The State and the Social. Ørnulf Gulbrandsen
and their respective governments is reflected in systematic written records of their decision making. For example, Kgosi Seepapitso III of the Bangwaketse (r. 1910–1916) compiled comprehensive accounts that later on were published by Schapera (1947b) and examined by Roberts (1991: 173). Roberts has identified the various fields in which dikgosi exercised their authority, including: ‘the agricultural cycle; control over access to agricultural land; the regulation of population densities in residential areas; the regulation of family life; the management of education; the organisation of public works such as roads and construction, and the eradication of noxious weeds; attempts to control Christian sects; regulation of the activities of the Ngwaketse medico-religious specialists (dingaka); control of money-lending; and the management of stray cattle’.
As this suggests, many of the dikgosi readily operated as agents of Western modernity, extensively confirmed by Schapera's (1970) ‘Tribal Innovators’. In the dikgosi's effort to conduct the administration of their respective ‘reserves’, they also developed a small administration, staffed with clerks who, amongst others, made written records of political decisions and court judgements. This was, however, not a radical break with the past. As Wylie (1990: 55) states, the northern Tswana dikgosi changed to ‘govern with the aid of salaried bureaucrats who were accountable to him alone’. The point is that the dikgosi could only operate powerfully in the interest of the British (and themselves) by maintaining their authority in relation to the morafe. This meant that they had to exercise authority continuously in the context of the kgotla and cultivate networks of political support amongst powerful dikgosana and other authority figures. A kgosi who repeatedly acted in disagreement with his subjects would not last long (see Chapter 6). That the two most prominent indigenous rulers during the colonial era – Kgosi Bathoen II of the Bangwaketse and the regent Tshekedi of the Bangwato – developed particularly forceful leaderships did not depend upon British support alone. As we shall see in the following chapter, the relationship between these two dikgosi and the British was at times ridden by serious conflicts and was always ambivalent.
Of course, it is questionable the extent to which the popular meetings in the kgotla (lebatla, pitso) under the presidency of the kgosi- with a highly inclusive assemblage of the adult male sections of the population (see Schapera 1984: 82) – were operated in a ‘democratic’ way in a modern, Western sense (see Chapter 6). It is nevertheless crucial that vast sections of the population were regularly gathered in the royal kgotla and exposed to the exercise of kgosi authority as the apex of the hierarchical structure of royal councillors (bagakolodi, singl. mogakolodi) and dikgosana25 of all the wards comprising the morafe. This exercise of authority was, to missionaries and other Westerners, readily conceived as mundane, secular practices of public debate ended by the kgosi's concluding statement. But, as I shall explain in Chapter 4, the process itself – in the discursive field of the kgotla – had significance far beyond resolving pragmatically the issue at hand in a straight forward Western sense. In brief, the debates in this discursive field – which often go on for hours and even days – ritualized the rich symbolism underpinning the hierarchical order of the merafe. They hence asserted the eminence of the Tswana ruling group surrounding its apex – the kgosi – who, as the incumbent of the bogosi and the principal custodian of ancestral morality, gave this particular hierarchy a cosmological anchorage.
The consequent reenforcement of the dominant position of the Tswana was gaining further momentum by the ever-more-present, larger world that impelled the dikgosi to secure societal control by means of legislation. Prior to legislation the dikgosi consulted extensively with their bagakolodi, dikgosana and the merafe at large in the context of the kgotla. Schapera's (1943b) extensive survey of the laws (melao) framed by Tswana rulers since the mid-eighteenth century shows how legislative activity intensified progressively during the colonial era. This development had a significant bearing on the dominant Tswana groups' exercise of authority in relation to subject communities as the legislative debates in the royal kgotla also included their leaders. Patently, they were brought into a discourse governed by the dominant Tswana which was leading up to the kgosi's decision, anchored in the Tswana royal ancestorhood.
The intensified exercise of Tswana domination in the discursive field of the kgotla was even more pervasive in the conduct of jurisprudence in the merafe's hierarchy of courts according to mekgwa le melao ya Setswana – the highly inclusive normative repertoire of ‘Tswana custom and law’ (see Schapera 1984; Comaroff and Roberts 1981: 70ff; Chapter 4, this volume). The gradual commoditization of the economy and, in particular, the extensive labour migrations to farms and mines in South Africa which took off with the exploitation of the diamond mines in Kimberley in the early 1870s (Schapera 1947a: 25), had a profound impact on family and community life and increased progressively the number of disputes and other conflicts. Such cases were usually initiated at the lowest court level – that of the descent-group kgotla. If unresolved there, the case was appealed to the ward level and, if still unresolved, ultimately to the royal kgotla where the kgosi made the final judgement.26 As I shall explain in Chapter 4, people's recognition of the kgosi as supreme judge follows from being perceived as the ultimate, living custodian of morality vested in the royal ancestorhood.
The everyday exercise of jurisprudence at all levels involved a mill of cultural assimilation that worked most powerfully in relation to immigrants distributed on wards in the royal towns. By the British instalment of the Tswana dikgosi as supreme authority of the various ‘reserves’, the Tswana royal kgotla also became the court of appeal for all lower-ordered courts, including those of outlying subject communities. Seen in retrospect, this practice had certainly a strong impact upon the establishment of Tswana domination in the sense that members of minority communities – without question – have become highly accustomed to bring their unresolved cases forward to one of the Tswana dikgosi (see Chapter 4). This goes even for people in Kgalagadi communities beyond the Tswana merafe in western Botswana who still – some thirty-five years after independence – call upon the kgosi of the Bangwaketse to judge their appeal cases. In view of the existentially important issues involved in many of these cases, minority communities' readiness to appeal their cases for judgement by a Tswana kgosi is obviously a major confirmation of how Tswana domination took hold during colonial times amongst people far beyond those incorporated in the royal towns.
In conclusion, the British wide-ranging authorization of the Tswana dikgosi to deal with all vital issues evolving amongst their respective subjects, perfectly matched the ways in which relations of authority are generated and reproduced amongst the Tswana: through the exercise of authoritative leadership in the discursive field of the kgotla under an imaginary cosmological guidance of the royal ancestorhood. Virtually obsessed by dispute settlements and very devoted to debating rules and notoriously concerned with social control and order, the British had at hand practices and structures that proved highly instrumental to implement principles of indirect rule. Just as the missionaries saw the kgotla as a secular field, the British had probably little idea about the extent to which their authorization of the dikgosi gave the latter prerequisites conducive to strengthening their authority and expanding the domination of the officially recognized Tswana merafe in accordance with their cosmological centrality.
Conclusion
The Tswana merafe of present Botswana is not a colonial creation; their strength, structure and practices were in many respects well established at the arrival of the British (see Comaroff and Comaroff 1991: ch. 4 for a corresponding account of the Southern Tswana within South Africa). I have explained with a particular focus upon the three major merafe – the Bakwena, the Bangwaketse and the Bangwato – that their growth in strength