“I have seen a newspaper in which it is said I asked for protection, also Gaseitsiwe and Khama. I do not understand this asking. The Bakwena were collected together as they are now when I went to the Cape to get guns and powder to defend myself with.
I went with Sanwe, Mr. Sam Edwards, here. There are others who can testify if I ever asked for anything beside to be allowed to buy guns and powder; to be allowed to obtain weapons the same as what the Boers had, to defend myself against them. As to our friendship I do not know why, because of that our country should be taken possession of. Why is known only to you white people and the missionary who lives here.” In his speaking of having gone to the Cape with among others the trader Sam Edwards, who had served as an interpreter, the venerable Bakwena Kgosi was referring to events that had occurred thirty-two years earlier, in 1853. After having accepted the Transvaal Boer leader Andries Pretorius’s armistice offer ending the 1852-53 Batswana-Boer War, the Bakwena Kgosi had proceeded to travel to Port Elizabeth and (by ship) to Cape Town to protest against provisions of the 1852 Sand River Convention.
