the MaLetamotse. Slender and still a little nervous on public occasions, he had made a favourable impression on all those who recorded their impressions of the ceremony. The correspondent of the Bulawayo Chronicle thought him `a quiet, thoughtful unpretentious young man...[who] betrayed the mannerisms and a quiet presence that inevitably led one to exclaim "Khama lives again in this boy". The similarity was remarkable'.

Evoking the difficult times they had experienced during the reign of Sekgoma II, and no doubt thinking back to their happier experiences under Khama III, the London Missionary Society declared : `We hope and trust a new era is dawning, in which the Regent will be able to stand firm and prove his worth, and the Tribe and Mission working in closer sympathy and harmony may see much good fruit to their endeavours'.

For the Bangwato, a new era was indeed dawning. Despite his youth and inexperience Tshekedi was soon to demonstrate that he intended to be sole ruler of his people. He now began to plan the downfall of those whom he perceived to be the main threat to his position as Regent : the Ratshosa brothers. His first step was to inform the Resident Magistrate that the people wanted Johnny Ratshosa replaced as Secretary to the Tribe. Neale cautioned Tshekedi against making a hurried decision and advised him to wait until the Resident Commissioner had been informed before dismissing him. As Neale wrote to Ellenberger, `it is of course a tribal matter and as such to be decided by the Chief. I anticipate, however, that a dangerous faction will arise and I would rather have seen Tshekedi well established and in a position to judge before rushing his fences'. But already Johnny's position had been made untenable by his brother Simon whose attitude towards Tshekedi was one of open defiance. He had walked out of a kgotla meeting without observing the customary courtesies. This gave Phethu the opportunity for which he had been patiently waiting : he had come back to Serowe with the fixed intention of taking revenge on the Ratshosas.

Further complications with the Ratshosa family had developed. Oratile, Tshekedi's domineering niece and wife of Simon, had seized a young Mosarwa girl from her father's widow, Queen Tebogo. This girl had originally been a gift to Oratile from her father, but he had taken back the child at a time when his relations with the Ratshosas were becoming increasingly tense. As Chief, he had the right to dispose of any Basarwa, who were treated by their rich Bangwato owners as property to work for them on their cattle posts without pay. It was customary to bring in Basarwa children to Serowe to work as domestic servants. Oratile had been further enraged when Tshekedi opened up her father's house preparatory to settling his estate. When Oratile raised the matter with the Resident Magistrate, Tshekedi told him it was not her affair.

When Ellenberger learnt that Tshekedi had brought the question of appointing a new Tribal Secretary in kgotla without first discussing it personally with Johnny he was very upset. When Tshekedi had raised the matter with him after the installation, he had not objected to Tshekedi's planned repalacement of Johnny. But he had supposed that Tshekedi would inform Johnny of his dismissal privately and not make it a matter for public discussion. He now urged Tshekedi to tell Johnny that he had no intention of appointing anyone in his place for some time and that even when he did so he hoped that Johnnie would `remain by his side and help him'.

When Captain Neale conveyed the Resident Commissioner's advice to Tshekedi, he promised to follow it. But to Neale's surprise Johnny came to him on the 8 February to tell him that he had been summarily dismissed from his post in the kgotla that very morning. Johnny was convinced that Phethu and his supporters were behind Tshekedi's decision.

An hour later Tshekedi arrived at Captain Neale's office, and told him that he had indeed seen Johnny privately and thanked him for his services. He had then called a kgotla meeting at which he reminded the people that he had promised to give them a decision about replacing Johnny. `I told them', he informed the Magistrate, `that they could get their own [Secretary] and that Johnny was no longer in this work and that it was in accordance with their request. I reminded the people that in the previous Meeting they asked me [to] take the Ratshosas out of their work but I said that I did not think that would be fair on my part and I beseeched them to let Obeditse continue his work at the kgotla issuing permits. In the meantime I told them to elect their own [Secretary] and tell me whom they have chosen'.

Captain Neale was very irritated that Tshekedi had not taken the Resident Commissioner's advice and told him as much. But Tshekedi replied that he had found it `impossible as he had gone too far and that if he retained Ratshosa the other faction would arise'. Neale informed the Resident Commissioner that Tshekedi had then changed his tune - a tactic he was to use many times therafter - by saying that he had not understood the Resident Commissioner's advice. `I cannot too strongly represent that unless Tshekedi alters his attitude as Regent trouble will ensue...He apparently takes no responsibility as Chief and is swayed and led by any faction as was to be expected when the Council was dissolved.'

Please give my greetings to Tshekedi and tell him that when he seeks my advice and I give it to him, I expect him to act on it, and that I am somewhat disappointed at his not having done so in this instance as it would have saved a good deal of ill feeling in the tribe....my advice to him is, as I have already told him, not to give a decision in any matter before he has consulted you or me, if at any time he is in doubt as to what he should do.

What neither the Resident Magistrate or Resident Commissioner realised was that far from being swayed to and fro by the Tribe or needing their advice Tshekedi had set off on a very clearly marked path of consolidating his own power which meant the elimination of the Ratshosas and the neutralisation of all other close relatives of his half-brother Sekgoma. He intended taking sole charge of the upbringing of the young Chief Seretse and running the affairs of the morafe as he, not the Ratshosas or the British, saw fit. And to get his own way he was prepared to dissemble and prevaricate.

Although the Council had been abolished and Johnny removed as Secretary of the Tribe, the Ratshosa brothers were still influential in Serowe. Obeditse still held the post of Native Clerk and Interpreter to the Resident Magistrate while Simon was Headmaster of the Khama Memorial School. They had the support of a powerful group of women in the royal family who bitterly resented Tshekedi and in particular his mother Semane. Simon dis not bother to disguise his contempt for Tshekedi and went around Serowe saying there was no Chief who could control him. Johnny, understandably embittered by his treatment, began to emulate his brother. Only Obeditse, who was probably circumscribed in his behaviour by his official position in the Magistrate's office, seems to have controlled his resentment of Tshekedi publicly.

For his part, Tshekedi, who had strong vengeful streak in his character, deliberately set about provoking the Ratshosas. On Saturday 3 April he sent some men to remove two Basarwa girls from Oratile. One of these was the girl Oratile had seized from Queen Tebogo. When Oratile refused to give them up, Tshekedi ordered that they be taken by force. The following Monday, he asked Mr. Cuzen, who had recently taken over from Captain Neale as Resident Magistrate, to attend a kgotla at which he would explain to the Ratshosas why he had taken away Oratile's Basarwa girls. Mr. Cuzen duly attended the kgotla with the Reverend Haydon Lewis as his interpreter. But the Ratshosas were busy getting dressed for a wedding of one of Tshekedi's nephews, which was being jointly organised by Baboni, Tshekedi's half-sister and one of Semane's bitter enemies. When Tshekedi sent a second summons to the Ratshosas, they still refused to come. So he closed the kgotla, no doubt delighted that they had now openly disobeyed him and could be called to account. As he told Mr Cuzen : `I wanted you to understand why I had taken those girls away, but now that the Ratshosa brothers have disobeyed me by refusing to attend the kgotla I will offer them no explanation. I am finished with them'. Then, clearly abusing his authority, he provoked the Ratshosas into a further act of disobedience by having Simon summoned in the middle of the wedding to undertake some work with his Regiment. Simon refused to come, for the cake was just being cut. But the Regiment made such a commotion outside and so threatened the guests that the wedding was disrupted.

That afternoon, at about 4 o'clock Tshekedi again summoned the Ratshosas to his kgotla to explain why they had disobeyed his earlier orders. When he was given assurance that the Magistrate would be present, Johnny advised his brothers that they should present themselves. When they arrived, the Chief instructed them to sit in the centre of the kgotla where a crowd of men had assembled. Simon whispered to his elder brother that the people were going to do the same to them as the Zulus did to Piet Retief. `We are dead, brother'. Then, without even the semblance of a trial, Tshekedi told them: `I will punish you with lashes'. When they protested that as royal princes they could not be flogged, the people in the kgotla set about them with any weapon they could lay hands on. At last their time for revenge on the once powerful, still arrogant and wealthy Ratshosas had come. One man shouted at Johnnie `You will never see the sun rise again. We are going to kill you'. Johnnie later said that he even heard Tshekedi cry out to Headman Baipedi `Kill them'. Johnnie himself was struck on the head with a chair and on the back with a stick, and fell half conscious to the ground. It was Tshekedi who ordered his assailants to let him go. Meanwhile Simon and Obeditse had managed to escape from the crowd which had rained blows on them too.

The two brothers raced back home where Simon took his revolver and Obeditse his Mauser rifle. They returned to the kgotla to see what had happened to Johnny, even though some neighbours tried to stop them telling them they would surely be killed. But they pressed forward with Obeditse calling out `Let us shoot the buggers' Nearing the kgotla, which was in uproar, Simon and Obeditse took cover behind some poles about a hundred yards from where Tshekedi was sitting and fired at him. They missed with both their first and second shots. Attendants tried to hustle Tshekedi out of danger, but at first he refused to budge, declaring : `I will die in my Father's kgotla.' But just before the Ratshosas fired their third volley from he was rushed towards the safety of a fence. Before he could reach it a bullet found its target. He was hit in the side. The Ratshosas then ran back home.

The kgotla now filled with excited men who had heard the rifle shots. Tshekedi silenced them and called on two of his headmen: `I want the men who shot at me - dead or alive'.

An eager party set off to the Ratshosas' kraal some bearing firearms. When they got there, Headman Oitsile fired at Simon and Obeditse but missed. So too did Moanaphuti, who was later to become as bitter an enemy of Tshekedi as the Ratshosas he now sought to kill. Before anybody was hurt, Mr Cuzen arrived in his car and stopped the shooting. He took Johnny, who had made his way back home, and Obeditse, who had waved a Union Jack from his window to show Cuzen he was not firing, to the Residency for their own safety. In the meantime Simon had escaped and taken refuge in the house of Cuzen's European clerk. McIntosh insisted that Simon hand over his pistol.

That night a fire broke out in the Ratshosas' compound. Tshekedi knew nothing about this but learnt the next day that Simon's house had been set alight. Then, as Tshekedi was to put it a few days later, he collected all his men in the kgotla and sent some of them `to burn the houses belonging to the three sons of Ratshosa'. The incendiarists were led by Phethu Mphoeng and they performed their task with a vengeance. Verandah posts and doors were hacked down, windows smashed, paraffin was poured on the contents and straw added to ensure a good fire. Cuzen could do little to stop these acts of vengeance having no police force of consequence at his disposal. He went to the kgotla to try and quieten things down, for the Bangwato were still very excited and many of them were armed with rifles. It was Tshekedi who eventually managed to get them to disperse peacefully to their homes. When Ellenberger heard what had happened, he straightway ordered that an enquiry in to what were called `the disturbances at Serowe' be held under the chairmanship of his Assistant Resident Commissioner, Lt-Col. R.M. Daniel. It began on the Wednesday and finished on the Friday and took place in the kgotla at Serowe with some two thousand Bangwato present. Since it was not a judicial enquiry, there were no lawyers present. Neither of the Ratshosa brothers denied that they had gone armed to the kgotla. But they argued that they had carried weapons to protect themselves. In their evidence both Simon and Johnny described at length the wrongs they had suffered at the hands of Tshekedi and what they considered his ventriloquist, Phethu Mphoeng. Johnny accused Phethu of actually telling the Resident Magistrate in a meeting : `What will please me most is if I can make Johnny poor. I have come to avenge myself'. This effectively he had done for as Johnny told Colonel Daniel : `My nice house has been destroyed, furnished like a European's. I have done nothing wrong to the Chief'.

The loquacious Simon spoke for three times as long as either of his brothers. Much of his evidence was concerned with damning Phethu, whom he accused of being the source of all their trouble. `What have we done wrong to you?', he asked Tshekedi. `Have we done wrong by protecting your Mother when she was being killed by all the Mangwato the day the Chief Sekgoma died? Do you reward a kind action with a bad one?' Then he lamented his present plight: `Buildings which had been put up by my father are gone. I have no blankets. I am destitute, we sleep like cattle. None of our papers are saved, all our belongings are gone, by the traitors Phethu and others on Easter Monday and Tuesday. Phethu led the Regiment, he said he was pleased that he had come here so that Ratshosa's sons might become poor...'.

Phethu followed Simon and declared that he would not go into any matter which had touched his name. Instead he outlined the events that had brought the Ratshosas into conflict with Tshekedi, carefully laying the blame for the rift at their door. He concluded his evidence with an impassioned appeal: 'We are kneeling down before His Honour and his assistants to beg of them to sympathise with us as our Chief has been wounded. We are kneeling down praying that these men should be killed lest they should teach the other Bamangwato to kill their Chief. A Chief must sometimes punish a man severely but the Chief is not to be killed for that. Our prayer is only one prayer, they must be killed, they have killed our Chief.'

In the days before British rule that might well have been the fate of Simon and Obeditse. But in matters of treason and attempted murder the law of the British `protectors' prevailed over that of the Bangwato. On Saturday morning, therefore, the Resident Commissioner who had just come up from Mafeking, informed the assembled Tribe that as Simon and Obeditse had not acted in self defence they would be indicted for attempted murder. He informed them that the two had already been arrested and sent under armed escort by motor to Francistown where they would await trial.

No criminal charge was laid against Johnny, who formally requested the Tribe to forgive him. They agreed to do so but only on condition that he was removed from Serowe the same day. Tshekedi undertook to look after his cattle until he was settled in a new home. He also agreed to look after the wives and families of Obeditse and Simon. Colonel Ellenberger pronounced these terms acceptable with the one stipulation that the place of banishment for Johnny should have a good supply of water.

Tshekedi was not physically rid of the Ratshosa brothers; but he had not reckoned with the resourcefulness of Simon and his female relatives to bring a plague upon his house from afar - from prison and from exile.

One of Tshekedi's first concerns when he became Regent was to locate the will his father had drawn up in 1907. He discovered that the Resident Commissioner possessed a copy. When he sent it to him, he found that his father had named him as his principal heir. There was no mention of Sekgoma. But in the letter enclosing the will, Ellenberger advised Tshekedi that Sekgoma had claimed that as a result of their reconciliation, Khama had altered his will verbally and allotted the bulk of his property to his elder son in conformace with Tswana custom. Indeed Sekgoma said that Khama had ordered the will to be burnt. But here was a signed copy, and it was unclear whether verbal declarations made in kgotla overrode an English-style will drawn up by a lawyer. In tradition, such a will had no place. But then Khama in his fifty year reign had overridden many other customary laws and introduced the concept of the King's own personal property. If the will of 1907 was held valid, then Tshekedi was a very rich man, while the young Chief Seretse would be heir only to his late father Sekgoma's not insubstantial herd. For the time being this did not become an issue, since by Tswana law Tshekedi as Regent was responsible for administering the property of his ward. But it was to be the subject of great bitterness between uncle and nephew twenty-five years later. For Tshekedi the immediate problem arose not from Khama's estate but that of his half-brother, Sekgoma. Sekgoma's daughter, Oratile, and his half-sisters, Mmakhama and Baboni, resented the fact that Tshekedi was managing it without consulting them.

`We cry to you Chief, Bamangwato are spoild, they lit Tshekedi in the wrong waye. Help, Sir, there is danger. Khama and Sekgoma daughters are living in the veld like animals. Phethu came, he spoil our tribe, see to it Sir.

We are sorry for our Chief's daughters. God will kill us. Help, the town is spild. Sons of Rachosa have no falt.

Tshekedi immediately suspected the Ratshosas of being behind the letter. As he wrote to the Resident Commissioner `the writer who ever he was took great care that he misspelled many of the words in the letter... I do not know', he complained, `what wrong I have done to my sisters. Ever since I came to Serowe after Chief Sekgoma's death not one of them cared to come and see me : as for me, while in their sickbeds I have visited them even supporting them with food, killing oxen for them and sending bags of flour and sugar to them'. The letter goes on, he continued, `to say the Ratshosas have no fault. I would have been surprised if no word of support to the Ratshosas did not appear in a letter of such nature. From what I have heard and seen there is hardly an incident in the near history of the tribe when there was trouble and the Ratshosas, or my sisters or sometimes both, were the sources of the disturbance.' Concluding, Tshekedi the Resident Commissioner, `whatever the result of the Ratshosas' trial may be, never allow them to return to the Bamanwato Reserve any along. As long as they are here there will never be any peace in the nation'. As for his half-sisters, `had they not been women and some of them widows ... I only ask that they should be transferred to some other reserve until such times as they will be able to think and realise that they have been totally misled by the Ratshosas in stirring up strife for reasons which they will find hard to explain.'

This was not an expression of paranoid fears on the part of a young and insecure ruler. As daughters of Khama's first wife, Mma Bessie, and sisters of Sekgoma, MmaKhama and Baboni were contemptuous of their younger half-brother from a junior house who now, simply because he was a male, had ascendancy over them. They quickly convinced the Resident Magistrate that they presented a real threat to Tshekedi. On one of Ellenberger's visits to Serowe, they had created a scene in the Resident Magistrate's office in front of Tshekedi saying that he was their servant and they would never recognise him as Regent. On a second occasion they had even insulted Ellenberger himself. Far from living in the veld, they were wandering about districts in which there was dissatisfaction stirring up further strife. They had even brought in a `Witch Doctor' from Southern Rhodesia. Tshekedi was so frightened of being poisoned by them that he would only eat food prepared by his special cook. His house was guarded day and night as were his drinking-water and his grain bins. Despite these troubles Tshekedi was getting on well with his headmen who were out with regiments making up the roads. `Great credit is due to the Acting Chief for his progressive movements. .... I am of the opinion that Phethu is not so bad as he is painted',the Resident Magistrate wrote to Ellenberger, `and he naturally has a feeling of revenge against the Ratshosas. The Tribe will never settle down until these women are removed...'

The depth of the bitterness of Oratile and Tshekedi's half-sisters was fully revealed at the trial of Simon and Obeditse Ratshosa for `wrongfully, unlawfully and maliciously' assaulting Tshekedi, Kgosidintsi and Gopelan,`by discharging firearms loaded with gunpowder or other explosive substance and bullets at and against' them `with the intent to kill or murder the said Chief Tshekedi, Kgosidintsi and Gopelan or one or more of them'.

The trial was held at Palapye Road and was presided over by a specially appointed Additional Resident Magistrate, Captain Robert O'Malley Reilly, since Mr Cuzen, the Resident Magistrate in charge of Serowe, was to be called as a witness. It began on 22 June and did not finish until 30 June, with judgement being delivered the following day. The transcript of evidence covered 339 pages of typed foolscap paper, and yet it reveals little that was new about the attempted assassination. It did however provide both opponents and supporters of the Ratshosas with a fine opportunity once more to air their grievances.

In the trial the Administration, in the person of Cuzen, was made to seem particularly inept by Dr Lang, the defence counsel from Johannesburg. Cuzen's declared policy of non-interference in Bangwato affairs was held up to ridicule, and yet he was merely espousing the doctrine of parallel rule practised in the Bechuanaland Protectorate. He told Dr. Lang that he did not consider it appropriate to interfere in the Chief's domestic affairs. When asked whether he had tried to stop the burning of the Ratshosas' houses, he replied:

Pressed further, Cuzen assured Dr Lang : `The Chief has the right to destroy houses'.

`Your general attitude throughout', Lang concluded, `has been to allow the natives to do as they like.'

Tshekedi proved a more impressive, though stubborn witness. He shared Cuzen's view of his powers. He also showed himself surprisinglu capable of dealing the hostile questioning of Dr Lang, especially as this was his first time in a European court. At times he was downright evasive in his answers, at others merely non-committal. At all times he refused to have words put into his mouth. After nearly a full day's cross-examination, he had shown himself a formidable adversary, despite his youth. Indeed his appetite for the law seems to have been whetted by his experience in the witness box, for shortly after the trial he made enquiries of Jutas, the Cape Town booksellers, about the cost of a number of lawbooks in particular two on Evidence.

The Defence were at pains to prove that Tshekedi had been wrong in Bangwato law to order the thrashing of members of the royal family. But Tshekedi was adamant that chiefs's sons could and indeed had been flogged in kgotla. He cited a number of examples, including his own Uncle Moloi and Johnnie Ratshosa's own grandfather. Rather incautiously in view of the fact that Dr. Lang was trying to prove him an autocrat, he declared: `I am their Chief and I do as I want.' Other witnesses made it clear that royal headmen or those like the Ratshosas who were sons of chiefs' daughters were in no way exempt from flogging in the kgotla. Indeed old Moloi how his elder brother, Khama III, had had him flogged for interrupting him when he was speaking. Like many other witnesses, Tshekedi denied that the Ratshosas were royals, since they were only sons of a daughter of a Chief and therefore took the status of their commoner father. In this he was supported by his Uncle Moloi, who when challenged by Dr Lang `They don't think much of women in your tribe' readily agreed. He was adamant that they were lucky to have got away with their lives. In pre-colonial times, he told Dr Lang, the penalty for attempted murder of a Chief would have been death.

What emerged from the evidence of other witnesses for the prosecution was the deep hatred the Ratshosas had earned in the Tribe. As old Moloi put it : `They look on the tribe as dogs.' In like kind, the witnesses for the defence witnesses were at pains to denounce Phethu whom they saw as the architect of all their troubles. Only less venomous were their attacks on Tshekedi, though some tried to portray him as the misguided puppet of the scheming Phethu. Tshekedi's half-sister, the overweight Baboni, and his niece, Oratile, tall and somewhat gaunt, both openly declared that as far as they were concerned, Tshekedi was not their Chief.

Nothing was produced by the defence to support its claim that the two Ratshosa brothers were `Not Guilty' as pleaded. What the defence did make clear was that the Ratshosa brothers had been sorely, if not deliberately, provoked by Tshekedi. In his judgement Captain Reilly made no mention of extenuating circumstances, and found the brothers guilty as charged and sentenced each to ten years' imprisonment with hard labour. Before passing judgement he did make allusion to an aspect of the trial that had bothered him, and that was the prominence given to the subject of slavery though it did not seem to have any real bearing on the case.

`Now that the case is finished it has been admitted by the Council(sic) for the Defence that the subject was not material at all. Why then was the point so laboured during the trial, and why did the newspapers give the matter such prominence by headlines such as `Slavery in Bechuanaland'. It appears to be that there is something peculiar behind this and that the Administration is being attacked under cover of a criminal trial. Finally I cannot too strongly emphasise, if my impression is correct, how irregular, to use an euphemism, this procedure is. The question of slavery should have been brought to the notice of the proper authorities by some other means.'

The Magistrate was right in perceiving an ulterior motive in the constant references to Basarwa slavery at the trial. But it was not so much the Administration as Tshekedi who was the intended target. Since it was Tshekedi's seizure of Oratile's Basarwa girls that had finally provoked the Ratshosas into open disobedience of their Chief, their Counsel was able to bring it in as material to an understanding of the situation leading up to the attempted assassination. But Simon and his lawyer ensured that the issue of Basarwa slavery would embarrass both Tshekedi and the British administration, which in their eyes gave him unquestioning support. Dr Lang's constant references to the issue of Basarwa slavery caught the attention of the press, as did Simon Ratshosa's dramatic declaration :

The Masarwa are slaves. They can be killed. It is no crime, they are like cattle. They have no liberty. If they run away their masters can bring them back and do what they like in the way of punishment. They are never paid. If the Masarwa live in the veld, and I want any to work for me, I go out and take any I want.'

The British administration had, however, already taken cognisance of the fact that a form of servitude existed among the Basarwa of the Bechuanaland Protectorate, as a result of the establishment of an investigation into slavery launched by the League of Nations in 1923. The resulting Slavery Convention to which Britain was signatory merely defined a slave as one `over whom all or any of the rights attaching to ownership are exercised', a definition which clearly applied to those Basarwa working for Bangwato masters. However the Convention only bound its signatories to suppress slavery `progressively and as soon as possible.'

By the time of the Ratshosa trial the British had done nothing to ameliorate the position of the Basarwa. But the unwelcome publicity given to the status of these near serfs at the trial trial provoked the Colonial Office into speedy action. Soon after the Ratshosas were sent to prison, the Secretary of State for Colonies called for a `full report on the conditions of Hereditary Service in the Bechuanaland Protectorate, with special reference to the allegations made at the Ratshosa trial.' Then on an official visit to Serowe on 3 August 1926, the High Commissioner, the Earl of Athlone, made what came to be known as the Athlone Declaration:

It has been said that the Masarwa are slaves of the Mangwato. The Government does not regard them as slaves, but realises that they are a backward people who serve the Mangwato in return for the food and shelter they receive. I understand that for the most part they are contented and that they do not wish to change. But the Government will not allow any tribe to demand compulsory service from another and wants to encourage the Masarwa to support themselves. Any Masarwa who wish to leave their masters and live independently should understand that they are at liberty to do so and that if the Mangwato attempt to retain them against their will the Government will not allow it. It is the duty of the Chiefs and Headmen to help these people to stand on their own two feet.

Tshekedi was caught completely unawares by the declaration, having been told that no political issues should be raised at the kgotla in honour of the High Commissioner. He was furious with the High Commissioner for springing this thorny political issue on him without even discussing it beforehand. He had still not celebrated his twenty-first birthday and had been on the throne less than a year. Yet here was the High Commissioner asking him to persuade his headmen, on whom he relied for support, not only to dispense with the assistance of their Basarwa on their cattle posts, but to go even further and help them become independent by building up herds for them. For these headmen the Basarwa were indispensable. Without them, these headmen would have to use their own sons who no longer beable to go to school. Further, they woulkd be deprived of the income from the hunting products their Basarwa brought in from the Kalahari. It was like asking a cripple to throw away his crutches. Above all Tshekedi resented the allegations that the Basarwa were slaves and that their Bangwato masters ill-treated them. Simon Ratshosa, now beginning his ten-year sentence in Francistown Gaol, at least had the satisfaction that he had severely embarrassed Tshekedi.

The Ratshosa brothers lost no time in lodging an appeal which was brought before the Resident Commissioner's Court a few weeks after Athlone had made his declaration. It was only on the fifth and final ground of appeal that their sentence was too harsh that the Acting Resident Commissioner showed any sympathy. He agreed to recommend a substantial reduction of their sentence, and three weeks later Athlone reduced it to four years. For Tshekedi this was a considerable blow, for he could have wished Simon in particular was locked away for the longer term. As it was prison walls did not prove much of a deterrent to Simon in his vendetta with Tshekedi.

Even before the appeal came before the Resident Commissioner's Court Simon had written a paper entitled `How the Masarwa became Slaves, and why the Chief's word is law'. This was handed by the Francistown gaoler to the Francistown Resident Magistrate who forwarded it in turn to Lord Athlone. In the paper Simon made allegations of vicious mistreatment of their Basarwa by some of the Bangwato masters. He even alleged that some Basarwa had been burnt alive. Most of those named as committing crimes were enemies of the Ratshosas, while Simon conveniently overlooked the fact that, according to Edirilwe Sekgoma, he himself had once been fined £60 with the alternative of one year's imprisonment for the crime of assault with intent to do grievous bodily harm to a Mosarwa, and that he had been punished by Khama for tying a Mosarwa to a tree and flogging him. Simon, indeed, tried to paint the Ratshosas as champions of Basarwa freedom.

Simon of course had nothing to lose by such an approach to the Basarwa question. In prison, his property destroyed, deprived of his own Basarwa, he found the issue of Basarwa slavery a convenient stick with which to flog Tshekedi. For the next ten years the vexed issue of whether or not the Basarwa were slaves took up much of Tshekedi's time and emotion. But more immediately he had to deal with Lord Athlone's request that all the allegations of mistreatment of Basarwa made by Simon be investigated. His only consolation was that he personally was not accused of any crime. With the help of the Resident Magistrate and Brierly,the local Police Sergeant, he was able to satisfy Lord Athlone that there was little substance in Simon's accusations, the most lurid of which - that the stomach of a pregnant Mosarwa woman had been ripped open and the foetus taken out - particularly angered Tshekedi.

If Simon could prove such a nuisance from prison, Tshekedi had every reason to fear that Oratile and his half-sisters would prove more so while still at liberty in Gamangwato. He had already secured the exile of Johnnie; now he sought theirs for while they were still in Gamangwato he saw no hope of peace in his country. In August the High Commissioner had agreed that the three women should be exiled. The first suggestion of the Administration was that they should be sent to land North of the Nata River, but according to Colonel Daniel, Tshekedi did not favour this as he did not want to make the lot of his aunts too hard. Furthermore Tshekedi had cattle posts in this area, and basically did not want these troublemakers anywhere in his Reserve The problem, then, was to find a Chief who would accept them. Finally the Regent of the Bangwaketse, Chieftainess Ntebogang, agreed to take Baboni and MmaKhama, although she had no reason to be friendly to allies of the Ratshosas, who were her stepsons : she had only recently complained to the administration that Johnny had failed to look after her and her children by his father, old Ratshosa, as custom dictated. Baboni and MmaKhama were allowed to leave their cattle in the Bamangwato Reserve in the care of the their children, but Tshekedi insisted that Johnny and Oratile take all their stock out of the Reserve. Orders were accordingly served on Oratile and Johnnie to leave the Reserve not later than 23 February 1927. No Chief would accept them and when finally they left the Reserve five days after the order came into force, they were not sure where they were going. More trouble from the Ratshosas lay ahead of Tshekedi, as a result of claim by the three brothers for damages in respect of the destruction of their houses and property. But for the time being the Government could not decide whether the case should be heard in kgotla or in the Resident Magistrate's court. Tshekedi, not surprisingly insisted that it was `a purely native matter'.

