"A nation without a past is a lost nation,
and a people without a past is a people without a soul."
Sir Seretse Khama, 1921 - 1980,
first President of the Republic of Botswana.
British Protectorate
In 1884 the Germans, imperial rivals to the British, began occupying Namibia. The Batswana were not only deserted by their friends, but were unable to purchase gunpowder and arms for the purpose of defending themselves from their enemies. This seemed rather hard, for it deprived them of the only means they had of defending themselves against the most blood-thirsty of their enemies.
In South Africa, as well as in England, strong feeling was aroused by this act of aggression. Unless steps were taken at once, the whole of Bechuanaland might be permanently lost, while German territory on the west might readily be extended to join with that of the Boers. Cecil Rhodes, then leader of the Opposition in the Cape parliament, was sent to Bechuanaland. Rhodes’ mission was attended with great difficulty. British prestige after the disastrous Boer War of 1881 was at a very low ebb, and he realized that he could not count on any active help from the imperial or colonial authorities. He adopted a tone of conciliation, and decided that the Stellaland republic should remain under a sort of British suzerainty. But in Goshen the Boers would let him do nothing.
Indignant protest in Cape Town and throughout South Africa, as well as England, led to the despatch in October 1884 of the Warren expedition, which was sent out by the British government to remove the filibusters, to bring about peace in the country, and to hold it until further measures were decided upon. Warren, without firing a shot, broke up the republics of Stellaland and Goshen.
After appeals by the Batswana for assistance, the British Government in 1885 put "Bechuanaland" under its protection. To prevent the Germans from expanding eastwards to link up with the Boers, in January 1885 the British proclaimed a Protectorate over the southern half of Botswana. This action was reluctantly accepted by local rulers as preferable to direct rule by either the Germans or Boers.
In March 1885, Botswana was declared a British Protectorate by Royal Decree. Bechuanaland was formally taken under British protection on 30 September 1885. The northern territory remained under direct administration and is today's Botswana, while the southern territory became a portion of the Cape Colony and is now part of the northwest province of South Africa; the majority of Setswana-speaking people today live in South Africa. Extensive territories belonging to Botswana's southern chiefdoms were incorporated into the then British colony of South Africa under the name of British Bechuanaland. At first most Batswana chiefs except Khama III of the Ngwato who had asked for British protection in 1870, resisted and were suspicious of British protection.
The natives cheerfully accepted this new departure in British policy, and from this time forward Khama’s country was known as the British protectorate of Bechuanaland. The establishment of a British Protectorate in 1885 was followed in the late nineteenth century a new threat in the form of the British imperial expansion. The discovery of diamonds at Kimberly resulted in the occupation of Batswana lands south of the Molopo River, which thereafter became part of South Africa.
The general rule was that the protected state does not cease to be a sovereign state, if such was its previous status. Its head is still entitled to the immunities and dignity of a sovereign ruler. Further, the establishment of a protectorate does not necessarily rescind treaties made between the protected state and Other states, at all events when it is not in reality conquest or cession. The question whether a particular protectorate forms part of the "dominion" or "territory" of the Crown for any purposes or within the meaning of any statute cannot be regarded as wholly free from doubt; its terms and intention must be examined. In Rex v. Crewe (1910, 79, L. J. 874) the Court of Appeal decided that the Bechuanaland Protectorate was not part of the dominion of the Crown, but was foreign territory.
In 1890 the protectorate was extended over northern Botswana. Thereafter the territory was formally known as the Bechuanaland. The British imperialist, Cecil Rhodes, wanted to bring Botswana under the political and economic control of his British South Africa Company, which between 1890-93 had brutally occupied Zimbabwe. During the colonial period various attempts were made to incorporate Botswana into Rhodes' colony of Southern Rhodesia in 1895, and later into the Union of South Africa. To stop this in 1895 three of the leading Batswana rulers - Bathoen I, Khama III and Sebele I - went to Britain to lobby in favor of Botswana remaining a Protectorate. After being told that the decision to transfer them to Rhodes' Company had already been made, the three launched a nationwide campaign to bring Botswana’s case before the British people. With the assistance of London Missionary Church, they drew so much public support that the British Government changed its mind and agreed to continue to administer the territory as a Protectorate.
In 1891, Britain had begun to set up a structure for colonial administration of the Protectorate. This provided for a Resident Commissioner responsible to a High Commissioner in the Cape. The Country was thereafter divided into 12 districts, each having a Resident Magistrate whose duties were primarily judicial and involved only foreigners and non-residents.
Until 1895 Bechuanaland included the Crown Colony of British Bechuanaland and the Bechuanaland Protectorate. In that year the Crown Colony was annexed to Cape Colony, and the Protectorate placed under the administration of the High Commissioner. The Protectorate had an area of about 275,000 square miles and extended from the Itolopo river in the Sought to the Zambezi in the North, and was bounded on the East by the Transvaal province and Matabeleland, and on the West by Southwest Africa.
