I first heard this story sat beside a campfire, beneath a blanket of stars, listening the calls of lions and hippos in Chobe National Park, Botswana. That introduction sounds made up, but is completely true. We’d had a day of safari and were camping in the bush with nothing but a ring a lanterns between us and the wild. Whilst most of our party had retired to their tents, my friend and I stayed up and chatted with our local guides about the animals, life in Botswana, and the country’s ties to my own, Great Britain.
‘The Empire on which the sun never sets’ was a boast for the vastness of the British Empire between the 18th and 20th centuries but it no longer remains a source of pride and this is something I’ve felt more acutely as I’ve travelled to places that were once colonies and have seen for myself the lasting ramifications. There might be something to be said for the colonialists’ investment in health care, education, infrastructure, spread of democracy etc. but this does not detract from the substantial human cost; dispossession, identity loss, the destruction of cultures, and the massacre of millions.
My history teacher once told me that we spent so much time learning about World War Two in school because they want to make sure our generation doesn’t allow the same thing to happen again. I got the impression it was much the same for our education on colonialism and I think it was against this backdrop that I became fascinated by small acts of rebellion against the great trampling machine of colonialism, such as in the tale of three African chiefs who traveled to England in 1895 to lobby Queen Victorian to protect their land, as told to me by two safari guides over one hundred years later.
In the 1890s the three chiefs, Sebele I, Bathoen I and Khama III, found themselves under increasing threat from the British South African Company, headed by Cecil Rhodes. Rhodes was putting pressure on the British government to annex Botswana to protect the British South African Company’s interests in the area, which would effectively see the leadership of Botswana firmly transferred to the British.
Each diplomatic, responsible, and popular, Sebele, Bathoen, and Khama were fierce protectorates of their land and their people and sought to prevent Rhodes from achieving his ambition. Khama in particular was in general an ally of the British, but after Rhodes used him and his tribesmen to defeat the Amandebele people and then accused him of being a coward for not wiping them out completely, Khama rejected Rhodes and determined to stand in his way.
With support from the London Missionary Society and the Temperance Movement, the chiefs sailed to England to lobby Queen Victoria to help them protect what was rightfully theirs. The safari guides told us that the chiefs sailed to England and presented themselves to the Queen in full tribal dress and although I haven’t seen anything to back that up online, I sincerely hope it is true and can only imagine her majesty’s reaction. Afterwards, Sebele wrote how he “had no idea she was so short and so stout.”
The chiefs spoke up and down the country and were ultimately successful in their mission, particularly with Rhodes’ reputation shattered by the failed Jameson Raid. The Bechuanaland Protectorate was established on the 31st March 1885 and became the Republic of Botswana on 30th September 1966.
A statue of the three chiefs, Three Dikgosi Monument, stands in the Botswanian capital, Gaborone. A statue of Cecil Rhodes which stands at Oxford University, England, is likely to be pulled down in the near future.
