The Bakgatla-Ba-Kgafela and the Liberation Struggle in South Africa 1948-1994
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L. Cantwell On the Frontline of a Frontline State: The Bakgatla-ba-Kgafela and the Liberation Struggle in South Africa 1948-1994 Abstract: In May 2012, Thabo Mbeki paid tribute to Botswana’s role in the liberation struggle in South Africa, and in particular to the role played by Chief Linchwe II of the Bakgatla-ba-Kgafela community in providing a safe haven for refugees and being a key part of the ANC’s ‘underground machinery’. The involvement of a traditional authority in Botswana in such clandestine activity in support of the liberation struggle in South Africa had, until this point, remained hidden from public view. Taking this revelation as a starting point, this paper examines the ways in which the Bakgatla-ba- Kgafela community had historically been involved in and affected by the struggle. Territorially located in both Botswana and South Africa, having been partitioned by the arbitrarily-drawn border decided upon by the colonial authorities, the Bakgatla were embedded within social and political networks in both countries. This paper draws on the central concerns of A.I. Asiwaju’s Partitioned Africans, especially R.F. Morton’s study of the Bakgatla within it,1 and seeks to place this demonstration of post-independence international cooperation within the deeply-rooted historical experience of a people of a common culture or ethnicity divided by an externally-imposed colonial border. Since 1870, there had been the constant trans-boundary travel and communication necessitated by the imagining of a single ‘homeland entity’ across a boundary constructed out of external political conflict rather than internal historical or social divides. As a result, the Bakgatla have historically been one the most politically dynamic societies in the region. Given the international nature of his ‘country’, it was inevitable that Linchwe and the Bakgatla in Botswana would be involved in by the liberation struggle. As a chief, however, his direct participation was controversial and dangerous. Chiefs had no official place in the multi-party democracy of post- independence Botswana, and though their traditional power remained hugely significant, they were prohibited from being politically active. Botswana, though a ‘Frontline State’ and a prime example of successful majority-rule in liberated Africa, remained at the mercy of South Africa both economically and militarily. Throughout this period, her foreign policy was inescapably influenced by economic dependence and military inferiority. Botswana was forced to walk the precarious tight-rope of official non-participation in the struggle, and the moral obligation to assist refugees. Based on a series of interviews and archival work carried out in Botswana in 2012, this paper will shed light on the social and political dynamics of a borderland community in the South African liberation struggle. It will examine the complexities the Bakgatla-ba-Kgafela faced through involvement in a fundamentally national struggle, as a partitioned people whose lands and outlook straddled the international frontier at the centre of the geopolitical hostilities. 1 R.F. Morton, ‘Chiefs and Ethnic Unity in two Colonial Worlds: the Bakgatla-ba-Kgafela of the Bechuananland and the Transvaal, 1872-1966’, in A.I. Asiwaju, (ed.), Partitioned Africans: Ethnic Relations across Africa’s international boundaries 1884-1984, (New York, 1985), pp. 127-153. 1 L. Cantwell On the Frontline of a Frontline State: The Bakgatla-ba-Kgafela of Botswana and South Africa and the Liberation Struggle 1948-1994 In May 2012 Thabo Mbeki gave a speech at a gala dinner held by the Sir Ketumile Masire Foundation in Gaborone. In his speech he paid tribute to Botswana’s role in the liberation struggle in South Africa, and in particular to the role played by Kgosi [Chief] Linchwe II of the Bakgatla-ba-Kgafela. Though based in Mochudi, on the Botswana side of the border, Linchwe’s Kgatleng [land of the Bakgatla] straddled the international frontier, and he was also the recognised chief of people living in South Africa. This irregular configuration, of an ideological ‘country’ intersected by an international border, had existed since 1870 when part of the Bakgatla fled northwards to avoid Boer harassment. The Kgatleng was inescapably involved with the liberation struggle, due to the ties and obligations of this geopolitical quirk. This paper will first examine the role of the Bechuanaland Protectorate, later Botswana, in the struggle, its foreign policy and its strategies of survival as an underdeveloped and dependent economic partner surround on all sides by hostile, minority-ruled regimes. It will then go on to look closer at events in the Kgatleng, taking as a starting point the involvement of Kgosi Linchwe, in order to shed light on the role a people on the very frontline of a Frontline state, within a complex and precarious international geopolitical situation. The National Context Botswana’s geopolitical situation left the government in an impossible position. To the south lay