Tshekedi's first twelve months as Regent may have been dominated by high family drama, but he had to deal with many more mundane things in Serowe. Most mornings shortly after dawn he presided over the kgotla listening to civil and criminal appeals from subordinate dikgotla. He also had to deal with the day to day administration of Serowe as well as problems in the outlying districts which his district governors could not settle themselves. He also had to deal with the European community, in particular the traders, who as far as conducting business in his Reserve was concerned were largely under his jurisdiction. It was he who issued or withheld trading licences from them or gave them permission to open a new store or garage. His approach to such matters was invariably that he did not want more than one store where he judged one alone would do. Thus on 27 May he issued Mr G. Blackbeard with a hawker's licence but asked him not to send his wagon with goods into any villages where there was already another trader established `as that would only cause friction between other traders and me and perhaps between you and them.'

He wrote letters on behalf of relatives seeking places for their children at Tiger Kloof or Lovedale. One he helped to get a place at Lovedale was his young cousin, Bagakgametse, daughter of old Moloi, who ten years later was to be his bride.

In his first year as Chief his many problems in Serowe prevented Tshekedi spending much time in the districts. There he had to rely on his governors and local headmen to settle problems. In Bokolaka territory in the far north of Gamangwato, Headman John Mswasi, who had been a close friend of his father, refused to call out his regiments to erect a fence near the Southern Rhodesian border. Tshekedi's local governor upbraided the Mswaswis for their `disobedience' and fined them six head of cattle telling them that unless the fine were paid they would not be allowed to plough. Reluctantly, John Mswaswi complied. Three years later he was not to be so compliant.

The main challenge to Tshekedi's authority from outside Serowe came from the Bakhurutshe who lived at Tonota not far from Francistown. He was to find that in certain matters the British Administration was only too ready to interfere in `native affairs' even if it did undermine his authority.

In 1913 Khama had allowed Rawe, Chief of the Bakhurutshe, then living on lands belonging to the Tati Company, to settle in his country. Rawe and the bulk of his people were anxious to make the move partly because of difficulties they were having with the Tati Company, partly because of the additional grazing to which they would have access. Khama gave permission for them to settle in the form of a written agreement signed by both parties in the presence of Major Hannay, the Resident Magistrate, which enjoined the settlers to obey all the laws of Khama, some of which, including the prohibition on the drinking of alcohol, were specifically mentioned. Although no specific reference was made to religious practice it was understood that Khama's law was that there should be only one denomination in his state, that of the London Missionary Society, and that those Bakhurutshe who were Anglicans should not practice their rite openly. He did agree however that they could cross the river to worship in Anglican churches in Tati territory.

When Tshekedi heard that an Anglican missionary had ministered to members of his Church in Tonota he saw this as a threat to the religious unity of his state which, like his father and half-brother, he was zealous to preserve. Tshekedi was also concerned that some of the Bakhurutshe Anglicans were using religion as a cloak for stirring up political trouble. This was the view of the Bakhurutshe headman who had succeeded Rawe. and he and Tshekedi agreed that those who were unwilling to follow the L.M.S. should either leave for Tati territory where they could worship according to the Anglican rite or else come and live in Serowe where Tshekedi could keep an eye on them.

When Nkebele conveyed this information to his people, the thirty-seven Bakhurutshe involved refused to comply with either alternative, and fled to the local Police Camp, protesting that they were about to be beaten. At this stage Tshekedi does not seem to have been trying to reverse his father's more tolerant policy of allowing Anglicans to cross the river and worship in Francistown. His apparently draconian measure against the thirty-seven was taken because he was convinced they were `mutineers' who had already given his brother trouble when he was on the throne. They were not following the agreement with his father and were openly trying to establish an Anglican Church in Tonota. Of course if the thirty-seven did refuse to emigrate to Tati territory and were forced to come and live in Serowe, they would only be able to follow their rite in the privacy of their own homes since Serowe was far removed from any Anglican Church.

When Lord Athlone heard of Tshekedi's action he was shocked and wrote to the Resident Commissioner on 9 October that `in no circumstances can I countenance any action on the part of the Chief calculated to interfere with freedom of thought in religious matters. I do not approve of the Agreement made between Khama and Rawe and do not wish its terms to be enforced by Tshekedi.'

A few days later what Lord Athlone most feared happened. News of `Alleged Religious Persecution' appeared in the Cape Times. Meanwhile Tshekedi held a three days long kgotla in Serowe to discuss the situation in Tonota. As far as he was concerned the Bakhurutshe demonstrated perfectly the very dangers that the presence of more than one denomination in Gamangwato would bring : they were riven between Anglican and LMS factions, and two of the leading Anglican `dissidents', Tumedi and Molefhe, had actually admitted that they were not even followers of that rite. `I may be asked', he said, `"Where is any wrong in having two denominations?" I am afraid of what will happen. Government is well aware of what has taken place in places where there is more than one denominations (sic) in such places as Kanye and Molepolole.' He also protested that `it looks as if I am the man who is being tried, and this is a sore point with me...

Mr Cuzen, true to his own policy of non-interference in `native affairs,' held that `the introduction of a new religion should be done in the proper manner, i.e., through an application to the Chief in the same way as applications for stores, etc., is done.' Colonel Daniel, as Acting Resident Commissioner, was much less sympathetic to Tshekedi's position which he felt smacked of religious persecution, while the High Commissioner was adamant that there should be no expulsion of people from Gamangwato on religious grounds. Tshekedi could fine them or punish them for disobedience but `no conditions of residence could be extorted from the Bakhurutshe which would constitute interference with the free exercise of their religion'.

There the matter rested until the kgotla called in early January to consider the High Commissioner's ruling. Tshekedi told his people in the presence of the Assistant Resident Commissioner that he considered that the High Commissioner's decision had diminished his authority among his people. `I have not been in my position one year, and whatever decision the Authorities may take in this matter my authority will disappear altogether.' He himself disagreed with the decision and would only go with the Assistant Resident Commissioner to visit the Bakhurutshe to explain matters in order to conform with the law.

Tshekedi was never one to give up easily and straight afterwards he requested an interview with the High Commissioner before he carried out his orders. Accompanied by four headmen and an interpreter he met Lord Athlone in Government House at Cape Town on Tuesday 1 February. Tshekedi made it clear that he would not tolerate the existence of two churches in his state. He cited the Bakhurutshe who `are in three sub-divisions on account of denominational quarrels.' Tshekedi insisted that if the Anglicans could not be expelled from his Reserve then they must come and live in Serowe under his eye. It was his right as Chief to determine where in the Reserve his subjects lived. He also made it clear that they would have to give up their denomination if they came to Serowe.

The High Commissioner then presented Tshekedi with a prepared statement giving his decision in the matter. He began patronisingly by reminding the Chief that `in all civilised countries there are a vast number of Churches erected by congregations belonging to various denominations, the members of which live and work in peace with each other, and without any interferences from their respective governments as long as they are law-abiding. He did however agree that the cases of Tumedi and Molefhe were `clearly outside the religious question' and that the Chief could punish them for disobedience, but this could not involve banishment. He could insist on their coming to live in Serowe, and if they did not wish to do that then they would have to return to their homes in Tati District. `It is to be clearly understood however that this removal is punishment for disobedience and in no way a consequence of the religion they follow.' The High Commissioner also made it clear that there was to be no burning of huts involved in the punishment of the two men. Then, as a belated salve for Tshekedi's wounds, he told him: `I am very pleased at the manner in which he had ruled up to the present and the way in which he has assisted the Government and so long as he acts in accordance with the law I shall continue to uphold him in the exercise of his lawful authority.'

Tshekedi replied: `I am obliged, Your Excellency, and I will carry out your instruction. I cannot say I am pleased.' It was not long before the High Commissioner was to realise the extent of the young Chief's displeasure.

Tshekedi lost little time in dealing with the Bakhurutshe. The `dissidents' made it clear that they were prepared neither to live in Serowe, nor to leave Tonota for the Tati District. Tshekedi accordingly took adavantage of Lord Athlone's grudging permission that he could bring them forcibly into Serowe. A regiment was despatched from Serowe with fourteen ox-wagons to carry the personal belongings of the fourteen families affected. The regiment was led by Headman Nkate, and armed with sticks, spears and rifles. It arrived at Tonota on the 19 February. The `dissidents' refused to accompany the Regiment, so Nkate gave the order for them to be siezed and placed on the wagons where the men were bound with straps `to keep them quiet and stop them jumping off the wagons', as Lieutenant Poole of the Bechuanaland Protectorate Police, who helped supervise the removal, was to put it. These were only removed from them once they had left Tonota.

The Bakhurutshe Anglicans were quick to protest the seizure of part of their congregation by Tshekedi's men, and when the Resident Commissioner received their telegram informing him that they were being taken to Serowe by force, followed by a letter from the Secretary of the Congregation expressing surprise `to see such a tyranny practiced upon us ... because of Christianity,' he asked the local magistrates and police officers to make it clear that `this removal is part of their punishment for disobedience and has nothing to do with any religious matter or sect.'

Tshekedi had won the first round in what was to be a protracted struggle with the Bakhurutshe, and he had done so with the support of a reluctant British administration which had salved its conscience by persuading itself that the Bakhurutshe were political dissidents rather than genuine Anglicans anxious to take advantage of the freedom to worship Lord Athlone had declared to be a fundamental right of all subjects of His Brittanic Majesty. But as far as the bitterly resentful Bakhurutshe were concerned they were being persecuted for their religion both by their Chief and his protectors, the British Administration. One of them asked the Resident Commissioner as to whether the `Church of Englan is a false religion.'

Equally convinced that the Bakhurutshe were being persecuted on religious rather than punished on political grounds were the Bishops of Southern Rhodesia and Kimberley. The latter, within whose diocese the Bakhurutshe Anglicans fell, determined that at least he would minister to them. But Lord Athlone prevailed on him to delay making arrangements for sending a priest, who should be a European rather than a `native', to the Serowe Bakhurutshe until things had settled down. `The young Chief's intentions are good, and I believe he is endeavouring to follow the fine example set by Khama; but he has been called upon to assume heavy responsibilities at a very early age, and has had many difficulties to face, and I feel that so long as he acts with justice and moderation we should do everything we can to support his lawful authority.' The Bishop accepted the wisdom of delay, and suggested that in due course he `might ask the Chief Tshekedi to see me, and visit him as a friend.'

For Tshekedi the immediate problems arising from the attempt by the Bakhurutshe to assert their religious independence had been dealt with to his satisfaction. He may not have been able to deprive the dissidents of their cattle and burn their houses as his father had done those of one of their leaders, Molefhe, and his followers on an earlier occasion for similar acts of disobedience and trouble-making. But he had brought them into Serowe where he could keep an eye on them and asserted that there should be only one Church in his state.

At the time of the arrival of the Bakurutshe in Serowe Tshekedi was preoccupied by `an event of very serious nature, both in regard to myself and the Tribe. Many very serious events have happened during my short reign over the Bamanwato, but this will ever make itself singled out from them all.' On 2nd March Tshekedi reported to the Resident Magistrate that Sekgoma II's widow, Queen Tebogo, in whose house he had been living, had just given birth to a baby daughter. Tshekedi was at great pains to make it clear that he was not the father, and had not taken the levirate as would be permissible under traditional custom. The father was the Chief Hut Tax Collector, Headman Mathiba, who that morning had been adjudged in kgotla `to be guilty of the very serious offence against the Tribe of being the paramour of the late Chief's Widow.' For his offence he was to be deprived of his position, an hencforth was to provide support for Tebogo and the child who would be removed from the Chief's house to her mother's compound.

Tshekedi was clearly worried about continued suspicion that he might have been the father of the child. As a strict adherent of the LMS he was anxious to make it clear that he was no adulterer, least of all with his brother's widow and mother of his ward, Seretse. In a pained lettter to the Resident Magistrate on 13 March he insisted that after the death of their father Sekgoma `regarded me more as his son than a brother, and I have always looked on Tebogo his wife as my mother. The suspicions therefore caused me great pain, but I am glad that I can honestly proclaim them to be false.' Tshekedi concluded the letter by insisting that this sad affair would have `no influence whatever in regard to the position of the heir to the Chieftainship, Chief Sekgoma's son Seretse.' For his part Resident Commissioner Ellenberger assured the Chief `that I do not attach the slightest suspicion to him but entirely believe him.' From outlying Mmadinare, came a letter of sympathy from Phethu, saying how shocked he had been by Tebogo's act, and urging Tshekedi to forgive her for the sake of her son, Seretse. `The poor child is helpless and so please do not let his mother's deeds overpower you.'

Out of this otherwise torrid situation, some good came at least for the local British administration. Tshekedi decided to reward Mokomane, Mmakhama's son, for his efforts to reconcile his mother with Tshekedi and get her to accept his authority, by appointing him to the vacant Collectorship. Cuzen thought him a promising youth, who could be pressed to bring in the cash every day `whereas in Mathiba's time, it was always difficult to bring him up to the mark, and there was usually delay in getting money out of him.'

Like a tropical ulcer the problem of the Ratshosas and Tshekedi's sisters continued to suppurate. Over the next six years nothing Tshekedi could do seemed able to heal it, and when finally it did dry out, it was only to leave a deep scar on the Gamangwato body politic. Tshekedi could make no political move in his state without first anticipating the likely response of the Ratshosas. If it seems that he was unusually vengeful towards them, it was because he believed that if he left them the slightest opportunity they would plot his downfall. He tended to see their hand in all his troubles, as did many of his supporters including the Reverend Haydon Lewis, who informed his London headquarters that it was the Ratshosa brothers who were at the bottom of the Bakhurutshe troubles.

Even with Simon and Obeditse behind bars, and Johnny and his female relatives at last in exile, Tshekedi did not feel safe from their intrigues. It had taken great effort to get Johnny to leave the Bamangwato Reserve : he finally moved out of the Reserve on 28 February, four days after the date specified in the Government's banishment order. He left most of his cattle behind, unsold, and with no arrangements made to look after them.

From prison and exile the three Ratshosa brothers and the disaffected sisters between them tested the inexperienced young Regent's administrative and political resources to their limit. Although Tshekedi had proved that he was capable of taking on both royal relatives and British administrators, largely thanks to the Ratshosas his first year in office had been a miserable one and there were times when he must have longed for the security of the lecture halls of Fort Hare. As he wrote to the Resident Magistrate concerning the disposition of the exiled Johnny Ratshosa's cattle : `Without my will, compelled only by the pressing circumstances of the twelve months in which I had the misfortune of ascending the chieftainship of the Bamanwato Tribe, I once again venture to write on that notorious Ratshosa question.' Bitterly he accused the British administration of inconstancy in its treatment of the Ratshosas. In normal circumstances those ordered into exile either had to take their cattle with them or make arrangements to dispose of them. Johnny had been given plenty of time to make the neccessary arrangements and yet now, Tshekedi complained,`like a thunderbolt I receive the news that my enemy's cattle are to remain unmolested and free to graze in my country.' If steps were not taken by the Administration to force the Ratshosas to remove their cattle, Tshekedi feared the impact on his people among whom `revolutionary ideas would soon become apparent, the outcome of which will naturally be anarchy.' Indeed, Tshekedi, with some reason, felt that the Resident Commissioner's sympathy was with the Ratshosas, especially Johnny whom the latter felt had been hard done by.

The question of the disposition of the Ratshosas' cattle was to preoccupy Tshekedi over the next twelve months, sour his relationship with the administration, and take up a great deal of his time. Indeed, one of the strategies of the Ratshosas in their vendetta with their Chief, was to tie him down with lawsuits and administrative enquiries. Simon and Johnny were to prove adept in placing complaints with the British Administration about the treatment of their property, based on information brought to them in Francistown by friends in the Bamangwato Reserve. The Administration in turn felt obliged to take these up with the Chief, who had to investigate and report on them when he had many other pressing matters on his hands. But Tshekedi was not without resources himself. In March he sent out a regiment to remove Basarwa herdsmen from Johnny Ratshosa's cattle posts leaving, as Johnny Ratshosa complained, `the cattle by themselves to be killed by the wild beasts and to cross over the borders wherever they could go to.' Johnny also alleged that some of his cattle had been removed and sold. On investigation, it proved that Tshekedi had cunningly used the new prescription by the Administration about the treatment of the Basarwa, to further punish his enemy. As Ellenberger wrote to Johnny, since `you are not entitled to free labour, the unpaid servants whom you had at your cattle posts have been removed therefrom, but that your paid herds were left with your cattle.' Furthermore the cattle removed from his posts were only those belonging to the Basarwa, together with the 150 he had promised to give to his step-mother, the Chieftainess Ntebogang, to look after the children of her marriage to his father.

While the Administration backed Tshekedi's action over the freeing of Johnny's Basarwa, they warned him to ensure that `the cattle and other property belonging to the Ratshosas which has been left in the Bamangwato Reserve will receive proper care and protection.' Bitterly Tshekedi replied that he was merely being instructed `to act as Johnny's herdboy ... It seems to me that on the whole , Johnny has had the better off me in the struggle and evidently has the sympathy of the administration.'

The British administration in their treatment of Tshekedi were not unconscious of their dependence on him to run the Bamangwato Reserve. As Cuzen, his Resident Magistrate put it, Tshekedi did most of the police work in the Reserve, and `I know that if he ever withdraws his assistance it will mean a large expenditure to police this Reserve effectively.' The Bamangwato Reserve covered a huge and sparsely populated area, which Tshekedi himself had had little time to visit since he became Regent. And yet he was never really happier than when was in the saddle touring the outlying districts discussing local political problems with his headmen or inspecting his cattle posts. At the end of April he was able to get away from his troubled capital for a trek to his Northeastern boundary near Selika to try and settle a dispute between his own people and the British-owned African Ranches Company. The Manager of African Ranches was concerned that Bamangwato cattle were straying onto his land and that they would open his own herds to infection by lungsickness which was prevalent in many parts of the Protectorate at the time. This was not the first occasion that African Ranches had made this complaint, but now they threatened to follow it up with prosecution of the offending Bamangwato cattle owners. Tshekedi, accompanied by some of his senior headmen, together with the Resident Magistrates of Serowe and Francistown, under whose jurisdiction the land owned by African Ranches fell, met with the Manager of African Ranches on 25 April. While Tshekedi accepted that some of his people had indeed moved their cattle through African Ranches land, particularly to water them at the Crocodile River, so too had cattle from the latter moved into Bamangwato Territory. The only solution, all agreed, was for African Ranches to fence in their land, a course Tshekedi had for some time been advocating.

Just before Tshekedi left for Selika, he had an interview with the Resident Commissioner at Mafeking where he was informed that the Bishop of Kimberley and Kuruman wanted to come to Serowe, as Tshekedi himself put it, `with a view to ministering to any members (should there be any) of the Anglican Church, who might be living in Serowe.' Adopting for once a conciliatory line, he followed up the interview with a letter confirming that he was quite happy about the Bishop's visit, and that he should hold a `mixed service' for `both Europeans and Natives'. He would, however, object to a separate service being held for the African Anglicans, which would of course serve the purpose of giving further religious identity to the Bakhurutshe.

It was not until 11 June that the Bishop finally arrived in Serowe, accompanied by his Archdeacon. At two in the afternoon he called on Tshekedi in his kgotla and suggested that he bring together his headmen so that he could explain the object of his visit and seek permission of the Tribe to minister to the Bakhurutshe Anglicans. Coldly, Tshekedi said he did not see what point there would be to this and took him to his house where they had a brief discussion. The Bishop then went off to hold an open air service for the Bakhurutshe. He had earlier approached the Rev. Lewis to ask him to serve as interpreter, which would have the further advantage that his Congregationalist rival would be aware that all he was doing was ministering to his flock and not trying to etsablish an Anglican bridgehead in the country. But Rev Lewis was unwilling to have anything to do with the meeting. At the service the Bishop appealed to the Bakhurutshe to attend the Chief's kgotla, from which they had conspicuously absented themselves since their forced removal to Serowe. After the Service, the Bishop left Serowe without saying goodbye to the Chief, on the grounds that he did not want to be seen too often with the Chief in case the Bakhurutshe were led to believe that he was currying favour with them.

Although the Bakhurutshe were now attending kgotla, they still presented Tshekedi with problems. They had not begun to build their own huts so that they could move out of the ones that had been lent to them on their arrival. They had refused to inspect the land Tshekedi had set aside for them to plough, and only agreed to do so on the Bishop's advice. Tshekedi's conclusion was that the Bishop's interest in the Bakhurutshe Anglicans was not merely a religious one : `That the Bishop has taken a prominant (sic) part in the political aspect of the question cannot be doubted, and I would ask the Government to indicate whether it is intended that I should rule these people through the Bishop of Kimberley, which attitude I would not feel inclined to agree to.'

On 22 August Serowe, which had received august visitors from Britain before, welcomed the most influential of them yet, the Secretary of State for the Colonies, Leopold Amery. It was the fisrt time a Secretary of State for the Colonies had visited the Bechuanaland Protectorate, and Tshekedi determined to lay on as splendid a welcome to Serowe as possible. But the prolonged drought meant that the Bamangwato regiments had to receive him dismounted, since the majority of horses were in poor condition and out in the veldt seeking grazing where they could. Tshekedi had prepared a gift of magnificent karosses made up from wild animal skins, while Mrs Amery presented two children's picture books to the young Chief Seretse. But the visit was not just the occasion for the exchange of niceties between Chief and Minister, and in the kgotla held for him Amery chose to touch on a thorny political issue, that of the Administration's lungsickness campaign. Lending the weight of his office to his local administration, he urged Tshekedi and his people to cooperate with the administration in their plans to eradicate the disease which was deveastating the African herds of the Protectorate, particularly those of the Bamangwato Reserve, and threatening the neigbhouring European owned herds. Tshekedi, had however, shown himself less than enthusiastic about the campaign which involved shooting all those cattle infected, and placing in quarantine those that had come into contact with them. To this end the Administration had proposed that a large section of the Reserve near the railway line be fenced in and used to quarantine the potentially infected cattle. The Bechuanaland Protectorate Administration had made an agreement with the Imperial Cold Storage Company that they would run the quarantine camp, and would ship cattle down to their abattoir at Lobatse for slaughter. When Tshekedi was informed of these proposals by the High Commissioner, he consulted the Reverend Lewis, who expressed the fear that the scheme was a ruse which would deprive Tshekedi of valuable land. `The fence will be built with no cattle inside it but those of the Imperial Cold Storage and the area will simply become a private kraal of that company. The fence will cost many thousands of pounds, and the venture on the part of the Company is clearly a speculation with a view to the permamnent hold on the land.' Lewis even advised Tshekedi that if he could not obtain an agreement from the Administration making it explicit that the land remained under his control, he should send in a regiment to pull out any fence poles the Company might erect.

The London Missionary Society was sufficiently alarmed by Lewis's warnings that they sought an interview with the Dominions Office, which accepted that Tshekedi genuinely feared the land would not be returned by the Imperial Cold Storage Company. The local administration was considerably irritated by Lewis's intervention, since Tshekedi's initial recation to the scheme had been favourable. As Hon. Bede Clifford, Imperial Secretary was to comment sourly later, `Mr. Lewis's duties were primarily associated with the religious welfare of the natives and that if he wished to express his views on political questions he should address himself to the Magistrate or Resident Commissioner.' The end result of Lewis's intervention was that in July Lord Athlone sent Tshekedi a written agreement explicitly stating that the Imperial Cold Storage Company would not acquire any vested interests in the land set aside for the quarantine camp. There is no doubt that Tshekedi was deeply impressed by the effectiveness of the intervention made on his behalf in London, and he was to rely increasingly on Lewis's advice thereafter and the assistance of the London Missionary Society in South Africa and Britain in his struggles with the Administration.

By the time of Amery's visit, the local administration was still not sure that Tshekedi was convinced that the plans for the quarantine camp were in his people's interests. The Administration alleged that Lewis was inciting the Bangwato to ignore the cattle quarantine regulations which would prevent them from selling their cattle. They therefore got the Secretary of State to use the occasion of his address to the Bangwato in kgotla toappeal for the cooperation of the Chief and People in their lungsickness campaign. Ironically, the Reverend Lewis was asked to interpret the Secretary of State's speech, and he can have had no illusions as to whom the Minister referred when he declared `false and stupid reports are being circulated to the effect that the Quarantine Camp is being constructed in order that the cattle of the Bechuanaland Cold Storage Company may be put there.' He urged the people to cooperate with the Government, and to dismiss the false rumours that there was little or no lungsickness in the Reserve, or that cattle that had been in contact with infected cows would not be paid for. Tshekedi seems to have accepted Amery's assurances, for thereafter the quarantine camp was fenced with assistance of Bamangwato labour for which the Administration insisted paying as they did not want to be accused of using forced Tribal Labour.

During these early days of his Regency, the well-being of his young ward, Seretse, was of critical concern to Tshekedi. He was only too aware that suspicious eyes were on him, and that malicious minds were ready to cast him in the role of the classic wicked uncle who would deliberately neglect the sickly child who stood between himself and the throne. In fact Tshekedi was not only solicitous of Tshekedi's welfare for political reasons, to avoid giving any grounds to those who expected the worst of him, but was very fond of the young boy, now aged seven, whom he brought up as though he were his own son. When Seretse developed a persistent cough in September and generally seemed in a weak and nervous condition, on the advice of Dr. Drew Tshekedi had him sent to Johannesburg for examination. The young Chief was accompanied by two Headmen, his young nurse-girl and an elderly woman attendant. The party arrived in Johannesburg on 15 September where Seretse was examined in the non-European hospital by Dr. Baumann, who confirmed that he was not suffering from tuberculosis, while an X-ray showed no abnormality of the lungs. Because of his persistent cough he was referred to Dr. Pienaar, a throat specialist, who found that he needed both his tonsils and adenoids removing. The two operations were carried out successfully and Seretse was able to return to Serowe a week later. Before he left, Dr Baumann `made a special study of the young patient's mentality in so far as this was possible under the difficulty of not knowing each other's language. So far as I could judge, the boy is intelligent though very nervous'.

By the time of the visit of the Secretary of State to Serowe relations between Colonel Ellenberger and Tshekedi had reached a nadir. It seemed that the young Chief opposed measures introduced by the Administration on principle. As Ellenberger wrote in exasperation to the High Commissioner, the `young Chief is very obdurate on certain points and therefore difficult to get on with, but, with firmness, I hope for the best, while finding it very hard at times i.e. when things are said and repeated but seem to go in by one ear and out by the other, without apparently any effect, to act up to Robert Moffat's precept of "Patience, patience and again patience where the native is concerned"...' It was this patronising attitude on the part of the white officials that irritated Tshekedi. He may have been young and inexperienced but he resented being talked down to, and in particular being required to implement measures introduced by the administration without any prior discussion with him. He was very conscious that he was the son of Khama, and believed he knew much better than the British officials what was good for his people. He was particularly sensitive about any measure that seemed to undermine his authority, or to place him in a subordinate rather than equal relationship with his local administrators. As he understood it he was partner with the British administration, and not an underling. If Ellenberger found it difficult to understand the young Chief, the latter found it increasingly hard to work with his Resident Commissioner. He was particular aggrieved at the way the Resident Commissioner had remonstrated with him on the question of Johnny Ratshosa's cattle `in the presence of my councellors (sic) - an incident which I cannot likely forget.' Similar disatisfaction with Ellenberger was felt by his neighbour, Chief Sebele II of the Bakwena and the Regent of the Bagwaketse, Chieftainess Ntebogang. Shortly before Amery's visit, the two came to Serowe without informing their respective Resident Magistrates, apparently at the invitation of Tshekedi, to discuss their common grievances and to draw up a petition to the High Commissioner. The meeting was reported in lurid detail to Ellenberger by an anonymous informant in Serowe. Ellenberger was sufficiently alarmed about the prospect of chiefs from different Reserves ganging up under Tshekedi's leadership that he sought to establish whether Tshekedi had called the meeting, or the two other chiefs had gone to Serowe at their own initiative. Ellenberger seems to have been infected by a certain degree of paranoia for on the basis of the anonymous report he convinced himself that the object of the secret meeting was to plan his `downfall'. In fact the list of complaints drawn up by the three rulers was a modest one, and concerned recent administrative measures that all three felt reduced their powers or undermined their authority over their subjects. As far as Tshekedi, himself, was concerned the `list of painful laws which have befallen the Bamangwato Tribe within a short period, during the term of Office of our Resident Commissioner, Colonel Ellenberger' were : the diminution of the right to use firearms, the limited licences available for purchase of ammunition, the limitation on Chiefs collecting taxes from subjects outside their borders, the devolution of powers traditionally belonging to the chiefs to the Magistrates through the recent Witchcraft and Native Marriages Ordinance. In this letter Tshekedi signed himself `by virtue of my authority to advocate for the Bamangwato.' As Tshekedi stated, these were not all his grievances, and in their rquest to see the High Commissioner the three Chiefs also asked to discuss the question of Tribal Labour and Hereditary Servants with him.

