Cattle People: The Tswana
By: 
Professor Fred Morton
Date: 
Thu, 11/07/2024 - 18:30
Branch: 
Northern
Cattle People: The Tswana
Talk by Professor Fred Morton, 11 July 2024

Tswana groups did not migrate long ago into southern Africa from Egypt or East Africa in ready-made ‘tribal’ communities. They emerged in southern Africa several hundred years ago as polyglot, mixed groups of people of different origins. Among their ancestors were Khoisan-speaking people who had lived as foragers in the region for many thousands of years. Other ancestors were Bantu-speaking farmers who had gradually moved in from further north after about 200 or 300 CE. Still others were Bantu-speaking farmers who arrived at later stages. 
This was the picture that Professor Morton drew in the opening remarks of his talk to counter what has become a common myth, especially on social media, about the origins of Setswana-speaking people. His alternative picture, which is generally accepted by scholars, is based on the results of 60 years of research by archaeologists and on his own careful re-interpretation of oral accounts of Tswana history that have been recorded since the early 19th century.


The front cover of Fred Morton’s new book, Cattle People: The Tswana. The artwork is based on a sketch of the Magaliesberg made by Charles Davidson Bell in 1835.

Professor Morton is a historian who originally hails from the USA. He taught at the University of Botswana for many years, and currently lives in retirement in Gaborone. He is one of the leading scholars of the history of Tswana groups before colonial times and has published widely in this field. For his talk to the Northern Branch, he drew on his latest book, Cattle People: The Tswana, published earlier this year by The Botswana Society in Gaborone.
After discussing conflicting ideas about Tswana origins, Professor Morton went on to sketch out an account of how, from about the 1600s, identifiable Tswana groups settled in what he calls the Tswana Cradleland, the region that stretches from Zeerust in the west, along the slopes of the Magaliesberg, to Pretoria. They favoured pockets of land that offered combinations of fertile soils, year-round grazing for cattle, perennial streams, and plenty of timber for building. In some areas an added bonus was provided by deposits of iron ore.



Map from Morton’s Cattle People showing the localities of Tswana groups in what he calls the cradleland.

From early in their lives, individuals acquired an intimate knowledge of the landscape and of the resources of plants and animals, from elephants to insects, that it offered for food, medicines and materials for making buildings, clothing, domestic items and weapons. Professor Morton graphically made the point that the learning manual that people used was the Setswana language. In its many dialects, it carries thousands of terms for animals, plants and varieties of landscape. Retaining this knowledge, and transmitting it through the education of children, was the responsibility of older women. To quote from Professor Morton’s book (p. 36), ‘A woman’s world spliced the wild to the domestic’.
Another powerful – and in some ways counter-intuitive – point made by Professor Morton was about the difficulty that individuals faced in accumulating cattle. Not all groups had access to good grazing lands. In times of drought, grass shrivelled and streams dried up. For many people it was easier to seize cattle from neighbouring groups than to try to breed them over a period of years. In many areas, cattle-raiding became endemic. As Professor Morton put it, cattle changed hands all the time. Only a few families became rich.



A painting titled ‘Bechuana huts’ by Charles Davidson Bell (from Christopher Saunders, ed., An Illustrated Dictionary of South African History, Johannesburg: ibis Books, 1994. The original is in the Museum Africa.

A new era in Tswana history, an era marked by loss of land and of political autonomy, began in the 1820s, when powerful groups from the outside world began raiding and ultimately invading the Cradleland – Korana, Griqua, Pedi, Ndebele, Zulu. Tswana groups responded in different ways. Some broke up, some resisted, some moved west into the fringes of the Kalahari, some joined the invaders. In the 1840s and 1850s Voortrekkers from the Cape began settling in Tswana country and, where they could, seizing land, cattle and slaves. 
Finally, in the 1870s and 1880s, came the British, greedy for diamonds, gold and imperial domination. In 1885 they set up what they called the Bechuanaland Protectorate over most western Tswana groups, and demarcated reserves where the Tswana were supposed to live. In 1900, during the South African War, the British annexed the South African Republic, which included the Cradleland. Some Tswana families clung on to farms that they had managed to buy. Others became tenants on farms owned by the intruders. Most others sent their menfolk as migrant labourers to the mines and the towns that were springing up on the land once inhabited by their forefathers.

Report by John Wright