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As an enthusiastic ally of the British, Khama III, leader of the Bangwato people and committed Chrétien, did not hesitate when Cecil Rhodes asked for help to defeat Khama's sworn enemies , the Amandebele.
after the successful campaign, when Rhodes marked Khama a coward in his own kgotla (court) not to erase the Amandebele, that Khama realized "he was the next, and Rhodes "It was not like the other British," says Neil Parsons, author of King Khama, Emperor Joe and the Great White Queen .
Two years later, in 1895, Khama and two other Botswana dikgosi (leaders) upset Rhodes' imperial playing plan by deploying an improbable tactic: a PR tour of Britain.
Thanks in large part to the efforts of the three chiefs, Bechubadand was spared by apartheid
In 1870, European involvement in southern Africa was limited to settlements Portuguese in Mozambique and Angola and British and Dutch participation in South Africa. Thirty years later, the whites controlled the entire region.
When the Bechubadand Protectorate (Botswana) was established in 1885, the British were happy to let dikgosi retain de facto control of the backwater. But Rhodes – who was both prime minister of Cape Colony and one of the richest men in the world thanks to his mining concerns in South Africa – recognized the strategic importance of the territory as a base for northward expansion towards the Zambezi. Republic of the Transvaal
Once Khama and his companion dikgosi – Sebele I of Bakwena and Bathoen I of Bangwaketse – realized that Rhodes intended the British government to hand over the protectorate to his British South Africa (BSACo), they quickly decided to travel to London for the centennial celebrations of a church established in Bechubadand by the London Missionary Society (LMS). Once in the capital, they planned to ask the colonial office – and Queen Victoria herself, if necessary – to keep their territory out of the clutches of Rhodes
. Their arrival in England was covered by numerous newspapers, notably The James Gazette which announced them as a "trinity of dark kings". The article describes Khama as "the best dressed of the three" and Bathoen as "a real Samson." Sebele had been a white man, the article continued, "he would have been a lawyer as surely as Khama would have been an ecclesiastic and [Bathoen] an innkeeper."
First stop on the route: the offices of Joseph Chamberlain, the new Secretary of State at the Colonies. But Chamberlain dodged the trio. He hoped that the arrival of Rhodes' representatives on the next ship would avoid him having to negotiate with the dikgosi Parsons explains: Chamberlain "told them that he would hear them when he would return from his summer vacation to the Mediterranean. "
dikgosi decided to take advantage of the delay in a tour of the country and to present his arguments to the British. While other colonial potentates had traveled to London and met Queen Victoria, all had received a short note from the Colonial Office, notes Parsons: "The rural advertising tour of the chiefs was a first.
They went with their guide and interpreter. Reverend William Charles Willoughby of the LMS. After the trip, Khama had persuaded Sebele to stop drinking – and anti-slavery and humanitarian movements, they appeared in town halls and church meetings in England, Wales and Scotland. "We do not just treat them as things that can be sold by their owners," Khama told Liverpool's audience.
Of all the meetings and merry, the dikgosi saw snow for the first time (the worst aspect of Britain, they all agreed, c & # 39; was his cold weather) and fox hunting. Khama, a good rider and hunter of big game, could not understand "why gentlemen should excite on things like foxes."
Despite some jealous tension between dikgosi – Khama To the chagrin of his companions, he became the poster for the tour – they returned to the British capital on a background of popular support and in a much stronger position than they had left it.
But Rhodes and Chamberlain were not idlers. Rhodes backtracked by taking Bechubadand "all at once," says Parsons, in favor of a fragmented solution that would allow the three dikgosi to keep most of their tribal lands until their departure from Britain and their cause And Chamberlain took advantage of the hatred of Rhodes and BSACo by making them donate the so-called "railroad gang" to the Queen, who would later hand her over to Rhodes, "Parsons says.
After the agreement was stamped at Windsor Castle in a meeting with Queen Victoria -" [I] did not know that she was so short and so corpulent, "wrote Sebele later – the step was blinded on 1945 dikgosi … but fate had other plans The Jameson raid, the invasion of the Transvaal Republic led by the mercenaries of Rhodes, extinguished it after five days, and it does not never completely recovered from failure. "The British government has punished Rhodes," says Parsons, retaining control of Bechubadand
In the decades that followed, Britain did not improve the Bechubadand. a protectorate to a colony because she hoped to give up control of the unprofitable territory of the Union of South Africa or Southern Rhodesia – movements that dikgosi was fiercely opposed because of the terrible treatment of blacks in both countries. Thanks in large part to the efforts of the three chiefs, Bechubadand was spared apartheid and remained a protectorate until 1966, when the independent Botswana nation was established.
Its president? Seretse Khama, who, like her grandfather, had used a tour in Britain to garner support for her cause. Eighteen years after the death of Seretse Khama, his son Ian Khama was democratically elected fourth president of the country, a position he abandoned in 2018 after two terms. To date, Botswana remains the leading example of democratic success in southern Africa.
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