Kgosi

A recent article in the Telegraph newspaper entitled “Bakgatla celebrate dikgafela in style” by Dr. Otlogetswe caught my attention. Dr. Otlogetswe was evidently attending cultural celebrations of the Bakgatla BagaManaana (BBM) at Moshupa kgotla. Dr. Otlogetswe is an educated and articulate man. What he writes has the aura of a science about it. He relates to us how the BBM Kgosi Mosielele came into being, born of a Mongwaketse princess. He then introduces the dignitaries gathered at the event. The Kgosi Mosielele’s are, of course, BBM Kgosis. The non-BBM kgosi Mosielele is duly introduced as Kgosi of Bahurutshe. Then comes the knocker – Kgosi Masunga of the customary court of appeal! I mean this was a celebration of culture; it had nothing to do with cultural administration of Justice. Why then couldn’t Dr. Otlogetswe show us how Kgosi Masunga lays claim to any cultural identity, if at all? What would Dr. Otlogetswe have written, if it had been Kgosi Maruje Masunga instead? Would he have written “of the Baperi baka Masunga” or “of the North East?

I pose the above questions because for too long, this country has been content to let false propaganda determine its national development agenda. Those who have been following this blog will by now know that this nation is a Kalanga nation. The nation carved out of the territory that is Botswana is composed of many tribes, ALL of whom have been part of the Kalanga nation; therefore it is fitting to call the nation a Kalanga nation, and NOT a Tswana nation. The Kalanga language is not entirely homogeneous – there is Nambdza, Lilima, Chinhu, Venda, Shona, Subiya, Nyanja, Swahili etc. These languages, though different to the point of being unintelligible to one another’s speakers, are nevertheless based on ONE language, which I call Kalanga.

In Southern Africa, Botswana included, when what we now call the Tswana tribes were recruited to speak Sotho language, some of them remained speaking Kalanga to this day. This is a point the “Botswana” propagandists would like to hide from the nation. The Kalanga-speaking Bangwato, Bakwena, Bakgatla, Barolong, Batlokwa have never been Tswana speakers before. They have always been Kalanga speakers who know their identity from man’s origin itself. As constituent tribes of the Kalanga nation, they identify themselves by their totems, not by TRIBAL TERRITORIES, which are an invention of the colonialists, anyway. In any given Kalanga community, there will be Bakgatla, Barolong, Bakwena, Bangwato, Batlokwa, living harmoniously together, without any friction whatsoever, because THEY ARE OFTEN ALL RELATED THROUGH INTERMARRIAGES, ANYWAY. The ruling family may be Bakwena by totem, but they are proud nieces, proud cousins, proud uncles of the Barolong, Bahumbe, Baperi etc. who make the rest of that community. Genealogy is very important to Bakalanga – it prevents in-breeding. That is why even an illegitimate child must know his/her biological parents!

And so, in the national (Kalanga) context, a chief identifies with a tribe only to the extent that he has a totem; and not as a ruler of a specific tribal grouping. This is the nation that we as Kalangas were duped into believing we were creating at Independence. Of course it would have been possible to fashion a Tswana nation out of the constituent Tswana-speaking tribes as well. However the history of Tswana tribes would have been an impediment to such an endeavour: the very formation of the Tswana tribes by the Reptilians involved accentuating tribal differences in order to weaken the Kalanga nation; a classic divide and rule tactic. It is a fact on record that when the British first tried to gather the Tswana tribes into one nation, the Tswana resisted, saying “we are all just different tribes, not one nation”. That they spoke one language; that they had been part of the Monomotapa kingdom, but considered themselves just different tribes, is testimony to the fact that they understood the “nation” of which they were a part, to be a Kalanga nation. And so when the British left, some 80 years later, the propaganda banner had to be unfurled to create a Tswana tribally dominated enclave, where it didn’t exist before - Botswana.

To give this new identity a semblance of legitimacy, the rest of the Kalanga nation within the British-created boundaries had to be psyched into believing that we Kalangas are a tribe; a constituent part of the new nation – Botswana! The scheme worked – the sycophants are working day and night (and waxing fat) to feed us that garbage.