Yes Merriweather and Bathoen ii delivered health for all
Jeff Ramsay | Tuesday October 18, 2016 18:06
The service began when then Regent Ntebogang (1924-28) supported the Seven Day Adventist (SDA, Sabata) church in establishing a medical mission in Kanye, which was expanded under her successor Kgosi Bathoen II. In this context, as Isaac Schapera observed in his book “Tribal Innovators” (Athlone, 1970):
“In 1929 the Seventh Day Adventist medical mission agreed with Bathoen II that in return for a monthly subsidy (of 50 pounds sterling) it would supply the people with free medicines and treatment. To meet the cost, Bathoen imposed a tribal levy of 2s (shillings) per taxpayer.”
As this author, among others, has also noted, e.g. in “The Birth of Botswana, A History of the Bechuanaland Protectorate 1910-66” (Longman, 1987), the imposition of the said levy was not without controversy, its rejection by the Bakgatla baga Mmanaana at Moshupa in particular giving rise to conflict. Grant further expresses incredulity that in the 1950s Dr. Alfred Merriweather was able to organise a mass inoculation campaign throughout the Protectorate, again wondering how it was possible and where was the finance obtained? Etc. etc.
Details of Merriweather’s extraordinary initiative have been documented by a number of sources, including in his own autobiography Desert Doctor Remembers (Pula, 1999). It began when the World Health Organisation (WHO) agreed to finance Merriweather’s ambitious proposal, supported by the then Protectorate administration, to eradicate Endemic (non-sexually transmitted) Syphilis, known in Setswana as dichuchwa, throughout the territory using the then still relatively new wonder drug penicillin.
As a result, during 1955-56 Merriweather was seconded to the WHO to lead the campaign that ultimately involved medical workers, officials, teachers and dikgosi from throughout the country. In Mochudi, for instance, Dr. Teichler is said by Merriweather to have made “all the facilities of the hospital at our disposal.”
The campaign was further facilitated by the procurement of four wheel drive Chevrolet trucks that allowed Merriweather’s team to reach the then remotest settlements. By the end of 1956 the entire country had been covered except Ngamiland-Chobe, resulting in a further extension of WHO campaign under a Government medical officer to complete the work. Grant further wonders how Sechele’s Bakwena could have deployed modern conical bullets prior to their adoption by the militaries of America, Britain and Russia adding “but they could not have adopted them unless those countries had been producing them for some time in great quantities.”
As is pointed out in my article ‘Firearms In Nineteenth Century Botswana, The Case of Livingstone’s 8-Bore Bullet’ (Journal of South African Historical Studies, 2013), in keeping with the then times the Bakwena made their own bullets, importing customised bullet moulds from elsewhere, including the Birmingham Gun Quarter, e.g. from an August 1, 1850 letter by David Livingstone to Robert Moffat:
“Can you get the bullet mould (perhaps 2, & ramrods to fit) of 8 to lb. or rather fit 8 to the pound bore but conical, from Birmingham? Those which have an indentation behind fire much further, the dotted line marking the indentation. Sechele is very anxious to get the seven-barrelled gun. You seem to have forgotten it.’”
In his insatiable curiosity Grant also queries whether Botswana’s current eastern boundary with South Africa was originally the pre-colonial boundary between the Boer’s South African or Transvaal Republic and the Bakwena, Bangwato and Bangwaketse Kingdoms. Here one can refer to maps and even globes by reputable cartographers of the period between c. 1855-1885, e.g. the monumental 1864 Johnson Map of Africa or either the English or original German copies of Dr. Emil Holub’s 1880 maps of the “Bechuana Kingdoms” (“Betschuanen Konigreiche”).
In his column, Grant further notes that the 1962 ANC Special Congress in Lobatse would have taken place in the shadow of the British Special Branch, suggesting that would have only happened if the British turned “a blind eye to the affairs”. Having looked at some of the declassified police reports, as well as talked to various participants, it is this author’s perception that the British were content to sit back and watch. This is a point that has, in fact, been previously made by others as well, e.g. Neil Parsons “The Pipeline: Botswana’s Reception of Refugees, 1956–68” (Social Dynamics, 2008).
Finally with reference to the truly remarkable lifespan of Senang Distela, apparently born before 1820, died 1945, Grant finds it strange that having covered his longevity in the 1930s external media seemingly lost interest thereafter. While it can be hard to account for media trends, one suspects that after 1939 at least they may have been a bit distracted by Ntwa ya Hitlera le Mussolini.