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Builders of Botswana - The sacking of Kolobeng (by Jeff Ramsay) |
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Tuesday 1 September 1852, the day after the
Battle of Dimawe: Returning at dawn, the invading Transvaal Boer Commando of
Commandant-General Piet Scholtz were surprised to discover that Batswana had
completely abandoned Dimawe during the night. The fact that Kgosi Sechele's
powder magazine had been emptied and little else of value was found at the
entrenchments indicates an organized evacuation. In his later
writings the missionary David Livingstone accused the Boers massacring those
wounded who had fallen behind. But, there is no other evidence for this
alleged atrocity. At the time of the invasion Livingstone, himself, was
enroute from Cape Town to visit his father-in-law, the Rev. Robert Moffat, at
Kudumane. Not knowing
where his opponents were, during the next three days Scholtz divided his
force in pursuit of Batswana. On day one a unit led by Commandant Phillipus
Schutte rode up to Kolobeng, eight kilometers north of Dimawe. There they
came upon Livingstone's then unoccupied London Missionary Society (LMS)
mission station. In the years
since its sacking, what actually occurred next has become a source of empty
controversy. While many of Livingstone's biographers have uncritically
accepted the missionary's self-serving account of an unprovoked act of
pillage, some imaginative historians have gone to the opposite extreme in
seeking to deny any Boer role in the destruction that undoubtedly took place.
The basic facts surrounding the incident are well established. There were
two buildings at the Mission: Livingstone's family house and the
church/school. The foundations of both of these structures are still quite
visible today at the national monument, which is located just off the
Mogoditshane-Kanye road near the evergreen village of Kumakwane. Also at the
premises on the fateful day of Schutte's raid was an ox wagon laden with
goods belonging to the arms for ivory merchant Joseph McCabe, who was then on
his historic journey from Kweneng to Ngamiland via the central Kgalagadi
thirstland. Both the
official English and Dutch versions of Scholtz's report, which were redrafted
and censored by his immediate superior, the South African Republic
(Transvaal) President Andries Pretorius, claim that one of the buildings was
locked, while the other was open. Otherwise these accounts, along with those
subsequently written by Schutte's second in command, Paul Kruger, confirm
that the Boers entered the buildings. In the following
passage from the report Pretorius seems to have forgotten that Schutte, not
Scholtz, was the man on the spot: "I therefore resolved to open the
house that was still locked, in which we found several half-finished guns,
and a gunmaker's shop with an abundance of tools. We here found more guns and
tools than Bibles, so that the place had more the appearance of a gunmaker's
shop than a mission station, and more a smuggling-shop than a school
place." The report goes on to state that the force collected booty
including "smiths and gunmakers' tools found in the house of the
missionary" as well as two wagons. Another, November 1852, account in
the semi-official Boer newspaper Zuid-Afrikaan gives further details of the
booty, noting that household effects, as well as livestock and guns, were
seized and later auctioned. This event
is said to have raised a sum of just over 8,000 Rixdollars. In two lines of
the newspaper's report the name of "the celebrated" former owner of
a horse and book were omitted before publication, but otherwise indicated by
dashes in the text. Additional
Boer documents also confirm the that the auction took place, while other
sources maintain that much of Livingstone's furniture ended up in the
household of Jan Viljoen, whose wife some decades later remarked that the men
"got out of control on commando". Like the Mabotsa (Dinokana) Mission before it, Kolobeng station was indeed sacked by Boers. As previously noted in these series, the claim that Livingstone, along with McCabe and others, kept munitions at the site, which they freely sold to the Bakwena and other Batswana, is also entirely true. |