The population as of 1900 was about 125,000, of whom 1692 were white. The province of Stellaland is principally inhabited by Boers, and the remainder of the country by Bechuanas. The protectorate was administered by native chiefs under the guidance of a British resident commissioner. The revenue was derived from customs and a hut tax, the latter collected by native chiefs. The Rhodesia Railways section of the "Cape-to-Cairo" line crossed the protectorate.
The power and influence of the tribal chief diminished near the end of the 19th century due to the influx of colonists and their Christian religion, as well as European technology. A cash economy was firmly in place. The British granted each of the chiefs a tribal reserve in which the chiefs were given authority over all black residents and 10 percent of taxes collected therein.
Lack of infrastructure within the Protectorate led to it being governed from nearby Mafeking (now Mafikeng) in the adjacent Bechuanaland Crown Colony [which was incorporated into South Africa in 1910]. During the British-Boer War of 1899-1900, Mafeking was the scene of one of the most determined and successful defenses in history. The 1908 Act of Union which created the Union of South Africa had a provision that the Union should grow by incorporating other territories like Botswana, Lesotho, and Swaziland. The British were willing to hand over these territories now that the situation had changed from what it was in 1885. In 1921, a Native (later African) Advisory Council was formed consisting of representatives from eight recognised Tribal Territories, namely the Bangwato, Bangwaketse, Bakwena, Barolong, Balete, Bakgatla, Batlokwa and Batawana.
The protectorate was administered by a resident commissioner, responsible to the high commissioner for South Africa. Legislation was enacted by proclamations in the name of the high commissioner. Order was maintained by a small force of semi-military police recruited in Basutoland and ofiicered by Europeans. Revenue was obtained mostly from customs and a hut tax, while the chief items of expenditure had been the police force and a subsidy of £20,000 per annum towards the cost of the railway, a liability which terminated in the year 1908. The average annual revenue for the five years ending the 3ist of March 1906 was £30,074 ; the average annual expenditure during the same period was £80,114. There was no public debt, the annual deficiency being made good by a grant-in-aid from the imperial exchequer. The tribal organization of the Bechuana was maintained, and native laws and customs, with certain modifications, were upheld.
There is enough historical evidence dating back to the introduction of the Bechuanaland Border Police between 1890 and 1891 that Batswana were dissatisfied with British protection. Batswana Chiefs had always wanted to protect their power from the colonial government even though the logic of colonial rule dictated that they should rule according to the wishes of the British government. This conflict was in many respects the root of the struggle for independence. As more and more proclamations were made curtailing the powers of chiefs, they in turn became very outspoken in asserting their birthright to rule their tribes and manage their affairs.
Economic problems arose in the beginning of the 20th century. An outbreak of hoof and mouth disease wiped out many of the cattle herds. Additionally, South African and Rhodesian (now known as Zimbabwe) corn farmers, being closer to ports, flooded the market with grain, pushing Botswanan farmers out of business. Because of this, between the 1930s and 1960s, 25 percent of Botswana men were working abroad, mostly in mines and on farms in South Africa. In the early 1920s, the British pushed to annex Bechuanaland into the Union of South Africa, but this idea was dropped when it was so strongly opposed by the indigenous population.
The attempt by the Union of South Africa to annex Botswana was a more serious threat to the protectorate until self-government in 1965. Despite pressure from apartheid South African, inhabitants of the Bechuanaland Protectorate (now Botswana), Basutoland (now Lesotho), and Swaziland in 1909 asked for and received British assurances that they would not be included in the proposed Union of South Africa.
In 1930, chiefs began demands for not only national symbols like flags but also self-government. The matter became a subject of hot debates in the chambers of the African Advisory Council. Growing dissatisfaction with British protection and an increasing nationalism among Batswana found expression though tribal leaders, who exercised considerable power at a local level. From the 1930s, demands for self-determination were increasingly vocalised through the African Advisory Council, which often found itself in conflict with the colonial administration. The British government rejected demands for self-government claiming that the Protectorate was not yet ready for independence. In a heated debate on the issue Kgosi Bathoen II asked the Resident Commissioner, "who will say the time is now ripe and who is it that will determine that we are now capable of ruling this country?"
An expansion of British central authority and the evolution of tribal government resulted in the 1920 establishment of two advisory councils representing Africans and Europeans. Proclamations in 1934 regularized tribal rule and powers of the chiefs. A European-African advisory council was formed in 1951, and the 1961 constitution established a consultative legislative council. The provision for incorporation stated that this could only be done with the consent of the peoples of the then High Commission Territories i.e. Botswana, Lesotho and Swaziland. Many South African Prime Ministers, from Hertzog to Verwoerd agitated for incorporation. Even on the eve of independence European settler communities in Tati, Tuli Block and Ghanzi asked to be ceded to South Africa. Botswana chiefs and later the nationalist leaders vehemently opposed the idea of incorporation.
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