Sebego Goes West

Sebego was not moving into unfamiliar territory. The sons of Masilo aMalope, including the descendents of Ngwaketse, had known the place for generations. This was the case notwithstanding the colonial era myth that before the late 19th century arrival of a few Boers, Ghanzi was an empty land - "nullius terra" in their legal Latin – on the basis that it had supposedly only occupied by "roving Bushmen", i.e. Khoe or Kua (Basarwa). 

Mmamosadinyana’s agents then and thereafter further assumed that, as Bushmen, the Khoe were by their nature a landless people. It was on the basis of this assumption transformed into convenient legal fiction that, in 1898, the Ghanzi District was handed over as “Crownland” to Cecil Rhodes British South Africa Company by the then British Tautona, Lord Milner.