The High Commissioner agreed to see the three rulers on 21 November. There was initially some difficulty in arranging this date for the Ratshosas had taken out a civil case against Tshekedi asking for £15,000 in damages for the houses Tshekedi's regiments had burnt. The case had been lodged a year before, but there was some question as to whether it should be heard in kgotla or in the Magistrate's court. Tshekedi, of course, had argued that it concerned a purely Tribal matter, and should therefore be held in kgotla. But after a year's deliberation, Lord Athlone finally ruled on 21 October 1927 that it should be heard in the Magistrate's Court. But the hearing of the case was postponed until after the interview with the High Commissioner.

This took place in the High Commissioners's Office in Cape Town over a period of two days. Tshekedi was accompanied by five senior headmen, no doubt to show the administration that his complaints were not self-inspired but were shared by other Bamangwato. In the interviews Tshekedi acted as spokesman for the delegation, and indeed did all the talking. He put their grievances clearly and forcefully. The Native Marriage Proclamation took away from the Chief the right to settle the division of property of Africans married by European law and gave it to the Resident Magistrate. As far as the Athlone declaration about the Basarwa was concerned, they could not be allowed to leave the Reserve at their own volition any more than any other subject could withouit first gaining the permission of the Chief. Cross-examined gently by the High Commisioner and the Imperial Secretary as to whether the Basarwa had equal rights and status with other Bangwato, Tshekedi was forced to admit that `I look upon them as equal but like servants' but he denied stoutly that they were slaves. On the question of firearms, Tshekedi expressed great bitterness at the implied discrimination in recent regulations that prevented Africans from buying Lee-Metford and Mauser rifles. `This is a painful matter to us', he told the High Commissioner, `as we have not been told what we have done to lose the privilege of buying modern rifles.' He also complained that Africans were now only able to buy 20 cartridges with a licence that used to permit them to buy 100. He, as Chief, had recently been unable to obtain Martini Henry ammunition. For a people who supplemented their diet from shooting wild animals and their income from selling their pelts, these restrictions on the purchase of weapons and ammunition were a considerable blow.

The recent ruling that Chiefs could not collect tax from those of their subjects working outside their borders undermined the authority of the Chief in relation to his people. Collecting tax from them was an indication of authority over them. Tshekedi could not accept `that my power as far as my people are concerned ends at the boundary of my Reserve. I think that even if a man is outside my Reserve he is still under my control.' Again, on the question of the Witchcraft Proclamation, Tshekedi felt strongly that the Administration had failed to define it sufficiently clearly, and that a matter that properly belonged to the jurisdiction of the Chiefs was now to be dealt with by the Resident Magistrates.

The only concession made to the delegation by Lord Athlone was to offer to re-examine the implications of the Marriage Proclamation. If Tshekedi gained few concessions from the Administration at the meeting, he had established himself as more than just ruler of the Bamangwato. He had shown that, young as he was, other Chiefs were prepared to accept his leadership. In future years he was increasingly to employ the device in his battles with the administration of calling on the support of fellow-chiefs. Though still essentially preoccupied with the affairs of his own Reserve, he was beginning to look at these within a national context. And it is an indication of his qualities of leadership that Sebele, many years his senior, and ruler of the senior Tswana morafe since 1916, was prepared to accept Tshekedi as spokesman for their delegation. These qualities were not apparent to Ellenberger, who wrote dejectedly to the High Commissioner `it is not without sorrow that after 37 years' service among the natives of the Bechuanaland Protectorate and having earned the respect of the previous Chiefs and enjoyed their friendship and confidence I see myself treated in this way on the eve of my retirement by a young inexperienced Regent, who, two years ago, was still at School... ' He went on to ask `whether , in fairness to my successor in Office, whoever he may be, the obstructive tactics of the Regent Tshekedi, in judicial and administrative matters, and his general attitude towards the Government can be tolerated any further.'

Colonel Daniel, a bluff and not very bright administrator who had been almost as long in the Bechuanaland Protectorate administration as Ellenberger, took over as Acting Resident Commissioner and seems to have had a greater tolerance for the headstrong young Chief than his predecessor. On his return to Serowe, Tshekedi's first concern was to prepare himself for the impending case against him launched by the Ratshosas. Tshekedi bitterly resented the fact that ay of his subjects could bring him to court. Such a thing was not traditionally possible. But here were the Ratshosas using the device of the British judicial system to humiliate their chief by having him appear as defendant in a civil suit in which they claimed a total of £15,000 for damage to their property and loss of cattle. Two separate summons, one by Simon, and the other by Johnny, were issued on 5 December 1927. Tshekedi filed counterclaims against the Ratshosas on behalf of those they had wounded, and for compensation for the waste of his time and managed to exclude Counsel from the case which was adjourned, at his request, until 21 March 1928. In the meantime, ap[art from preparing his own case, Tshekedi had to contend with the recalcitrant Bakhurutshe, who despite the interventions of the Bishop of Kimberely, refused to build their own huts, and furthermore would not plough the lands set aside for them. Instead they complained that they were starving which brought in further intervention from the Bishop of Kimberley and Kuruman, who arranged relief supplies for them. Clearly the Bakhurutshe understood how to present themselves as religious martyrs, and in an impassioned letter to Lord Athlone written just before he died, the Bishop made it clear that he was himself convinced that the Bakhurutshe were victims of religious persecution. But Colonel Daniel backed Tshekedi's view that they were political dissidents and that they had brought their present difficulties over food and shelter on themselves by refusing to plough or build their own huts. Otherwise Tshekedi's time was taken up in kgotla, where from all accounts, despite his growing authoritarian streak, he was good listener and a fair judge in cases in which his own interests were not directly involved. For relaxation, which was not an indulgence to which he gave much time, he had his horses and now his newly purchased Dodge car.

The claims by Simon and Johnny Rsthosa against Tshekedi were heard at the Court of the Additional Resident Magistrate, Ngwato District, Captain Ag. Stigand. It was held at palapye Road between 21st and 29th March, and apart from the intervening weekend kept Tshekedi permanently away from his duties in kgotla. The first cliam to be heard was that of Simon, who produced a detailed list of property lost by himself, his wife, and younger brother when the Regiments burnt their houses. Detailed lists of cattle that had been removed from their cattle posts were also submitted. Tshekedi, as defendant, counter-claimed for £4,689 2s. 8 1/2d. for injuries suffered by his followers as a result of the shoorting and for waste of his own time. He also claimed £38 17s. 6d. towards their medical expenses.

Tshekedi's defence throughout the suit brought by Simon was that he had every right as Chief to burn their houses and property. `I burnt Plaintiff's houses purposely. In intended to kill the Plaintiff and his brothers and as the Government had taken them away I burnt their houses ...' Tshekedi then brought a whole string of witnesses who confirmed that the Chief had every right to burn the houses and property of disobedient subjects. The Chief had the right to order those he sent into exile to take their cattle with them. Phethu Mphoeng no doubt savoured, for once, his own experience of exile at the hands of Sekgoma II, when he told the Plaintiff, whom he held responsible for his plight in the first place, that he had been forced to take all his cattle with him and had lost most of them as a result of drought in his place of exile. Perhaps the most damning evidence from the Plaintiff's point of view came from Nkobela, Obeditse's father-in-law. In answer to a question by Simon, he told him : `The reason you were not executed by the Chief was on account of the modern Government which is over the Chief....In former days you would have been executed by the Chief and the Kgotla because you had wounded the Chief.' Other witnesses confirmed that the decision to burn the Ratshosas' houses was not made in the heat of the moment by Tshekedi but in the proper fashion after consultation with his headmen and the people in kgotla who had given their unanimous approval for this course of action `because they had seen the Chief's blood flow through the attack of the two Ratshosas.' Indeed many had intended to kill them. Tshekedi also gained sympathy by his demand for compensation for the victims of the Ratshosa's attack on him. Kgosidintsi, who had been shot in the hip, told the Court : `To-day I have lost my health and I am not the strong man I used to be. I am lame.' Both Kgosidinti and Gopolan, who had lost his second finger as a result of the attack, confirmed that it was proper for the Chief to claim damages on their behalf from the Ratshosas.

A good deal of the Court's time was spent in contesting the claims made by the Ratshosas. William McIntosh, a local waggon-builder and blacksmith, who also undertook house construction suggested that all three brothers had overvalued their houses, while other witnesses suggested that they had grossly exaggerated the range of the contents and value therof which they claimed had been burnt. Reverend Lewis, who had visited Simon's house on several occasion, sisd he had never seen books to value of £100, which he was claiming, on his bookshelf. Nor did he put a value of £500 on the unpublished manuscript by Simon on CHECK PARSONS `One of my senior missionaries looked through it and neither of us found it of any value from the point of view of publication which was the object for which it was brought to us. If this is the manuscript referred to it is not worth anything at all.'

If hardly a word had been spoken in the Plaintiff's favour in the course of the proceedings, the Magistrate's judgement was devestating. His opinion was that Tshekedi had been quite right to burn their houses and property, and that they were both very lucky that they were living under British protection, for otherwise they would have been put to death too and their cattle confiscated. Furthermore they had put ridiculous prices on the chattels they claimed were burnt, and it was clear that half of them were not in the houses anyway, for why else where there no remains of them in the charred ruins of their houses? All Simon's claims wre dismissed, and instead he was ordered to pay £500 to the defendant and half the cost of the medical expanses incurred by his followers.

Johnny Ratshosa fared no better. But his case was slightly different. He had not actually taken up arms against the Chief, and yet his house and property had been burnt. To this Tshekedi had a quick reply. He was as guilty as his brothers of insurrection. But because he had appealed to the Resident Commissioner to interecede with the kgotla he had been forgiven. Otherwise he too would have been joined in the criminal trial againts his brothers Simon and Obeditse. It was clear that he intended to take up arms against his Chief for immediately after his flogging he had gone to the house of a local trader, Wood, to get the rifle he had lent him, but was unable to do so as Wood had travelled to Johannesburg. The Magistrate had no doubt that Johnny `intended to join his two brothers and support them with his rifle in shooting at the Chief and his followers. The whole thing appears to the Court to have been a preconceived plan by the Ratshosas with Plaintiff as the ringleader. It was in the opinion of the Court only accident that prevented Plaintiff from joining his brothers in the attack on the Defendant with intent to murder. ... It looks as though the plot was designed to seize the Chieftainship. At any rate to kill the Defendant and establsih their authority in his place, Simon's wife being the eldest daughter of the late Chief Sekgoma.' Accordingly the Court found that Johnny had `incited his brothers to armed public violence against the authority of the Chief and that the Defendant had the power to act as he did.' As a consequence all Johnny's claims were dismissed. Tshekedi was triumphant, and as the Johannesburg Star put it the brothers had now been`punished thrice'. The Star also reported that the Magistrate's judgements were receieved with loud cries of `Pula'.

The Ratshosas did not take their defeat lying down. They now set about initiating another series of actions against Tshekedi, which the Resident Magistrate at serowe, Captain Nettelton considered were `deliberately planned to pass the time in litigation instead of in Hard Labour and I think it should be made more difficult for them.' In Captain Nettelton's opinion the three brothers `maintain an arrogance which is not associated with down-trodden and unjustly treated people. they came to these cases not in a suppliant mood but insolent and unruly in Court.' Nettelton reccommended that the two brothers be transferred from Francistown to gaol in the Union, or at least gaborone,where they would no longer be in `communixcation with natives in this Reserve who walk to Francistown and carry information, mostly of a false nature, which stirs up trouble.' As far as Captain Stigand was concerned, he agreed that the three Ratshosa brothers were `dangerous anarchists and should be removed from the Bechuanaland Protectorate.'

One of the main problems for Chiefs in the Bechuanaland Protectorate was the extensive amount of travelling the complex structure of the British adminisrtrative system involved. They were frequently summoned to Mafeking for discussions with the Resident Commissioner, but where there were problems that could not be resolved, these were referred to the overall head of the Protectoerate administration, the Governor General of South Africa in his capacity as High Commissioner for the Bechuanaland Protectorate, Basutoland and Swaziland. He alternated offices between Pretoria, the administraiuve capital of the Union, and Cape Town, its legislative capital, so that when Parliament was in session a chief like Tshekedi had to make the thre day and one thousand mile long journey to Cape Town to see him. Only the Chief of the Batawana, in remote Ngamiland had further to journey.

Tshekedi seems not to have resented the amount of travelling he had to do. Indeed he would at the shortest notice travel to both Mafeking and Cape Town if the thought it would serve his current cause. He was protected against many of the humiliations of railway travel for African passengers in the region. As a chief, he was entitled to special accommodation set aside for `superior coloured and native passengers'. But when on 9th April, he set of to see the new Resident Commissioner, Colonel Daniel, about a number outstanding grievances - in particular those over hut tax and the quarrantinme regulations, and also to ask that banishment orders to be served on Simon and Obeditse once they had completed their jail sentences - he chose to set off from the station at Mahalapye rather than Palapye Road. When he went to purchase his ticket as usual from the office on the Platform side of the station, he was unceremoniously sent by the white foreman to the back entrance where `the general native public' were served. He asked to be allowed to show the letter he was carrying from the Resident Magistrate explaining who he was, but the foreman refused to take it except at the back door. After the letter had been examined, Tshekedi was told that it would make no difference to the treatment he would receive on the train.

Tshekedi was not one to accept such an insult, especially delivered him by a railway clerk in the second town of his country. On his return he complained about the incident to Nettelton. The matter was taken up with the South African Railways, whose System Manager, Mr. F.C. Beavan, wrote to apologise to the Chief. The clerk concerned had been recently transferred to the Station, and had been unaware of the identity of the Chief. `He has been put right for the future', Beavan assured the Government Secretary at Mafeking.

At the end of May Tshekedi took the first holiday he had had since he became Regent nearly two an half years before. Before he left, he had succeeeded in persuading Nettelton that any further reduction in the Ratshosa's prison sentence was undesirable. Not that nettelton needed much persuasion. As he wrote to Colonel Daniel, before `I saw and experienced these Ratshosas in Court I felt aa certain amount of sympathy for them but that has gone. They are not humble and down-trodden - they are as insolent and defiant now as they were when they attempted to shoot Tshekedi. I do not think a further reduction would create a good impression upon the natives. And it practically condones an attempt on the life of the Chief. The reaction would be troublesome to us.' Daniel passed on Nettelton's reccommendation to Lord Athlone, who accepted noting that in in any case the brothers would, with remission of sentence for good conduct, be out of gaol around September of the following year. Before he left, Tshekedi also rejected an appeal by Baboni to be permitted to return to Serowe. He did not feel that Baboni was really `repentant for the trouble she has got me to.' Indeed, when she came to Serowe in January for the funeral of her son Mogomotsi, she had not even bothered to call on him, and that surely would have been the occasion to express her feelings of remorse. And yet he had sent his own car to bring her from Palapye Road station, and paid for her ticket back to Kanye when she sent a message to him that she did not have the money for it.

The rest of the year remained a relatively untroubled on for Tshekedi as far as the Ratshosas were concerned. But for his people, and himself as a large and consientious cattle owner, these were terrible times. 1928 saw one of the worst years of drought in a country which was well acquainted with it. So bad had the water shortage in Serowe become by October that the Honorary Secretary of the Northern bechuanaland Protectorate Chamber of Commerce wrote to the Resident Commissioner that the `wells belonging to the European inhabitants are kept busy day and night supplying the needs of the natives.' He asked that the Chief and people be urged to conserve water by constructing dams to take the pressure off the few European owned wells. Innocently, and surely with the best of intentions, Colonel Daniel arranged for £500 to be included in the current estimates to improve water supplies in Serowe the following year.

ce in front of Tshekedi saying that he was their servant and they would never recognise him as Regent. On a second occasion they had even insulted Ellenberger himself. Far from living in the veld, they were wandering about districts in which there was dissatisfaction stirring up further strife

By Tswana custom the eldest son of the principal wife in a family inherited all his father's property. Khama III had been monogamous and so in normal circumstances when he died his large herds of cattle, which made him one of the wealthiest men in southern Africa, should have passed to Sekgoma II as his eldest legitimate son and then, on his death, to the young Chief Seretse. But Khama II had been an assiduous moderniser, and in 1907 at the height of his quarrel with Sekgoma, he had written a will in favour of his new son, Tshekedi. It was drawn up for him by lawyers in Mafeking and a copy was sent to the Master for Bechuanaland Protectorate. Tshekedi was naturally very concerned to get hold of a copy of the will and when the Resident Commissioner was in Serowe for the enquiry into the attempted assassination he asked him for a copy. When it arrived he found that his father had specified him as his principal heir. There was no mention of Sekgoma, but ???100 had been left each to his daughters, Mmakhama and Milly, wife of Phethu, and to his son-in-law, Johnny Ratshosa. To Semane, he left ???1,500 and five cattle posts as well as all his sheep and cattle. If Tshekedi were to die unmarried, his share was to revert to Semane. He also left ???200 to Bonyerile, Tshekedi's sister.

When Sekgoma II became Chief he insisted that as a result of their reconciliation, his father had altered his will verbally and allotted the bulk of his house and cattle to him. Indeed Sekgoma said that Khama had ordered the will to be burnt. The Resident Commissioner accordingly advised Tshekedi that Khama had altered the will verbally. But it had not in fact been burnt, and it was unclear whether verbal declarations made in overrode an English-style will. In tradition, such a will had no place. But then Khama in his fifty year reign had overridden many other customary laws and introduced the concept of the King's own personal property. If the will of 1907 was held valid, then Tshekedi was a very rich man, while the young Chief Seretse would be heir only to his late father Sekgoma's not insubstantial herd. For the time being this did not become an issue, since by Tswana law Tshekedi as Regent was responsible for administering the property of his ward. But it was to be the subject of great bitterness between uncle and nephew twenty-five years later.

For Tshekedi the immediate problem arose not from Khama's estate but that of his half-brother, Sekgoma. Oratile, SEkgoma's daughter, and Mmakhama and Baboni, his half-sisters, resented the fact that Tshekedi had appointed two men, one of whom was Golekanye, to manage the estate without consulting them.

'We cry to you Chief, Bamangwato are spoild, they lit Tshekedi in the wrong waye. Help, Sir, there is danger. Khama and Sekgoma daughters are living in the veld like animals. Phethu came, he spoil our tribe, see to it Sir.

We are sorry for our Chief's daughters. God will kill us. Help, the town is spild. Sons of Rachosa have no falt.

Tshekedi immediately suspected the Ratshosas of being behind the letter. As he wrote to the Resident Commissioner 'the writer who ever he was took great care that he misspelled many of the words in the letter.'

'I do not know what wrong I have done to my sisters. Ever since I came to Serowe after Chief SEkgoma's death not one of them cared to come and see me: as for me, while in their sickbeds I have visited them even supporting them with food, killing oxen for them and sending bags of flour and sugar to them'. The 'letter goes on', he continued, 'to say the Ratshosas have no fault. I would have been surprised if no word of support to the Ratshosas did not appear in a letter of such nature. From what I have heard and seen there is hardly an incident in the near history of the tribe when there was trouble and the Ratshosas, or my sisters or sometimes both, were the sources of the disturbance.' Concluding, Tshekedi earnestly requested the Resident Commissioner, 'whatever the result of the Ratshosas' trial may be, never allow them to return to the Bamanwato Reserve any along. As long as they are here there will never be any peace in the nation'. He would make the same reservation about his half-sisters, among whom he curiously included Milly, Phethu's wife, 'had they not been women and some of them widows ... I only ask that they should be transferred to some other reserve until such times as they will be able to think and realise that they have been totally misled by the Ratshosas in stirring up strife for reasons which they will find hard to explain.'

This was not an expression of paranoid fears on the part of a young and insecure ruler. As daughters of Khama's first wife, Mma Bessie, and sisters of Sekgoma, they were contemptuous of their younger half-brother from a junior house who now, simply because he was a male, had ascendancy over them. They quickly convinced the Resident Magistrate that they presented a real threat to Tshekedi. When the Resident Commissioner, Ellenberger, came to Serowe they had created a scene in the Resident Magistrate's office in front of Tshekedi saying that Tshekedi was their servant and they would never recognise him as Regent. On a second occasion they had even insulted the Resident Commissioner himself and were ordered out of the office. Far from living in the veld, they were wandering about districts in which there was dissatisfaction stirring up further strife. They had even brought in a 'Witch Doctor' from Southern Rhodesia. Tshekedi was so frightened of being poisoned by them that he would only eat food prepared by his special cook. His house was guarded day and night as were his drinking-water and his grain bins.

Despite all this, according to the Resident Magistrate, Tshekedi was getting on well with his headmen who were out with regiments working on the roads, suggesting that Tshekedi had indeed made the right choice in backing Phethu's faction rather than that of the Ratshosa brothers. The Resident Magistrate believed 'great credit is due to the Acting Chief for his progressive movements.' .... 'I am of the opinion that Phethu is not so bad as he is painted', he wrote to the Resident Commissioner,' and he naturally has a feeling of revenge against the Ratshosas. The Tribe will never settle down until these women are removed...'

The depth of the bitterness of Oratile and Tshekedi's half-sisters was fully revealed at the trial of Simon and Obeditse Ratshosa for 'wrongfully, unlawfully and maliciously' assaulting Tshekedi, Kgosidintsi and Gopelan, 'by discharging firearms loaded with gunpowder or other explosive substance and bullets at and against' them 'with the intent to kill or murder the said Chief Tshekedi, Kgosidintsi and Gopelan or one or more of them'.

In the trial the Administration, in the person of Cuzen the second witness to be called, was made to seem particularly inept as an administrator by Dr Lang, the defence counsel from Johannesburg. Cuzen's declared policy of non-interference in Bangwato affairs was held up to ridicule, and yet he was merely espousing the doctrine of Indirect Rule as practised in the Bechuanaland Protectorate of those days. He insisted that although he had only arrived to take charge of Serowe a few days before the attempted assassination, he was familiar with Bangwato affairs since he had been stationed in neighbouring Francistown for fourteen years. Even so he assured Dr. Lang that he did not consider it appropriate to interfere in the Chief's domestic affairs. When asked whether he had tried to stop the burning of the Ratshosas' houses, he replied:

Pressed further, Cuzen assured Dr Lang: 'The Chief has the right to destroy houses'.

'Your general attitude throughout', Lang concluded, 'has been to allow the natives to do as they like.'

Tshekedi proved a much more impressive, though stubborn witness. He shared Cuzen's view of his powers. He also showed himself fully able to deal with the hostile questioning of Dr Lang, refusing to answer questions that seemed designed to place him in a bad light. At times he was downright evasive in his answers, at others merely non-committal. At all times he refused to have words put into his mouth. After nearly a full day's cross-examination, he had shown himself a formidable adversary, despite his youth. Indeed his appetite for the law seems to have been whetted by his experience in the witness box, for shortly after the trial he made enquiries of Gutas, the Cape Town booksellers, about the cost of Gardiner and Lansdown's two-volume Criminal Law, Wills on Circumstantial Evidence and Powell on Evidence. On receipt of an invoice for ???6.12.Od. from Gutas he sent them a money order on 4 September to cover their cost.

The Defence were at pains to prove that Tshekedi had been wrong in Bangwato law to order the thrashing of members of the royal family. But Tshekedi was adamant that chiefs's sons could and indeed had been flogged in kgotla. He cited a number of examples, including his own Uncle Moloi and Johnnie Ratshosa's own grandfather. Rather incautiously he declared: 'I am the Chief and I do as I want.' Other witnesses both at the trial and at the earlier statement of evidence by witnesses made it clear that royal headmen or those like the Ratshosas who were sons of chiefs' daughters were in no way exempt from flogging in the kgotla. Indeed old Moloi told himself how his elder brother had had him flogged for interrupting him when he was speaking. Like many other witnesses, Tshekedi denied that the Ratshosas were royals, since they were only sons of a daughter of a Chief and therefore took the status of their commoner father. He was adamant that they were lucky to have got away with their lives. In pre-colonial times, he told Dr Lang, the penalty for attempted murder of a Chief would have been death. This had earlier been affirmed on oath by Phethu, who somewhat curiously was not called to give evidence at the trial.

What emerged from the evidence of other witnesses for the prosecution was the deep hatred the Ratshosas had earned in the Tribe for their arrogant ways. As the venerable old Moloi put it, the Ratshosas were very proud of themselves. 'They look on the tribe as dogs.' The defence witnesses, including the two accused, were equally at pains to denounce Phethu whom they saw as the architect of all their troubles. Only less venomous were their attacks on Tshekedi, though some of them tried to portray him as the misguided puppet of the scheming Phethu. Tshekedi's half-sister, the overweight Baboni, and his niece, Oratile, tall and rather gaunt, both openly declared that as far as they were concerned, Tshekedi was not their Chief.

Nothing was produced by the defence to support its claim that the two Ratshosa brothers were 'Not Guilty' as pleaded. What the defence did make clear was that the Ratshosa brothers had been sorely, if not deliberately, provoked by Tshekedi. They also succeeded in making clear the extent of their loss when their European style houses were burnt. In particular Simon had lost a fine library along with all the records kept by his father 'long before we were born'. Before 'I was living a whiteman's life', Simon lamented to the court, when suggesting that his total loss was between two and three thousand pounds.

In his judgement Captain Reilly made no mention of extenuating circumstances, and found the brothers guilty as charged and sentenced them each to ten years' imprisonment with hard labour. Before passing judgement he did make allusion to an aspect of the trial that had bothered him, and that was the prominence given to the subject of slavery though it did not seem to have any real bearing on the case.

'Now that the case is finished it has been admitted by the Council(sic) for the Defence that the subject was not material at all. Why then was the point so laboured during the trial(sic), and why did the newspapers give the matter such prominence by headlines such as 'Slavery in Bechuanaland'. It appears to be that there is something peculiar behind this and that the Administration is being attacked under cover of a criminal trial. Finally I cannot too strongly emphasise, if my impression is correct, how irregular, to use an euphemism, this procedure is. The question of slavery should have been brought to the notice of the proper authorities by some other means.'

The Magistrate was right in perceiving an ulterior motive in the constant references to Basarwa slavery at the trial. But it was not so much the Administration as Tshekedi who was the intended target. Since it was the question of Oratile's ownership of the Basarwa girls that had finally provoked the Ratshosas into open disobedience of their Chief, their Counsel was able to bring it in as material to an understanding of the situation leading up to the attempted assassination. But Simon Ratshosa and his lawyer ensured that the issue of Basarwa slavery would embarrass both Tshekedi and the British administration, which in their eyes gave him unswerving support. Dr Lang's constant references to the issue of Basarwa slavery caught the attention of the press, as did Simon Ratshosa's dramatic declaration while giving evidence:

The Masartwa are slaves. They can be killed. It is no crime, they are like cattle. They have no liberty. If they run away their masters can bring them back and do what they like in the way of punishment. They are never paid. If the Masarwa live in the veld, and I want any to work for me, I go out and take any I want.'

The British administration had, however, already taken cognisance of the fact that a form of servitude existed among the Basarwa of the Bechuanaland Protectorate, and had made inquiries about in view of the establishment of an investigation into slavery launched by the League of Nations in 1923. The resulting Slavery Convention to which Britain was signatory merely defined a slave as one 'over whom all or any of the rights attaching to ownership are exercised', a definition which clearly applied to those Basarwa working for Bangwato masters. However the Convention only bound its signatories to suppress slavery 'progressively and as soon as possible.'

By the time of the Ratshosa trial the British had done nothing to ameliorate the position of the Basarwa. But the unwelcome publicity given to their status as a result of the trial provoked the Colonial Office into speedy action. Soon after the Ratshosas were sent to prison, the Secretary of State for Colonies called for a 'full report on the conditions of Heredeitary Service in the Bechuanaland Protectorate, with special reference to the allegations made at the Ratshosa trial.' Then on his official visit to Serowe on 3 August 1926, the High Commissioner, the Earl of Athlone, made what came to be known as the Athlone Declaration:

It has been said that the Masarwa are slaves of the Mangwato. The Government does not regard them as slaves, but realises that they are a backward people who serve the Magwato in return for the food and shelter they receive. I understand that for the most part they are contented and that they do not wish to change. But the Government will not allow any tribe to demand compulsory service from another and wants to encourage the Masarwa to support themselves. Any Masarwa who wish to leave their masters and live independently should understand that they are at liberty to do so and that if the Mangwato attempt to retain them against their will the Government will not allow it. It is the duty of the Chiefs and Headmen to help these people to stand on their own two feet.

Tshekedi was caught completely unawares by the declaration, having been told, he later alleged, that no political issues should be raised at the kgotla in honour of the High Commissioner. He was furious with the High Commissioner for springing this thorny political issue on him without even discussing it beforehand. He had still not celebrated his twenty-first birthday and had been on the throne less than a year. Yet here was the High Commissioner asking him to persuade his headmen, on whom he relied for support, to dispense with the help of the Basarwa and go even further to help them become independent by building up herds for them. How would these headmen tend their herds without the assistance of the Basarwa? What would their reaction be to loss of profits from hunting products their Basarwa brought in from the Kalahari? It was like asking a cripple to throw away his crutches. Above all Tshekedi resented the allegations that the Basarwa were slaves and that their Bangwato masters ill-treated them. Simon Ratshosa, now beginning his ten-year sentence in Francistown Jail, could at least have the satisfaction that he had severely embarrassed Tshekedi.

