A study of state formation and interventionism can hardly be said to be complete without an analysis of individual, class or group interests and the manner in which the latter relate to the means of production in a given socio-economic and political environment. This generalisation is, perhaps in some limited way, as true for "primitive" societies as it is for the modern nation states. In two authoritative works, political scientist Crick {1987 and 1992) makes the point that all but the most primitive societies have differing interests and values, and that it is the mark of civilisation to attempt to reconcile them by political institutions. In some ways the same can be said of traditional Tswana polities.
Botswana's early history is largely unknown, but archaeological discoveries suggest that parts of the country were inhabited at a very early stage. Settlement in Botswana extends back into the Palaeolithic Age, with the development of a cattle-based economy as far back as 200 AD. Until the early 18th century the inhabitants of what is now Botswana were semi-nomadic hunters and gatherers. The earliest states in southern Africa may have originated in present day Botswana about 1000 AD (Denbow, 1982, 1986 and 1988). Archaeological evidence suggests that centralised cattle-keeping and nucleated human settlement of numerous peoples in southern Africa were indicative of the existence of states with centralised wealth and authority (Murray and Parsons, 1990). But very little is known about these inhabitants. What is now established is that a characteristic feature of state formation in pre-colonial Botswana was a system known as Mafisa. This refers to a system whereby cattle were loaned in trust from patron to client, in return for tribute, services and political allegiance. For a long time clients could not slaughter or market Mafisa cattle since they were held in trust and
remained the property of the patron. However, they could use them as draught power for ploughing and milk them, and an accumulation of such cattle could enhance one's prestige in society thus allowing the furthering of political and economic interests.
A clear understanding of the manner in which the Mafisa system functioned is significant for our analysis, not only because it was an organisational principle among the most powerful Tswana principalities, but also because it was at once a mechanism for both accumulation and redistribution among the various polities. It was also a useful safety valve against absolute poverty and rebellion. In this sense it constituted a unique moral economy whereby a distinct survival safety mechanism for the disadvantaged members of a community also acted as an effective device for domination by a small but prosperous traditional elite i.e. it enhanced their political hegemony tremendously while it lasted. As Parson (1981) observed, pre-market relations in cattle were characterised by a semi-feudal system, whereby chiefs granted usufructuary rights in cattle to kin and close associates in return for their political loyalty. Thus, besides serving an economic function, the Mafisa cattle constituted the contractual basis of political relations between the chiefs and their subjects.
However, this system started to collapse in the 19th century with the intensive penetration of Cape mercantile economy into Tswana territory. It should be noted though that Cape mercantilism, as an external force, did not cause the disintegration of this system. Internal developments and conflicts laid foundations for the eventual decline of the system. For instance, many "vassals" who had accumulated numerous Mafisa cattle began to perceive claims on the part of successive chiefs to ultimate rights over them as undue interference in their freedom to participate in trading thus taking advantage of the commercial opportunities afforded by the advent of coastal mercantilism. In essence, Cape mercantilism merely acted as a catalyst in the decline of what was almost a moribund social organisational principle. Chief Kgari of the Kwena tribe was for instance believed to have precipitated his own downfall at the hands of a small group of large cattle-holders in 1859 (Parson, 1981) because he continued to make indiscriminate ownership claims to all cattle.
It was against this deteriorating background that most chiefs, realising that cattle ownership had become the main internal threat to their political authority, declared some limited rights to private ownership on the eve of the advent of British colonialism. But
... the liberalisation of private property relations was a slow and cumulative process dependent on the scale of productive opportunities in the market as well as upon the progressive extension of citizenship rights even to some serfs by 1911... it was the large cattle owners who gained the most by freeing of livestock from royal ownership, by realising cash from sales of cattle and purchasing imported goods
from small holders, effectively building their herds even further (Lawry, 1983 p.5)
( 11).
The above observations lend colour to the supposition that by the turn of the last century, social relations in cattle among the Tswana took on increasingly less importance relative to cattle as a commodity, as well as a means of subsistence.
Setswana-speaking groups, one of the major divisions of the Sotho group of Bantu-speakers, arrived in Botswana in a series of migrations in the period immediately preceding the 18th century. These groups were more economically advanced and well politically organised. Consequently, they managed to push the earlier hunter-gathering San inhabitants westwards into the Kgalagadi Sandveld. Most of the San were enserfed by these intruders and disparagingly called Masarwa, a pejorative term denoting servitude; European settlers were later even more inaccurately to call them "Bushmen" (see Chapter 5 and 6).
According to Murray and Parsons (1990) the Mafisa System became the organisational principle among the Tswana states as they spread across modern Botswana. Strong political institutions consequently evolved among these communities in the nineteenth century due to coastal trade, wars of conquest and subjugation plus the emergence of chieftainship as the most effective organ of national mobilisation and statehood. The rise of Zulu militarism in the wake of the Shaka revolution would appear to have legitimised the establishment of strong chiefdoms capable of protecting both subjects and property (Omer-Cooper, 1966).
