The Surgeon :: Mmegi Online

We concluded last week by observing that when in 1846 the Boers confiscated the wagons of one trader for carrying arms to Sechele, the missionary David Livingstone had calmed their fears about Bakwena military strength. But, tensions increased shortly thereafter as the Boers suspected that Livingstone, himself, was involved in the arms trade.

Their suspicions were correct. Livingstone’s surviving private correspondence with family members and close associates confirms that he, along with his father-in-law the Rev. Robert Moffat, assisted Kgosi Sechele in the direct ordering of guns and bullet moulds from the Birmingham Gun quarter, then the world’s leading centre for the manufacture of made to individual order armaments. In a May 1849 letter to Moffat, Livingstone thus notes:

“Sechele sends three really splendid tiger (leopard/nkwe) karosses to Birmingham, two to the ladies who sent the chairs, not as payment, but as tebogelo for their friendship to one they knew whom not.

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