Bechuanaland Protectorate

This is a place called Chobe on the, uh, at the, in the north of, um, Botswana.

It used to be called Bechuanaland in colonial days.

It's now Botswana, just south of Zambia.

And, uh, there's a big reserve there.

One thousand armed Boers were preparing to cross the Limpopo River and establish a new Boer Republic right across the middle of Rhodes' intended empire.

further south-west in bechuanaland a pioneer column would gather but ardendorf was not put off it was going to be a race to try and seize these new lands from the schooner skirting the western lands of the indebelli for whom the boers had a healthy respect while some of the shona chiefs could only rely on a few hundred warriors others had a few thousand but the chiefdoms were fragmented and could not work together to oppose the invaders the shona in the west of mashonaland had been cowered by the further north and to the east it was a different story they were still largely independent of lobengula's reach to access this region rose and his british south african company mercenaries The pioneer column had to navigate serious geographical and political obstacles.

Tswana chief Kama in Bechuanaland was suspicious of Rhodes and Lobengula and the Ndebele king was suspicious of Kama and Rhodes and Rhodes was suspicious of both African chiefs.

At first Rhodes thought the column could possibly sail to the port of Beira in Mozambique and access Machonaland from there, taking a succession of rivers and pathways through extremely difficult, broken country.

But the Portuguese were not allies, and that area was also infested with malaria-bearing mosquitoes.

In the steppe, Frederic Courtney Salou, big game hunter, explorer, who advised the De Beers chairman to go up the road to the north as far as the borderlands of Ndebele territory and then pass around to the southeast to avoid conflict with Lobengulo.

In January 1890, Rose and Salou met Governor Loch in Cape Town, joined by Sidney Shippard, the Bechuanaland Commissioner, and Frederick Carrington, who was the Bechuanaland Border Police Commander.

Rose and Salou outlined the plan to recruit, train and arm a force of 500 mercenaries who would escort the pioneer column of a few hundred miners on 100 wagons.

When not bringing a new car back from UK leave, the final leg of the journey home from Cape Town would be a week on a slow steam train, its carriages sumptuously fitted with leather and wooded interiors.

The track at times followed the same line initially laid by Cecil Rhodes to supply his new country, Rhodesia, and where it passed through the arid and featureless and then entirely undeveloped Bechuanaland, I only did one of these train journeys, but I recall one particular event.

Accustomed as we had come by then to the fecund undulations that make up most of Neasodon, I recall my mother commenting as we passed through Bechuanaland, Thank God we don't live here.

This was the country which would become Botswana, and where I was destined later to spend 47 years of my life.

Funny how things turn out sometimes.

It's like something out of a bad adventure novel where...

Dr. Leander Starr Jameson and a group of hired guns adventurers drawn from Bechuanaland and parts of South Africa, other parts of British-held Africa, mount up.

And the idea is they're going to ride into the Boer Republics, this sort of flying column, maybe 600 men strong, although some people seem to drift away as they can see it's not going to work.

They're going to fly through South Africa.

That was the last straw.

Sensing he was about to experience his own clubbing nightmare, Thompson made a dash towards Bechuanaland.

He unharnessed one of his cart horses and rode it bareback to an outpost, where he borrowed a saddle and bridle.

Before leaving, he sent a message to Lomangula that he'd be gone for a few days visiting Missionary Helm.

Instead, he headed off as fast as his horse would carry him toward Muffet King in the Cape Colony, crossing miles of Bechuanaland dryland.

His horse collapsed, exhausted, after a day.

Thomson walked to Muffet King, arriving there in three days, tongue hanging out from thirst, as he describes it.

All this painted red, he would say as he passed his hand over this part of the map, and this South African empire of the future, he dreamed, would one day be connected with Egypt by a Cape to Cairo railway.

The first step was to acquire the wide expanse of arid deserts and grasslands known as Bechuanaland, directly north of Cape Colony.

As this region lay like a corridor between the Boer Republics of Orange River and Transvaal on the east, and German South West Africa on the west, it was aptly described by Rhodes as the Suez Canal of South Africa.

It was the vital gateway to the north.

Without it, British South Africa might be hemmed in on the north by a sea-to-sea band of Boer and German territory.

It may be remarked, by the way, that German imperialists were eager to win the friendship of the Boers, as distant linguistic kinsmen, and some even hoped that the Boers might accept German protection.

To gain Bechuanaland, Rhodes first exerted himself.

Having entered politics in Cape Colony and made himself a power at Cape Town, Rhodes began a vigorous agitation for British acquisition of Bechuanaland.