the apartheid regime of South Africa, whose anti-majority rule influence extended into Southwest Africa (later Namibia) thanks to the continued insistence from Pretoria that the state remained a province of the Union of South Africa and its illegal occupation which lasted until 1990 in defiance of continued resistance from the international community. A geographical quirk characteristic of the early twentieth century land-grabbing of the European powers meant that the territory of South west Africa reached across the north of the country too – the Caprivi strip providing the German occupiers with a tactical corridor to the Zambezi. To the east lay Ian Smith’s minority-ruled Southern Rhodesia, which left Botswana in the precarious position of being almost entirely landlocked by hostile, minority-ruled and increasingly defensive regimes. There was one geographical link to the outside world – a hundred yard long border across the Zambezi to Zambia, via the Kazungula ferry at the intersection of four nations at a single point in the middle of the river, some forty kilometres north of the Victoria Falls. Botswana’s unfortunate geography, or rather the fact that she suffered to such an extent from the machinations of the colonial powers in delineating the borders of southern Africa, was the crucial and underlying factor in the foreign policy decisions of both the British colonial government before 1966, and the post-independence governments of Seretse Khama and his successor Quett Masire with regards to the threat from South Africa and the struggle for liberation which unfolded in this period. At the same time, Botswana was being heralded internationally as a shining example of a successful liberal democracy developing under majority rule, despite its improbable location in the midst of hostile regimes. Liberation movements struggling towards independence in those surrounding states depended upon such democratically successful nations for both assistance and inspiration, as well as to prove to the world that majority rule could and did work. Botswana’s stability, her human rights record, her economic growth and her democratic developmental goals 2 L. Cantwell flew in the face of the justifications for the retention of minority rule and the ideology of the apartheid regime. Botswana therefore was automatically embroiled in the struggle between liberation movements and the minority regimes – merely by virtue of her existence as a viable nation state. However, the precariousness of the geopolitical facts complicated and coloured the political options available to the government. Botswana was almost entirely dependent on South Africa, and was therefore completely at the mercy of the apartheid regime. Though territorially similar in size to France, Botswana’s population was little over a million at independence, much smaller than any of the other countries in the region. At independence her economy was one of the least developed in the world, as a result of the lack of investment during colonial rule that stemmed from the British view of the Bechuanaland Protectorate as an economic backwater with no potential, whose significance was merely as a buffer to further South African expansion to the north that threatened the crucial trade and transport route from Cape Town to Cairo. A significant proportion of Botswana’s workforce were employed on a contractual basis on the mines and farms in South Africa. Though the significance of this factor declined in the decades after independence, with urbanisation providing employment options at home for many Batswana, cross-border labour links were certainly a factor that forced the government to remain economically involved with South Africa. In terms of trade, Botswana was entirely dependent on rail links and port facilities in South Africa for both imports and exports, and also on the country as a market for her primary export, beef. Botswana used the rand as currency until 1976. She has been a part of the Southern African Customs Union since its establishment in 1910. Until the mid-1980s, the share of customs revenue received through this system provided a greater proportion of government income than anything else – close to fifty percent of the total income between 1970 and 1975.2 The customs union was controlled by South Africa, so Botswana had no choice but to retain relations with the apartheid regime as international trade would have been impossible without the use of South African infrastructure which was only possible through remaining part of SACU. Even the exploitation of the vast reserves of copper and diamonds in the north of the country was locked into reliance on external investment from South Africa, namely through the De Beers Company. Militarily Botswana was extremely weak – the army, the Botswana Defence Force, was formed only in 1977, and until then the only armed defence came from the very small armed wing of the police. The age old fear of South African invasion remained as potent in this period as it had been for the three chiefs who travelled to England and petitioned Queen Victoria for British protection against Boer encroachment in 1885.