Simon and Obeditse lost no time in appealing against their sentence. Their lawyer gave notice of appeal on 3 July. On 6 July they complained about the food they were given in prison: 'we are not used to plain malie meal.' That same day the Francistown Resident Magistrate wrote to the Government Secretary that he could not alter the men's rations without approval. . 'I think these men will be an endless source of trouble and annoyance to the Government. They have refused to eat the food supplied this morning. I suppose this is the first step towards a hunger strike....I would suggest that it would be a good idea to transfer one of them to Gaborones, preferably Simon.' The Medical Officer who examined Simon did recommend lemon juice, meat and vegetables for Simon who had bleeding gums, and concurred that the two brothers should be separated. But the Assistant Resident Commissioner ruled that they should not be separated until their appeal was heard.

There were five grounds of appeal brought before the Resident Commissioner's Court a few weeks after the Athlone Declaration was made in Serowe. The first, that Simon and Obeditse had already been convicted of their crime in the Chief's court and punished by the burning of their houses and property, was dismissed on the grounds that they were not tried and convicted lawfully of the same offence in kgotla. The second ground of appeal was that the two brothers were tried and sentenced together where in fact no common purpose had been proved. But the Acting Resident Commissioner, Colonel Daniel, held that they did act in concert to commit the crime and that they were both equally guilty of it. The third ground of appeal was that the Minutes of the Enquiry that were cited at the Trial should not have been admitted because they contained hearsay evidence. Colonel Daniel accepted that this was so but ruled that it did not affect the Ratshosas's guilt. The fourth ground of appeal was that the conviction went against the evidence, but Daniel ruled that the 'prosecution had proved its case without a doubt by a number of reliable witnesses on the material points, that the account given by the accused is not to be believed and that their intention was to commit the crime.' He therefore saw 'no reason to disturb the judgement.' It was only on the final ground of appeal that their sentence was too harsh that Daniel showed any sympathy. He agreed to recommend a substantial reduction of their sentence to the High Commissioner. Three weeks later Athlone reduced it to four years. For Tshekedi this was a considerable blow, for he could have wished Simon in particular was locked away for the longer term. As it was prison walls did not prove much of a deterrent to Simon in his vendetta with Tshekedi.

Even before the appeal came before the Resident Commissioner's Court Simon had written a paper entitled 'How the Masarwa became Slaves, and why the Chief's word is law'. This was handed by the Francistown gaoler to the Francistown Resident Magistrate who forwarded it in turn to Lord Athlone. In the paper Simon made allegations of vicious mistreatment of their Basarwa by some of the Bangwato masters. He even alleged that some Basarwa had been burnt alive. Most of those named as committing crimes were enemies of the Ratshosas, while Simon conveniently overlooked the fact that, according to Edirilwe Sekgoma, he himself had once been fined ???60 with the alternative of one year's imprisonment for the crime of assault with intent to do grievous bodily harm to a Mosarwa, and that he had been punished by Khama for tying a Mosarwa to a tree and flogging him. Simon, indeed, went as far as to paint the Ratshosas as champions of Basarwa freedom. He implied that Sekgoma had told the brothers that 'the headmen owning the Masarwa are strongly against you my nephews' and that the reason the Ratshosas had supported the Council set up to assist Gorewan was that they were 'intending nothing else but to se free the Masarwa who had long been our servants from time immemorial'.

Simon of course had nothing to lose by such an approach to the Basarwa question. In prison, his property destroyed, deprived of his own Basarwa, he found the issue of Basarwa slavery a convenient stick with which to flog Tshekedi. For the next ten years the vexed issue of whether or not the Basarwa were slaves took up much of Tshekedi's time and emotion. Immediately he had to deal with Lord Athlone's request, made at the suggestion of the Acting Resident Commissioner, made at the suggestion of the Acting Resident Commissioner, that all the allegations of mistreatment of Basarwa made by Simon be investigated. His only consolation was that he personally was not accused of any crime. Together with the Resident Magistrate and the local Police Sergeant. Briefly, he was able to satisfy Lord AThlone that There was little substance in Simon's accusations, the most lurid of which - that the stomach of a pregnant Mosarwa woman had been ripped open and the foetus taken out - particularly angered Tshekedi.

If Simon could prove such a nuisance from prison, Tshekedi had every reason to fear that Oratile and his half-sisters would prove more so while still at liberty in Gamangwato. He had already secured the exile of Johnnie. Now he sought that of Simon's wife, Oratile, and his half-sisters, MmaKhama and Baboni. While they were actively stirring up trouble for him he saw no hope of peace in his country. Thus when the Ratshosas sent Tshekedi a letter of apology through their lawyer in which they recognised Tshekedi 'as their true and lawful superior' and undertook 'to bear him obedience and loyalty', Tshekedi told the Resident Magistrate that he did not want to deal with the apology until he had received a similar one from the three women. He was also sceptical about the sincerity of the Ratshosas' apology, as well he might, since it was sent at the time Simon was purring the finishing touches to his inflammatory paper about Basarwa slavery.

Of the three women Oratile proved to be Tshekedi's most formidable opponent. Her first action against him was in respect of her inheritance from her father. She alleged that Tshekedi had cheated her of property that was rightly hers. To prove this she produced a will written by Sekgoma on 4 June 1921 in which he left his five cattle posts to her. But according to Tshekedi and others who knew Sekgoma well the writing on the will was not his. In particular, they observed, he never spelt him name Khama but always Kgama. Headman Mathiba alleged that the writing was in fact that of Simon Ratshosa and the Resident Magistrate on comparing a letter of Simon's with the will was inclined to agree that this was the case. Minchin, the Crown Prosecutor, had been equally dubious about the will when Oratile had first brought it to him shortly before the attempted assassination. At that time he had told her that since it was not signed by a witness, she would have to prove it was a holograph and if it was accepted by the Master it would be useful in determining the distribution of Sekgoma's assets. However she decided to keep it so that she could produce it in the Chief's kgotla. After the attempted assassination she wrote that it had been burnt in the fire that destroyed her house. Minchin was unable to say whether the will now before him was the one she had shown him earlier. Tshekedi in kgotla refused to acknowledge Oratile's claim, and insisted that Sekgoma's estate be settled according to tradition, whereby Seretse as his first legitimate son would be his father's principal heir.. He informed the Resident Magistrate that he would, however, provide for Oratile 'out of his own free will and he would have done so before had the recent trouble not intervened, but he cannot be compelled to provide for her as, when she married, her father Sekgoma gave her a cattle post and a wagon and Khama gave her cattle, being a married woman she can have no claim in Native law to Sekgoma's estate.'

When Oratile finally came in person to Tshekedi's kgotla to claim her cattle, he asked her to produce witnesses and prove her claim. She declined to do so and Tshekedi refused to hand her any cattle. Possibly inspired by her example, Baboni and MmaKhama complained that same month that they had not received their shares of Khama's estate and that a paper written by Khama describing their inheritance had been destroyed when the Ratshosas' houses were burnt. They made their complaint to the Resident Magistrate at Kanye where they had been finally sent into exile. As early as August the High Commissioner had agreed to Tshekedi's request that the three women should be exiled. The first suggestion of the Administration was that they should be sent to land North of the Nata River, but according to Colonel Daniel, Tshekedi did not favour this as he did not want to make the lot of his aunts too hard. Furthermore Tshekedi had cattle posts in this area, and basically did not want these troublemakers anywhere in his Reserve The problem, then, was to find a Chief who would accept them. Finally the Regent of the Bangwaketse, Chieftainess Ntebogang, agreed to take Baboni and MmaKhama, although she had no reason to be friendly to allies of the Ratshosas, who were her stepsons: she had only recently complained to the administration that Johnnie had failed to look after her and her children by Ratshosa as custom dictated. Baboni and MmaKhama were allowed to leave their cattle in the Bamangwato Reserve in the care of the their children, but Tshekedi insisted that Johnnie and Oratile take all their stock out of the Reserve. Orders were accordingly served on Oratile and Johnnie to leave the Reserve not later than 23 February 1927. No Chief would accept them and when finally they left the Reserve five days after the order came into force, they were not sure where they were going. More trouble from the Ratshosas lay ahead of Tshekedi, as a result of claim by the three brothers for damages in respect of the destruction of their houses and property. But for the time being the Government could not decide whether the case should be heard in kgotla or in the Resident Magistrate's court. Tshekedi, not surprisingly insisted that it was 'a purely native matter'.

Tshekedi's first twelve months as Chief may have been dominated by high family drama, but as Chief he had to deal with many more mundane things in Serowe. Most mornings he had to preside shortly after dawn in kgotla listening to civil and criminal appeals from subordinate dikgotla. He also had to deal with the day to day administration of Serowe as well as problems in the outlying districts which his district governors could not settle themselves. He also had to deal with the European community, in particular the traders, who as far as conducting business in his Reserve was concerned were entirely under his jurisdiction. It was he who issued or withheld trading licences from them or gave them permission to open a new store or garage. His approach to such matters was invariably that he did not want more than one store where he judged one alone would do. Thus on 27 May he issued Mr G. Blackbeard with a hawker's licence but asked him not to send his wagon with goods into any villages where there was already another trader established 'as that would only cause friction between other traders and me and perhaps between you and them.'

He even tried to help a friend, presumably from Lovedale or Fort Hare, whom he addressed affectionately as Sport, to find a job. But he regretted he had been unable to find anything suitable for him, signing himself as 'your old sport, Tshekedi Khama'. He wrote letters on behalf of relatives seeking places for their children at Tiger Kloof or Lovedale. One for whom he sought a place at Lovedale was his young cousin, Bagakgametse, daughter of old Moloi, who ten years later was to be his bride.

In his first year as Chief problems in Serowe prevented Tshekedi spending much time in the districts. There he had to rely on his governors and local headmen to settle problems. In Bokolaka territory in the far north of Gamangwato, Headman John Mswasi, who had been a close friend of his father, refused to call out his regiments to erect a fence near the Southern Rhodesian border. Tshekedi's local governor upbraided the Mswaswis for their 'disobedience' and fined them six head of cattle telling them that unless a fine were paid they would not be allowed to plough. Reluctantly John Mswaswi complied. Three years later he was not to be so compliant.

The main challenge to his authority from outside Serowe at this time came from the Bakhurutshe who lived at Tonota not far from Francistown. He was to find that in certain matters the British Administration was only too ready to interfere in 'native affairs' even if it did undermine his authority in the eyes of his people.

The agreement with Khama was signed by both parties in the presence of Major Hannay, the Resident Magistrate, and enjoined the settlers to obey all the laws of Khama, some of which, including the prohibition on the drinking of alcohol, were specifically mentioned. Although no specific reference was made to religious practice it was understood that Khama's law was that there should be only one denomination in his state, that of the London Missionary Society, and that those Bakhurutshe who were Anglicans should not practice their rite openly. He did agree however that they could cross the river to worship in Anglican churches in Tati territory.

When in July of 1926 Tshekedi heard that a white Anglican missionary had ministered to the Anglicans in Tonota he saw this as a threat to the religious unity of his state which, like his father and half-brother, he was zealous to preserve. Tshekedi was also concerned that some of the Bakhurutshe Anglicans were using religion as a cloak for stirring up political trouble. This was certainly the view of the Bakhurutshe Headman, Nkebele, who had succeeded Rawe. Tshekedi took the occasion of the presence of Nkebele and other Bakhurutshe at the kgotla held in honour of Lord Athlone to discuss the matter and they agreed that those Bakhurutshe who were unwilling to follow the L.M.S. should either leave for Tati territory where they could worship according to the Anglican rite or else come and live in Serowe where Tshekedi could keep an eye on them.

When Nkebele conveyed this information to his people, the thirty-seven Bakhurutshe involved refused to comply with either alternative, and fled to the local Police Camp, protesting that they were about to be beaten. Later it was agreed that no violence had in fact been used against them. At this stage Tshekedi does not seem to have been trying to reverse his father's more tolerant policy of allowing Anglicans to cross the river and worship in Francistown. His apparently draconian measure against the thirty-seven was taken because he was convinced they were 'mutineers' who had already given his brother trouble when he was on the throne. They were not following the agreement with his father and were openly trying to establish an Anglican Church in Tonota. Nkebele as their headman was clearly also worried at the political threat they represented because he supported Tshekedi throughout. Of course if the thirty-seven did refuse to emigrate to Tati territory and were forced to come and live in Serowe, they would only be able to follow their rite in the privacy of their own homes since Serowe was far removed from any Anglican Church.

When Lord Athlone heard of Tshekedi's action he was shocked and wrote to the Resident Commissioner on 9 October that 'in no circumstances can I countenance any action on the part of the Chief calculated to interfere with freedom of thought in religious matters. I do not approve of the Agreement made between Khama and Rawe and do not wish its terms to be enforced by Tshekedi.'

A few days later what Lord Athlone most feared happened. News of 'Alleged Religious Persecution' appeared in the Cape Times. Meanwhile Tshekedi held a three days long kgotla in Serowe to discuss the situation in Tonota. As far as he was concerned the Bakhurutshe demonstrated perfectly the very dangers that the presence of more than one denomination in Gamangwato would bring: they were riven between Anglican and LMS factions, and two of the leading Anglican 'dissidents', Tumedi and Molefhe, had actually admitted that they were not even followers of that rite. 'I may be asked', he said, '"Where is any wrong in having two denominations?" I am afraid of what will happen. Government is well aware of what has taken place in places where there is more than one denominations (sic) in such places as Kanye and Molepolole.' Tshekedi then named the individual Bakhurutshe he believed were using religion for political ends. He also protested that 'it looks as if I am the man who is being tried, and this is a sore point with me....If this matter was a religious matter at all these people would have crossed the border quietly when they were told to, failing that they would have come to Serowe and we would be holding this meeting to enquire into their grievances made to us after coming to Serowe.' In conclusion Tshekedi reaffirmed: 'I do not want two denominations in this country.'

Mr Cuzen, true to his own policy of non-interference in 'native affairs,' wrote a report on this kgotla for the Government Secretary in Mafeking that was extremely sympathetic to Tshekedi's position. He agreed that Molefhe and Tumedi were troublemakers and should be dealt with accordingly, while as for those who were genuine Anglicans it would be no hardship for them to live in Tati territory since they would be closer to an Anglican Church than before and would still be near enough to visit relatives in Tonota. As the Chief says, he noted approvingly, 'the introduction of a new religion should be done in the proper manner, i.e., through an application to the Chief in the same way as applications for stores, etc., is done.'

Colonel Daniel as Acting Resident Commissioner was much less sympathetic to Tshekedi's position which he felt smacked of religious persecution. He suggested that Tshekedi did not even like the fact that the BAkhurutshe Anglicans crossed the river to worship in Francistown. He agreed that there 'are some who are not of the Anglican CHurch but have associated themselves with those belonging to it in order to attain some other end. I refer principally to Molefhe Tselawe and Tumedi who are influential men and who openly state that they do not belong to the Church of England. 'In their case he was inclined to agree with the Resident Magistrate that they should be told to leave the Reserve or come and live at Serowe, but in view of the prominence the matter had been given in the press he advised it might be best to treat them on the same footing as the true followers of the Anglican rite.'

But the High Commissioner was adamant that there should be no expulsion on religious grounds. Tshekedi could fine them or punish them for disobedience but 'no conditions of residence could be extorted from the Bakhurutshe which would constitute interference with the free exercise of their religion'.

There the matter rested until the kgotla called in early January to consider the High Commissioner's ruling. Tshekedi told his people in the presence of the Assistant Resident Commissioner that he considered that the High Commissioner's decision had diminished his authority among his people. 'I have not been in my position one year, and whatever decision the Authorities may take in this matter my authority will disappear altogether.' He himself disagreed with the decision and would only go with the Assistant Resident Commissioner to visit the Bakhurutshe to explain matters in order to conform with the law. As the Assistant Resident Commissioner subsequently wrote to the Resident Commissioner Tshekedi and his headmen 'pointed out that it was going to hit very hard at the Chief's authority especially if Molefhe and Tumedi are to be acquitted.'

Tshekedi was never one to give up easily and straight afterwards he requested an interview with the High Commissioner before he carried out his orders. Accompanied by four headmen and an interpreter he met Lord Athlone in Government House at Cape Town on Tuesday 1 February. Tshekedi made it clear that he was not having two churches in his state. He cited the Bakhurutshe who 'are in three sub-divisions on account of denominational quarrels.' Tshekedi insisted that if the Anglicans could not be expelled from his Reserve then they must come and live in Serowe under his eye. It was his right as Chief to determine where in the Reserve his subjects lived. He also made it clear that they would have to give up their denomination if they came to Serowe.

The High Commissioner then presented Tshekedi with a prepared statement giving his decision in the matter. He began patronisingly by reminding the Chief that 'in all civilised countries there are a vast number of Churches erected by congregations belonging to various denominations, the members of which live and work in peace with each other, and without any interferences from their respective governments as long as they are law-abiding. I may mention that in Basutoland, which is under my control, there are several different religious communities and every Basuto is at liberty to join any Church he may select.' He then proceeded to rule that the cases of Tumedi and Molefhe were 'clearly outside the religious question' and that the Chief could punish them for disobedience, but this could not involve banishment. He could insist on their coming to live in Serowe, and if they did not wish to do that then they would have to return to their homes in Tati District. 'It is to be clearly understood however that this removal is punishment for disobedience and in no way a consequence of the religion they follow.' The High Commissioner also made it clear that there was to be no burning of huts involved in the punishment of the two men. Then, as a belated salve for Tshekedi's wounds, he told him: 'I am very pleased at the manner in which he had ruled up to the present and the way in which he has assisted the Government and so long as he acts in accordance with the law I shall continue to uphold him in the exercise of his lawful authority.'

Tshekedi replied: 'I am obliged, Your Excellency, and I will carry out your instruction. I cannot say I am pleased.' It was not long before the High Commissioner was to realise the extent of the young Chief's displeasure.

Basarwa, they warned him to ensure that `the cattle and other property belonging to the Ratshosas which has been left in the Bamangwato Reserve will ............

When Tshekedi returned to Serowe on 26 May after an absence of nearly three months it was to a triumphal reception from his people. A large number of horsemen rode out to meet him, while outside the kgotla he was received by dancers, ululating women, and hand-clapping schoolchildren. As he walked into the kgotla great cries of `Pula' - rain - went up from the crowd. In the centre of the densely packed assembly sat the royal family and members of the European community. After being greeted by Captain Nettelton, who had returned to Serowe ahead of him, and by the Rev. J.H.L. Burns, Tshekedi shook hands with Queen Tebogo, his young ward Seretse, and lastly his mother, Semane, who knelt and kissed his hand. After prayers had been offered, speeches were made by Acting Chief Edirilwe and representatives of the European community. Tshekedi seemed to be at the height of his popularity. It was some years since such a large meeting of the Bangwato had assembled in kgotla. Yet within a year of his return Tshekedi found himself in deep trouble with both his own people and the British Administration.

In Cape Town, before he left for Serowe, Tshekedi had had an amicable meeting with Lord Athlone in which he was promised that his proposal that the Bangwato buy out the mining concession would be passed on to the British South Africa Company. Athlone also urged Tshekedi to discuss the financial implications of the proposal for the Bangwato with Colonel Rey, the new Resident Commissioner, in whom he would find `a sincere friend who will always be ready to advise and help you and your people.' In fact, Rey, who took over the administration of the Protectorate on April 1st, was already planning ways in which he could cut Tshekedi down to size. His meeting with the Chief, who stopped in Mafeking on his way to Serowe did nothing to improve relations between them. `The morning's meeting', he confided to his diary, `was ghastly - the worst I have ever had. He has been almost ruined in England by those damned fools who have never lived among Africans but who persist in treating them as brothers, people who regard all of us who have to govern these people (a handful of whites amongst thousand of blacks) as bloated tyrannical monsters of cruelty and oppression.'

Two developments while Tshekedi was away in England seemed to suit Rey's book admirably. A search party had crossed into the Tati District to look for some Basarwa who had deserted their masters leaving their cattle unattended and were now working for Europeans. The two Bangwato who comprised the party were carrying a pass to travel to the Tati District which had not been authorised by the Resident Magistrate of Serowe, but had apparently been issued by the Secretary of the Bamangwato Tribal Administration. He was new to the job and had not realised that the passes needed the Resident Magistrate's approval. Even so, Rey held that Edirilwe Seretse, who was acting as Chief for Tshekedi in his absence, had personally despatched the search party or at least it had gone out with his knowledge and consent.

When Tshekedi returned to Serowe, Rey ordered him to punish those responsible for the attempt to sieze the Basarwa, since, as he wrote to Lord Athlone, it `was in direct conflict with the policy laid down in Your Excellency's declaration at Serowe in 1926 concerning the position of the Masarwa'. Tshekedi did nothing about the matter since the two men sent to fetch the Basarwa had already been tried in the Magistrate's Court in the headquarters of the Tati District. They had been discharged with a caution on the grounds that they had not used force, had spent a week in custody, and had gone on their errand with Edirilwe's approval. Rey also demanded that Tshekedi punish Edirilwe and the Tribal Secretary. It was not until the end of August that Tshekedi even deigned to reply to the order, when he wrote to the Resident Magistrate refusing to punish either man and protesting once more against the Athlone Declaration in terms that were to infuriate Rey : `I am not prepared to admit, in the absence of a finding of an impartial enquiry to that effect, that the treatment of the Masarwa is such as to call for any action on the part of Government. I respectfully submit that I am unable to regard the Declaration as of such legal nature that I am expected to punish members for alleged disregard of its provisions.' Rey considered that the letter was tantamount to a denial of the right of the High Commissioner to issue the Declaration, and `going so far as to criticise His Excellency's action in the matter.' Rey demanded that the letter be withdrawn or substantially modified by Tshekedi, who stubbornly refused to do so.

The second development involved Headman John Mswaswi, who had at last returned to Serowe to present his complaints in the kgotla, this time accompanied by a suitable retinue of headmen. Tshekedi had left for Cape Town a few days before Mswaswi's arrival, so Edirilwe presided over the kgotla. The hearing lasted the best part of two weeks and and its main business was not Mswaswi's complaints against the Chief, but rather complaints by the assembled Bangwato against Mswaswi. Abuse of the most vulgar kind was heaped on Mswaswi in what rapidly became a trial rather than a hearing, with Edirilwe giving his verdict that Mswaswi and five of his headmen should come into Serowe to live under the Chief's eye, a verdict which Rey believed had been arranged with Tshekedi before he left. Whether this was the case or not, Tshekedi was well aware of what was going on as Edirilwe kept him informed by telegram of latest developments in the case. The telegram, which was intercepted by the Post Office and passed on to the Administration, suggested that Simon Ratshosa was at the bottom of the affair and accused the Acting Resident Magistrate of unwarranted interference. Tshekedi was sufficiently alarmed by the news from Edirilwe that he asked that the Dominions Office telegraph Lord Athlone and request that all further action in the matter be delayed until his return. As far as Tshekedi was concerned, in the context of the disturbances he had already experienced in `my short troubled reign, it appears to me the Administration has formed an opinion that the Mzwazwis (sic) have been ill-treated without making investigation into the charges or complaints.'

Matters were complicated for the Administration by the publicity given the `trial' in the South African and Southern Rhodesian press, which focussed their stories on the refusal by Mswaswi and his people to pay the ox levy imposed by Tshekedi to defray the cost of his visit to London. Furthermore they were alarmed by rumours - which proved to be false - that despite direct orders to the contrary Edirilwe had despatched a regiment to bring Mswaswi in to Serowe.

Mswaswi sent off an appeal against the judgement to Rey, who ordered that no action be taken by the Serowe authorities until his complaints had been reviewed. The Magistrate, acting for Nettelton while he was in England, was meanwhile to summon Mswaswi to Shashi and inform him that pending the outcome of the appeal `he must refrain from any act of insubordination or aggression or any other action which might be likely to create friction.' Edirilwe was to send a representative to this meeting `to be present at the interview but to take no part in it.' Contemptuously, Edirilwe sent Mmile, a Mosarwa, as his representative, and despite the Administration's concern for the advancement of these people, the Acting Resident Magistrate would not allow him to participate in the meeting as `I required a responsible person, and, he being a Mosarwa I could not allow Mmile to be present at the interview, but my interpreter translated the proceedings to him afterwards.' Rey, who was later to present himself as the champion of the Basarwa, thoroughly approved of the Acting Resident Magistrate's action in excluding the Mosarwa from the interview with Mswaswi, `though he should have insisted on a proper representative being sent...'. Rey arranged that Captain Nettelton hold an enquiry into Mswaswi's complaints and effectively anulled the decision made by Edirilwe in kgotla. When Tshekedi returned from England it was to learn that far from Mswaswi's case being settled in his absence, the obstreporous headman had gained a reprieve. What Tshekedi considered a purely "tribal" matter was now to be settled by the Resident Magistrate.

Before Nettelton could hold the enquiry, Colonel Rey paid his first visit to Serowe. Apart from familiarising himself with the most important state of the Bechuanaland Protectorate, Rey was anxious to take up the mining issue with the Bangwato. To this end a two day long kgotla was arranged by Tshekedi in which various grievances he and his people had against the administration could be aired before the Resident Commissioner. For his part, Rey was determined to ensure that the Bangwato had been told by Tshekedi what the Secretary of State for the Dominions had decided about mining.

Rey was given a very cordial welcome by Tshekedi and his people, who lined the way to the Residency. There, several hundred school children greeted the Resident Commissioner by singing `Rule Britannia'. Rey even began to warm to Tshekedi, who was `obviously very nervous about what I am going to say in Kgotla, and to tell the truth so am I! Its a heavy responsibility, for every word I say will be carried through the length and breadth of the Bamangwato country (which is nearly as big as England), repeated to the missionaries and possibly telegraphed to England if I make a mistake when it will be raised in Parliament.'

The Kgotla met for three hours on the Thursday and another three hours on the Friday, with everything the Bangwato said being laboriously translated into English, and Rey's words likewise being rendered into Setswana, sentence by sentence. The Bangwato laid a variety of complaints before Rey, including the infrequency of visits of Resident Commissioners to Serowe in the past, loss of grazing rights and inadequate medical treatment. As far as both Rey and Tshekedi were concerned the most important area of disagreement between the Bangwato and the British was over mining. Rey was left in no doubt that the Bangwato supported Tshekedi in his opposition to mining and were prepared to contribute cattle to help their Chief buy out the concession.

Rey was still not convinced, however, that Tshekedi had given the Bangwato a full report on his discussions with the Secretary of State as he had been told to do. Tshekedi assured Rey that he had done so, but Rey did not believe him, and determined that he, himself, would ensure that the advice of the Secretary of State was formally communicated to the Bangwato. But his problem was how to do this `without showing Tshekedi that we did not believe or trust him, and thus undoing all that I was laboriously building up to win the Chief back to our side, avoid future friction, and smash the L.M.S.?'

In his concluding speech to the Kgotla on the Friday morning, Rey assured the assembly that the revised mining concession was in their interest, and that the Government was not trying to force the Bangwato to accept the Concession. Cunningly he quoted verbatim Lord Passfield's own statement to Tshekedi that it would be in the best interest of the Bangwato to accept the revised concession. Tshekedi seems not to have been dismayed by Rey's approach, presumably because he knew that the Bangwato were solidly behind him in their opposition to mining. In any case he had already given his people an account of what had been discussed in London though not in detail since he did not believe they would understand the technicalities involved. In the afternoon, when he called at the Residency to say goodbye to Colonel Rey, he thanked him for the patience he had shown in listening to his people and for his reply. He then presented him with two magnificent karosses, one of which was inscribed `To Colonel Rey on his first visit to the Bamangwato'.

For a time it seemed that Tshekedi had been tamed. At the end of the month Nettelton wrote to Rey to inform him that in `my dealings with Tshekedi latterly I discern a new and very reasonable attitude - a desire not to run up against the Government.' Nettelton also `felt that that the day will come when Tshekedi will come to you and ask you to help him negotiate a new Concession.'

Nettelton wrote these encouraging words the day before he was due to preside over the enquiry into Mswaswi's complaints. He spent `three really perishing days' in the Kgotla taking evidence, for this was the height of the Southern African winter. Tshekedi could not have hoped for a better result. Although Edirilwe's ruling that Mswaswi should come and live in Serowe under the Chief's eye had been anulled in view of the enquiry, it was exactly this course of action that was now recommended by Nettelton who considered Mswaswi `a rebellious and scheming fellow'. If they let Tshekedi down over Mswaswi, Nettelton believed `we will be ruining his authority.' Nettelton rejected all Mswaswi's complaints as unfounded, and dismissed him as an unreliable witness who `seldom gave an honest direct reply until he had been pressed - his nature is deceit and I would not care to put much trust in him... He has been deliberately disobedient and defiant to Tshekedi who has really shown great restraint.' Nettelton also believed that it was significant that `Mswazi's agitation co-incides with the release of the Ratshosas from Gaol and though there is no proof against them, I think they are, whilst they remain at Francistown, a danger to the peace of this District.' The Enquiry was, Nettelton reported, orderly throughout and at its conclusion Tshekedi, to show that there was no ill-will on his part, gave Mswaswi and his followers and ox to eat.

