Botswana�s National Monuments and Protected Areas
Correspondent | Friday November 13, 2015 16:06
The National Monuments and Relics Act of 2001 ensures that the sites are adequately protected; most can be freely visited, and some have full time guides.
Continuing the series of articles, MIKE and JEREMY BROOK cover Dimawe Hill (Battle of the first Tswana - Boer War) and the Livingstone Kolobeng Missionary, all within an hour’s drive from Gaborone, and situated near each other, southwest of the Capital.
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Dimawe Hill
Dimawe is close to the Boatle – Mmankgodi road, five kilometres south of Mmankgodi village and less than an hour’s drive from Gaborone.
In 1852, the Battle of Dimawe occurred. Boer farmers raided the settlement, stealing cattle, wagons, and women, but through the command of Sechele 1, the Bakwena successfully defended their settlement.
The Battle of Dimawe was fought between several Batswana tribes (Bakwena, Bangwaketse, Bangwato, Bakaa, Balete, Barolong, Bakgatla bagaMmanaana, Bahurutshe, and Batlokwa) and the Boers in August 1852. Under the command of Kgosi Sechele I of the Bakwena tribe, Batswana defended Dimawe on the granitic Dimawe and Boswelakgosi Hills against the Boer troops.
The battlefield is easily accessible and includes remnants of the fortresses on Dimawe Hill and other enclosures and the Tswana soldier’s mass grave close to Boswelakgosi Hill, where the non-fighting Batswana held out.
Today few people are aware of the importance of the outcome of the Tswana-Boer War of 1852-1853.
However, the 1852-53 Tswana-Boer War was the ground-breaking event in Botswana’s birth as a nation.
At this time, Boer farmers used the Bahurutshe as slaves on their cornfields around Bloemfontein. A group of Bahurutshe, led by Kgosi Manyana Mangope, escaped and fled north to seek help from Sechele I and the Bakwena tribe in Manyana.
The Boers followed the Bahurutshe into Bakwena territory. The Boer commando of just over 1,000 arrived at Dimawe on Saturday the 28th of August 1852. There they found, mobilised against them, Kgosi Sechele I troops numbering some 3,000.
The Bakwena had detailed knowledge of the surrounding hilltops around Manyana and Mmankgodi and used them as watchtowers and hiding places.
When the Boers were spotted, Kgosi Sechele ordered the women and children to hide. Sechele’s own pregnant wife and staff were hidden in Sechele’s Cave four kilometres to the west at the site of the Manyana rock paintings.
The Boers stole cattle and wagons, and raided both Bakwena and English homes, including the house of David Livingstone at the Kolobeng – London Missionary, 13 kilometres to the north.
The battle lasted between three and seven days. David Livingstone wrote that the Boers captured hundreds of women and children before the Tswana stopped fighting, but today, historians believe that the Tswana won by using Sechele’s large gun stockpile.
The Boers killed 60 and 35 Boers fell – losing a great number of horses. Although the Boers began the hostilities by invading south-eastern Botswana, it was they who ended up running away. Scholtz’s Boer commando retreated back into the Transvaal of South Africa.
In February 1853 the Boers requested peace, resulting in an armistice. The boundary that prevailed at the end of the conflict still forms Botswana’s eastern frontier with South Africa today.
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Livingstone Kolobeng Missionary
This site boasts the first church and the launch of Christianity in Botswana, the first clinic and the first Bible School. It is also the site of the first western style irrigation project in Botswana; all due to the settling in 1847 – 1852 of David Livingstone and Robert Moffat at Kolobeng, just 40 kilometres south - west of the capital, Gaborone.
The site is now managed by the Kumakwane Trust and a guide will accompany you to the site of the Church, Livingstone’s house and clinic and the family graveyard down by the River Kolobeng, which is perennial and fed by springs.
Outside the entrance to the main residence lies the wonderful dentists’ chair or doctors’ examination table. Being a trained doctor, Livingstone performed dental surgery and surgery/first aid on the flat, elongate rock.
A permanent water supply, hills for protection against intruders and fresh meat from an abundance of warthogs (wild pigs) attracted the missionaries to set up the first London Missionary Church along the Kolobeng River in the Southern District of Botswana.
Livingstone, the famous British explorer and missionary, married Mary Moffat, daughter of Robert Moffat who set up the London Missionary School at Kuruman in South Africa. Through his 40 years of travel throughout Africa, Livingstone covered over 50,000 kilometres.
It was at Kolobeng in 1848 that Livingstone transformed the first Motswana to Christianity – Kgosi Sechele I, the great chief of the Bakwena tribe.
At their new location, the Bakwena built a dam and irrigation canal from the river as well as a school while Livingstone built Sechele’s house, taught the tribe how to irrigate fields, and practiced Western medicine.
The Boer army raid at Dimawe and the ongoing drought caused unrest among the Bakwena so they left the settlement.
Livingstone also left the mission for Cape Town, whilst his wife and children returned to England.
Livingstone’s daughter Elizabeth is buried at Kolobeng. She was only two months old when she died.
Thomas Dolman, a missionary and artist, and his servant, John Coleman, are also buried at the graveyard, along with a fourth, unknown, deceased.
Livingstone died in Zambia in 1873 and was buried at Westminster Abbey in London, UK the following year.
*Taken from a new book called, Wild About Botswana, to be released at Christmas