Of all the Tswana societies the Rolong were among the worst affected by violence of the Difaqane, as unleashed by the Ndebele. Here medicine men are administering the charm to Rolong warriors when going to battle.
All Tswana groups, just like the Sotho, were affected by the violence of the Difaqane. The Tswana were not so adept at nation building as the Sotho. Two factors contributed to this. First, Tswana chiefdoms were numerous, autonomous and disunited before, during and even after the Difaqane. Second, many other Tswana societies, such as the Kgatla-ba-Kgafela and the Fokeng, had internal power struggles of their own. Both these factors weakened them. The Tswana tended to regroup along former lines after the Difaqane rather than build new societies.
The Tswana faced the depredations of the early Difaqane raiders as well as the later power of the Ndebele. Between 1823 and 1826, the Rolong were attacked by the Phuting, the Hlakwana, the Taung and the Fokeng, who had fled their homelands in the east. Driven by hunger, these people raided for cattle and attempted successfully to drive the Rolong out of their best lands. The Rolong were forced to move from one settlement to another to escape attack. Communities fell apart and the Rolong chiefs Sefunyela, Ta wana and Gontle struggled to retain adherents. People tended to huddle in smaller groups around what arable and grazing lands remained.
Rolong medicine men blowing a counter charm towards the enemy.
From 1826 to 1836 the Ndebele introduced a period of ambiguous peace. Although the former raiders were displaced, the Ndebele brought the Tswana under tighter and more centralised control. Most of the Tswana groups were forced to flee their homes following Ndebele attacks upon them. Examples are the Tlokwa-baga-Sedumedi, Kwena-ba-Modimosana, Phalane and Kgatla of the Pilanesberg, the Hurutshe near the modern-day town of Zeerust and the Pedi of today’s Mpumalanga Province. They were able to return only after the expulsion of the Ndebele by the Voortrekkers from the western Transvaal in January 1837.
Yet other communities did not flee from their homes. An example is the Ramokhele branch of the Taung who lived a precarious existence under Chief Moseme at Thaba Nchu, close to the Modder River. To the northeast there was a similar situation in which Tswana groups were barely surviving by hunting and stealing, under constant fear of attack from the Ndebele.
Of all the Tswana societies, perhaps the worst affected by the violence of the Difaqane unleashed by the Ndebele were the western Rolong. Between 1826 and 1832 the presence of the Ndebele brought them some security against attack from other groups fleeing the Difaqane. But in 1832 two Ndebele representatives sent by Mzilikazi to oversee the Rolong capital, Khunwana (just west of the present-day town of Mafikeng), were put to death by the Rolong, who distrusted Ndebele motives.
Kwena with supplies for Mzilikazi. As subjects of the Ndebele, the Kwena were obliged to offer Mzilikazi tribute.
This incident provoked a devastating reprisal. In 1833 an Ndebele army surrounded Khunwana at night and launched a surprise pre-dawn attack. Indiscriminate slaughter of men, women and children followed. Consequently, large numbers of homeless refugees were forced to wander the lands between the Vaal River and Philippolis. The Rolong themselves fled south. At the same time, another Ndebele force attacked a branch of the Kwena under Khama who lived near the Madikwe-Odi confluence. The Kwena were defeated and their population scattered or captured. The Hurutshe of Chief Mokgatlha, although not attacked (because they were Mzilikazi’s acknowledged vassals), nevertheless panicked and also fled south when they heard of the Rolong’s fate. The uprooting of so many communities led to general starvation.
But in the Madikwe valley, not all of the Tswana communities fled their homes. Some remained and accepted Ndebele rule. Others worked for the Ndebele either in agriculture or tending livestock, all the while being checked on by the Ndebele for loyalty. The subject chiefs regularly paid tribute to Mzilikazi in various forms, such as tobacco, karosses, iron tools and weapons. As long as they paid tribute, the subject peoples were left in peace by the Ndebele rulers.
Robert Moffat of the London Missionary Society. He worked among the Tlhaping at their capital Dithakong from 1816 and obtained the help of the Griqua for them at the Battle of Dithakong in 1820.
Some Tswana reconstructed their broken societies only with the aid of European missionaries who had settled among them just before the Difaqane. To the extreme southwest, the Tlhaping and their close neighbours, the Tlharo and Kgalagadi, were spared the ravages of the Difaqane due to the role and presence of the London Missionary Society’s Robert Moffat at the Tlhaping capital, Dithakong. Moffat had worked among the Tlhaping from 1816 and offered them protection at the battle of Dithakong in 1820, and afterwards. Moroka’s Rolong-bo-Seleka of the present-day Thaba Nchu area survived due to the critical and timely role of missionaries, whose presence deterred potential enemies from attacking them – such as the Taung, and Moshoeshoe, who claimed they occupied Sotho territory.
In 1833 they were resettled by missionary James Archbell at a flat-topped hill to the west called Thaba Nchu. From the four mission stations they founded in the area, the missionaries provided both practical and spiritual assistance to the Seleka, the Griqua and the Korana. Moroka himself never became a Christian but depended on missionary help in his struggle with Moshoeshoe over the latter’s land claims in an area inhabited by Moroka’s people. Moroka remained at Thaba Nchu and never returned to his original homeland of Khunwana even after the expulsion of the Ndebele.
