After days and weeks of uncertainty regarding the participation of the Bakgatla-ba-ga-Kgafela in Mochudi and the surrounding villages in the on-going Presidential Commission of Enquiry in the Review of the Constitution of Botswana, the turn up at the Mochudi kgotla was reasonably good. It was good considering that a month before the Wednesday meeting, a letter written by Kgosi Kgafela II to the President last December, was leaked to the media. It contained frightening contents which were capable of aborting the commission’s visit to Mochudi. It was a sigh of relief when Deputy Kgosi Sekai Linchwe welcomed the commission at the Mochudi kgotla for the people to make their submissions.
Kgosi Kgafela II had said in a letter to the President that Bakgatla would not participate in the exercise and that individuals and groups which would participate would not be having the mandate to speak on behalf of the tribe. Kgosi Kgafela has since relocated to South Africa but still rules Bakgatla of Mochudi. He is on record saying he was not interested on things in Botswana. Part of the letter reads, “may it be clear that Bakgatla will not participate in any talks for Constitutional reform in Botswana, until we have full restoration our country (Bakgatla Reserve). Otherwise, we risk falling into error of betraying our forefather’s stand, recorded in Kgosi Linchwe I’s letter of 1894, Kgosi Linchwe II’s letter of December 1965, and all their gains since 1870 which are (our inheritance) systematically taken from us by politicians and foreign rule disguised as a democracy. Only then with our country in hand, shall we be in a position to meaningfully contribute to constitutional reforms, and negotiate a Federal State of Botswana (in the very least of compromise), where Bakgatla retain their independence, or semi-autonomy, within the greater Botswana”.
The letter continues, “Your Excellency must appreciate that we Bakgatla will never give up on our demands for restoration of our country. Our stand is a matter of principle informed by history and law. It is a reality of having no choice, given the history of cruelty we and our Bogosi have suffered at the hands of your BDP government and western democracy since 1966.The letter also warns the president that he will miss Bakgatla formal participation in the Constitutional reform talks. It states that the entire constitutional exercise will become still-born from a failure of participation by a major tribe within the country”. To the individual men and women of Kgatleng, Kgafela’s letter appears to acknowledge the possibility of them participating in the exercise and that he would have no power of preventing them.
To that end, it states that such people are those whose loyalties reside more with politics than Bakgatla heritage. “But none-in their small or large numbers-has the mandate to speak for our private ownership of Bakgatla Tribal Territory” the letter states. It is not the intention of this article to discuss the merits and demerits of the Kgosi’s letter. That is for the politicians and the courts to determine. The intention is to examine a few things that it brings about. First of all, it put Sekai in a difficult position because he had to choose who to defy and who to obey between his two masters. The first master is Kgafela who appointed him as his deputy. That means Sekai has to support whatever Kgafela does or says to him. He cannot be seen ignoring Kgafela’s instruction. If he chooses to ignore what Kgafela tells him to do, that may be seen as insubordination and risks being fired. For the tribe to have participated in the constitutional reforms, tells a different story. Sekai was better advised. He has never defied Kgafela and has vowed never to do that for as long as he is still Kgafela’s deputy. In fact he is on record saying most of the things he has been doing were at the insistence of Kgafela. In other words, he was honoring the master’s word. This is justified. He cannot be blamed for that.
The other master is the employing authority – the Government. Currently, he is in the payroll of the Botswana Government, the position he fought for during the past years when he was jobless. He had retired due to compulsory retirement age and government had refused to employ him on contract. After protracted talks, government finally employed him. My understanding of government machinery is that he must have been advised to toe the line when he was re-employed. There is absolutely no way he could be offered re-employment without such a warning being put out to him. That would be a very serious omission on the part of the employer. Even when an employee is being promoted to a high scale, he or she is advised to pull up the socks to ensure that the out-put is commensurate with the level of the new post. The same is the case with suspended officers upon their reinstatement. A word or two is always necessary.
Now being in the government payroll, Sekai was expected to do what the employer wanted him to do. It was a must for him to arrange a kgotla meeting for the Presidential Commission of Enquiry on the Review of the Constitution of Botswana. It was not a request but an instruction. He was duty bound to do that. The consequences of not cooperating with the commission would have been far greater . Similarly, defying Kgafela would also have landed him in troubles because he would have been seen as a betrayer, something he had never done to Kgafela since he became his deputy. For the tribe to have participated in the exercise despite Kgafela’s indifference to the issue is unclear. But common sense dictates that there must have been a behind the scene negotiations between Sekai and Kgafela during the days preceding the meeting. If indeed that is what happened, then Sekai did a clever move because the parties involved were able to avoid embarrassment. Submissions were long but time was the enemy. What was embarrassing was an attack on the chairperson of the commission, Justice Maruping Dibotelo by some element in the tribe. They claimed that at one stage during the public flogging hearing, Dibotelo imprisoned Kgafela. The fact of the matter is that it was Maruping who released Kgafela and co-accused from prison at the High Court in Lobatse. The state had earlier demanded Dibotelo to recuse himself because he was closer to Kgafela II. It was pointed out that Kgafela was Dibotelo’s counsel when the latter was suing Mmegi Newspaper for defamation and that when Kgafela got married, Dibotelo gave him a present.
In his letter, Kgosi Kgafela punctuates his message by using two Setswana terminologies. These are “Monna o nkga le di tsagagwe simply meaning that the hated must not be denied their belongings or he who hates one another, must apply that to the property as well. The second terminology used is “Motse fa o bakwa re tla o kgaogana”. This is a Sekgatla war song which originated years ago when there was a dispute about who should take control of a village. The people would go to war and the victor would take full control and when there was no outright winner, the village would be divided into two halves. This reminds one of the stories of how Korea was divided into two halves, North and South in 1948 following the failure by the Soviet Union and the United States to agree on the terms of Korean independence. North Korea has since been backed by the Soviet Union/Russia in opposition to the pro-western South Korea. This happened after the World War II following Japan’s surrender. Details of the Korean war can be seen on Wilfred G. Burchett’s book, “Again Korea”.
