From his second home at the Three Dikgosi Monument in Gaborone, Khama III stares into the middle distance where his bronze eyes fall upon an unlikely couple. A uniformed police officer, who has sneaked away from the station with a marked car is building a romantic fire with a stout young woman who has been waiting for him in the bush.
It is unlikely that Tshekedi Khama, unlike his father Khama III, would ever get his own second home in the capital city to view scenes of what has become the territory that he also fought tooth and nail to ensure was not incorporated into the Union of South Africa. The fact that Tshekedi waged a tough struggle to ensure that generations after him are not forced to speak Afrikaans, that he was a wonderful guardian to founding president the late Sir Seretse Khama, and that he built the school that current President Festus Mogae would later attend, should make him an undisputed hero. However, the Bangwato royal's status as a hero is highly contested.
In 1936, Tshekedi and Bathoen II, the Bangwaketse chief took the colonial government High Commissioner, Sir William Clark, to the High Court over plans to restructure the political and judicial systems by way of two draft Proclamations 74 and 75. The introduction of these Proclamations was deemed as a first step towards incorporating the Bechuanaland Protectorate, as Botswana was known in colonial times, into South Africa. The Resident Commissioner Charles Rey had revealed contents of the Proclamations at the 1930 14th meeting of the Native Advisory Council in Mafikeng. The council was made up of local royal and political leaders. However, Tshekedi fought long and valiantly enough to stall the implementation of the Proclamations in his territory until the time that Rey left colonial administration and retired to the Cape in South Africa.
Tshekedi's public career began on January 19, 1925 when he was installed as Bangwato regent following the death of Sekgoma, his elder brother and Seretse's father. It was an occasion grand enough to attract the attention of the Johannesburg Star and the Bulawayo Chronicle. In the early days of his regency, Tshekedi decided that he would take sole charge of Seretse's upbringing and that he would develop a close relationship with his nephew. He was really fond of his young nephew and wanted the best for him. He is said to have never subjected Seretse to corporal punishment, considering the young man his royal senior. "If he needed to punish Seretse he sent him to the cattle-post," writes Michael Crowder in an unpublished typescript. While he may have lacked 'book intelligence' - he was a mediocre student at Fort Hare - Tshekedi handled real-life situations with amazing brilliance. He combined force of character and knowledge of the white man's law to negotiate his way out of sticky situations. He showed his true capabilities when he reacted after the infamous Ratshosa brothers' assassination attempt on him of Easter Monday 1926. He conducted himself very well in the subsequent trial.
Though it was his first time in a European court, the 21-year old regent comfortably fielded hostile questions from Dr Lang, a Johannesburg lawyer engaged by his would-be killers.
After the trial, he contacted Jutas, Cape Town booksellers to enquire about the cost of some law books, including two on evidence.
Those books proved useful 10 years later when Tshekedi clashed with Rey at the High Court in Lobatse over the implementation of the Proclamations in the Bangwato territory. He was no walk-over and in his memoirs, 'Monarch of All I Survey', Rey acknowledges that: "Buchanan's opening speech was rotten, but Tshekedi was good. Blakeway, who is a very bad cross-examiner and who did not know his brief, could not shake him".
Blakeway was the colonial administration's Attorney General while Douglas Buchanan was Tshekedi's lawyer. Tshekedi opposed Seretse's marriage to the English woman, and future first lady, Ruth Williams because he did not think that a white European woman was up to the task of being "mother of the tribe". It was after one of the few battles Tshekedi lost that he was banished from the Bangwato territory. Before his death in a London hospital on June 10, 1959, Tshekedi managed to meet and be reconciled with his nephew Seretse.
As we celebrate 40 years of independence, how should we remember Tshekedi? In his book, 'Tshekedi Khama: The Master Whose Dogs Barked At', Gasebalwe Seretse asserts that the good that Tshekedi did far much outweighs the bad. Understandably, Seretse's characterisation of Tshekedi is as objective as anybody else's would be when writing about a relative they idolise. Tshekedi's heroism however is viewed completely differently by other people. His misdeeds remain both tremendous and numerous. Tshekedi had running battles with chief John Nswazwi of the Bakalanga. To this day, some people are still bitter about the heavy-handed way in which a Bangwato regiment dealt with Nswazwi's people. Tshekedi's niece and sister to Seretse Khama, Naledi Seretse, recalls that as a student at Fort Hare, some currently prominent Kalanga leaders taunted her about the misdeeds of her uncle.
However Gasebalwe Seretse, absolves the Bangwato regent of all blame in an incident in which a Bangwato regiment penned Nswazwi's people up for refusing to pay tax. "The truth of the matter is that Oteng Mphoeng, the leader of the regiment and a World War II veteran who was known for his harsh dealings with the Kalangas had used his discretion to contain the potentially explosive situation," Gasebalwe Seretse writes. Afterwards Nswazwi relocated to present day Zimbabwe where he died. When his remains were exhumed and reburied in Botswana in 2002, one of the speakers described Tshekedi as a "terrorist". It is important to understand that Tshekedi could be mean to his own people - relatives included. At a meeting to discuss, Seretse Khama's controversial marriage to Ruth, Tshekedi, who was opposed to the union, decreed that the poor should not be given the opportunity to speak.
Gasebalwe Seretse's book suggests that the reason for this was that Tshekedi had support among the upper class only. It is said that when Tshekedi fell out with an erstwhile friend and composer of Botswana's national anthem, Kgalemang Motsete, he ordered him to pay 25 head of cattle to the parents of a woman he had seduced 11 years previously. Watching all this happen, the Serowe Resident Magistrate, Captain Gerald Nettelton remarked of Tshekedi: "If I were a Mongwato against whom he had a grudge, I would lose no time in finding another place of residence". Tshekedi did nothing to end the servitude of Basarwa to Bangwato, a gross injustice that continues to this day.
As a young boy, he interacted with Basarwa herdboys, eating, sleeping and even sharing the same blanket with them. Crowder suggests that from these Basarwa, Tshekedi must have also learnt some of his considerable skills as a hunter. Years later when he was regent, the colonial administration carried out an investigation in which it found that Tshekedi 'owned' 1,300 Basarwa. How would, Tshekedi who would have turned 101 on September 17 if he were still alive have fared in today's world? Like his long-time friend and cousin Bathoen II, Tshekedi would have taken a dim view of the current House of Chiefs. Crafters of the Chieftainship Act may never have met Rey, who died of internal bleeding in 1968 but it is remarkable how much, either by design or accident, his views greatly impacted on the spirit of the Act.
Under the Proclamations, chiefs could not take up office without recognition and confirmation by the administration. A conspicuous consumer Tshekedi would have been right at home in modern-day Botswana where as, Mogae has stated, people live large when we are only a low-income economy.
In one of his tours, Rey discovered that Tshekedi had bad debts and "showed no indication that he intended paying them". It is reported that one white trader told Rey that Tshekedi had run up such a large account with him for petrol that to save himself, he had given up selling it. The trader feared being shut down by the regent if he refused him more credit. Afterwards Rey would observe that Tshekedi's financial position "is far from good. It is true that he does not spend money on debauchery, but he spends it very freely in other ways.
For example he recently bought himself a house at the cost of nearly £1,000. He has four motor cars, a considerable number of well-bred horses, and generally behaves as if he had a considerably higher income than is the case". Ultimately, whether Tshekedi is brought back to life in bronze or not does not really matter. He will always tower above many leaders of his era despite his many character flaws.
