met were Moshete of the Ratlou, Matlaba of the Rapulana and Makgobi of the Ratlou in Phitshane (Molema, 1966:106). He requested them to join the war on the side of the British government to protect their land from being taken by the Boers. This was a last dish attempt by Montshiwa to pacify other section of the Barolong by compelling them to subsume themselves under the British government. Moshete and Matlaba refused to join Montshiwa and asserted that they were the “children of the Transvaal” because they were promised land by the Boers after they had helped them to defeat Montshiwa (Molema, 1966:106).
Moreover, the other sections of the Barolong did not want to be dictated terms by Montshiwa whom they regarded as an opportunist and a minor chief with no respect for Moshete. Montshiwa was shaken by the negative comments made by Chief Matlaba‟s nephew called Mogotsi who accused Montshiwa of ambition and greed for power and leadership and excessive love for anything British (Molema, 1966:107). There was a crisis and Montshiwa appealed to the chiefs to reprimand Mogotsi but he was applauded by Matlaba‟s brothers and other men of the Rapulana for undermining Montshiwa. Montshiwa felt humiliated in before other Barolong chiefs and decided to “punish” the Rapulana. The impending attacks by Montshiwa triggered the Rapulana to fight the war on the side of the Boers, it was a good opportunity for Montshiwa to settle old scores during and after the war (Molema,1966:107). The Barolong were prepared to kill one another because of the iron curtain that had been established by the Boers and the British. It has to be noted that the Barolong entered the war in order to safeguard their land , cattle, women and children but also to rule themselves. However, the two colonial powers had their own agenda which included the discovery of diamond among the Barolong and the British quest to protect the road to the north which could be thwarted by the Boers occupation of the Northern Cape.
around the town. The night parties who numbered between three and four hundred also established bomb-proof shelters and other defense works (Bell:29).
Some of these duties were carried under heavy fire from the Boers and on many occasions the Barolong men, women and children became victims of a battle that was destined to be according to Baden-Powel of “one government against another but the Boers were making it to be the war against the people” (Comaroff, 1989:34). According to Vyvyan, a Deputy-Commander to Baden-Powel and also a diarist, Baden-Powel had employed gangs of Africans to dig a series of forts and earth works protected by sandbags and reinforced with steel from the railway yards. There were also three hundred Africans who were recruited to serve as
“watchmen, police and cattle guards” (Packenham, 2001:119).
The Ratshidi and Rapulana were involved as runners in espionage missions on either side. They brought information which provided strategic direction to the planning of the attack on both sides. The letters of information about the movement of the Boers and the Rapulana, were generally written on tissue papers concealed in the lining of the caps, or soles of the books of the messengers and sent to Major Dodley who was in charge of the contingency against the Boers. Dispatches were often hidden in empty cartridge cases, and buried or thrown away at any sign of danger or discovery (Main,1996:162). In Mafikeng a group of Barolong and other Africans were employed as runners, scouts and collected information about the movement of the Boers. These runners were controlled by Smithman who was in charge of the Intelligence Department. He worked effectively with runners who brought in the information through the dispatches (Comaroff, 1989:110). He connected the information to Baden-Powel who would prepare the regiments to contain the impending Boer attack. On 8 March 1900 the runners brought news that one hundred Boers had been killed in a contingent led by Cronje one of the Boer Commanders and seven hundred were taken prisoner with him (Comaroff, 1989:110). They reported that one thousand Rapulana were scattered all over the country looking for Mathakong Kudumela the cattle raiding party leader (Comaroff, 1989:119). They
also maintained that Snynman had disarmed the Lotlhakane rebels (Rapulana) who took advantage of the siege to revenge against the Ratshidi (Comaroff, 1989:10). They brought information about an English relief column which was in Vryburg and on its way to Mafikeng. Baden-Powell and the British garrison managed to contain the advance of the Boer forces in many occasions because of the intelligent information supplied by the Barolong informers.
One of the outstanding Africans who assisted the British forces was Chief Seane of the Ratshidi. He disguised himself as a Rapulana in the early months of the siege by assisting Mafikeng‟s runners (Comaroff, 1989:110). He and the Ratshidi established a secret communication network which became an effective strategy to assist the British garrison to locate Boers like a radar and allow them to enter the British encirclement unconsciously where the British would make a preemptive strike. Later, he was captured by the Boers and removed to Lotlhakane, from where he provided Mafikeng garrison with intelligence reports through a labyrinth of Barolong runners. This flow of information caused the Boers to be in disarray because some of their missions to attack the Ratshidi were known before hand and when they happened, they were easily repulsed.
