Land, Chiefs, Mining

Bernard Mbenga, Andrew Manson

Description

Land, Chiefs, Mining explores aspects of the experience of the Batswana in the thornveld and bushveld regions of the North-West Province, shedding light on defi ning issues, moments and individuals in this lesser known region of South Africa. Some of the focuses are: an important Tswana kgosi (chief ), Moiloa II of the Bahurutshe; responses to and participation in the South African War and its aftermath, 1899-1907; land acquisition; economic and political conditions in the reserves; resistance to Mangope’s Bophuthatswana; the impact of game parks and the Sun City resort; rural resistance and the liberation struggle; and African reaction to the platinum mining revolution. Written in a direct and accessible style, and illustrated with photographs and maps, the book provides an understanding, for a general reader ship, of the region and its recent history. At the same time it opens up avenues for further research. The authors, Andrew Manson and Bernard Mbenga, both based at North-West University, Mahikeng Campus, have, for some thirty years, been studying and writing on the region’s past.

Sujets

• Techniques
• Energie et Environnement
• Energie & environnement
• Africa
• History
• General
• History of Africa
• Mining
• General officer
• Histoire

Informations

• Publié par: WITS University Press
• Date de parution: 01 septembre 2014
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781868149926
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 2 Mo

Extrait

LAND CHIEFS MINING
LAND CHIEFS MINING
SOUTH AFRICA’S NORTH WEST PROVINCE SINCE 1840
ANDREW MANSON AND BERNARD K MBENGA
Published in South Africa by:
Wits University Press
1 Jan Smuts Avenue
Johannesburg
www.witspress.co.za
Copyright © Andrew Manson and Bernard K Mbenga 2014
First published 2014
ISBN 978-1-86814-771-7 (print)
ISBN 978-1-86814-772-4 (digital)
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the written permission of the publisher, except in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright Act, Act 98 of 1978. All images reproduced in this book remain the property of the copyright holders. The publishers gratefully acknowledge the institutions and individuals referenced in the captions for the use of images.
Project managed by Monica Seeber
Cover design and layout by Hothouse South Africa
Table of contents
Acknowledgements
Glossary
Maps
Introduction
CHAPTER 1: ‘The dog of the Boers’? Moiloa II of the baHurutshe c.1795-1875
CHAPTER 2: The South African War and its aftermath 1899-1908
CHAPTER 3: Land, leaders and dissent 1900-1940
CHAPTER 4: ‘Away in the locations’: Life in the Bechuanaland Reserves 1910-1958
CHAPTER 5: Rural resistance: The baHurutshe revolt of 1957-58
CHAPTER 6: ‘Blunting the prickly pear’: Bophuthatswana and its consequences 1977-1994
CHAPTER 7: Modernity in the bushveld: Mining, national parks and casinos
Conclusion
Bibliography and sources
Index
Acknowledgements
Many people, too numerous to mention, over the period of thirty years during which we have been studying and writing on the region’s past, have afforded us invaluable insights and encouragement. We should like to single out Professor Sue Newton-King, formerly head of the Department of History at the University of Bophuthatswana (now North-West University, Mafikeng campus), who provided the start and enthusiasm required to embark on our respective paths as historians. We should also like to thank Jane Carruthers, Professor Emeritus in the Department of History, at the University of South Africa, who took the time to read and comment on a much earlier draft of this book. Her remarks helped tremendously in the final outcome of this project. Any shortcomings are entirely ours. We should also like to thank Eugene Breytenbach, Deputy-Director, Directorate of Information and Management, Office of the Premier, North West Provinc e, and Liesl de Swardt, Department of Geography and Environmental Science, North-West University, Potchefstroom, for the production of maps. Our gratitude goes to Abe Madibo for photographs and to Paul Weinberg, Gille de Vlieg and Joe Alfers for the use of photographic material. And once again we are indebted to Elenore van der Riet of Hermanus for excellent translations of German scripts.
Terminology
We have chosen to employ the African prefixes when referring to the various communities about which we write. Thus we refer to the baHurutshe or baTswana in contrast to the academic norm which omits the prefix and retains only the stem: Hurutshe, Tswana. When used as an adjective the prefix ‘ba’ is omitted.
Glossary of Setswana and Afrikaans names
bakgosing
royal ward
commando
armed, mounted party
difaqane
period (c.1800 to 1830s) of political turbulence, migration and social transformation accompanied by frequent destruction of life and property in southern and central Africa
inboekeling (pl. inboekelinge)
indentured servant, likened to a slave
kgosana (pl. dikgosana)
clan head, sometimes referred to as a headman
kgosi (pl. dikgosi)
term for king or chief among all Tswana societies
kgotla
public meeting, central meeting place or court
khuduthamaga
advisory council to the kgosi comprising family members and dikgosana
laager
(Dutch/Afrikaans) defensive fortified position, usually circular, with use of wagons
makgowa
Europeans/whites
mephato
age regiments
morafe (pl. merafe)
chiefdom
oorlam(se)
Africans absorbed into Dutch/Afrikaner society and culture
pitso
public meeting
veldkornet
local district official (in the South African Republic) with administrative and, especially, military duties
voortrekkers
Dutch pioneers (later Afrikaners) who set out on the great trek from the Cape Colony from c.1834 to the 1840s and founded the South African Republic and the Orange Free State
volksraad
parliament of the South African Republic
MAP 1: North West Province: Location (2013)

