INTRODUCTION

We know a lot more nowadays about important chiefly personalities in the history of the baTswana in South Africa. Luka Jantjie – despite initially placing faith in British justice and European religion – found his people subject to colonial laws, and his country overrun by white colonists. In order to defend shrinking independence and constant land alienation he resorted to a final desperate act of military defiance in 1897. Montshiwa, similarly, fought for a quarter of a century to protect his territory in the Molopo region from the ambitions of white mercenaries, as did Mankurwane of the baTlhaping further south near Vryburg. Both finally opted for British protection, despite the significant loss of autonomy that this meant. The career of Mokgatle Thethe of the baFokeng near Rustenburg has now also been revealed. As the ‘founding father’ of the baFokeng, he formed a close association with Paul Kruger, later president of the South African Republic. This enabled him to buy a much needed measure of independence and to embark on a programme of extensive land acquisition which was later to form the basis for baFokeng material security and, later, mineral wealth. To preserve their land, their independence and ethnic unity, these men resorted to tactics ranging from outright resistance to accommodation with the colonising forces – but they lived in difficult and complex times, and to view them as mere collaborators (as has been the case with Mokgatle) would be an oversimplification.

Our focus, though, is on a kgosi who has not received full recognition for the role he played in reconstituting and laying the foundations for the continued security of his society. In many respects Moiloa's career mirrors that of other nineteenth-century Tswana leaders. It also reflects some of the key features of the experiences of African communities from the mid-1840s to the turn of the century. Reconstructing his life means also examining crucial external forces and institutions such as the missionaries, the local Boers who had moved onto the western highveld from 1838, state officials of the South African Republic, and Tswana neighbours.

Introduction

In 1800 the baHurutshe lived about twenty kilometres north of the present-day town of Zeerust in the wider Marico district. Archaeological evidence reveals that they had been in this locality for close to half a century.