The Bangwaketse/SDA Health Service Happened

Jeff Ramsay | Monday October 31, 2016 14:00

This genuine indigenous initiative was achieved in partnership with the Seventh Day Adventist (SDA) mission during the reigns of Kgosi Bathoen II (1928-68) and his regents Kgosi Tshosa (1919-23), Mohumagadi Gagoangwe (1923-24) and Mohumagadi Ntebogang (1924-28).

The October 1929 agreement between Bathoen II and Dr. A.A. Huse of the SDA for the latter to expand its services and provide patients with free medicine and treatment in return for an additional annual payment of 50 pounds sterling per annum can, in this respect, be understood a milestone in the broader process.

It was this agreement that resulted in the Kgosi imposing a two shilling levy or surcharge on top of the then prevailing Hut Tax rate of 25 shillings in his Reserve. In his “Our Heritage” (26/10/16) column Grant, however, reaches the false conclusion that Bathoen II never actually imposed the levy, coupled with the false assumption that “the tribe would have gained from the proposed levy nothing more than it was already receiving” to further affirm that “the Bangwaketse did not, as claimed, pioneer the creation of a universal health service...”

The levy was in fact collected throughout 1930, in the face of a political struggle between Bathoen II, the Moshupa Kgosi Gobuamang, and the then British Resident Commissioner Charles Rey, which ultimately resulted in alternative financing.

The fact of the levy and the contours of the struggle over its implementation are at least partially reflected in the pages of Birth of Botswana, A History of the Bechuanaland Protectorate 1910-66, relevant passages of which would appear to have escaped Grant’s attention.

For a fuller picture, however, it is better to go to primary sources, for which there is documentation among the surviving Protectorate Administration files at Botswana National Archives and Record Services (BNARS) in Gaborone. Those truly interested in the period may also wish to explore the recently opened Bathoen II papers at the new BNARS centre in Kanye, as well as relevant SDA material.

A helpful overview of the history of the mission, its up and down evolution in financing and outreach can, for example, be found in a memo drafted by Bathoen II to the British authorities dated September 29, 1937.

Early reference to the introduction of the levy, itself appears in a March 3, 1930 memo by the Kanye Resident Magistrate to the Government Secretary in Mahikeng, reporting the Kanye kgotla’s unanimous endorsement of the initiative, as well as alleged rival LMS efforts to sabotage the effort.

A subsequent March 13 ,1930 communication by the Secretary of the SDA Bechuanaland Field Mission to the Government Secretary further outlines the additional services arising from their agreement with Bathoen II, over and above the salary support then already being provided for out of Protectorate funds, while a May 1, 1930 response by the Principal Medical Officer to the SDA confirms Government’s initial acceptance of the arrangement.

Additional correspondence documents the continuation and revival of the levy after Resident Commissioner Rey’s instruction that it be suspended in August 1930. Thereafter, the matter was temporarily settled by a new funding agreement between the Protectorate authorities and the SDA, signed in June 1931, to partially make up for the levy; e.g. Report on R.C. Visit to Kanye (27/8/1930); Rey to the High Commissioner (20/3/1931), PMO to Resident Magistrate Kanye containing SDA Secretary to PMO (30/4/1931) and New Agreement SDA Mission Kanye (17/6/1931).