Rey received Nettelton's report with some relief because a judgement in favour of Mswaswi would have soured relations with Tshekedi at a time when they seemed to be improving. Rey wrote to Tshekedi informing him that he was ordering Mswaswi to come to live in Serowe with his wives and servants. Tshekedi's position had been reinforced, and something of a honeymoon seemed to be beginning with the Administration. But it was to be a short-lived one. There was still the matter of Tshekedi's letter about the Basarwa and the question of mining on which Chief and Resident Commissioner held very different views. In London, John Harris of the Anti-Slavery Society was working hard on Tshekedi's behalf. He had obtained from Sir Thomas Inskip, a former Attorney-General, the opinion that the Concession could indeed be cancelled by the Bangwato and that their best course would be to give twelve months' notice of termination. Tshekedi's resolve was strengthened by this opinion but he replied Harris that he was not going to take action unilaterally to cancel the Concession until the High Commissioner had concluded his negotiations with the Company. But the arrogant and impetuous Harris had already jumped the gun by announcing to the London Press that Tshekedi had indeed cancelled the Concession.

More immediately Tshekedi was concerned by the activities of a young Scottish trade unionist and publicist, William Ballinger, who was on tour of the Bechuanaland Protectorate. While accepting Tshekedi's assistance and the use of his car, Ballinger made contact with the leading dissidents among the educated elite of Serowe. In particular he was persuaded by them that the Basarwa were indeed slaves of the Bangwato. Ballinger also interested himself in the question of `tribal labour' which he was increasingly convinced was in fact a form of forced labour. His source of information on this was Moanaphuti Segolodi, who had recently been sentenced to a flogging in the kgotla by Chief Tshekedi for writing to the Resident Commissioner suggesting that Tshekedi gave judgements for those he favoured. Segolodi, who was educated and had served for a time as Tribal Secretary in Ngamiland until he was thrown out by the Chief, appealed to the Resident Commissioner. Several weeks later he failed to turn up with his Regiment to do work on cleaning the Serowe dam. When he was sent for he believed it was to be flogged once again, and so he took refuge in the Resident Magistrate's compound arriving there armed with a gun. He alleged that he was being compelled by force to undertake forced labour. Nettelton and the administration in Mafeking were convinced that Moanaphuti had been put up to this allegation by Ballinger, for whom he became an assiduous informant over the succeeding years, feeding him with all sorts of information and gossip about events in the Bamangwato Reserve, especially where it would serve to embarass Tshekedi. While Rey was clear that Moanaphuti had a duty to work on the dam in terms of the tribal custom `under which the natives of the Prot[ectorate] assemble in regiments or in smaller numbers to perform work for the benefit of the Tribe as a whole or for the Chief himself' he was not happy that such labour was obtained under threat of flogging. Tshekedi should be asked to fine rather than flog Moanaphuti for his disobedience, and be warned that Ballinger was probably at the bottom of Moanaphuti's complaint. Indeed this was probably very near the truth since Ballinger believed that the `progressive section at Serowe have as a result of our visit plucked up courage.' Because of the outside interest in the incident Rey considered it neccessary to proceed with `the utmost caution.' Moanaphuti determined to see the Resident Commissioner about his complaints against Tshekedi, and set off for Mafeking unaware that he was travelling on the same train as his Chief. But Moanaphuti got not joy in Mafeking : he was told that he could only be interviewed by the Resident Commissioner in the presence of the Chief.

The Administration had backed Tshekedi over the question of Moanaphuti, but when on 19 October they received a petition signed by Moanaphuti and seven other Bangwato complaining against Tshekedi's oppressive rule, Rey decided that a full scale commission of enquiry should be held into their allegations. Three days before the petition was handed in Tshekedi finally withdrew his letter about the Basarwa, which Rey felt directly challenged the High Commissioner's authority. He did so very reluctantly, and under the strongest pressure from Rey, who told the Chief he would not see him until he withdrew the letter. Nettelton agreed with Rey that it would have to be withdrawn unconditionally and that Tshekedi `must be driven into complete submission'.

When Rey learnt that Tshekedi had withdrawn the letter on 16 October he arranged to see him in Mafeking on 28 October along with six of his headmen. But Tshekedi was still sore about his defeat and became `offensively obstructive' at the interview. Rey was so angered that he `kicked them all out, swore myself into a state of calm and said I would have nothing more to say to them, and that they could all go back to Serowe.' This dramatic gesture seems to have had its effect, for Tshekedi wrote Rey `a full and ample apology' and the next day the meeting was resumed and a number of outstanding difficulties were solved including the matter of the punishment of all those concerned in the expedition to the Tati District to sieze the Basarwa. Tshekedi now agreed with extreme reluctance to carry out the Resident Commissioner's instructions and punish them.

The most important item of business raised at the meeting was the question of mining. Rey informed Tshekedi that the Administration had now heard from the British South Africa Company which had refused his offer to buy out the Concession. After discussing the options now open to him with Rey, Tshekedi invited the Resident Commissioner to come to Serowe and talk to his people about the whole question of mining in the light of the Company's decision.

Rey had hoped to settle the dispute between Tshekedi and the Ratshosas and put an end to their seemingly interminable litigation by suggesting that he pay a sum of money to them in final settlement. But Tshekedi objected violently to this proposal and Rey `was impressed by his evident fear that the order by myself to him to pay any sum to the Ratshosas would be regarded throughout the Reserve as a definite blow to his prestige and authority.'

At this same interview Rey formally announced to Tshekedi that he was arranging for Captain Nettelton to hold an Enquiry into the complaints made against him in the Petition. The Enquiry began in the Kgotla at Serowe on 13 November. The transcript of evidence covered two hundred and forty-two typed foolscap pages. Although Nettelton had at first thought the evidence would seriously undermine Tshekedi's authority, he soon lost sympathy with the Petitioners. As far as he was concerned they were all agitators, and were significantly sons of members of the Tribe who had disagreed with Khama III and had been sent into exile as a result. They did have some points regarding the conduct of the Regiments and the use of flogging to punish those who did not turn up for tribal labour, which had been exacerbated by the recent efforts to clear the Serowe dam. As far as their complaints about the excessive authority of the Chief were concerned, these would no doubt be dealt with by the proposed reforms of the system of native administration in the Protectorate. As far as tribal labour was concerned, however, Nettelton upheld it since without it many works which were really beneficial to the Tribe would never be carried out. There was need for reform, especially in the matter of flogging of those who did not attend to their regimental duties, especially if they were educated men. `It was this', Nettelton believed, `which caused the Ratshosa disturbance and it seems undesirable that civilised and respectable men should be publicly flogged for offences which really do not justify flogging.'

While the petitioners got little joy from Nettelton, and Tshekedi himself was effectively exonerated, the Chief showed himself `in his worst form' during the Enquiry. Immediately after it was completed Tshekedi took his revenge on all the Petitioners by ordering them to free their Basarwa and Bakgalagadi servants, `but he himself and his favourites and the remainder of the Tribe have not been ordered to do so', Nettelton reported to Rey. This of course represented a severe blow to his rivals, who would have to send their sons and other male relations to their cattle-posts to replace their Basarwa. instead of being sent to school. In the same letter Nettelton informed the Resident Commissioner that Tshekedi was plotting with some of his fellow chiefs to petition the High Commissioner for the removal of Rey.

Tshekedi's erstwhile friend, K.T. Motsete, was discovered in the course of the Enquiry to be an adviser to the Petitioners. This began a bitter enmity betweeen the two, and Tshekedi took early vengeance by ordering Motsete to pay twenty-five head of cattle to the parents of a woman he had seduced eleven years previously. For Nettelton Tshekedi, whom he normally supported, had proved himself a `thoroughly vindictive young man and personally if I were a Mongwato against whom he had a grudge I would lose no time in finding another place of residence.'

In Pretoria the High Commissioner's concern was that Rey would use the Enquiry to get rid of Tshekedi. As he cabled Rey, `as far as I know there is no-one who could replace Tshekedi.' Athlone clearly felt the need to place a restraining hand on Rey who assured him by reply: `I do not anticipate that matters are approaching, or are likely to approach, such a crisis - provided that we deal with difficulties firmly and sympathetically as they arise, and do not allow discontent to foment and come to a head.'

But before the end of the year matters did seem to be reaching a crisis. Despite the fact that Rey had responded to Tshekedi's invitation and gone to Serowe to tell the Bangwato about the advantages he believed mining would bring them and the dangers of embarking on `the slippery slope of legal proceedings', on Christmas Day Tshekedi wrote to the British South Africa Company cancelling the concession with effect from 31 December 1931. In the meantime, he informed the Company, he would no longer accept their cheques in payment of rent. This dramatic development brought to an end a year in which Nettelton reported `Tribal progress ... was notable by its absence.'

Within just two weeks of receiving Tshekedi's notice of cancellation, the British South Africa denied his right to do so and notified him that the question would have to be settled in the Courts. Pending a judicial decision, they would continue to pay rent. Each month the Company sent its cheque for £25 to Serowe; and each month Tshekedi returned it uncleared. But both Tshekedi and the Company were anxious to avoid prolonged and expensive litigation, the outcome of which was not entirely clear and so they did not break off communications. At the end of April the solution to the problem was found in principle. Tshekedi once again stated his willingness to consider signing the new agreement if he were given Crown Lands that had once been Bangwato territory in compensation for those lands in his Reserve which the Company would exploit. The British administration agreed to transfer these Crown Lands to Tshekedi provided the BSA CO would compensate it for its loss.

While the mining dispute was edging towards a solution, Tshekedi engaged Rey in another bitter battle, this time over the education of his ward, Seretse. The young Chief of the Bangwato was now ten years old and had lost his mother in December. Tshekedi, who now assumed full parental responsibility for Seretse, judged it time to send him away to school and arranged a place for him in his alma mater, Lovedale. Rey was deeply suspicious of this institution and its products, and was determined to keep Seretse `out of the clutches of the misionaries'. He ruled that `on no account can we allow Seretse to go to Lovedale.' Nettelton agreed with Rey's views, considering that Seretse would meet all sorts of Africans from the Union `with a decidedly anti-European outlook on life and this Administration will suffer for it eventually just as it suffers from Tshekedi's outlook which was created at Lovedale.' Nettelton, Rey and the Inspector of Education, Mr. Dumbrell, all agreed that the best course would be for Seretse to go to one of the schools in Southern Rhodesia, or alternatively one of the mission schools in South Africa. The school favoured by the Administration was Dombashawa which the young Chief Moremi of the Bakgatla was attending. But Tshekedi made clear his dislike for Rhodesian schools which he did not consider up to standard.

The Administration's counsels were to no avail : Tshekedi ignored all advice and sent Seretse to Lovedale on 2nd February. When Nettelton later expressed to him the fear that Seretse would return a follower of Clement Kadalie, the Trade Union leader, Tshekedi replied : `No, I know what the Government is afraid of - it is afraid that Seretse will come back with a hard head like me, but there is no fear of that because my hard-headedness is my own individual characteristic - I did not get it at Lovedale.' For his part Rey was furious that Tshekedi had `flouted' the views of both himself and Lord Athlone as to the appropriate education of Seretse, and urged the new High Commissioner, Sir Herbert Stanley, to permit him to convey His Excellency's displeasure to Tshekedi at the action he had seen fit to take in the matter. But Stanley counselled caution. From his reading of the correspondence he did not consider that it had been made clear to Tshekedi that the Administration was making plans for Seretse's education, nor that Tshekedi was under any mandatory obligation to consult with the Resident Commissioner before he sent Seretse off to school.

Rey's growing disillusion with Tshekedi was communicated to him in a remarkable and sickeningly paternalistic letter in which he wrote not as the Resident Commissioner to a Chief but `as one very much older than you with many years of administrative experience in various parts of the world with different Nations, to a young man who, by reason of his age, cannot have had very much experience, and who appears to be taking a wrong turning at a critical period of his life.' Rey accused him of showing an antagonistic attitude towards the administration and of `lacking in that courtesy which I was told was such a marked characteristic of the Bechuana people.' Rey then went on to instance the occasions on which he considered Tshekedi had been rude to members of the Administration from the Secretary of State downwards. He criticised him for trying to organise his fellow chiefs in opposition to the Government, and for deliberately rejecting the advice of the latter's officials. Do not, Rey concluded, `treat this as official criticism but as friendly counsel from one older and more experienced than yourself.'

Tshekedi reacted bitterly to the Resident Commissioner's strictures and wrote in protest direct to Sir Herbert Stanley, thus bypassing Nettelton and Rey through whom he was meant to channel any communications to the High Commissioner. `I most respectfully and emphatically refute the suggestion that I have acted in an antagonistic and hostile spirit towards the Administration.' Tshekedi denied that he had been stirring up hostility towards the Administration among his fellow Chiefs. He asked for an audience with the High Commissioner to explain his position.

Stanley, who had earlier served in South Africa as Imperial Secretary, replied directly to Tshekedi saying that he would be `glad to see you, both in your capacity as Acting Chief and also as your father's son... You need have no fear that I shall ever be unwilling to hear and consider what you may have to say.' Stanley concluded by suggesting that Tshekedi write a conciliatory letter to Rey.

It seemed there would be little hope of conciliation between the two antagonists. Rey had just completed an extraordinary memorandum on the Protectorate, which came to be known as `Rey's Secret Report'. After a year in the Protectorate he confessed that he had `rarely seen natives .... who appeared so backward, so neglected, and of such poor physical standard.' The cause of this, he believed, was the fact that `the interests of 200,000 natives in this Territory have been sacrificed for the sake of preserving the personal interests and privileges of half a dozen chiefs, not one of whom is at present fit to be a chief.' The urgent task he had set himself was to reform both native administration and justice. He realised there would be opposition to this on the part of the Chiefs. Indeed `it has already manifested itself although as yet they have no inkling of the proposals I have to put forward; the mere idea has been sufficient to rally them in opposition.' The leader of this opposition was to be Tshekedi Khama. But for the time being Tshekedi and his fellow Chiefs had only rumour to rely on as they sought to find out what the Resident Commissioner planned.

Things had gone very badly for Tshekedi since his return from London. On the more cheerful side Peter Sebina and a number of other Bangwato had sent a petition to the High Commissioner in support of Tshekedi. In particular they asked that Ratshosas be restrained from further interference in the affairs of the Tribe and that the signatories to the Petition into which Nettelton had recently enquired be punished for making false statements. Rey was dismissive of Sebina and his co-Petitioners as known supporters of Tshekedi. Rey also discovered in the course of a long tour of the Protectorate in June and July that Tshekedi was heavily in debt to local traders and showed no indication that he intended paying them. One trader told Rey that Tshekedi had run up such a large account with him for petrol that to save himself he had given up selling it. The traders were in a difficult position since they could not refuse giving him credit, or risk taking him to court, since they held their trading sites by his favour and if any of them displeased him he could bring their operations to a standstill at once. `I am afraid', Rey concluded, `that his financial position is far from good. It is true that he does not spend money on debauchery, but he spends its very freely in other ways. For example he recently bought himself a house at the cost of nearly £1,000.; he has four motor cars, a considerable number of well-bred horses, and generally behaves as if he had a considerably harder income than is the case.'

Much more encouraging for Tshekedi was the news he got from London in July when the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council at last gave judgement in his appeal. The judgement of the Special Court was set aside and that of the Magistrate's Court was upheld with the exception of that in respect of Tshekedi's counterclaim against Simon Ratshosa. The Ratshosas were to pay the Tshekedi his costs in the appeal, as well as those he incurred at the Special Court. Tshekedi's victory against the Ratshosas was total. However, in giving judgement in favour of Tshekedi their Lordships `desire to make it plain that their decision in this appeal must not be taken as in the least degree approving the action of the appellant in directing the burning of the plaintiff's houses and their contents...'. They believed that the custom of burning hopuses and contents was not compatible with peace, order and good government and suggested that the High Commissioner might take administrative steps to prevent a repetition of such action. Although Tshekedi had proved the Administration wrong in their conviction that he would lose the case, Rey was to use this qualification by the JCPC to argue for the reform of the Chiefs' judicial powers.

In that same month the British administration set up the Commission of Enquiry into the position of the Basarwa, which Tshekedi had urged Lord Passfield to etablish. It took place in the context of horrendous incident when five men raided a cattle post belonging to some other Bangwato and seized their Basarwa. They beat one of the Basarwa to death, and almost killed two others. There were nearly three hundred wounds on the body of the man who died. Rey now determined that there should be a `cocked hat official enquiry into the whole question' of the Basarwa. But while Rey believed that the Dominions Office would be upset by his proposal, wishing to keep the whole Basarwa situation `hush-hush', he received no opposition from `that poisonous little rat Tshekedi', who was delighted that at last there was to be an independent enquiry into the treatment of the Basarwa.

Rey decided that the focus of the Enquiry would be the Bamangwato Reserve rather than the Protectorate as a whole, even though he knew such abuses existed in other Reserves. He justified this limitation on the grounds that Tshekedi was the only Chief who had asked for such an Enquiry, but there is no doubt that he hoped the Enquiry would help cut Tshekedi down to size.

Both Tshekedi and Rey had proposed that the Commission be a three man one. Tshekedi had suggested that it should include one non-official, and one Black South African and nominated Professor D.D.T. Jabavu, a South African politician in the Cape. Rey, surprisingly in view of his intense suspicions of Ballinger's radical views, proposed him as a member no doubt because he already made it clear that he considered the position of the Basarwa as nothing less than slavery. But Stanley, the High Commissioner, considered that a one-man Commission would be quicker as well as cheaper. It would furthermore have the virtue of ensuring uninamity in its reccommendations. A former Secretary of Native Affairs in Northern Rhodesia, E.S.B. Tagart, was appointed sole Commissioner and Rey hoped that the results of his `impartial enquiry' would be `to enable me to give the Bamangwato hell.'

Tagart arrived in Serowe on 17 July with the dual task of enquiring into the position of the Basarwa and the use of corporal punishment among the inhabitants of the Bamangwato Reserve as a whole, which Tshekedi also wanted investigated. Tagart spent about three weeks touring cattle posts and talking with groups of Basarwa. The rest of his time he interviewed officials and leading Bangwato, including Tshekedi. Among the witnesses were many of Tshekedi's bitterest opponents like the Ratshosas, who all `expressed themselves as very definitely of the opinion that the Masarwa lived in a condition of great hardship under the tyranny of their Bamangwato masters and that drastic reform was called for.' But Tagart was alive to their motives : `Unfortunately these people were, without exception, known to be political opponents of the acting Chief, and can hardly escape from suspicion that they were using the Masarwa question as a stalking horse with their eyes on more important game. The value of their evidence can be discounted accordingly.' Conversely he considered that there was a possibility that the evidence of the European witnesses was biased, however unconsciously, by the knowledge that the activities of those resident in the Bamangwato Reserve `largely depended for their success upon the continued good will of the Chief and his party.' Tshekedi's own lengthy evidence provided Tagart with a history of the relations between the Bangwato and the Basarwa, and while his father had failed in trying to form a tribal people from the latter, `at least his policy was better that a policy of destroying them, such as I have heard was employed by other races in the case of the Cape Bushmen and the Hottentots.'

Tagart's general conclusion, which was not communicated to Tshekedi, was that the Basarwa who were controlled by Bangwato masters as distinct from those who lived by hunting and gathering in the Kalahari were serfs rather than slaves. He based his distinction on the fact that their obligations to their masters were limited by custom and that they could not be sold, but only changed hands through inheritance. He did note that they could not leave their masters without consent which was usually refused. On the whole, however, he reckoned that their life was `primitive, carefree and unprogressive'. Most of the Basarwa with whom he spoke, however, wanted their freedom, but were unsure how they would survive if they were not given cattle.

Tagart concluded with a number of recomendations : there should be a census of the Basarwa, with the names of their masters recorded. The Basarwa should be required to pay hut tax like any other adult males in the Bamagwato Reserve. The Chief should allot them suitable land for occupation, and Governmnet should consider providing agricultural instruction for those who wanted to farm. Finally, legislation should be passed making it an offence to employ any one save in accordance with the Master and Servant Proclamation, and affirming that slavery in any form whatsoever was unlawful.

As far as corporal punishment was concerned, Tagart felt the most cogent argument for its retention was the problem of what to put in its place. There was no prison, and the only alternative was fining, which Tshekedi pointed out meant that a poor man was more likely to receive corporal punishment than a rich man. Tagart therefore suggested that infliction of corporal punishment should be carefully regulated, and restricted to the Chief's kgotla at Serowe, which hardly solved the conundrum he posed in the beginning of what except fining would be put in its place in the dikgotla of the outlying areas. Women should not be subject to corporal punishment, and all sentences of corporal punishment whould be carried out under European supervision. There should be provision for appeal to the Magistrate's Court against sentences of corporal punishment in the kgotla. Tagart also advocated the abolition of flogging by regiments of members who failed to turn up for their tribal labour, despite the fact that Tshekedi and most Bangwato witnesses had argued strongly in favour of retaining this practice.

Although Rey was upset that Tagart had not concluded that the Basarwa were slaves, he was satisfied enough with his general recommendations. He decided, however, not to implement them until after he had introduced and promulgated his reforms of native administration and justice. Although the report was submitted in October 1931, Rey kept it from Tshekedi who was not finally given a copy until eighteen months later, even though it was he who had first asked for the Enquiry.

In August 1931 Sir Herbert Stanley paid his first visit to Serowe in his capacity as High Commissioner. Tshekedi presented him with an elegantly short address of welcome, in which as always he made political points. Comparing the chiefs of the Protectorate with those in other parts of Africa, who are only `called chiefs nominally', he informed the High Commissioner that `we can still call ourselves chiefs under the chieftainship which we obtained under the protection.' Then in a scarcely veiled allusion to Rey's plans for reform, he asked that `this freedom which we enjoy should be enlarged and not be withdrawn'.

Tshekedi took the opportunity of assuring the High Commissioner that there was no trouble in the Reserve, and that the Government got a false impression of the state of affairs there from the petitions sent to them by malcontents. Stanley, himself, confessed to being troubled by the number of petitions and counter-petitions he was receiving from some of Tshekedi's disgruntled subjects. Undoubtedly the recent visit to Serowe of William Ballinger, this time accompanied by his future wife and Senator in the Union Parliament, Margaret Hodgson, and the radical journalist, Leonard Barnes, was in part responsible for this. They deliberately sought out the malcontents in Serowe, and hired Moanaphuti Segolodi as their interpreter and informant despite the fact that Rey had advised Ballinger against using him. But the small educated elite had genuine grievances against Tshekedi. Apart from being excluded from his counsels, if they dared to disagree with him he openly persecuted them. For instance after the Ballinger visit Acting Chief Edirilwe called a meeting to inform all those who had given Ballinger and his colleagues information would have to answer before Tshekedi on his return from his tour of the north. While Tshekedi did not in fact bring them before his kgotla, he did secure the agreement of the British administration to the banishment of Moanaphuti from his Reserve which served as a warning to the other agitators. But their case was taken up in the pages of the Johannesburg Star by a `Special Correspondent', who, the Administration had no doubt, was one of the three visitors from Johannesburg. In a series of eight articles they wrote on the Degeneration of Tribal Rule, on Slave Tribes,and Administrative Failure in the Protectorate. Their articles brought forth a vigorous counter-attack from Dr. S.M. Molema, the Mafeking doctor and political leader, and Sol Plaatje, the journalist and novelist who had helped found what was to become the African National Congress.

For the most part Tshekedi's troubles as a ruler came from a small group of educated Bangwato in alliance with members of the royal family who resented what they considered the ascendancy in state affairs of the commoner headmen. But these people with their education and skills of manipulation of the press and the courts, and their abilities in drafting petitions, were able to create a disproportionate amount of difficulty for Tshekedi in his attempts to control his widely dispersed people. The real problem was that these educated malcontents who had lost access to the corridors of traditional power in Gamangwato, now sought an alternative method of achieving influence in the state. They argued that it should be democratised, and what they considered Tshekedi's autocratic rule be checked.

But at this stage it seems clear that the great majority of the Bangwato still supported their young ruler without question. Of course he had problems with dissident groups like the Bakhurutshe and Mswaswis. Some 471 of the latter had petitioned for the return of their headman, John Mswaswi, in August. In November Tshekedi wrote to the Resident Magistrate that `after consultation with the tribe I have decided to let Mswazwi [sic] return to the Bokalaka district in my country after the harvest season.' But Tshekedi had no illusions about his likely future behaviour. `Mswazwi is far from being repentant and he is still organizing future disturbances.'

What is remarkable is that this young man of only twenty-six years, was able to keep both critics from both the British Administration and the Bangwato aristocracy at bay. His approach to the latter was too often one of overreaction which further served to embitter them against him. His suspicious nature, his resentment of criticism, and his belief that his own opinions were not given due consideration by Rey and his colleagues in Mafeking alienateded the very people he believed should be educating him. As he wrote Captain Nettelton in connexion with the funds set aside for water development : `my plea was that the chiefs should be given an opportunity to govern their own countries according to modern principles, and not to be taught how to be governed.'

ious offence against the Tribe of being the paramour of the late Chief's Widow.' For his offence he was to be deprived of his position, an hencforth was to provide support for Tebogo and the child who would be removed from the Chief's house

For the next two years Tshekedi seemed to be besieged on all sides: members of the royal family continued to plot against him, and to do all they could to embarass him if not remove him from office; subject peoples like the Mswaswi and and Bakhurutshe continued to resist his rule; the British administration became increasingly disillusioned with the young Regent's high-handed ways and showed growing sympathy towards those of his subjects who openly criticised his autocratic methods and began to consider replacing him as ruler of the Bangwato. Over and above this the poverty stricken cattle economy of his territory was beset by drought, Foot and Mouth disease, and lung sickness.

The most serious domestic challenge to Tshekedi's position as Regent came not from the Ratshosas, who continued to plague him with court cases, nor from the Bakhurutshe and the Mswaswis, but from a Pretender to the Bangwato throne. On October 21 1932 Gasetshware, the illegitimate son of the late Chief Sekgoma, travelled from his home in Shoshong to Serowe to present the Resident Magistrate at Serowe with a remarkable letter in which he claimed the Ngwato chieftaincy :

Receive herewith my letter. I have come to greet you and to voice my complaint before you and the Government, namely whether I am a servant, a Headman a Tribe or a mere person.

Gasetshware was accompanied to the Resident Magistrate's office by that well known trouble-maker Kesebonye who, the Administration believed, had prompted Gasetshware to make his claim to the chieftaincy in the first place. The Resident Magistrate, Captain Potts, gave both Gasetshware and Kesebonye short shrift. He warned Gasetshware that he was was in danger of being led into serious trouble by his so-called friends. As for Kesebonye, `he was a discredited man and that by his present action he was only looking for trouble which he would surely find if he persisted.' Despite the Resident Magistrate's warning, Gasetshware appeared determined publicly to claim the throne, even though he had not advanced this claim since Tshekedi came to the Regency in 1925.

In fact Gasetshware had no legitimate right to the chieftaincy, being as the Resident Commissioner so bluntly put it a son of Sekgoma's concubine and `according to native custom a bastard cannot succeed.' Gasetshware stoutly denied that he was illegitimate, and claimed that his mother was in fact Serero, who had made a marriage to Sekgoma that was legal in both Christian and traditional terms. But in fact it was generally agreed that he was born to Sekgoma by the barren Serero's sister, Maria, who was no more than a concubine to Sekgoma. Tshekedi was sufficiently worried by the impact of Gasetshware's claims to the chieftaincy that he believed they might lead to violence. For this reason he reluctantly accepted that the Administration deal with the matter rather than bring it before his kgotla. But he was at pains to insist that normally this was a matter that should be dealt with by the Chief according to Native Law and Custom.

The Administration therefore decided to have Gasetshware and Kesebonye brought to the Resident Magistrate's office, if neccessary by force. In the event they came peacably but Gasetshware reiterated that he considered that he was the rightful Chief, and repeated his claim in two further letters to the Magistrate. On 10 December matters came to a head when Tshekedi complained that Gasetshware was holding meetings in Serowe, and that shortly all his own men would be absent at their lands, `leaving the way open to action by Gasetshware.' Accordingly with the Magistrate's backing Tshekedi sent a letter to Gasetshware ordering him to leave Serowe immediately. Gasetshware responded with an insolent letter telling Tshekedi that `he was in his father's village and that Tshekedi could leave himself and go to his home at Bobirwa' - an allusion to the fact that his mother Semane was a Mobirwa and not a member of the royal house by birth. But Gasetshware's bragadaccio was short-lived, and, before a regiment could be mustered to expel him from Serowe, he moved into the Administration's camp. There Captain Potts gave him two minutes to elect to return to Shoshong or go to gaol. He chose to return home. Meanwhile Tshekedi summoned the Pretender's known supporters before the kgotla to examine their role in the plot to put Gasetshware on the throne.

Tshekedi was still very nervous about the threat to his position as Regent, and to the eventual succession to office of his ward, the young Chief Seretse. Indeed he even told the Resident Magistrate that he feared for his life while members of his Tribe were in `a very excited state: all were looking to the Government to take definite action to suppress this trouble once and for all.' Since Gasetshware's followers remained in Serowe, and the Pretender himself had merely moved to the next neighbouring town, Mahalapye, and not to his home at Shoshong as ordered, the Administration decided to hold an enquiry to establish whether there was enough evidence to prosecute Gasetshware and his followers.

On 19 December Gasetshware wrote a long letter to the Resident Magistrate in which he declared that Tshekedi was `only my servant'. `I am the son of Sekgoma. I am Chief. I will go to my death roaring as a lion as I am the son of a lion - the son of Sekgoma. I will not turn back from what I have done.' At the end of December at Tshekedi's request Gasetshware was placed under open arrest at Mahalapye since he had publicly declared that he planned to return to Serowe to press his claims.