MAP 2: North West Province: Bushveld Region – showing some towns, villages, roads, rivers and mountains (2013)

MAP 3: North West Province: Vryburg Region – showing some towns, villages, roads, rivers and dams (2013)

MAP 4: North West Province: current ethnic areas (2013)

MAP 5: North West Province: Rustenburg Region – Platinum mining areas (2013)

MAP 6: North-West Province, Main Rivers (2013)

MAP 7: Native Reserves in Vryburg District (2013)
Introduction
This book deals with aspects of the history of the black, predominantly Setswanaspeaking population of today’s North West Province of South Africa. It covers the period from approximately1840, with the beginning of settler and colonial domination, to the present. It is not a comprehensive account but, rather, a number of interrelated chapters on different topics which chart the various political and economic forces that have shaped the fortunes of communities and personalities in the province.
The North West Province is a recent geographical construct that arose out of the Constitution underpinning the new democratic dispensation in 1994. It comprises parts of the former western Transvaal, most of the former homeland of Bophuthatswana, and the northern reaches of the Cape Colony, later Cape Province (see Map 1 ). In one sense, the construct is not entirely artificial, for its inhabitants broadly comprise two culturally and politically homogeneous units – Setswana-speakers and Afrikaners – who have experienced close to 200 years of contact with one another. This is not to suggest that both societies were sealed off from outside influences. Both had extensive contact with their surrounding inhabitants and there was a constant infusion of other people into this region over a long period of time. Both societies interacted with British colonialism and bore the imprint of that association.
The history of the baTswana in South Africa has by no means been neglected. The early arrival of missionaries, traders and hunters from south of the Orange River, and the settlement of the Boers on the western highveld have ensured that many aspects of their societies were written down, providing a rich source of information for later scholars.

IMPORTANT PUBLISHED WORKS ON THE BATSWANA IN SOUTH AFRICA
Between the burgeoning of research and writing on African societies in South Africa beginning in the late 1960s, and its petering out some two decades later, the baTswana in the Republic – with the exception of Kevin Shillington’s history of the colonisation of the Southern baTswana – rather missed the boat as far as published works are concerned. Shillington’s work, however, principally covered the Southern Tswana living in the former colonies of Griqualand West and British Bechuanaland. As far as other Tswana chiefdoms are concerned, the baFokeng have been the focus of a recent study by the authors of this volume as well as Heinrich Baumann, and Fred Morton sheds light on events in the Pilanesberg district through several studies of the closely related baKgatla ba Kgafela in the Bechuanaland Protectorate.
Important aspects of twentieth-century Kgatla affairs are recounted in J Magala’s history of the baKgatla ba Kgafela. Nancy Jacobs has written an environmental history of the black Tswana residents of the Kuruman district (although it is a little removed geographically from the North West Province). This declining attention to African societies in the pre-colonial and colonial eras was partly a reflection of increasing concern for other scholarly movements such as postmodernism, social and urban history, feminist and gender studies and, in South Africa especially, liberation histories which, on the whole, treated rural affairs in an understated way in which African reserves were viewed ‘largely in terms of their functionality to the developing capitalist system’. 1 The other diversionary development was the rise of nationalism in Africa which focused on ‘the larger narrative of national self-fulfilment’. 2 In this vision of Africa’s past, colonialism was either regarded as dead and buried and best forgotten, or reformulated as neocolonialism and used as a justification for the failures of many modern African states. Recent times, however, have seen a shift in interest to the last two centuries in Africa, sparked by renewed interest in postcolonial and subaltern studies. Finally, recent interest in the impact of South Africa’s ‘bantustans’ has led to a revival of interest in the lives of those trapped ‘away in the locations’. 3
Some of the more important books that have been published include Kevin Shillington’s The Colonisation of the Southern Tswana, 1870-1900 (Johannesburg: Ravan, 1985) which deals mainly with the baTlhaping and baTlharo merafe south of the Molopo River up to the turn of the nineteenth century. Part of this story has been reworked into a book on one of its leading figures, Luka Jantjie: Resistance Hero of the South African Frontier (London and Johannesburg: Aldridge and Wits University Press, 2011). Silas Modiri Molema wrote biographies of two prominent nineteenth century baRolong leaders, Montshiwa 1815-1896, BaRolong Chief and Patriot (Cape Town: Struik, 1966) and Chief Moroka: His Life and Times (Cape Town: Struik, 1950). The baFokeng received attention from the authors in ‘People of the Dew’: A History o