One of the findings of the study is that the conflict of the Barolong was caused by the British and the Boers. The two European communities wanted the wealth and land of the Barolong. The strategies that were used included an alliance with one section of the Barolong against another. The two colonialists managed to obtained land at the expense of the formatting wars which killed the Barolong men, women and children.
Another finding is that the British claimed that they protected the Barolong. This claim was fundamentally flawed because they sold the Barolong land to the Boers when they realized that it was rich with diamonds they offered to protect sections of the Barolong and Batlhaping who were became puppets of British Empire. The British finally annexed the diamond land and this did not benefit the Barolong but empire the British Empire.
The major finding of the study is that the paramouncty of all the Barolong belong to the Ratlou-Barolong. The last king of all Barolong Tau was ruthless and feared by all and managed to keep the kingdom together. When he died the kingship was handed over the Ratlou, his eldest son who was a legitimate heir to the throne. However, skirmishes over leadership between the children of Tau
namely, Ratshidi, Seleka, Magetla and Rapulana emerged. The kingdom disintegrated into four chiefdoms namely Ratlou-Barolong, Ratshidi-Barolong, Seleka-Barolong and Rapulana-Barolong. These chiefdoms were named after each of Tau‟s children. The unity that the Barolong enjoyed for many years disappeared and animosities developed and therefore the struggle for the paramouncty began. The British exploited the situation to its advantage by promoting the chief of the Ratshidi, who was loyal to the empire and who did not qualify according to traditional laws, to become the paramount chief of the Barolong. The Boers on the hand exploited the history of the Barolong and found out that the paramouncty belong to the Ratlou. They promoted Moshete, the Ratlo chief, to the paramount position and forced him to cede all the Barolong land to the Boers. However, the Ratlou, accordingly are the legitimate claimant of the paramouncty of all the Barolong. This is the reason why conflict has continued for many decades until today because the Ratshidi chiefs did not have the right to chieftainship of the Barolong and cannot claim the paramouncty of all the Barolong according to the Batswana laws. Therefore this was the fundamental cause of the long struggles fought by the Barolong. The Ratshidi and the British were responsible for strive, struggle, death and destitute of all the Barolong because they tried, albeit in vain, to enforce the paramouncty because of power and greed.
The role of the missionaries was also unraveled. The missionaries were agent of colonialism and colonized the Barolong conscience through the teaching of the good news. They turned the mission station into a mini industry where the Barolong were taught working routines and time management to survive in the cash economy. They converted the Barolong through mundane activities of every day life and created wants that can only be satisfied through entry into the colonial economy. They discouraged the Barolong from worshiping their ancestors and regarded their religious practices as demons. They also brainwashed Africans to become priests and used them to continue this underestimation of African traditional practices. In spite of the fact that the
missionaries resisted by Boer encroachment on the Barolong land, they none the less paved the British Authority for colonialism Bechuanaland.
The study also brought to light the facts about the contribution of the Barolong in the struggle of the independent churches in South Africa. The Barolong history had always being overshadowed by the history of one section the Ratshidi who were favoured by historians. This section of the Barolong was dominated by the Wesleyan Missionary Society who condemn ethopianism because this section sympathized with whites and consider them civilized and worth emulating.
However, the Ratlou joined a revolutionary church called AME and ambraced its ideology and struggle in its attempt to free Africans from the bondage of racial oppression.
Finally the study has managed to unravel the Barolong Nationalist organisation, the BNC. This was the only organization that was ever formed by the Barolong.
The organization wanted to becme a true representative of the Baralong ethnicity and political culture. This organization was registered and managed to unite the Barolong to a certain extent. The activities of BNC have been neglected by historians and this study has recorded these rural dynamics of the Barolong and proves that they were also affected by the dialectics of modernity. Their contribution to the politics in South Africa is comparable to other ethnic groups elsewhere in the country who developed rural organisations to resist subjugation by colonialists and fought for the rights of their communities. This research has succeeded to highlight the hidden struggles of the ordinary people in the rural areas.
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