Kgosi Linchwe - the end of an era

| Friday August 24, 2007 00:00

 

So he has gone, without even a final goodbye. Probably it makes little difference where one receives news of this kind, at home, or, as in my case, whilst visiting relatives in the UK The impact is just the same - very hard. Mind you, there was always the possibility that, with a major operation of this kind, he might not pull through. And we had to recognize as much. On the other hand, he himself was remarkably confident. He had great confidence in the specialist he had seen in Johannesburg and was in no doubt that he would soon be back in Mochudi in good health and spirits.

But he must have known that there could be no guarantees that this would be so. In the very difficult weeks before his operation, when he was waiting for the treatment to reduce the size of the tumour, he was incredibly brave and philosophical. We joked, not for the first time, as to which of us might go first. But we never went much further than suggesting that if it was me, he would talk, if it was him, I would probably write. And I am now landed with a job that it is the last one in the world that I would ever have wanted - to try and write about him and his life time achievements without first giving him a draft for his approval. That said, I am conscious that he is somewhere behind me, peering over my shoulder, concerned that I get it right. So where do I even make a start when considering someone whose career has been long, varied and frequently controversial? With Kgosi Linchwe as a major traditional leader both in Mochudi and Moruleng over the border? With him as a diplomat, as an authority on customary law, as an innovator and moderniser, as a leading member for many years of the Ntlo ya Dikgosi, as a linguist and farmer or possibly as someone whose pungent comments could be quoted from one end of the country to the other? Perhaps it's right to begin with his youth, with his curious placement at an Afrikaner school in South Africa and then his time at another in England. How curious then that he should have said that he wanted to be a lawyer in later life.

It was in the UK that he first met Naomi Mitchison, who first befriended him and then became his adopted mother thus establishing one of the most remarkable relationships in the modern history of Southern Africa. Back home, Linchwe was installed in early 1963 and almost immediately agreed, with the tribe, to Martin Ennal's request that he, with Nana Mahomo, the PAC representative in London, and others there, such as Lord Listowel, Alec Dickson and Naomi herself, should set up a combined community development/refugee transit centre in Mochudi. At around the same time, he was involved with Kgosi Bathoen in the constitutional talks that preceded independence. As Kgosi, he hosted the 1965 BDP conference in Mochudi but at the elections that year, Mochudi rejected the BDP candidate and instead opted for the BPP's T.W. Motlhagodi. It has been frequently claimed that whilst remaining officially distant from politics, Linchwe unofficially favoured, first the BPP and then the BNF which was established soon afterwards at Pilane.  It has also been argued that Seretse's motive for appointing him Ambassador to the USA in 1968 was solely to remove him from the local political scene. It seems highly unlikely, however, that Seretse who had made such a brilliant move in making Z.K. Matthews the country's first Ambassador there and in New York would appoint a successor who was likely to fluff his lines. 

My own first hand impression, from a brief stay with him and Mma Seingwaeng in Washington was that he had made a very considerable impact on the black community there. The impact, however, went both ways. He himself was gingered by that community into re-examining his own identity and culture. The immediate result, once back at home, was his proposal to the tribe that bogwera should be revived.
It was promptly endorsed. The initiative was deplored by Seretse who regarded it as a retrograde, tribalistic move and kept a watchful eye on it see if justification could be found for bringing it to a halt. The revived bogwera was, however, to take a modernised form with circumcision being carried out in the DR Hospital in Mochudi. There were therefore no deaths and if it never liked the idea, the attitude of the government became slowly more relaxed. The first bogwera in 1975 was a relatively small scale affair but each of the five following exercises became larger and larger.

A question that was frequently asked by non-Bakgatla during the 1970s in particular was 'why is Mochudi so different? It wasn't just bogwera - which was not, of course, replicated anywhere else in the country - it was a number of other interlocking factors.  And all of them involved Linchwe, to one degree or another. In the first place, there was his personality, his delight in rocking the establishment boat and his on/off skirmishes with less adroit District Commissioners, to determine who possessed the greater authority. The issues at that time were particularly real because of the inevitable changes of authority in Mochudi which a centralising Independence had brought about. It needed the wise, hand of an amiable G.M. Lebani to settle things down. But what made Linchwe and Mochudi so different was that the Bakgatla had voluntarity given him an authority that was matched nowhere else in the country. After independence, the government rapidly reduced the formal powers of the Chiefs but the powers he had formally lost were counter balanced by the authority that he informally gained. In short, he became both locally and nationally a very major figure, controversial and enormously outspoken - as when his criticisms of President Mugabe persuaded the government to cancel his proposed visit to Mochudi and to substitute a less opinionated Molepolole in its place!

But how did he use this authority? In the 1930s the Bakgatla were described as the most progressive tribe in the country. During the later 1960s, 70s and 80s - the golden years - Mochudi was on the move and rarely out of the news. There were huge set piece occasions, the culmination of the six bogwera and bojale exercises, the opening of the new leobo, the visit of the Director General of UNESCO and the colourful meeting of all the burial societies which brought people together and gave them a sense of identity and achievement. And then there were a whole range of development initatives which included the Community Centre and Brigades, Linchwe II School, the cooperative societies, the library, the country's first rural industrial estate, at Pilane, the DR Hospital and the Phuthadikobo Museum.

It was sometimes said - correctly - that Linchwe himself was only rarely directly involved in these development initiatives. The comment missed the point. He never saw himself as the person who did the day to day work because he was the architect, not the builder. He approved initiatives, gave them his support and was available when help was needed. That was a role that he was uniquely able to perform.

Could he have been both a moderniser and a throw back conservative?
This was someone who could contemptuously reject witchcraft out of hand and who could try and ween the Bakgatla away from the unquestioning adherence to boswagadi, who had see-saw relations with the DR Church and ended by opposing the induction of a female moruti in the Mochudi DR Church. He usually had good reasons for adopting a particular stance but unfortunately I failed to ask him what, in this case, it might be.
And now it is too late. He has gone and an era has ended. He was the old Mochudi and without him Mochudi can only become something very different.