As a result of their investigations, the Administration decided there was sufficient grounds to bring Gasetshware, Kesebonye and six of his followers to trial. Gasetshware was sentenced to seven years with hard labour, and Kesebonye to ten for conspiracy against Tshekedi. The Magistrate did, however, enjoin the Chief to protect their property while they were incarcerated, so that there would be no repetition of the Ratshosa situation. As far as Resident Commissioner Rey was concerned this `brought to an end an extremely difficult and even dangerous movement which threatened at one time to cause serious disturbance in the Ngwato Reserve.' In reporting to the High Commissioner, Rey was at pains to point out that the whole matter had been handled in `full co-operation with the chief, who, indeed, appealed to us for help; and the relations thus established should react very favourably in many directions.'

Rey, despite his own strong reservations about Tshekedi, and his many conflicts with him, was ever optimistic that a basis of cooperation between the Chief and the Administration would be found. But Tshekedi's close collaboration with the British over the Gasetshware conspiracy was largely a self-interested one: he really did fear that if it were not suppressed at once, it would open up further rifts in the Bangwato body politic. While there was no real danger of Gasetshware being acknowledged by the Bangwato as their ruler, since he was generally accepted as being illegitimate both according to traditional practice as well as Christian norms, if it had not been handled firmly from the start, Tshekedi's opponents might have used the situation to embarass him further. Captain Nettelton, who tried the case, believed that the matter `had the potentialities of something worse than the Ratshosa disturbances.'

While there is no evidence that the Ratshosas were involved in the Gasetshware conspiracy, Baboni Morwe, Tshekedi's half-sister, seems to have had a well-concealed hand in the affair. She was feeling particularly bitter at the failure of her case against Tshekedi challenging his distribution of the inheritance of her son Mogomotsi, who had died intestate. In September of 1931 Tshekedi had announced his plans for the distribution of Mogomotsi's cattle in the Ratshosa ward kgotla to which Mogomotsi had belonged. During the deliberations Baboni according to Tshekedi `used against me the most abusive and vulgar language.' And in an interview in the Resident Magistrate's office on 17 September she stated that `in my opinion the matter has been resurrected because during the High Commissioner's visit I took it upon myself to send for the son of Sekoma [sic] who lives at Shoshong to go to Serowe to see the High Commissioner. The Chief does not want him to go to Serowe because in effect he is a Chief and he wants him concealed at Shoshong.' Tshekedi believed that the reason Baboni would not accept his division of the estate was because she `does not regard me as a Chief and maintains that there is a certain Chief at Shoshong.'

In November the settlement was announced in the main Serowe kgotla, with 170 head of cattle being allocated to Baboni, 170 to Psyee, Mogomotsi's widow, and 239 to his daughter Oefhile. While Tshekedi insisted that he had distributed Mogomotsi's cattle according to custom, and that he had in fact been generous to Baboni since mothers were not expected to inherit from their sons. Nevertheless he had `allotted certain cattle to Baboni out of sheer consideration for her.' Apart from complaining about the distribution of the cattle, Baboni wanted control of the fixed deposits which Mogomotsi had made for his daughter. Furthermore she wanted custody of the child; as Tshekedi emphasised, in the absence of the father, the mother was the natural guardian and entitled to custody.

Baboni took her complaint about Tshekedi's division of Mogomotsi's estate to the Administration. They were anxious that she be allowed to bring her complaints before Tshekedi in kgotla, but he told the Resident Commissioner that the matter has been properly settled according to custom and had nothing to do with the Kgotla. Rey complained after this interview about Tshekedi's `autocratic and high-handed modus operandi.' Baboni was no less stubborn. On 1st March she went to see Captain Potts and asked him to escort her to the kgotla which honour he declined. `She admitted that she usually lost her temper, but averred that she would act with discretion... Baboni says she is starving but invariably appears with her huge and grotesque figure attired in the latest fashion.'

Eventually the Administration forced Tshekedi to hear Baboni's complaints in kgotla, but not after a great deal of correspondence had been exchanged over the `constitutional' issues involved. They also insisted that she should have the right of appeal to the Resident Magistrate's Court. Very reluctantly Tshekedi called her into kgotla on 22 July. Nettelton was pessimistic as to the outcome : `Baboni is a born trouble-maker and whatever the outcome she will not be satisfied.' Her hearing provided a marvellous opportunity for all his opponents to embarass him. One declared that the distribution of Mogomotsi's property `had been dealt with according to the Chief's idea of his authority but not according to Bamanwato Custom.' In particular Dinalo Nthebolang, Ratshosa and Mokhutshwane, had made wild statements which Tshekedi ordered to be investigated.

Tshekedi had a detailed transcript of the proceedings in Kgotla made in the event of an appeal by Baboni. This is more interesting for the way it shows how his opponents used the occasion to attack or embarass him rather than for any legal points scored. Baboni pursued her grievance to the Magistrate's Court, where it was ruled that there was no reason to set aside Tshekedi's division of Mokgomotsi's propert. Undaunted she appealed to the Resident Commissioner's Court presided over by Colonel Rey again confirmed Tshekedi's original judgement.

An awful amount of Tshekedi's time had been wasted by Baboni in what was essentially a family quarrel. Like her cousins the Ratshosas she had learnt that the courts could be used as a weapon against the young Regent whose authority they so resented. With the same assuidity Oratile Sekgoma pursued her grievances over her inheritance from Sekgoma II. But her husband and brothers-in-law finally accepted the judgement of Captain How who was instructed to inquire into the settlement of their affairs.

As a result of How's patient labours, in August 1932 an agreement was reached that the three brothers should be given 476 cattle in lieu of their outstanding claims, and that `you will not in future make any further claims against the Government, Acting Chief Tshekedi or any resident of the Protectorate...'. It was however made clear that the Administration of the Bechuanaland Protectorate did not recognise any legal obligation to make good any losses of their property. The Acting Resident Commissioner, Captain ???, also informed Simon that the Government had enquired into his wife's complaints about the distribution of Sekgoma II's estate. The Government found that `they were quite unfounded and she has no claim at all'. But `she still keeps on writing and writing which does not do any good at all.' Now that Simon's own case was settled he was aked to try and get his wife to drop the matter. This she did with considerable reluctance, having spent the last five years using every legal ruse to get her claims heard again, and had even lodged an appeal with the Privy Council in forma pauperis. It seemed that at last the Ratshosas, including Oratile had played themselves out. Not so the Mswaswis.

The Mswaswis did not accept the banishment of their headman to Serowe, less still his replacement by a royal Mongwato, Tshekedi's cousin Rasebolai Kgamane. Among the several grievances of the Mswaswi against Rasebolai was the fact that he was still determined to collect the cattle levy which Tshekedi had imposed on all his subjects to help defray the costs of his expedition to London. They further resented the fact that they were prevented by Rasebolai from contributing labour free to the building of K.T. Motsete's Tati Training College. On Tshekedi's part this interdict was an act of spite against an erstwhile friend. He had his own ambitions to set up a secondary school for his people and did not relish the idea of one of his subjects building one before him.

Above all the Mswaswis wanted to be independent of Tshekedi's rule. To this end they asked for the return of their leader, John Mswaswi. Tshekedi had already in November 1931 indicated that he was prepared to send back Mswazi once the annual harvest had been gathered in June of the following year. But he changed his mind as a result of renewed complaints against him made by the Mswaswis. Tshekedi was insistent that the Mswaswis should pay the cattle levy, but Rey underlined the fact that the levy was supposed to be `voluntary'. But Tshekedi's attitude was that since the rest of the Bangwato had paid, `it would be grossly unfair' if the Mswaswis did not also pay. While Rey accepted that the Mswaswis were a difficult lot, they had grievances which were `aggravated by the tactless and autocratic methods of Tshekedi.' Rey's view was that Tshekedi was deliberately trying to goad the Mswaswi into overt rebellion so that the Administration would have had to take drastic action against them. When asked what he would have done if he were not under British Protection, he told Rey, `I suppose I should have killed them.'

Tshekedi's main demand at the interview was that there should be a further Enquiry into the Mswaswi's complaints. This was agreed to by Colonel Rey, and was held on 25-26 February 1932 at the Govenment Camp in Serowe under the chairmanship of Captain Potts. The Mswaswis were told that they could bring up their complaints against Tshekedi, but on no account would the question of the cattle levy be discussed by either party.

The Potts Enquiry did little more than rehearse the arguments presented at the Nettelton Enquiry. But Potts did come up with concrete recommendations which were accepted with relief by the Administration, but with less alacrity by Tshekedi who resented that the decisions of the Administration were to be announced in a kgotla in Serowe without him having seen them first, and then again at Rasebolai's kgotla outside Mswaswi's village. At both meetings at which Tshekedi was present the Mswaswi were told by the Acting Resident Commissioner, Captain Reilly, in the presence of Tshekedi that there was no question that they could be released from Bangwato rule. `To Chief Tshekedi I say that Mswazi and his followers must be accorded just and equal treatment by you so that they may live in peace.' As far as the return of their headman was concerned Reilly told the Mswaswis that it was `for Mswazi and his followers, by good behaviour, by obedience to the lawful order of the Chief and his representatives, and by a cessation of frivolous and unfounded complaints, to show that they are deserving of consideration, and that if Mswazi is allowed to return, the Government and the Chief need not fear a recurrence of the troubles which led to his removal to Serowe.' The Administration were agreed that Mswaswi could return to his village within six months, but to avoid it appearing in any way to be a victory for him over Tshekedi, he should be told that he could only return subject to good behaviour.

Before the Administration's decision was due to be announced Tshekedi sent a regiment, the Makobamotse regiment, to Mswaswi to show the Bangwato flag. This disturbed the British Administration, though Tshekedi gave assurance that there would be no coercion of the Mswaswis. Captain Nettelton, now Resident Magistrate in Francistown, wrote to the Assistant Regiment Commissioner that he would like to see the Mswaswis `give Tshekedi's regiment an awful licking but of course we can't promote these contests...'

On his return from the kgotla in Mswaswi, Tshekedi informed Potts that he would release John Mswaswi. Although the Administration had made it clear to Tshekedi that they would in no way sanction the collection of the cattle levied on the Mswaswi unless these were voluntarily forthcoming, the Mswaswi clearly came to the conclusion that the only way to obtain the release of their headman was to pay the outstanding levy. The Administration were not happy at this piece of `blackmail', but at least it brought to a close yet another difficult chapter in Bangwato affairs, in which their sympathies were often with Mswaswi rather than Tshekedi. But they felt obliged to support the Mongwato ruler - for better or worse - since without him they could not administer the largest of the reserves in the Protectorate. Further, they were not prepared to entertain the idea of secession by the Mswaswis, some 3,600 strong, for fear that it would provide a precedent for others. As far as Tshekedi was concerned he was equally determined to keep the Mswaswis under his rule since the majority of his people were not Bangwato, and he feared that if the Mswaswis were able successfully to break away their example would be infectious.

On 11th July Tshekedi informed the Serowe kgotla that he was now willing for Mswaswi to return home. In the last week of August John Mswaswi, a huge man well over six feet tall, returned like a conqueror on a white steed and to the welcome of village choirs and great feasting. `The real danger in this Mswazi affair', wrote Nettelton, `is the young Communistic Mokalaka who is restless and never ceases to openly express his dislike for Tshekedi and his Bamangwato.'

If the Mswaswi situation had been satisfactorily solved, Tshekedi's dispute with the Bakhurutshe festered on. Molefhe, the leader whom Tshekedi had accused of using religion as a cloak for politics had died. Since then the Bakhurutshe had given little trouble and had even built their own houses and begun to plough fields outside Serowe. But Tshekedi remained convinced that their main aim was to secure their independence from the Bamangwato. The Administration considered this a red herring for even if it were the case that this was their long term goal a careful eye could be kept on any subversive activities on their part by the local police station in Tonota and the Resident Magistrate at Francistown, just twenty miles away. Indeed it is difficult to understand why Tshekedi was quite so hostile to their return to Tonota. They represented a very small group with relatively little influence. As far as the Administration was concerned, they wanted nothing better than that Tshekedi should let them go home. The new Bishop of Kimberley and Kuruman took up cudgels on behalf of the Bakhurutshe, and Captain Potts opined that `part of the Chief's obduracy in this mattter is that he objects to the persistence of the Bishop.' Colonel Rey agreed with this assessment, and urged Potts to endeavour to get the Chief `to agree to let these people go, if neccessary and in your discretion hinting that it is better to do these things voluntarily than by order.' Potts should `in no circumstances refer to to the Bishop of Kimberley in this connection, and if possible keep his name out of the discussion.'

When Potts took the matter up with Tshekedi he told him that he would `indeed be happy and at peace from the continual worry by these people, if it were possible for me to let them go back to Tonota.' But `I have always maintained and still maintain that the whole affair is not a religious movement, but a definite attempt to obtain independence from the Bamanwato.'

The Administration, particularly under Colonel Rey, was much less tolerant of Tshekedi's stand over the Bakhurutshe than the Mswaswi and were anxious that he should let the Bakhurutshe return and put an end to a distasteful chapter in the troubled history of Bamangwato under his rule. Indeed Rey's own view was that the Bakhurutshe had been wrongly brought from Tonota in the first place and now was the time to make amends to them. Indeed, he believed that the whole episode was `merely another instance of the subservience to the views of the Chief which characterised the Administration in the past.'

The stumbling block, of course, was, as ever, Tshekedi. It was very difficult for the Administration to determine what the basis of his objection to the return of the Bakhurutshe was. As Potts put it, `the Chief raises all sorts of side issues and irrelevant points and definitely tries to avoid the issue.' The Administration thought it had found a solution to the impasse by getting Tshekedi to agree to an Inquiry into the whole question to be conducted by two of his headmen, with a representative of the Administration in attendance. But the Enquiry was delayed indefinitely by much more serious developments in the ongoing war between Tshekedi and the Administration.

There was, however, one apparent resolution of the ongoing differences between Tshekedi and the Administration.

In March 1932 the long drawn out negotiations over mining were finally concluded when Tshekedi, after personally inspecting on horseback much of the land that was to be given to the Bangwato by the Administration, finally signed the revised agreement on the 21st. From Tshekedi's point of view it was as good a deal as he could have obtained in the circumstances. He was handsomely compensated with land; he gained access to the waters of the Limpopo; strict regulations were to be enforced in relation to the proximity of mining activity to Serowe and to cattle posts; and Tshekedi would have a say in the importation of non-Bangwato labour. The lease would no longer be an open-ended one but would run for a fixed period of twenty years and the rent would be £50 a month with a 10% share in profits. The funds received by the Bangwato from the British South Africa Company were to be paid into a `Bamangwato Trust Fund'.

For the Administration and in particular Rey who saw mining as a means to developing the otherwise impoverished Reserve, this was what he normally described as a `triumph' in his Diary. In fact his entry recording the end of the long wrangle was curiously muted : a mere bracketed comment, `By the way I forgot to mention that Tshekedi had signed the agreement for mining with the Chartered Company on Tuesday and I had told [Sir Ernest] Oppenheimer so - he was fearfully excited and I think that things will now move.' But they did not. The Company abandoned their search for minerals in 1934 and the Concession was effectively cancelled. What Tshekedi had learnt during the protracted negotiations with the Company and the Administration was a considerable amount of information about mining which he was to use in later years to the advantage of his people. In the meanwhile the Concession he had done so much to oppose lapsed.

A much graver attack on Tshekedi's position as chief was now launched by Colonel Rey. When Tshekedi was interviewed by Lord Passfield in 1930, the Dominions Secretary informed him that it was proposed `to establish on a proper legal footing the jurisdiction and powers of the courts of the Chiefs in the Protectorate'. Since his arrival to take up the position of Resident Commissioner Rey had been drafting Proclamations that would define the powers and functions of the Tswana chiefs and regularise their administration of justice. Tshekedi and the other Chiefs were aware that Rey proposed introducing radical changes to their powers, but quite what these would be they did not know. Their content was finally revealed at the 14th meeting of the Native Advisory Council in Mafeking when Rey presented them in draft form. Rey told the Chiefs that the new Proclamations were considered necessary since the Chiefs and their courts had no `legal statutory status, they have no definite basis on which to rely in the possible event of change in the general position or in the form of Government' This allusion to the possibility of the transfer of their territories to the Union of South Africa was not lost on the Chiefs, least of all Tshekedi who was attending the Council for the first time. Hitherto he had followed the example of his Father and boycotted meetings of the Council on the grounds that the `treaty' between the Bangwato and the British was a direct one, and not made collectively with the other rulers of the Tswana states. He thus had no business in Protectorate wide Council. But the issue before this meeting of the Council was so crucial to his own future that Tshekedi attended it as an observer. He was no passive spectator of the proceedings, as became clear immediately after Rey had concluded his presentation to the Council : the Proclamations he assured the Chiefs marked `a great occasion, a great step forward, and a great opportunity. It is for you to take full advantage of it, and I rely with confidence on your doing so.'

Rey's confidence was quite misplaced. Tshekedi led a devestating attack on the Proclamations: `I perceive that these laws are intended to define the powers of the Chiefs, the functions of the Chiefs and their Tribes, and to reduce the existing rights of the Tribes, and for this reason I find that the time in which this matter is being discussed is inappropriate. Looking at the men in front of me, who are called Protectorate Chiefs today, I find mere boys, and if the subject matter will be of benefit to the Tribes, to my mind it should have been discussed with the original seekers of the Protectorate. I do not suggest that the Government deliberately delayed action until the death of our fathers in order that they may discuss the matter with their sons, but I feel that if the matter had been discussed in the time of our fathers, they probably would have understood it better - so far as we are concerned, we are unable to understand it.'

Tshekedi fully understood the implications of the Proclamations for his own position and that of his fellow Chiefs. In the first place, by insisting that in future all the Chiefs would make decisions in consulation with Councillors who were to be chosen from among their headmen, the new Proclamations effectively abolished the function of the kgotla both at the national and the local level. In the second place the judicial functions of Chiefs and headmen in kgotla were to be replaced by a series of tribunals with no traditional backing. In both cases the Chief would lose much of his power. This pleased many of Tshekedi's opponents like the Ratshosas who saw the Proclamations as a means of introducing the Councils for which they had been lobbying for the past eight years.

Tshekedi's bitter opposition to the Proclamations was in part inspired by the implied limitations they would place on his power. He was most reluctant to share power on a formal basis with named councillors and judicial assessors. Apart from the resultant diminution of his authority he feared that his opponents would gain positions on the Council and the Tribunals. And indeed the new dispensation was to find favour among those members of the elite who had long sought to obtain a share in the governance of the Bangwato state, especially Simon Ratshosa and K.T. Motsete. But by effectively abolishing the kgotla as an administrative and judicial organ, the ordinary people would be excluded from participation in their own governance, a point Tshekedi made only too clear to them.

No other Chief spoke at the Council meeting. Though he was only a guest Tshekedi quickly assumed leadership of resistance to the Proclamations, a leadership most of the other Chiefs accepted. Although Tshekedi had led delegations of fellow Chiefs to see both the Resident Commissioner or the High Commissioner, he had maintained his position that his own state was in a direct treaty relationship with Britain. But now that his authority was under serious threat he rallied his fellow chiefs in opposition to the Administration. He determined to oppose the passage of the Proclamations by whatever means possible. He told Rey `now that we understand the intentions of our Government, we should have been given at least five years in which to consider the position.' To this Rey replied with some exasperation that if he had thought it would take five years for Tshekedi to understand the Proclamations he would not have wasted his time in drafting them.'

The Chiefs were sent away with instructions to explain them to their people, and with the aid of their Resident Magistrates bring back any amendments to the next meeting of the Native Advisory Council. This was scheduled for July 1933. In the meantime the Bechuanaland Protectorate was in near crisis. Foot and Mouth Disease had broken out. Lung Sickness threatened. But worst of all an unrelenting drought had further impoverished the people as their cattle and small stock died for lack of water. Colonel Rey worked desperately to control the spread of Foot and Mouth, and to bring relief to those most seriously affected by the drought. In this he secured the cooperation of Tshekedi, but not so in the attempt to put through the Proclamations despite a number of meetings to try and persuade the stubborn chief to accept their introduction.

At the July 1933 meeting of the Native Advisory Council, Tshekedi led the opposition to Rey. The Resident Commissioner took the Chiefs through the various amendments that had been made as a result of suggestions from the other Chiefs. But in discussing the written observations submitted by Tshekedi `purporting to represent the views of his tribe he sets at considerable length what he says is native law and custom and makes a certain number of general observations the effect of which would be, if agreed to, either to defeat the object of the proclamations or to delay for a very long time their enactment, although I know this is not his obect.' But Rey was only too aware that this was what it was as he confided to his diary.

When Tshekedi addressed the Council it was to tell his fellow chiefs that his people `say they will reject the laws as they stand.' He then indicated a new line of attack. The Proclamations referred frequently to Native Law and Custom : `before this law could be made law, it is neccessary that Native Law and Custom should be known.' Tshekedi was fully aware that if the passage of Proclamations were to be made dependent first on the codification of Tswana Law they would be indefinitely delayed. The last thing Tshekedi wanted was a codification of Tswana Law and Custom, for as far as he was concerned a written charter of legal practice and custom would limit his room for manoeuvre - he was a wily but not always very scrupulous manipulator. But his bluff was called by the Administration and Professor Isaac Schapera was commisioned to conduct an investigation into the nature of Tswana Law and Custom which was published in 1937 and for which all scholars of the Tswana must be for ever grateful.

Tshekedi was becoming so nervous about the implications of the Proclamations for his position and the overall relationship between the British and the Bangwato, that he consulted with his lawyers. On their advice he sent a letter jointly written with his friend, Bathoen II of the Bangwaketse, to the High Commissioner, Sir Herbert Stanley, enclosing a cable for despatch to the Secretary of State requesting that a Royal Commission be appointed to look into the whole question of the Proclamations. If this were not acceptable at least he should grant them an interview in London while the High Commissioner was on leave there. When Rey learnt about the letter he was furious that he had been bypassed by the two Chiefs who well knew the proper channels of communication with members of the Administration. But not only had they ignored him but also the Acting High Commissioner, Vice Admiral Evans. Tshekedi's habit of corresponding direct with the High Commissioner over his head was an extreme irritant to Rey especially as he suspected Tshekedi did it deliberately and not out of ignorance of correct administrative procedures.

This piece of `planned insolence and defiance' proved the last straw for Rey, who consulted with Admiral Evans when he was passing through Mafeking on his way to Pretoria. Rey had come to the conclusion that it was time to get rid of Tshekedi, even though his experience of deposing Sebele II of the Bakwena in 1930 had not been a happy one. Although from the British point of view Sebele was an inefficient ruler, and certainly behaved in an eccentric way in relation to his subjects, they rallied behind him when he was removed from office and would not accept his replacement, a younger brother Kgari Sechele, who was only third in line of succession. The Bakwena would not accept a substitute for their rightful chief, and so Kgari Sechele ruled as a puppet of the British administration. Rey would have to tread carefully with the Bangwato. Although Tshekedi had many opponents, the Bakwena case had shown that the people would rally round their Chief if his position were threatened by the Administration.

Any hesitation Rey may have had in engaging in a head-on confrontation with Tshekedi was removed by news of the dramatic events that had taken place in Serowe : Tshekedi had brought a young white wagon-builder before his kgotla and sentenced him to a flogging for assaulting a Mongwato youth. In fact the young white man's `major crime' in the eyes of Tshekedi and most Bangwato was that he and a number of other white youths had been sleeping around freely with local women, indulged in drinking bouts and generally creating mayhem in the stadt. Despite numerous complaints to the Resident Magistrate about their behaviour over a period of years nothing effective had been done to curb them. So Tshekedi took the law into his own hands. He was quite aware that he had no legal right to try and sentence white residents of his state. But he was determined to put an end to the sexual anarchy among the young white population of his state. What, however, became increasingly clear was that he was using the occasion of `the flogging' to provoke a crisis in his relations with Colonel Rey and the British. This was certainly the interpretation that Colonel Rey was to put on the events, though Tshekedi denied it on several occasions.

Whatever Tshekedi's motives, for Rey it was the culmination of eight years `trouble with a swollen headed youth whose openly expressed desire and ambition has been to be the ruler of an independent sovereign nation.' His objective was a last minute attempt to `sidetrack the enactment of the new laws by raising a cosntitutional issue. He did this by flogging McIntosh. It was a deliberate challenge to the Administration. He knew perfectly well that even under the existing law no white man, with or without his consent, could be judged, on any excuse whatsoever, in any Native Court.' On this occasion Rey felt he had Tshekedi cornered: it was a cardinal rule of British colonial rule that African chiefs did not try white men before their courts, let alone punish them by flogging.

Rey conferred once more with Evans, and the two agreed that Tshekedi had to be removed from office especially in the context of sensitivity in South Africa about the humiliation of a white man by an African chief in a territory which they one day hoped to incoporate into the Union. It was agreed that Tshekedi be tried for his breach of law and thereafter deposed. Rey was lucky that he did not have to put this plan before the substantive High Commissioner, a man of some caution or as Rey put it with `about as much backbone as a filleted jellyfish'. His replacement, Admiral Evans `of the Broke', was the famous Antarctic explorer, naval hero of World War I and author of popular boys'adventure stories. He fell in with Rey's plans to remove Tshekedi and agreed to send a naval expedition a thousand miles from his Simonstown Naval base into the Kalahari. The aim was to put down the `native rising' which Rey was convinced was either happening or would take place when it was known that Tshekedi was about to be deposed. It is not clear whether the idea for the expedition was Rey's or Evans, but both were equally enthusiastic about it. Evans was anxious to demonstrate to the South Africans that he had the situation under control. His friend Oswald Pirow, Minister of Railways and Defence, was anxious to join the enterprise and even offered to lend an aeroplane to bomb Serowe. This offer Evans turned down and contented himself with the permission to send his troops on the South African railways. Rey's enthusiasm for a full-scale military operation was inspired in part by his recent experience with a minor chief, Gobuamang of the Bakgatla ba Mnaana. With only ten thousand people under his rule, `Gobbleman' as Rey chose to call him in his diaries held the British at bay for several years and it was only when Rey decided to launch an expedition against him that he gave in.

While the party of 250 bluejackets and marines were steaming north, Rey made elaborate preparations for an enquiry into the circumstances of Tshekedi's flogging of McIntosh. To avoid any demonstration by his people in his favour, Rey decided to hold the enquiry in the small railway encampment at Palapye Road rather than Tshekedi's capital Serowe, to minimise the risk of demonstrations in favour of the Chief. Initially Rey had promised Tshekedi that he could have legal representation at the Enquiry. And Tshekedi had sent to Cape Town for his lawyer, Douglas Buchanan.

When Tshekedi did arrive at Palapye Road for the Enquiry it was to discover that he was effectively under arrest, since warrants were served on him confining him to the British police camp. To Rey's fury, Tshekedi had ignored his instruction that his people were to remain in Serowe. Large numbers of Bangwato - some estimates suggest as many as 15,000 trekked along what one newspaper described `aching road to Palapye'. A few brought weapons with them : Tshekedi personally disarmed them. For Tshekedi it was important not only that he demonstrate that his people were under his control, but also that he could summon up a large contingent of them in his support when he was under threat from the British, for Rey believed that Tshekedi did not have the support of his people.

Shortly before the Enquiry was due to be held Tshekedi's lawyer, Buchanan, was told that since it was an `administrative' one Tshekedi could not be represented. The most they would permit was that Buchanan and Kieser, Tshekedi's lawyer from Mafeking, sit with him during the proceedings. Under the watchful eyes of the marines and bluejackets the Enquiry was conducted with Tshekedi acting as his own defence counsel. Buchanan served as his `junior' and later said that Tshekedi........................... But the Enquiry was more a drumhead trial and any time Tshekedi asked a question that embarassed the administration it was disallowed by the Chairman of the Enquiry, himself the Assistant Resident Commissioner, Captain Neale.

With Tshekedi effectively muzzled, the Enquiry concluded that he had flogged McIntosh, and the Acting High Commissioner would announce his decision as to Tshekedi's future the next morning at a kgotla at Serowe. The Bangwato had little doubt as to what this would be : indeed as the reporter of the Natal Mercury ....................................... The President of the Commission of Enquiry did announce one verdict : young Phinehas McIntosh was to be exiled from the Bamangwato Reserve. While he was called as a witness, he was given no indication that he was on trial. Throughout his cross-questioning by Tshekedi he made it clear that he accepted the Chief's punishment, although the British had made several attempts to persuade him to lay a formal complaint against Tshekedi.

Immediately after the Enquiry, Rey held a further one over which he presided : this investigated Tshekedi's complaints that neither of his Resident Magistrates, Potts or Nettelton, had done anything to curb the behaviour of McIntosh or other young white layabouts in Serowe. In the absence of action on their part Tshekedi argued that he had to deal with the problem himself. Again this was very much a drumhead trial with Rey judging that both Magistrates were without blame.

That evening Admiral Evans came up to Palapye Road by plane to conduct the elaborately planned ceremony of suspension of the Chief in Serowe the next morning. Tshekedi had been ordered to make sure as many of his people as possible attended this kgotla : But Tshekedi was determined to show that he still controlled his people and relatively few turned up. The newspapers covering the event vary in their estimates : the left-wing papers gave low figures, the right-wing ones high figures. Certainly there were not nearly as many people at the kgotla as would normally be present for a major ceremonial event.

