The State and the Social. Ørnulf Gulbrandsen

Illustration 2. ‘Battles outside Shoshong’ as rendered by LMS missionary John Mackenzie (1883: 246)

      While it is true that the missionary-kgosi relationship could, at times, become tense and even conflict ridden, in some important respects the kgosi was the stronger party because the evangelizing missionaries depended on his permission to establish a church in his morafe. Usually, the dikgosi allowed only one missionary church to be established (Schapera 1970: 122), which they attempted to capture into their polity. That the dikgosi and their close retainers functioned as the church elderhood epitomizes the extent of their engagement. As I have argued elsewhere (Gulbrandsen 1993a: 49ff.), this meant that the missionary churches tended to take on the character of a ‘state church’. Landau (1995: 51) emphasizes the missionaries' dependency on the dikgosi, one of whom pointed out that ‘[i]n a very true sense Khama is head of the Church as well as head of the State’. Likewise, during a celebration in the royal kgotla, a prominent man asserted that Kgosi Khama ‘reigns through the Church. His reign is established by God’ (Landau 1995: 52). Echoing European notions of church-monarchy relations, Khama himself declared that ‘[t]he Lord Jesus Christ…made me a chief, and He knows how I try and have always tried to rule my people for their good’.¹¹

      By these constructions, several dikgosi hence attempted – to a great extent successfully – to add a new spiritual dimension to their respective bogosi. For example, when Kgosi Bathoen II of the Bangwaketse (r. 1928–1969) played the organ during church service, he was both asserting his divine connection and naturalizing Western idioms of eminence into Tswana hierarchical thought. This did not conflict with the kgosi's centrality in indigenous cosmology which was continuously reproduced in the discursive field of the kgotla – the locus of ancestral morality – into which also the missionaries were drawn, e.g. in the conduct of Christianized ritual practices, like praying for rain (see Gulbrandsen 1993a: 68–70).

      The consequent close relationship between dikgosi and the evangelizing missionaries was the prevailing pattern amongst the Northern Tswana – to the extent that the missionary church assumed the character of being a ‘state church’. To a very limited extent ‘the spiritual aspect of the chieftainship’ drew a wedge between ‘religion and politics, chapel and chieftainship’ as Comaroff and Comaroff (1986: 4–5) report in the case of the Southern Tswana. But there were a few exceptions, as for example in the case of Kgosi Kgama who ran into a serious conflict with the missionary resident in the royal town that instigated the formation of a challenging faction (in 1894), entailing a major controversy which also involved the protectorate administration (Chirenje 1978: 35ff.). However, Khama prevailed as a Christian kgosi. Amongst the Bakwena a controversy over the initiation ceremony of bogwera also entailed factionalism and a major conflict at the royal centre that implicated the missionaries; I shall discuss this case in the following chapter.

      In the case of the Bangwaketse, an indigenous LMS priest, Mothowagae, came acutely at odds with the resident missionary and he established an independent church – King Edward BaNgwaketse Church. This gave rise to a major divide amongst the Bangwaketse, manifesting itself in a serious conflict between Kgosi Bathoen I (r. 1889–1910, see front cover of this volume) who was attached to the missionary, and important dikgosana who supported Mothowagae. Their support was largely influenced by an emerging rivalry between Bathoen and his younger brother, Kwenaetsile. As I explain extensively elsewhere (Gulbrandsen 2001: 44ff.), the dikgosana were unhappy with the kgosi's close association with the resident missionary and his consequent reform and abandonment of important ritual and social practices. Mothowagae exploited this rift by expressing adherence to Tswana cultural practices. This he allegedly articulated in a charismatic manner that prompted the missionary to accuse Mothowagae of having brought ‘Ethopianism’ to the Bangwaketse. At the same time the dikgosana exploited this development to build up a second political centre. Kgosi Bathoen prevailed, however, because Kwenaeitsile died. But there was also a perceived threat emerging toward bogosi represented by independent church movements to which the dikgosana felt equally vulnerable as the kgosi.

      Apart from capturing Christianity in the effort to adding another spiritual dimension to the bogosi, it became increasingly evident that the kgosi's control over the missionary church was highly conducive – from the point of view of the royal centre – to sustaining spiritual control within the morafe. During the latter part of the nineteenth century an increasing number of young men migrating to industrial and mineral centres of South Africa were exposed to indigenous church movements, lead by people who had departed from a missionary church. Some of these church movements also attempted to expand into the Tswana merafe, where they were fiercely rejected as potentially disruptive to social order and a major challenge to kgosi authority (see Gulbrandsen 2001: 49ff. for an extensive account).

      Thus, by granting a missionary society a monopoly on evangelization and taking firm control over the church and its congregation, the dikgosi virtually gave rise to state churches. Quite pragmatically, virtually all the Tswana dikgosi recognized by the British (see below) privileged the missionary churches with a monopoly since they represented a powerful instrument preventing syncretistic movements – as dangerous exterior forces – from generating rhizomic attacks. Especially the provincial communities represented potentialities of such forces (Gulbrandsen forthc.), the supervision of which was tacitly conducted by the network of clergies extending from the royal centre. In particular, to keep at bay forces giving rise to challenging independent church movements was at least as much in the interest of the missionary church as the ruling groups of the Tswana merafe. Before the dikgosi lost their control over the establishment of churches at Botswana's independence, there seems to have been only one instance (in the 1930s) when one such movement temporarily became of some significance in a dynastic conflict at the Bakgatla royal centre (Morton 1987: 88f.; Gulbrandsen 1991: 52f.).

      Negotiating Protection: Threats of Annexation and the Establishment of a Colonial State

      The formation of the Bechuanaland Protectorate cannot, however, be characterized as entirely a matter of ‘love at first encounter’. Negotiations with each kgosi were conducted by a colonial officer – Charles Warren – who was met by the Bakwena with some reluctance, but shown considerable appreciation by the Bangwato (see Ramsay 1998: 66ff, on whose excellent account much of the following relies). Scepticism was only to be expected in view of British expansion into the region over the past decades. Indeed, this expansion was at one point perceived as such a serious threat that initiatives were made to unite various Tswana merafe, including the Bakwena and the Bangwaketse, into a confederation to resist what they considered British aggression. Such a confederation never materialized, however. The Northern Tswana rulers Gaseitsiwe (Bangwaketse) and Sechele (Bakwena) remained spectators to the violence perpetrated by the British in order to safeguard the diamond fields in and around Kimberley.

      When they eventually welcomed the British offer of ‘protection’, their acquiescence should be understood against a background of other colonizing forces at work which was perceived by Northern Tswana as an indeed dangerous threat. These were settler communities – British as well as Boers – which were by no means under British control and which pushed for expansion into the territories of the Northern Tswana merafe. This led to some violent interactions in the early 1880s (Ramsay 1998: 65).

      In