It is this period of conflict which coincided with the development of the various Tswana chiefdoms. These chiefdoms soon found themselves strategically placed as centres of trade in Southern Africa. The advent of European commerce in the Southern tip of the continent effectively located them in a position to regulate the flow of commerce to regimes north and east of their territory. Economic historians have observed that the political expansion of these chiefdoms resulted mainly from the fact that "trade in ivory, furs and feathers, and the introduction of the horse, wagon and gun, accounted] for the articulation of the 'feudal' states of Botswana into the expanding mercantile economy of the Cape... an articulation that was to take the eventual political form of a British Protectorate over Bechuanaland in 1885" (Murray and Parsons, 1990).
Meanwhile, as weaker chieftains, like those of the Kalanga, Kgalagadi and Kaa, were incorporated into Tswana societies, the Mafisa system was used to keep them in servile status. Some scholars have rightly characterised this political function of Mafisa as constituting "cattle-feudalism". Social and economic differentiation seem to have been distinctive features
of pre-colonial Tswana life. In the background of these primitive forms of accumulation lay the figure of the Chief.
The anthropologist Schapera has studied Tswana societies for well over fifty years and provided a corpus of information that has been consulted and used by academics of different persuasions and from different disciplines. Among his subjects, the chief was
... at once ruler, judge, maker and guardian of the law, repository of wealth, dispensers of gifts, leader in war, priest and magician of the people. (Schapera, 1984, p. 62).
According to Schapera a tribe was not a closed group and it was not necessarily homogenous; culturally, linguistically and socially. Schapera distinguished in descending order of political power and wealth, several ranks of social classes:
... nobles (dikgosana), agnatic descendants of any former local chief; commoners (badintlha, batlhanka), descendants of aliens incorporated long ago; and immigrants (bafaladi, baagedi), people of groups more recently admitted (Schapera, 1984, p. 36).
The chiefs rule was, however, not absolutist. Chiefs ruled by the consent of their subjects and through self-appointed councillors plus some members of the noble class to pre-empt challenges to their power. A fourth group existed of such socially and politically "inferior" status that they had no rights of their own, were usually attached to "masters" to whom they paid tribute and provided free labour. Virtual hereditary serfs, if not slaves, these subjects, referred to by Wiseman (1974) as "the Peaceful Outsiders", have over the years remained in a state of servitude. The traveller Chapman after meeting a group of them wrote that:
They call themselves dogs, pack oxen and horses of Sekomi (sic) [the Ngwato chief] and never think of aspiring to any other position. Dogs because they hunt and kill game for their masters, pack oxen because they must carry home the proceeds of their hunts for hundreds of miles, and horses because they must act as spies and run from one post to another with the least information (cited in Steenkamp, 1991, p. 302) (12).
Thus contrary to accounts that differentiation in the rural economy only dates back to the colonial period, this phenomena has long been a feature of Tswana societies. The distribution of resources, especially cattle and land, was very skewed even in the pre-colonial economy.
The chief was charged with the responsibility of allocating and distributing land. In effect the land belonged to the chief even though he could not alienate any part of tribal land to outsiders without the consent of his subjects. It was against this background that Schapera (1952) suggested that
land use was similar among Tswana tribes and this determined land rights for members of each tribe (Ngongola, 1992a). In fact legal studies have established that three modes of customary land tenure were common to all Tswana ethnic groups, viz; land was earmarked for residential, arable and grazing purposes (Frimpong, 1986).
The village compound and its immediate surroundings constituted the residential area. Beyond the latter were arable agricultural holdings. Grazing land stretched from the end of arable land, in theory ad infinitum, but common logic dictates that it practically ended where it met the boundaries of other tribes; unless of course war was planned. Actually, recent archaeological findings around Toutswe Hill in the Central District confirmed the existence of such settlement patterns dating back to 1000 AD (Denbow, 1986).
It would appear that although the basis for differentiation in Tswana society has always been the property rights appertaining to cattle, access to grazing land, social class (especially, one's political position in society), and to labour engaged in cattle-herding, most families had rights of access to some agricultural land. Individual accumulation was possible even though senior tribesmen and the chief could exact tributary demands and thus undermine the process. The advent of colonial rule, its expanded encashment of rural produce (largely cattle) and labour, and the different colonial interpretation of customary Tswana law transformed both property forms and socio-political relations.
The most interesting feature of Botswana's pre-colonial and colonial relations of production is the fact that they were characterised by a dynamic cattle economy, sanctioned by an ancient historical tradition and socio-cultural ethos, rather than field crop production as was the case in neighbouring South Africa and Zimbabwe (Palmer and Parsons, 1977) and indeed most parts of the world (Harriss, 1982). In the case of Botswana cattle accumulation and access to expansive areas of grazing thus largely determined rural differentiation. To contemporary observers, however, this was to be expected; as Schapera (1943) remarked, "the country is notoriously more suitable for ranching than for the cultivation of crops, which, indeed, is possible only in certain areas...” (p. 209). How then did this mode of production, based on land and cattle accumulation articulate with the capitalist relations of production "introduced" by the colonial state?