Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
cash to pay British taxes, sent many Batswana to South Africa to look for work on farms
and in mines. Up to 25% of Botswana's male population was abroad at any one time. This
accelerated the breakdown of traditional land-use patterns and eroded the chiefs' powers.
The British government continued to regard the protectorate as a temporary expedient
until it could be handed over to Rhodesia or the new Union of South Africa. Accordingly,
investment and administrative development within the territory were kept to a bare min-
imum. Even when there were moves in the 1930s to reform administration or initiate agri-
cultural and mining development, these were hotly disputed by leading Tswana chiefs, on
the grounds that they would only enhance colonial control. So the territory remained di-
vided into eight largely self-administering 'tribal' reserves and five white settler farm
blocks, with the remainder classified as 'crown' (ie state) land. Similarly, the administrat-
ive capital, Mafikeng, which was situated outside the protectorate's border, in South
Africa, remained where it was until 1964.
Independence
The extent to which the British subordinated Botswanan interests to those of South Africa
during this period became clear in 1950. In a case that caused political controversy in Bri-
tain and across the empire, the British government banned Seretse Khama from the chief-
tainship of the Ngwato and exiled him for six years. This, as secret documents have since
revealed, was in order to appease the South African government, that objected to Khama's
marriage to a British woman at a time when racial segregation was enforced in South
Africa.
This only increased growing political agitation, and throughout the 1950s and '60s Bot-
swanan political parties started to surface and promote the idea of independence, at the
precise historical moment when African colonies elsewhere were seeking their freedom.
Following the Sharpeville Massacre in 1960, South African refugees Motsamai Mpho, of
the African National Congress (ANC), and Philip Matante, a Johannesburg preacher affili-
ated with the Pan-Africanist Congress, joined with KT Motsete, a teacher from Malawi, to
form the Bechuanaland People's Party (BPP). Its immediate goal was independence.
In 1962 Seretse Khama and Kanye farmer Ketumile 'Quett' Masire formed the moder-
ate Bechuanaland Democratic Party (BDP). The BDP formulated a schedule for independ-
ence, drawing on support from local chiefs such as Bathoen II of the Bangwaketse, and
traditional Batswana. The BDP also called for the transfer of the capital into Botswana (ie
from Mafikeng to Gaborone) and a new nonracial constitution.
The British gratefully accepted the BDP's peaceful plan for a transfer of power, and
Khama was elected president when general elections were held in 1965. On 30 September
