One notable rainmaker was Kgosi Sechele I of Bakwena. So on October 1, 1848 Kgosi Sechele I of Bakwena, after parting ways with his ‘superfluous’ wives, was baptised by the missionary David Livingstone. It was a sad day in Kweneng. “Many of the spectators were in tears of sorrow for the loss of their rain-maker or of grief at seeing some of the ties of relationship to him broken,” writes Livingstone in his Missionary Travels.
As fate would have it, the people’s sorrows were vindicated as unforgiving drought ensued following the famous (or rather infamous, depending on whose side you viewed it) Sechele’s conversion into Christianity. Rain would not fall and Sechele refused people requests for him to ‘charm the clouds’ and end the dry spell. Many people believed that Livingstone had bound Sechele with some magic curse. “I received deputations, in the evenings, of the old counsellors, entreating me to allow him [Sechele] to make only a few showers,” writes Livingstone. He said people pleaded with him saying the corn will die if he refuses and they will scatter. Livingstone records one of the pleas; “Only let him make rain this once, and we shall all, men, women, and children, come to the school, and sing and pray as long as you please.” This was the real test, not only on Livingstone’s celebrity convert but also on the reputation of Christianity among Africans who had their own beliefs and faiths. Livingstone had earlier noted; “The belief and gift of ‘rain making’ is one of the most deeply-rooted articles of faith in this country”