In the morning the marines and the bluejackets set off from Palapye Road for Serowe, taking with them their gun carriages. In the midst of their convoy was a car marked No 13 `the ex-Chief Tshekedi'. The timetable for the ceremony at Serowe was thrown out by the difficulty of moving the gun carriages through the sandy road in which several got stuck. Eventually the party arrived, followed shortly by Admiral Evans and Colonel Rey. The Admiral was welcomed by a nineteen gun salute, and then mounted the platform from which he was going to announce Tshekedi's fate. The Chief stood in front of the flag-bedecked dais bareheaded in the sun.

After Evans had pronounced his verdict Tshekedi was led into exile but not before many members of the European community, including the parents of McIntosh, had said farewell to him and expressed the hope that he would soon be back.

Tshekedi was sent into exile in Francistown, the main commercial centre of the Protectorate. Rey had hope that he would be sent to Ghanzi on the western fringes of the Kalahari well out of harm's way. As it was Francistown was on the main railway line, and had easy access to the telegraph. He had also hoped to persuade Evans to depose Tshekedi from office. But the most he would agree was to suspend him. Rey could at best hope for was that Tshekedi would remain under suspension for long enough for the Native Proclamations to be introduced in the Bamangwato Reserve.

Tshekedi, who was normally the most resilient of characters, complained of being ill the evening he was due to leave for exile. Rey suspected that it was a ruse to delay the inevitable. But the doctor sent to attend him and give his opinion as to the reality and gravity of his illness reported that he was suffering from nervous exhaustion. But he would be well enough to travel, and on the evening train to Francistown he was accompanied into exile by a small police detachment under Lt. Lawrenson. As soon as they crossed the River Shashi, marking the eastern boundary of Gamangwato, Tshekedi asked to move to the next carriage where his secretary and other supporters who were accompanying him into exile were sitting.

After a weekend of uncustomary inactivity Tshekedi set about reversing the unfortunate situation in which he found himself. Using his knowledge of the workings of the British imperial system gained through assiduous reading and from his visit to England in 1930, he contacted friends in Parliament, the press and humanitarian and missionary groups to raise questions about his suspension. he also sought to focus as much attention as possble on conditions in the Bechuanald Protectorate. In raising a storm in the press Tshekedi was triumphantly successful. Far from giving the British administration their unqualified support, the South African press was generally critical of the way the administration had handled the matter. While they disapproved of black chiefs taking the law into their own hands in the way Tshekedi had done , they were more concerned about the fact that white men were freely sleeping with black women. If the administration would do nothing to stop this, at least an African chief had done so. The very press the expedition into the Kalahari had been partly designed to assuage, proved less than sympathetic to the British cause.

In London the press had a field day. The flogging of a white man by and African chief, and the sexual peccadilloes of that white man, appealed to the prurient press. The Ruritanian naval expedition into the Kalahari desert captured many a headline. But the more serious press spurred on by Tshekedi's supporters in the Anti-Slavery Society and the London Missionary Society put the administration of the Protectorate under a searchlight. Fundamental questions were raised in the pages of the Manchester Guardian and the Times about the conduct of British administration in the Bechuanaland Protectorate. While some of the comment was critical of the power of the chiefs, Tshekedi had succeded in drawing attention to what for most English readers was an obscure part of Empire.

Through his allies in London he put pressure on the Dominions Office, whose Secretary, J.H. Thomas, was deeply embarassed by the fact that a military expedition had been launched into one of the territories for which he was responsible without any reference to him. Indeed Thomas and his officials did all they could to secure a way of restoring Tshekedi while at the same time saving the face of the local administration. They insisted that Tshekedi withdraw any claim to have jurisdiction over the whites living in his territory. Tshekedi at first showed great reluctance to do this : but Jennings and Buchanan put great pressure on him to do so. They argued that if he remained in exile and under suspension Rey would achieve his objective and enact the Proclamations in Gamangwato.

As it was Tshekedi was well aware of what was going on in his state during his absence. His cousin Serogola Seretse kept him informed of developments. Rey had put pressure on the Bangwato to chose an Acting Chief in place of Tshekedi, Serogola and all other members of the royal family refused to collaborate with Rey. As far as they were concerned Tshekedi was their legitimate Chief pending the majority of Seretse. Even Tshekedi's opponents rallied round him including Simon Ratshosa, though not K.T. Motsete.

Finally Tshekedi agreed publicly to acknowlege that he had no right to try white men in his kgotla. And so three weeks after he was suspended he was reinstated by Admiral Evans, in the same saluting ground, but without the guns of marines trained on him. Rey who had fought a rearguard action to keep Tshekedi under suspension until the Proclamations were introduced in Gamangwato was overruled by both Evans and the Dominions Office who wanted to bring an embarassing episode to an end as quickly as possible.At the end of his formal reinstatement Tshekedi shook hands with Evans but withheld his hand from Colonel Rey. There was the larger battle to come between the two over the Native Proclamations. And this was one that Tshekedi was determined to win.

esident Commissioner had been soaked by the rain, but this in no way worried them for rain on such a day was the best of omens in this drought stricken country where the very word for rain, pula, was the royal greeting.

The installation of Tshekedi took place in the kgotla at the foot of the hill in which Khama's grave had been dug. A canopy of whi

Tshekedi returned to Serowe completely unchastised by his suspension. Indeed when he discussed his reinstatement with Admiral Evans on his flagship at the Simonstown Naval Base he requested that he be allowed to travel to London to see the Secretary of State to discuss the Proclamations. He raised the question again immediately after his ceremonial reinstatement in Serowe by Evans, who referred the matter to Colonel Rey. Tshekedi avoided any consultation with Rey, but rather waited for the return from leave of Sir Herbert Stanley who, he believed, would lend him a more sympathetic ear. `In the meanwhile', reported Rey, `Tshekedi is dealing with practically nothing and is passively obstructing almost everything...'

When Sir Herbert Stanley returned to South Africa Tshekedi joined with his cousin Bathoen II of the Bangwaketse and Lotmarolong, Chief of the Barolong, whose headquarters was in Mafeking, and sent a petition to the High Commissioner requesting an interview with him. Rey forwarded the petition but strongly advised Stanley against seeing the Chiefs : he saw this as yet another manoeuvre by Tshekedi to delay implementation of the Proclamations. The High Commisssioner responded to the Chiefs by telling them that they could submit any statements they might like to to make `not merely in vague and general terms, but with sufficient precision to enable me to understand, and consider any points or suggestions which they would desire to represent.' The three chiefs responded by sending a section by section critique of the Proclamations to the High Commissioner. They insisted that the Proclamations raised constititional issues which affected their treaty rights as self-governing people under the suzerainty of Great Britain.

`We question the authority and stoutly contest the intention of the Government to impose any Law to which we, as Chiefs, and our people are unanimously opposed. We invoke the sacred principle of government by consent.' They went on to argue that under the terms of the Proclamation of 10 June 1891 the Courts of the Protectorate may not interfere in any matter in which natives only are concerned, unless, in the opinion of the Courts the exercise of such jurisdiction is necessary in the interests of peace or for the prevention or punishment of acts of violence to person or property. It was clear, they argued, taking up a well worn contention of Tshekedi's, `that Bechuanaland Chiefs are Treaty Chiefs.' Yet now the new Proclamations, far from codifying and clarifying Native Law and Custom, would violate them. The accession of a Chief would not depend on traditional practice but on approval, recognition and confirmation by the Administration. Chiefs' powers would be seriously curtailed and they would be obliged to communicate with the Magistrates on almost every matter, and as a result Chiefs would lose prestige among their people. `We have still to learn that our present Magistrates possess any better and superior qualifications over Chiefs so as to entitle them to exercise control over native tribes.'

While Tshekedi was leading the attack on the Proclamations in Southern Africa, his lawyer, Douglas Buchanan, and the missionary Jennings, had set sail for London where with the assistance of the Anti-Slavery Society and other supporters of Tshekedi in London they finally secured an interview with the Secretary of State. Their principal demands were that the British government agree to sign the `Treaty' which they had drawn up with Tshekedi before they left, and also to make it clear that no blame attached to Tshekedi in the McIntosh affair. The Treaty implied that the Bangwato and the British had negotiated the Protectorate on an equal footing and that if the Bangwato were unhappy with their association with the British they could withdraw from it and, if they so decided, seek another Protecting power. This the Dominions Office rejected summarily. The most Thomas would do with regard to Tshekedi's `guilt' over the McIntosh case was to say that as far as he was concerned the case was closed. He regarded Tshekedi `as an upright and straightforward man who was trying to do the best for his people.'

Back in southern Africa Tshekedi through dint of his usual persistence finally secured an interview with the High Commissioner for himself and some of his fellow chiefs, including Bathoen and a representative of Lotmoroleng. The transcript of the interview covers nearly 104 pages of foolscap paper. Most of the talking was done by Tshekedi. The arguments brought forward by Tshekedi and suppported by his colleagues were to be repeated again and again over the ensuing three years. The Tswana Chiefs were born not appointed, whereas under the Proclamations Chiefs could not take up office without recognition and confirmation by the Administration. Furthermore the proposed Tribunals and the establishment of Councils through which the Chiefs would administer their people were contrary to Tswana law and custom : as Phethu Mphoeng, a royal headman had told Kgotla at Serowe a few months before, `if the Proclamations are passed we shall not have committed suicide but we shall have been murdered.'

The discussions reached an effective impasse with Tshekedi and Dr. Molema raising the spectre of incorporation into South Africa by insisting on similarities between the new legislation and that of the Union. To prove this Tshekedi produced a detailed analyisis of the new Proclamations, comparing them with the provisions of the 1927 Native Administration of the Union, and Lord Lugard's prescriptions for the administration of `native peoples'. The burden of Tshekedi's analysis was that effectively the new Bechuanaland Proclamations followed closely those of South Africa. Clearly they were designed to serve the eventual integration of the Protectorate with the Union. The interview with the High Commissioner ended in impasse. But Tshekedi continued his epistolary war, and in a long letter sent to the High Commissioner on 23 April he set out to prove that the Chiefs were not autocrats, as some administrators, in particular Rey, would hold, and that no law was passed without due consultation with the Tribe. With regard to one clause dealing with disciplinary actions to be taken against Chiefs, Tshekedi wrote that `the Proclamations have apparently in view where Chiefs are concerned, the worst type, while in regard to to the Administration their provisions envision Magistrates of the best type.... We have actually had shocking instances of the conduct of some magistrates e.g. a Magistrate in the course of hearing a case actually left the bench and bestowed a blow or two on the accused with the words that the witness was being intimidated by the accused and therefore was unable to supply the evidence. Despite all his efforts, Tshekedi saw the two Proclamations promulgated in early January 1935. But he was determined not to operate them in his Reserve.

Tshekedi also had other major problems to deal with in his state. One that was resolved was the position of the Bakhurutshe. After holding them for nearly seven years in exile, and placed under a great deal of pressure from dignitaries of the Anglican Church and from an increasinly embarassed Administration, Tshekedi with very bad grace allowed them to return home to Tonota from Serowe. But he only did this after Phethu Mphoeng and another headman had finally produced the report that Tshekedi had agreed should be conducted into the position of the Bakhurutshe. It had been genuinely held up by the crisis over the flogging of Phinehas McIntosh. Phethu's report on his visit to Tonota could not find any continued collusion between the exiled Bakhurutshe in Serowe and their relatives in Tonota. His conclusions were presented by Tshekedi at a kgotla meeeting on 6 July 1934 with an announcement by the Chief that the Bakhurutshe could now return to their home.

The Bakhurutshe understandably did not leave with good grace. Many did not even attend the kgotla where their return was announced. Tshekedi himself believed they would prove troublesome over the long term just as he believed the Mswaswi would too.

The one group which could not give Tshekedi direct trouble, since they were too scattered and politically weak were the Basarwa. But from 1934 to 1936 much of Tshekedi's time was taken up with defending the Bangwato record on the treatment of the Basarwa, and trying to ensure that the the Administration understood his reservations about the reccommendations of the Tagart report. The Administration had avoided implementing Tagart's reccommendations until the Native Proclamations had come into force in Gamangwato. In the meantime the whole question of the position of the Basarwa had been raised by a sensational headline in the London News Chronicle of 5 November 1934 :`Missionaries'"Slaves"'. In the article Tshekedi's old antagonist, William Ballinger, declared that there were English missionaries in Southern Africa, `supported by subscriptions raised in this country, who own property which is tended by slaves.' One in particular, he alleged, owned several thousand head of cattle that were tended by Basarwa `slaves'.

The London Missionary Society were alarmed by the accusations and the possible adverse effects on their attempts to raise funds in Britain for their missionary endeavours in Southern Africa. They quickly established that the missionary in question was Tshekedi's staunch supporter, Rev. Alfred Jennings, who in fact had a herd of some 115 which had grown to that size by natural increase in the years since he had left the Bechuanaland Protectorate. Because of weight restrictions and Foot and Mouth disease, he was unable to transfer them to his new home in the Union. Khama III had offered to have them looked after at one of his cattle posts, to which Jennings agreed provided that any Basarwa involved would be paid from the increase in cattle.

The Board of the London Missionary Society were nevertheless sufficiently concerned not only by the accusations of their missionaries exploiting Basarwa, but by their apparent failure to have done anything about their lot. So from March 20-27 they held a meeting in Serowe to enquire into the whole position of the Basarwa. This delighted Tshekedi who now had a chance to put his own views in an `official' report, since the Directors of the LMS specifically instructed their South Africa District Committee to confer with Tshekedi as to `what steps may be taken to secure for the Masarwa full liberty in the disposal of their labour and in the control of their persons, and by Educational and Evangelistic work among them, to fit them more worthily to take the place free men in the life of the Bamangwato tribe.' Tshekedi, as so often before, dominated proceedings, and the final report supported his general position. Indeed the High Commissioner in acceding to Tshekedi's request that it be forwarded to the Advisory Committee of Experts on Slavery of the League of Nations considered that in it : `There are evidences in it of a desire to whitewash the Masarwa system at the expense of Tagart's report.' In fact by the time the Administration formally received a copy of the Report it was the end of June 1935. Tshekedi was at the time ill[CHECK TIME OF LLNESS?] so it was not possible to discuss the implementation of Tagart's reccommendations with him. The High Commissioner decided anyway to go ahead with the census of Basarwa, in consultation with the Chief. It was specifically stated that the names of the Bangwato `masters' would be recorded but not published.

Tshekedi was very adept at dealing with several issues at one and the same time, and while he was working on the Basarwa problem, he was also planning how to stave off the implementation of the Proclamations in his Reserve. As far as Colonel Rey was concerned, as he recorded in his diary after a meeting of the Native Advisory Council on 11 February 1935, all the Chiefs accepted the new Proclamations fully `and there will be no trouble ... of course Tshekedi did not attend - but his jackal, Bathoen ... howled with all the other chiefs.'

Tshekedi had become disillusioned with his fellow chiefs, and decided that he would return to his father's practice of dealing direct with the Administration. In future he would `paddle his own canoe'. But this did not worry Rey for whom the the promulgation of his Proclamations and apparent acceptance by the Native Advisory Council was a `great triumph'.

The triumph was a short-lived one. On 16 March Tshekedi wrote direct to the new High Commissioner, Sir William Clark, again by-passing Rey, complaining that none of his own observations on the draft Proclamations had been incorporated in their final versions. `It would appear that the effect of the Proclamations as they stand is to transfer the government and rights of the tribe from the natives to the Administration ... It behoves us all the more to see that our rights of independence under the Protection of Great Britain are not curtailed.' Tshekedi followed this up with a Petition to the King in May

in the hope that this would further delay the implementation of the Proclamations in his Reserve. It rehearsed once again Tshekedi's earlier arguments. Rey's view was that it was one more attempt by Tshekedi to delay implementing the Proclamations in his territory.

In July the High Commissioner toured the Protectorate with the intention of telling Tshekedi that he must implement the Proclamations, even though he had sent a Petition to the King requesting that they be not implemented. Tshekedi complained to to Stanley that there were `no such things as Councillors in the Tribe, unless the whole Tribe were considered as Councillors'. When Tshekedi was told simply to supply the names of those who usually advised him in matters, and who usually tried cases in kgotla, Tshekedi replied that if he did this it would seem ridiculous to the Government, as his lists would really contain the names of most members of the Tribe. Tshekedi was told to put forward names in any case.

Tshekedi continued to stall in the hope that he would receive a favourable response to his Petition to the King. The Mafeking administration wanted to go ahead with directing Tshekedi to implement the Proclamations in Gamangwato; but when the High Commissioner learnt of this he expressed surprise since it was difficult to impose them while they were the subject of a Petition to the King.

There was a further obstacle placed in the way of the Proclamations in Serowe. Tshekedi went into hospital in Kanye with an injury to his leg and suffering from nervous strain. Instructions were issued that Tshekedi and Bathoen of the Bangwaketse should both both present themselves for a meeting at Pretoria. If Tshekedi were still ill, then he would have to send a representative. But then Tshekedi developed tonsilitis, and had to have his tonsils out further delaying resolution of the problem. In the meantime trouble was brewing in Serowe where it was reported that dikgotla were functioning as though the Proclamations had not come into force. But after close investigation it was found that Tshekedi `has been careful not to deal with criminal cases in kgotla since the Proclamations were promulgated.' It did seem that some of the subordinate dikgotla had been trying cases, but Tshekedi had not been doing so himself.

While still in hospital in Kanye, Tshekedi was handed a letter by the local Resident Magistrate informing him that his Petition to the King had been disallowed. Tshekedi replied that `he had not expected to be given official letters while in bed ill.' He further stated that `the contents of the letter would cause him to hurry home.' The local missionary doctor in Kanye, having at first said that he could return at the end of the week, gave him a letter addressed To Whom it May Concern. `Chief Tshekedi who is under my care is in a weakened condition both mentally and physically and not in any condition to undertake any Tribal or Political problems before the end of September. He must be freed from all worries and be allowed complete physical relaxation.'

When Tshekedi finally left hospital he went off to his cattle posts well out of the reach of Nettelton who had been instructed that the Chief should be told to put the Proclamations into force and supply his list of Councillors. It was not until Tshekedi returned to Serowe on 14 October and resumed his administrative duties that these instructions could be delivered to him. Tshekedi was given a `final' deadline of 15 November for submitting his list of Councillors. But when the day arrived Tshekedi had done nothing about their appointment although he understood the seriousness of the situation and the possibility of his own imprisonment and deposition.

Nettelton then reported on 18 November 1935 that it seemed that Tshekedi was about to comply with the Proclamations. In Mafeking they were more cautious about accepting this at face value : as Reilly, the Assistant Resident Commissioner, reported to Rey, if this were true, `then it is a complete volte face'. Reilly was right for on 27 November Tshekedi delivered his bombshell, and handed in a process citing the High Commisssioner, Sir William Clark, to prevent the implementation of the Proclamations. Cunningly Tshekedi put himself in the legal right by supplying Nettelton the next day with a list of Councillors, who were presented at a kgotla meeting. By and large they were an unlikely lot and a few refused outright to serve in this capacity. But formally Tshekedi had complied with the Proclamations and was now ready to do battle against them in the Courts.

Tshekedi was vehement in his opposition to the Proclamations not only because they undermined the powers of the Chiefs, but because he saw them as further hastening the incorporation of the the Protectorate into the Union of South Africa. This was a fate that the Tswana chiefs were determined to avoid, and one which they had resisted for the past quarter of a century. But that fate seemed increasingly imminent : in 1932 Havenga the South African Minister of Finance met with J.H. Thomas, the British Dominions Secretary at the Imperial Conference in Ottowa. Havenga understood from his talks with Thomas that he had no basic objections to the transfer of the High Commission Territories. While the British government denied that Thomas had made such a commitment, the whole question of transfer now became an urgent political issue for the three High Commission Territories. Although it had been explained to the South Africans that the British had made earlier commitments that they would not consider the question of transfer without consulting the African inhabitants first, Herzog now in coalition with Smuts in the new United Party was determined to incorporate the three territories

Although Tshekedi was still deeply involved in his war against Proclamations, he also found time to launch a sustained campaign against the prospect of incorporation of the High Commission Territories into South Africa. In January 1935 his A Statement to the British Parliament and People which had been printed at his expense in South Africa was published by the Anti-Slavery Society in London. Tshekedi vehemently opposed transfer to South Africa since it would be in breach of the agreement earlier made between `the natives of the Protectorate and the British people.' What was needed before any decisions were made by the British Government was the despatch of an impartial commission of enquiry to ascertain the feelings of the peoples of the Protectorates about the prospect of being incorporated into the Union.

Tshekedi's pamphlet received wide distribution in London among Members of Parliament, the House of Lords and among Bishops and others concerned with the humanitarian interest. Tshekedi's main agent in London was the indefatigable Sir John Harris. He drafted an article entitled `The Challenge of the "Protectorates"' which he wrote to Tshekedi would be published in the News Chronicle under Tshekedi's name. Could Tshekedi just cable `Agreed' when he had read it? Tshekedi wrote back to Harris : `I did not feel very happy to allow the article to appear under my name as I felt that it was not my work ..... I am therefore writing an article embodying the points brought up in your draft article...' This exchange of correspondence more clearly than anything else puts the lie to the calumny that Tshekedi had his main letters and articles written by European friends. He was very much his own man.

Tshekedi's article appeared in the News Chronicle on 31 July 1935 as he had rewritten it. In it Tshekedi declared `We African Natives have three intensely strong affections - our land, our freedom, and the British Crown and its Parliament.' We have no `Colour Bar' Tshekedi continued. We have no degrading pass laws. `We greatly fear that, given transfer, we shall be degraded to the level of our brethren across the Limpopo - namely, that our people will come under the hateful ban of the "Colour Bar" for the usually given reason that they are considered inferiors.'

In Britain Sir John Harris distributed further copies of Tshekedi's original appeal to the British Parliament and People although Tshekedi had to cover the cost of reprinting it. In the Bechuanaland Protectorate Tshekedi acted as his own agent and wrote to friends in South Africa. Isaiah Bud-Mbelle [See Willan/??] offered to take twelve copies `as in Pretoria there are very few intelligent native (sic) who would buy some and appreciate reading.'

Though Rey and Potts found Tshekedi exasperating in his apparently continuous opposition to the Administration's schemes, they could not help admiring his persistence. Captain Nettelton, who had been Resident Magistrate at Serowe for much of the time since Tshekedi became Regent, wrote with admiration of Tshekedi's personal morals. `Tshekedi is an unusual native character. He is actually and firmly a total abstainer. In contrast to the other young native Chiefs he does not appear to have taken advantage of the facilities which are open to these young men to become thoroughly entangled in affairs with women.' He was seldom if ever seen in the company of young women. He had, however, at times been associated with a young widow of the `tribe', but there was no indication that Tshekedi contemplated matrimony with her.

The London Missionary Society was less tolerant of this latter association since the young woman had produced Tshekedi a child [CHECK BURNS] and Tshekedi had to leave the Church. [See Tshekedi's letter of regret] Generally Nettelton was much more charitable : `his morals appear to be exceedingly good and they are indeed remarkable when compared with those of people of his position.' Tshekedi had a deep distrust of the Administration, but he could be extremely helpful. But if he withdrew his cooperation, `the task before us becomes very diffficult and eventually develops into "stalemate".' Although Tshekedi's behaviour had at times been difficult, Nettelton recorded that in a period of six years dealing with Tshekedi `I have personally never experienced any ill-mannered treatment at it his hands which is unfortunately, from report, not the case generally.'

Not long after Nettelton produced this paean of praise for Tshekedi, he wrote in his December 1935 Report on Tshekedi that he had it on good authority that Tshekedi was soon to marry Bagakgametse, the daughter of the late royal Headman Moloi. The arrangement was ideal in traditional Bangwato terms : Moloi's daughter was Tshekedi's cousin, while old Moloi had been a half-brother of Khama III. Tshekedi had already bought a trousseau of garments worth about £50. Tshekedi already had a fine house, so there would be no accommodation problem for himself and his new bride. But for ten years he had been a bachelor monarch, cherished by his mother Semane, and his sister Bonyerile, who had just been divorced by her husband Headman Lekhutlile - `thrown away' as the News Sheet prepared for Bangwato miners working on the Rand put it, so cruelly. How would the young Bagakgametse fit into this tight knit family?

One member of the family who was away most of the time was Seretse, now in his fifteenth year and soon to be old enough to take over the chieftaincy from his Uncle. But Tshekedi's plans for his `son' were that before he became Chief, he should have the University education his uncle did not. Malicious tongues suggested that Tshekedi was sending away his young nephew so that he could continue to rule. In fact uncle and nephew got on well together, and for most of the time the relationship between them was that of father and son. Tshekedi was particularly distressed when in early 1935 he learnt that Seretse had contracted Tuberculosis. On the advice of the doctors Seretse left school and returned to Serowe to recuperate. And when he did feel better he was sent by Tshekedi to Adams College in Natal, rather than return to Lovedale since the climate in Natal would be better for his chest.

Early in January Tshekedi visited Rev. Burns and asked him to officiate at his marriage to Bagakgametse on 3 February. He made elaborate plans for the ceremony with an invitation to be printed in silver which he asked Burns to check. Six ministers - three European and three Bangwato - presided over the wedding. The church was packed with Bangwato some of whom had trekked in from outlying districts, and some hundred Europeans including a party that had come to play tennis the day before and decided to stay on for the wedding. The Church was bedecked with flowers while behind the platform where the ceremony was to take place a huge Union Jack emphasised Tshekedi's ultimate loyalty to the British crown. Bagakgametse was dressed in a white wedding dress, with four train bearers. She was attended by only one bridesmaid. Tshekedi was driven up to the Church by Alfred Page-Wood, a local trader. His arrival was cheered by the crowd outside the Church. The congregation was almost ecstatic when they saw that Tshekedi was accompanied by the young Chief Seretse as his best man. At the service, Tshekedi's uncle, Gorewan, and a representative of his cousin Bathoen II acted as witnesses. The Benediction was given by Rev. K. Raditladi, whose family was shortly to be involved in a bitter dispute with their chief over Bagakametse. But for the time being it seemed that Tshekedi had made a judicious marriage. The bridal pair were close in age - he thirty and she twenty-six. Bagakgametse had been educated in South Africa and indeed Tshekedi had sponsored her studies. [CHECK]

Magnificent as was the wedding itself, there was no reception afterwards and those who had come in from afar had to eat with their friends or relations in the capital. The reason for Tshekedi's apparent parsimony - and he was not by nature a particularly generous man - was twofold : personally he did not enjoy parties of any kind; but more to the point as a cattle owner he did not want to slaughter the large number of cattle that would be necessary for a wedding feast at a time when the Bangwato herd had been reduced by drought and disease by some 300.000. So that evening Tshekedi went back to work in his office, preparing for his case against the High Commissioner. Bagakgametse went to stay with his mother, Queen Semane.

For the next six months Tshekedi's main preoccupation was his forthcoming case against the High Commissioner. His process, drawn up in consultation with Buchanan, argued that the High Commissioner had no right to order him to carry out certain duties under the two Proclamations since they were of no legal force in that they did not respect Native Laws and Customs as specified in the Order in Council of May 1891, that the duties imposed on the chiefs were unreasonable in that it was impossible for them to carry them out; that the Proclamations did not make clear whether the Tribal Council replaced the kgotla as the sole administrative body for the Tribe; most important of all it took away the powers and jurisdiction of the Chiefs as guaranteed by the verbal Treaty entered into by the Queen through her representative, Sir Charles Warren in 1885[?]. Tshekedi was later joined by Bathoen in filing this suit so that the two most powerful chiefs of the Protectorate - one from the North, the other from the South, were rallied against their British overlord.

The case was not heard at Lobatse until July 1936, which effectively delayed implementation of the Proclamations in the Bamangwato Reserve as they were now sub judice. It was presided over by Judge Watermeyer of the South African High Court. A huge crowd of some two thousand Batswana, many of them Bangwato, had come to hear the case. There was no possibility that they could hear the proceedings in the court room itself since it only held fifty.

Buchanan wanted the case to be held in the open air but the judge remarked that this was not a theatrical performance. Tshekedi's party then suggested fixing a tent of bucksails tied to and round the Court House. This Rey flatly refused to allow. Finally Rey suggested that loudspeakers be brought up from Johannesburg. The result, Rey reported, was wonderful `All remarks in the Court House could be heard half a mile away, and even further amongst the hills. Rey made Tshekedi and Bathoen cover the cost of this unusual improvement to the court's facilities which came to £120.

Rey wrote that Buchanan made a rotten opening speech, but Tshekedi was very good. The Attorney General, Blakeway, was in Rey's view was a very bad cros-examiner and did not know his brief and oculd not shake Tshekedi. Rey himself was disappointed by the presentations of his own officials, while he had to admit that Tshekedi performed well. Gloomily Rey wrote in his diary that the judge seemed `to favour the view that our Proclamations do not respect native law and custom and that they ought to. Our contention is that they do except where native law and custom is against order and good government.'

In the event the outcome of the case turned not on this point but on the question of whether under the Foreign Jurisdiction Act of 1890 the Crown had `unfettered and unlimited power to legislate for the government of and administration of justice among the Native tribes in the Bechuanaland Protectorate and that this power is not limited by Treaty or agreement.' This question was referred to the Labour Secretary of State for the Dominions, Malcolm MacDonald. The Court adjourned sine die until the Secretary of State's decision was received.