When this happened the Boers accused a few Boer commanders of spying for the British. The degree of mistrust increased and caused the Boers to be in disarray pointing fingers at one another and not at the enemies. According to Packenham, spies were rumoured to be everywhere (Packenham, 2001:150).
Undeniably, burgeoning of intelligence information in this particular terrain of the war elevated Chief Seane to a monolithic hero of the siege. These heroes of the siege were not acknowledged by the Afrikaner and liberal historians because they wanted to reduce their activities into oblivion and this precipitated into bias of omission.
The three diarists namely Edward Ross, Charles Bell and Major Baillie attempt to conceal the fact that the Barolong were armed to defend the Stad. They relegated the Barolong‟s participation only to non-combatant duties and cattle
raiding expeditions. According to Edward Ross, the Boer Commander Snyman armed three hundred Rapulana men who would be used to attack the Stad.
Diarists find it easy to disclose the number of Boers and Rapulana who were armed but fail to reveal those armed by the British. Moreover, the information they presented about the armaments of Africans on the side of the Boers is skeptical because they visualised the unfolding of the siege from Mafikeng and it was extremely difficult for them to move out of the Stad because of hails of shells fired by the Boers. The Stad was like a defensive fortress for the British and the Ratshidi-Barolong and it was easy to interact with Baden-Powell to ascertain the statistics of Africans who were armed. The diarists, however, reveal that the Barolong were involved in a battle with armed Boers but, obviously the Barolong could not resist the Boers unarmed. Sol Plaatje in his diary gives incidents in which the Ratshidi were armed and attacked the Boers on many occasions.
Packenham who has written about the siege, uses the diary of Vyvyan extensively, and reveals that this diarist also played down the fighting role of the Barolong (Packenham, 2001:150). This was done for political reasons because from the beginning, the war was destined to be a “white mans war” and they did not want to show the enormous contributions made by Africans. But, the historian Jeal, reveals the number of armed Africans to be between six and seven hundred
Many Africans were armed and drawn into the conflict of the so called a white man‟s war (Morris, 2004:131)
something which the diarists fail to state (Jeal, 2001:620). The reluctance of these diarists to reveal the full truth about African participation in armed combatant is similar to that of Baden-Powell who did not fully acknowledge the work done by the Barolong. Even at the end of the siege, the Barolong were not given money for reconstruction but money was given to the Boers. Consequently Montshiwa‟s decree of enforcing other sections of the Barolong to side with the
British government was strategically baseless because he was not given the latitude to do so by the British government. In addition, the British told him that the war was not for the Barolong but a “white mans war”. This rapacious shortsightedness proved to be exorbitant for the Barolong in general and made them to become polarised even further.
In 1899 Baden-Powel informed the Boers through a letter that the Boers killed women and children of the Ratshidi in their own country. He added that it would be difficult for the British to stop the Africans from rising against the Boers (Comaroff, 1989:34). This letter to the Boers was in actual fact justifying the armed involvement of the Ratshidi in the war. The Ratshidi had designed a contingent plan to protect their cattle from being stolen by the Boers. The Barolong managed to repulse the Boers‟ attacks and killed some of them. Baden-Powell realised the value of these Barolong defenders and armed them on the basis of self-defense and subsequently five hundred of them were armed with rifles and ammunition (Comaroff, 1989:34). Barolong did not only defend the Stad but made sporadic offensive operation to over-run the Boer fort. They attacked the place with three rounds of ammunition per man and managed to open fire on the helplessly sleeping Boers.This incident revealed how vengeful the Barolong had become after relentless killing of men, women and children by Boer shells. The terms that controlled “civilised” warfare did not approve of a situation where helpless people including those who had slept and surrendered, were killed but preferred that they be held as prisoners of war. However, the so-called
“barbarism” of the Boers seemed to have being reciprocated by the Barolong whom their children and women were killed indiscriminately much against the rules of “civilised” warfare which the Boers had vigorously advocated at the beginning of the siege. The Barolong had to be vigilant because they were a thorn between the squalor of ill-treatment by the British at home and the squalor of the Boer shells.