Volume 51 Issue 6 - June 2013 : Heritage

The popular belief that the three Dikgosi went to seek Queen Victoria`s protection is now so embedded in popular consciousness that it is unlikely ever to be shifted. In many ways, this belief is unfortunate and to be regretted because, not least, it minimizes the magnitude of the problem they were, in fact, attempting to overcome.

After all, a visit to seek Protection from a single person, the Queen, would have been a straight forward quest with the outcome presumably being a simple yes or no answer. In reality, there was no need for those three

Dikgosi to request protection from anybody because, whether they had liked it or not, the British had declared today`s Botswana to be a Protectorate ten years, earlier in 1885. 

Ironically, the 1895 visit was a far more dramatic undertaking than is popularly understood.

This was a visit made in a desperate attempt to hold on to that Protection – which was recognized as being under severe threat - not to secure what they already possessed! It is evidence of the severity of that threat that the three very different personalities should have agreed to travel together to put their joint case, not to the Queen, as is believed, but to the British Government.

They had also to agree to meet the very considerable costs that would be involved.  Not only had they to travel by sea but they had also to accept being immersed in an environment and a social and economic scene which was vastly different from anything they could have previously experienced or even imagined.

Yet, somehow, magnificently, they coped with the inevitable tensions amongst themselves, with their supporters, the misunderstandings, the social gaffs, the food, the accommodation, the failure to do what was expected and appropriate.

How could they have known know what was appropriate?

If we look at this visit as it was viewed from the British side, we can begin to have a better understanding of the really mountainous problem that those three were attempting to overcome.

In fact, there must have been many in the key power circles in England at the time who would, when learning of the visit, have dismissed it as a costly and foolish initiative.

The future of the three gentlemen and their people had already been decided when six years earlier Cecil Rhodes` British South Africa Company had been given by its Royal Charter the power to do almost anything it wanted from the Molopo River to the Great Lakes.

The implications, and the characteristics and history of Chartered Companies, seem to be poorly understood in this country. The origin of such Companies may derive from Francis Drakes` 16th century attacks on Spanish possessions in South America.

Thereafter, the notion of a Company licenced to exercise most of the powers of a government without being a government proved to be a formula which had much appeal to the Dutch, French and Danish governments all of which established their own Chartered Companies to exploit overseas possessions.

The model for Cecil Rhodes` British South Africa Company though was the huge British East India Company with which it was to enjoy a very similar history. Wikipedia, for instance notes that ‘the East India Company eventually came to rule large areas of India with its own private armies, exercising military power and assuming administrative functions.

Company rule in India effectively began in 1757 after the Battle of Plassey and lasted until 1858 when, following the Indian Rebellion of 1857, the Government of India Act 1858 led to the British Crown assuming direct control of India in the era of the new British Raj.`

This meant for a certainty that the three Dikgosi would inevitably be brought under the control of the British South Africa Company as had already happened to the Matebele and Mashona.

The preliminary steps had already been taken for the Company to take control of the Barolong and Balete.

Initially, therefore, the formidable British Colonial Secretary, Joseph Chamberlain, may have been reluctant to waste time with the three Dikgosi.

He had taken on the job of Colonial Secretary only after the elections the year before and had inherited a total mess in the Southern Africa where the discovery of gold and diamonds had brought the major power players to the fore.

Many of those with major clout in England had already staked out their positions, and were involved with Rhodes and his Chartered Company.

Chamberlain had therefore inherited a situation whereby the major decisions had already been taken and he was left with almost no room for maneuver.

The three Dikgosi, however, were fortunate that they were able to exploit the fact that there were people in the UK who had been familiarised with the situation in the Protectorate as a result of Mackenzie`s earlier campaigns on behalf of the Batswana.

They were also fortunate in that the LMS was celebrating its centenary in 1895 and the three Dikgosi were handy personalities to have on hand.

Their modern style campaign to obtain the support of the British general public was so successful that Chamberlain eventually found that his opt out  compromise was to give Rhodes land for his railway line but otherwise to leave the three Dikgosi to rule their people much as before.
Rhodes may already have gobbled up the Barolong and Balete but he concluded that Chamberlain`s decision meant that he had been defeated by ‘a bunch of niggers`. 

In reality, it was his own personality which was soon to be the ruin of his great dreams.

‘Surrounded by sycophancy and buoyed by an almost uninterrupted succession of triumphs`, says Robert Rotberg, one of his biographers, Rhodes was about to launch Jameson on his catastrophic attempt to unseat Kruger.
It was this denouement which released those two smaller tribes from Rhodes` grip and left the Protectorate much as it had been ten years earlier. Ends

Buy Online Now!