While Tshekedi was dealing with his case against the High Commissioner he was also engaged in his continuing war against incorporation by South Africa. The campaign of the South African government to secure the transfer of the three Protectorates to her administration had become more vigorous since Hertzog and Smuts combined forces to enact the so-called the Native Bills : these would remove the African voters from the common roll in Cape Province, extend marginally and define once and for all the lands on which Africans could live. The British made it clear once again that there could be no question of transferring the three Territories to South Africa without the consent of their people. At the same time they were well aware of how deeply the South Africans felt about the the incorporation of the Territories as being naturally part of their territorial destiny. But although some of the European settlers were in favour of transfer to South Africa, the Africans were largely and in many cases vehemently opposed to it since they were well aware of the harsh circumstances Africans in the Union lived. To try and soften this opposition, the British government suggested that the Union Government make an offer of financial assistance so that Batswana would see them in a more favourable light. Accordingly a sum of £35,000 was offered by the Union government for the development of water resources in the three Territories. But this offer was rejected by the majority of Tswana chiefs as tantamount to a Greek gift. The Bangwato rejected it `firmly and unequivocally' in kgotla in April. There seemed to be no going back on this stand. As the Resident Commissioner reported, after attending a kgotla in Serowe in which the matter was again discussed, both `the Chief and the tribe re-affirmed their hostility to the proposals in quite definite terms.' Tshekedi's own view was that the grant would be of comparatively little use to them, and far less valuable than the other concessions for which they had pressed, and which the Union Government had consistently refused to give as, for example, the removal of the weight and numerical embargoes on cattle, or the easing of restrictions on Batswana seeking work in the Union. As he put it so nicely `the boot pinched in many places' and he `would suggest to the Union Government that if they really had the desire to assist the people of the Territories they should ease the boot where it pinches most.' Any chance of persuading the Batswana to accept the Union `gift' was sabotaged by Hertzog himself in a statement he made in June to his Parliament which indicated that the High Commission Territories would eventually be handed over to the Union `as soon as the time seemed ripe.'

In face of almost general opposition in the Bechuanalnd Protectorate to the South Africa government's offer of assistance, it was decided that the Union's offer of financial assistance should be left in abeyance for the time being. But Tshekedi and his people were still uneasy that there had not been `a definite and permanent suspension of the proposed financial assistance but merely a postponement.' For once, Colonel Rey was fully on Tshekedi's side having been opposed to it when it was first mooted in Pretoria at the meeting of Resident Commissioners with the High Commissioner on [?]. He reported with some satisfaction in his diary that in early May he was at a dinner party at which General Smuts was a fellow guest. As regards the question of financial assistance this should be dropped in the face of the opposition that had been shown to it. `He said that it was unfortunate that there was this suspicion "though God knows we have given them cause for it", which was veru funny.'

If the Administration had so much difficulty in implementing its administrative reforms in the Bamangwato Reserve, it found the implementation of the Tagart Report much less difficult. This may have been because of Tshekedi's preoccupation with so many other matters. Two Proclamations implemented Tagart's recommendation that that it be affirmed that slavery was illegal and that all labourers should receive payment in cash or in kind. Tshekedi himself had protested against the passage of both Proclamations on the grounds that the first was otiose since in the British Empire the legal status of slavery had long ceased to exist, while the second `would be an introduction of legislations based on colour distinction which it would be very unfortunate to introduce into British Protectorates.' Meanwhile Joyce, an administrative officer with previous experience of the Protectorate, who had served in the Bamangwato Reserve, was appointed to conduct the planned census of the Basarwa and their masters. Joyce received little assistance from the Bangawto. Indeed he complained that Bangwato masters were spreading rumours as to the real purpose of the census.[BNA S360/8/1 Joyce to Nettelton, Resident Magistrate Serowe / ?date] Despite the lack of cooperation he counted well over 9000 and estimated that there were further 1000 or so who were out of reach or `so scattered that the expense of travelling in search of them would not be justified.' Only one hundred Bangwato `owned' Basarwa. The largest owner was Tshekedi himself whom some 1,300 named as their master. But Joyce estimated that about 75 per cent gave him no service. Nettelton believed that Joyce by `his quiet perseverance' had inflicted a defeat on the Bangwato `and it is now realised that the Masarwa question is one which the Administration is determined to pursue.'

It was not until November that the Secretary of State sent in his opinion about the implications of the Foreign Jurisdiction Act : the Crown did indeed have `unfettered and unlimited power' to legislate for the Bechuanaland Protectorate. So judgement went against Tshekedi and Bathoen. `My greatest triumph!', Rey crowed in his diary. `The Judge has delivered his judgement ... and we won on all points with costs. What a fight - nearly six years of argument and now I am justified. My proclamations stand, and Tshekedi is defeated.' The only consolation for Tshekedi was that the Judge did agree with his contention that they violated Native Law and Custom, and suggested that the defence wasted Court time by taking up so much time on this issue. For those days the defence would pay the costs of the trial.

Tshekedi was not one to accept defeat, and in the following year he was to take up the whole question of the Proclamations with Rey's successor Charles Arden-Clarke who had recently arrived from Nigeria to take up the position of Assistant Resident Commissioner preparatory to taking over from Rey. The gloom over the loss of the case against the High Commissioner was temporarily alleviated by the birth of a boy to Bagakgametse. But the rejoicing in Serowe was short-lived and the state was to be rent by doubts as to his parentage.

ctivity to Serowe and to cattle posts; and Tshekedi would have a say in the importation of non-Bangwato labour. The lease would no longer be an open-ended one but would run

For Tshekedi it was no occasion for rejoicing when Bagakgametse presented him with a son born on 22 December 1936. By Tshekedi's calculation the child could not be his since at the material time of conception he had been on tour of his cattle post at Nata in the North and had then travelled South to Cape Town to see his lawyer Buchanan. Even though he did visit Serowe briefly on his way to the Cape, he did not stay with his wife but at his house near the Mission because he had to work day and night on his case against the High Commissioner before discussing it with Buchanan. Tshekedi suspected that his cousin Leetile Raditladi was the father of the child: on investigation he found that while he was on tour Leetile had spent evenings with his wife. Bagakgametse, it transpired, had already had relations with Leetile and Moremi, the young Chief of the Batawana, when she was at school at Lovedale. To add gall to the situation Tshekedi himself had paid to send Bagakgametse through Lovedale. Indeed, Tshekedi was so upset by this affair that he told Bagakgametse that he no longer wanted to marry her. But Queen Semane intervened and told Tshekedi that it was his duty to marry her.

Tshekedi told Bagakgametse a week after he married her that he had had an affair with the sister of Serogola Seretse, whom he put in the family way. Bagakgametse forgave him, but told Semane about it who was very angry. Semane insisted that the girl should come and live in Serowe where an eye could be kept on her in case Tshekedi should be further tempted.

Matters were further complicated by the enmity that had developed between the two Queens: the dowager Queen Semane, and Bagakgametse. According to Tshekedi Bagakgametse used `witch doctors' to poison Semane, who fell ill while Bagakgametse was away in Bobonong having her child, even though Tshekedi had insisted that she should give birth at home in Serowe. The two had quarelled over the matter and he finally agreed that she travel home to deliver her child. Although this was normal custom, Tshekedi had insisted that it did not apply to the wives of rulers.

When by Tshekedi's calculation the child was born at a time he could not be the father, he determined to divorce her for infidelity and took her to the Magistrate's court where she strongly denied the charge that the child was Leetile Raditladi's. Nevertheless she was judged guilty of adultery with Leetile on 17 March 1937. and the marriage was dissolved.

Tshekedi, however, gave her all her personal property as well as a gift of ten cows. Furthermore as far as Tshekedi was concerned, Bagakgametse could keep the child. It was not his. But Nettelton was worried that in future years the child could become a source of `serious tribal disagreement, especially if Seretse should happen to die or dies childless'.

Not content with divorcing Bagakgametse, at the end of April Tshekedi had her charged before the Magistrate's Court for practising witchcraft against himself and his mother under the Witchcraft Proclamation No. 17 of 1927. This, as Nettelton observed, was `a most remarkable development and Tshekedi states the Proclamation is a most wise provision of the Law. He was the leader of the deputation to the High Commissioner in 1927 to protest against this Proclamation.'

At first Tshekedi was intent on presiding over the case himself, but was persuaded by the Assistant Resident Commissioner, Charles Arden-Clarke, that this would be inappropriate as he was an interested party. Instead his Deputy, Serogola Seretse, presided at Kgotla. After hearing the case in which allegations were were made that Bagakgametse and two of the `witch-doctors' who were accused of assisting her to try and poison her mother in law the case was referred to the District Commissioner for trial. The fact that at this particular time Semane was indeed ill seemed to confirm that she had been bewitched. Indeed Tshekedi suggested to the local doctor that his mother's illness was due to poisoning. But Dr. Morgan concluded that `it is most unlikely that a poison could produce all the other clinical signs found.'

The Court presided over by the District Commissioner to try Bagakgametse was assembled under a cluster of thorn trees near the Government Camp. Tshekedi and headmen from different parts of Gamangwato were spectators. Evidence was given that swallows had flown into Bagakgametse's hut in Bobonong. This, she believed, was a sign that she was being bewitched by Semane. When she returned to Serowe she took measures to doctor herself against witch craft. She also had love potions made that would persuade Tshekedi to love her more. One witness said that Bagakgametse had told her that `she wanted Semane to die so that she could be alone with Tshekedi and share his power with him.' All four accused pleaded guilty to the charge.

Accordingly the Magistrate found her and her accomplices guilty. Each was fined £50 with the alternative of six months with hard labour. Tshekedi informed the District Commissioner that `the tribe was very indignant over the leniency of the sentences passed, more particularly in Bagakgametse's case'. Indeed the District Commissioner reported that the Deputy Chief, Serogola, and other leading men of the Tribe called on me to give vent to their feelings of pain and indignation in regard to the sentences. The accused they said, were self-confessed killers; the Tribe feel that the accused should have been punished with death.' The Magistrate was not particularly persuaded by the accusations against them, but Tshekedi was convinced that they had attempted to poison his mother. Bagakgametse's own father, Khama's half-brother Moloi, now dead, was a well-known `witch' in his time bearing the name of witch, which Moloi signified. His apparent paranoia about Bagakgametse was reinforced by the fact that his mother, Semane, was indeed unwell. At the end of January she was suffering from abdominal trouble. Tshekedi suspected poisoning, possibly through witchcraft and the insigation of his wife. In July she had written to Burns that the sickness she had complained of had gone, and she was able to walk a little. A few days later Tshekedi broke his right arm in a hunting accident and had to go into hospital. This series of misfortunes that were befalling his family persuaded him that there was a general conspiracy against him led by the Raditladis. As he told the Kgotla on 10 May `I have come to the net conclusion that this has been an attempt to overrthrow the native Chieftainship of the Ba~nwato Nation...' In a speech that continued for twenty-one pages of typescript Tshekedi accused the Raditladi family and Bagakgametse of `having taken very prominent parts in the present turmoil of this tribe.' He had come to the conclusion that the sons of Sekgoma, Khama's half-brother were plotting to seize the Chieftaincy and deny it to Tshekedi and his ward, Seretse, for whom he was acting as Regent. At the head of this conspiracy was the Raditladi family : it was as though history was repeating itself with first the Ratshosas, who had tried to assassinate him in 1926, and now his other royal relatives, the Raditladis in 1937. As with the Ratshosas, Tshekedi was determined to send them all into exile.

In May he arranged an Enquiry into the conduct of the Raditladi family, and at the conclusion requested that the Government remove Disang, Lebang, Leetile, Bagakgametse and the witch doctors from the Reserve. As the District Commissioner, who attended Tshekedi's Kgotla, wrote afterwards, the aim of this group `all related to one another and working together with one object in view - the destruction of the house of Khama.' The Raditladis not surprisingly wanted to appeal against the decision of the Kgotla, whereby they would go into exile. Normally any sentence of exile had to be confirmed by the Resident Commissioner, but Ellenberger argued that in any case it would not be possible for the seven to stay in Serowe, whether the prsesent verdict were affirmed, rescinded or varied. If the request of the Chief and Tribe is not acceded to, the Bamangwato will take their own measures to protect the House of Khama.'

As far as the District Commissioner was concerned, the people were determined to rid Bamagwato of the Raditladi faction and those associated with them.'

Meanwhile Semane's condition appeared to deteriorate. She left Serowe for Mafeking where she stayed with Dr. Molema, Tshekedi's old friend. On September 11 while under his care, she died quietly while sitting in an armchair in Dr Molema's sitting room, while fully dressed and reading. She was aged about 58. Tshekedi was absolutely devestated by the loss of his mother to whom he had been completely devoted. The only immediate relative left was his elder sister Bonyerile.

Tshekedi was concerned that if he did not take things in hand the people in Serowe might take revenge against those they would hold responsible for his Mother's death. He was still convinced that it was a result of witchcraft. The District Commissioner hurried the Raditladis out of Serowe with their agreement to avoid possible attacks on them by the distraught people. The funeral of Semane took place on Tuesday 14th. She was buried in the royal graveyard next to her beloved Khama.The service in the Church was attended by some one hundred local whites and about two thousand Bangwato.

As it was Serowe remained `perfectly quiet'. But `the shock of his mother's death is telling severely on the Chief who today looks very tired and worn', reported Ellenberger. Once the funeral had taken place, Tshekedi started seeking the causes of his mother's death. He was quite convinced that it was due to poison and arranged for a number of autopsies both in the local hospital and at Johannesburg. But the poison he believed had been administered to her could not be found even in the specimens he sent to the forensic scientists in Johannesburg. The administration insisted that he pay all costs involved in examining his mother's corpse. When the final pathologist's report came back it was clear that no poison had been administered and that she had died of perfectly explicable medical causes. But this fact was not revealed by Tshekedi to the people of Serowe, much to Ellenberger's shock. It clearly would not suit Tshekedi's book to find his suspicions baseless. But his correspondence over the matter shows the Chief as obsessed by poisoning, for in November his sister Bonyerile became ill. Dr Morgan wrote a note to Tshekedi `Personally I do not think your suspicions are correct ...but as the posibility exists you would be well advised to remove her from "the danger zone' for the time being.'`We are fully convinced that my mother Semane died of poison and now I might say that Bonyerile has very similar complaints ...'

In this cauldron of dynastic rivalry, the key ingredient had been ignored : Seretse the acknowledged heir to the Bangwato throne. No one had challenged the sixteen year old Chief's right to take over the Bangwato chiefdom when he reached his majority. Now sixteen years old, it would not be long before the Tribe would be prepared to acknowledge that he was old enough to take over as their ruler. Then a new political situation would develop in which his uncles would at last have access to the advisory role from which they had been excluded by Tshekedi.

Tshekedi believed that the only way Seretse could rule effectively was to further his education : he wanted his `son' to go to University and preferably to train as a lawyer. He believed that legal training would best suit him for his role as Chief in the modern world. From the point of view of his uncles this as part of a plot by Tshekedi to hold on to power by delaying

At this stage Tshekedi seems to have no plans to delay his ward's accession. Seretse seemed content with his studies, though he had to take a year off in 1935 and 1936 because of a recurrence of his chest troubles. When he was stronger he returned to school at Adams College in Natal. At this time Simon Ratshosa reported a rumour to Captain Nettelton in Mafeking in a letter marked `Protest (not official)'that both Edirilwe Seretse and and Phethu Mphoeng had informed him that Tshekedi was planning to send Seretse to London for his further education. As far as Nettelton was concerned, this, as he wrote in November, was all part of `the drive to get Seretse into the Chieftainship that started some months ago and if he is sent away to England he is not available to displace Tshekedi and he probably will not wish to return too soon.'

Tshekedi seems to have considered himself more a Father than and Uncle to Seretse. Indeed Seretse often addressed his Uncle as `Father', and Tshekedi wrote to Seretse as `My Son'. However when the two were in dispute they addressed each other as Uncle and Nephew, and generally the relationship between the two was an affectionate one. Seretse's half-sister Naledi was treated as a member of the family, and thought of Tshekedi as her Father. Indeed she was treated by him as his favourite child even when he started to have his own children after his second marriage. Bonyerile liked Tshekedi relationships only soured when Tshekedi and Seretse fell out over his marriage to an English woman in 1949. Tshekedi was a strict disciplinarian. He never beat Tshekedi, since the young man was his `senior'. If he needed to punish Seretse he sent him to the cattle-post.

Tshekedi was convinced that the troubles he had had with Leetile Raditladi were part of a wider conspiracy by the Raditladi family supported by relatives who belonged to the `Sekgoma' branch of the family, that is those who had been opposed Khama, father to Tshekedi and grandfather to Seretse.

It is clear there was no love lost between the two branches of the family. Tshekedi was convinced by local gossip that the Raditladis, and their relatives by marriage, the Ratshosas, were determined to overthrow him. He denounced them in the kgotla and would have sent them into exile without more ado, but the restraining hand of the British administration made it clear that they could only approve this after an enquiry under their auspices. The proposed enquiry, scheduled for September, had to be postponed until after the burial of Semane for fear that the presence of the Raditladis and Bagakgametse in Serowe would inflame tempers in Serowe and possibly provoke faction fighting.

The High Commissioner, who ultimately had to sanction the exile which Tshekedi sought for his opponents finally agreed to the Enquiry was finally set for the 15 November and lasted till 1st December. Serowe was treated to a repeat of the Ratshosa and Kasebonye enquiries, only this time the chief actors were the Raditladi family. Over a period of some fifteen days thirty-three witnesses were called. Only six appeared for the Raditladis, including Disang and Leetile themselves, and Bagakgametse. Both Tshekedi and the Raditladis had legal representation. Though this was an Enquiry rather than a Trial, both sides felt their interests would be best safeguarded by lawyers.

At the kgotla enquiry of 10th May, the Tribe had asked tht the Raditladi family be sent away from the Reserve, and be exiled to Ghanzi, and not Francistown or `any other place on the railway line where the Chief might pass.' In particular Francistown was seen as an unsuitable place of residence for the Raditladis because of its proximity to the Bamangwato Reserve and the unfortunate precedence of the Ratshosas who were allowed to live out their exile in Francistown, and `from there have caused the Chief and Tribe continual uneasiness, irritation and annoyance'. The shortest and most convenient route, the Commissioner observed, to Bokalaka district of the Bamangwato Reserve, and the route Tshekedi used when travelling to his cattle posts in the Nata area was through Francistown.

As far as the Tribe was concerned they made no distinction between the three Raditladis any more than they had the `Ratshosa brood.'They considered them all a source of danger to the life of the Chief and the peace of the Tribe. As far as Leetile was concerned the Commissioner believed him to be `a bad young man whose principal offence, that of violating the sanctity of the Chief's home, is unpardonable.' Therefore he should be sent out of the Reserve, while his uncle Lebang should be banished too. Though he lived in Francistown, it was clear from the evidence just how much mischief he could cause from across the border. Similarly Disang was a trouble-maker, and should be exiled and not allowed to take his cattle and other property with him. These conclusions, which were arrived at after taking evidence that amounts to well over a hundred pages of typed foolscap, Ellenberger as Commissioner reached the same conclusions that had been arrived at by Tshekedi in his Kgotla Enquiry. But on the basis of this `official' enquiry, the Raditladis could be legally sent into exile, which the High Commissioner agreed to.

Tshekedi had defeated another set of royal opponents to his rule. What is not clear either from the transcript of the proceedings of the Enquiry or from interviews with members of the Raditladi family is whether there was such a conspiracy or more important, since it was at the core of the family's trouble, whether Leetile had actually committed adultery with Tshekedi's Queen. As it was stressed at the Tribal Enquiry, formerly `the man who had the temerity to meddle in the affairs of the Chief's house was promptly put to death.' Today many informants say that Leetile was not the father of Bagakgametse's son, and that Tshekedi wanted the occasion to get rid of a wife of whom he was tired. He clearly did not like her, and had his eyes on another partner. He could also neutralise the Raditladis whom he always seen as dynastic rivals.

Despite his many family preoccupations and the fact that he had broken his arm in a fall from his horse Tshekedi was able to find time to deal with affairs of state. Colonel Rey finally left the Protectorate to go into retirement in South Africa and settled among those `damned Dutch' at whom he had so often sneered. The majority of chiefs, in particular Tshekedi, were only too happy to see him go. History has however been kinder to Rey. He had to run the Protectorate in particularly hard times, with the cattle economy under siege from drought, Foot and Mouth disease, and Lung Sickness. A man of immense energy, he had the exciting ideas about development, but tended to impose them on the chiefs rather than discuss them. This in particular irritated Tshekedi, who, like Colonel Rey believed he knew the best solutions to the agricultural and pastoral problems of his people. The one area on which the two were always unlikely to agree were the new Native Proclamations. These still had not been introduced in Gamangwato except in the most half-hearted way. Just before Rey left, his successor designate, Charles Arden-Clarke, visited him and agreed.

But there was little Rey could do. On ??? May he finally set off for South Africa in retirement. Quote.

Tshekedi was no doubt delighted to see the back of the little Resident Commissioner with whom he had so often clashed, but with whom he shared so many ideas in common.

Tshekedi and Rey's successor, Arden-Clarke, got on much better. Clarke was a much milder man who preferred to discuss matters with the Chiefs rather than give them direct orders. Tshekedi and he developed a much easier relationship than the tense one built up by Rey and the Chiefs, in particular Tshekedi who invariably ended up in a confrontational dialogue with him.

Arden-Clarke quickly recognised that Tshekedi could be a valuable ally that the Native Proclamations, whatever their virtues, would be unworkable in their presnt form, if only because of the deep-rooted opposition of the Chiefs, in particular Tshekedi. Arden-Clarke therefore set about consulting the Chiefs and formed a Committee including Tshekedi and Bathoen which would make reccommendations to revise the Proclamations. This proposal certainly mollified Tshekedi who for the first time was incorporated into a Government Committee on equal terms with members of the Administration. Arden-Clarke also undertook to establish Native Treasuries for each Reserve, a development which both Tshekedi and Bathoen had long since advocated. [ DEVELOP] Generally the relationship between Arden-Clarke and the Chiefs was unrecognisably more cordial than that with Rey. In particular Tshekedi seems to have been captivated by the new Resident Commissioner, who treated him with unfailing courtesy.

Apart from the problem of the Proclamations, the main concern of Tshekedi and the other Chiefs was the continued attempts by the South Africans to take over the High Commission Territories. General Hertzog did not give up his ambitions in this direction, and was supported in his attempts by some of the white settlers in the Protectorate, in particular L.S. Glover, the main spokesman for Incorporation. In June 1938 a special Joint Advisory Conference composed of representatives from both the High Commission Territories and South Africa was scheduled to visit the Bechuanaland Protectorate. Their aim was `to study openings for co-operation between the Union Government and the the Administrations of the High Commission Territories in matters affecting the development of the Territories and to consider any matters of joint concern to the Union and the Territories such as prevention and control of animal diseases, marketing of produce, prevention of bubonic plague, et cetera.' But Tshekedi remained deeply suspicious of any cooperation with South Africa, even when Arden-Clarke inisted that the Conference `has nothing to do with question of the transfer of the government of the Protectorate to the Union.'

In any case Tshekedi had his own plans for a visiting Conference which he had arranged with his great supporter in London, the hyperactive and imperious Secretary of the Anti-Slavery Society, Sir John Harris. Sir John had travelled to the United States where he had addressed a twenty-five thousand strong meeting of Quakers at Philadelphia and rustled up support for Tshekedi's cause. He arranged that a small delegation visitSerowe and find out for themselves just how deep the opposition was in the Ngwato capital to the Incorporation of the Bechuanaland Protectorate into South Africa. A large kgotla was held in Serowe in honour of the visitors and was atttended by Rev. Burns, Sister Evelyn Haile, Chief Kgari Sechele of the Bakwena, Bathoen of the Bangwakwetse, Tshekedi and some 1,400 Bamangwato. Apart from Harris, there were Dr. and Mrs Thomas Jones from Philadelphia and Mr Russel Bragshaw from Britain.

For once Tshekedi was upstaged by a visitor, Sir John Harris, who as always monopolised discussions and tended to lecture in a rather condescending manner. Tactlessly Harris began his address by telling the kgotla that General Hertzog had sent his delegation a telegram `bidding us welcome to South Africa.' Harris's speech was a very patronising one, but the Bangwato were mainly intent in conveying their hostility to any suggestion that they should be incorporated into South Africa. Phethu Mphoeng, who reminded his listeners, that he had been in Serowe when the original Protectorate was first negotiated with the British, picked up the theme developed by Harris that what they were talking about was a marriage. `...we are a young maiden that is sought for marriage; but the ring has not yet been put in our finger, and the man that wishes to marry us we do not believe he loves us, what we know is the man loves the land and not the maiden.....the idea is to take away our land from us.'

Tshekedi concluded the meeting by asking those in favour of the Union to raise their hands. Noone did, and there was not a soul who spoke in favour of Incorporation. Tshekedi suggested that some may have been in favour of Incorporation but were reluctant to express their views publicly. Tshekedi then suggested that any who had such views could express them in complete confidence afterwards to Sir John Harris. Only one man visited Harris and he too made it clear that he was against Incorporation. Indeed the Harris delegation came away quite convinced that there was almost no support whatsoever for Incorporation.

Despite his preoccupation with the problems of Incorporation and the implementation of the Proclamations, Tshekedi found time to deal with a wide range of problems such as mining and the Basarwa and to undertake various development schemes for both the benefit of his people and himself. Despite Tshekedi's initial vehement ofpposition to mining in his territory, even when the British South Africa Company abandoned its concession, Tshekedi now sought for a new Concession. In 1938 for example Colonel Sir Llewellyn Anderson requested permission from the Distriuct Commissioner at Serowe to prospect for minerals in Gamangwato, `subject to Chief Tshekedi's consent'. When he was refused permission he asked the District Commissioner what the ground for Tshekedi's refusal were. He was told tartly that it `was not open to questions.' At this time Tshekedi was in the process of negotiating for a Concession with British Mineral Properties Investigation Ltd., a subsidiary of Rio Tinto Zinc. Without consulting with the Administration until he felt that the terms offered by Mineral Properties Investigations Ltd. were satisfactory, Tshekedi drew up terms of agreement. Although he had proved deeply hostile to the exploitation of the resources of his Territory by the British South Africa Company, he felt that events `both in and out of Europe' were `marching too rapidly' ... that it is imperative for us to get British capital invested in our Territory without delay.'

Tshekedi's change of heart over the Mining Concession was to bring in British capital since, as Arden-Clarke the successor to Rey wrote to the High Commissioner, Tshekedi had told him he had come to realise that he and the Tribe `cannot stand out indefinitely against the development of the mineral resource of their country.' And in the eventuality of a transfer of the Protectorate to the Union he would rather be covered by an agreement with a British company which would be better able to resist efforts by the South African government at encroaching on their rights. For Tshekedi his people would be safer under an agreement which had been negotiated with a British company than under a South Africa company.

Perhaps the most extraordinary feature of the terms of the Concession with Mineral Properties was that they were negotiated direct between the British directors and Tshekedi. The High Commissioner felt that the terms Tshekedi had agreed with the Company `were favourable to the Tribe.' The contract was signed on 15 September 1939, and an advance paid to the Bangwato. But it was to lead nowhere since war intervened, and it would no longer be possible for the Company to obtain the shipping space for the equipment it would need. They therefore gave notice of cancellation of the agreement. Tshekedi was deeply disappointed, and manage to persuade the company to suspend rather than cancel the agreement until the war was over so that they could review the situation then.

If Tshekedi's relationship with the British administration before the arrival of Arden Clarke had been a turbulent one, he now got on particularly well with the new Resident Commissioner. As Mary Benson put it in her biography of Tshekedi he quickly established an amicable relationship with the young Chief. Indeed there was not much difference difference in age between the two. But age apart, Arden-Clarke's main advantage as Resident Commissioner was the fact that he was prepared to listen to Tshekedi and other chiefs and discuss their problems with them. More especially Arden-Clarke with his Nigerian experience was prepared to institute Native Treasuries, reorganise the Tribal courts, and generally discuss administrative developments with Tshekedi and his fellow Chiefs.

As far as Tshekedi was concerned the main potential source of friction was over the position of the Basarwa and in particular the census conducted by ??? Joyce.

Before the Administration's decision was due to be announced Tshekedi sent a regiment, the Makobamotse regiment, to Mswaswi to show the Bangwato flag. This disturbed the

Receive herewith my letter. I have come to greet you and to voice my complaint before you and the Government, namely whether I am a servant, a Headman a Tribe or a mere person.

Eventually the Administration forced Tshekedi to hear Baboni's complaints in kgotla, but not after a great deal of correspondence had been exchanged over the `constitutional' issues involved. They also insisted that she should have the right of appeal to the Resident Magistrate's Court. Very reluctantly Tshekedi called her into kgotla on 22 July. Nettelton was pessimistic as to the outcome: `Baboni is a born trouble-maker and whatever the outcome she will not be satisfied.' Her hearing provided a marvellous opportunity for all his opponents to embarass him. One declared that the distribution of Mogomotsi's property `had been dealt with according to the Chief's idea of his authority but not according to Bamanwato Custom.' In particular Dinalo Nthebolang, Ratshosa and Mokhutshwane, had made wild statements which Tshekedi ordered to be investigated.

Black Prince: A Biography of Tshekedi Khama 1905-1959

Black Prince:
A Biography of Tshekedi Khama
1905-1959