Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
their divided nation was vulnerable to attack, they began to regroup under the aegis of
King Segkoma I.
These new states were then organised into wards under their own chiefs, who then paid
tribute (based on labour and cattle) to the king. Botswana may have begun to unite, but
the states were also highly competitive, vying with each other for the increasing trade in
ivory and ostrich feathers being carried down new roads to the Cape Colony in the south.
Those roads also brought Christian missionaries into Botswana for the first time and en-
abled the Boer trekkers to begin their migrations further north.
The Boers & the British
While Mzilikazi was wreaking havoc on the Batswana and missionaries were busy trying
to convert the survivors to Christianity, the Boers were feeling pressured by their British
neighbours in the Cape. The Boers were farmers from the eastern Cape in Southern
Africa, the descendants of Dutch-speaking settlers. In 1836, around 20,000 Boers set out
on the Great Trek across the Vaal River into Batswana and Zulu territory and proceeded to
set up their own free state ruling the Transvaal - a move ratified by the British in the Sand
River Convention of 1852. Effectively, this placed the Batswana under the rule of the so-
called new South African Republic, and a period of rebellion and heavy-handed oppres-
sion ensued. Following heavy human and territorial losses, the Batswana chiefs petitioned
the British government for protection from the Boers.
But Britain had its hands full in Southern Africa and was in no hurry to take on and
support a country of uncertain profitability. Instead, it offered to act as arbitrator in the
dispute. By 1877, however, animosity against the Boers had escalated to such a dangerous
level that the British conceded and annexed the Transvaal - thereby starting the first Boer
War. The war continued until the Pretoria Convention of 1881, when the British withdrew
from the Transvaal in exchange for Boer allegiance to the British Crown.
With the British out of their way, the Boers once again looked northwards into Bat-
swana territory. In 1882 the Boers managed to subdue the towns of Taung and Mafikeng,
and proclaimed them the republics of Stellaland and Goshen. They might have gone much
further had it not been for the annexation of South West Africa (modern-day Namibia) by
the Germans in the 1890s.
With the potential threat of a German-Boer alliance across the Kalahari, which would
have put paid to their dreams of expansion into mineral-rich Rhodesia (Zimbabwe), the
British started to look seriously at the Batswana petitions for protection. In 1885 they pro-
claimed a protectorate over their Tswana allies, known as the British Crown Colony of
Bechuanaland.
