�Republic of Botsoana�

We previously noted that in March 1919, at the inaugural congress of Comintern in Moscow, a report on “Communism in South Africa” had described Bechuanaland as a breeding ground for cheap black labour, which primarily worked in the mines and farms of South Africa.

The report further noted that local government in the Protectorate and other “native territory” in the region was “exercised by chiefs, petty chiefs, and headmen, always of course under the supervision of the police patrol.”  On the basis of the above, from the 1920s South African communists attempted to actively recruit Batswana migrant labourers, as well as those from the other rural reserves, into their party’s ranks.