- Mphuthumi Ntabeni writes a regular book column for LitNet.
Title: Morafe: Person, family and nation in colonial Bechuanaland, 1880s-1950s
Author: Khumisho Moguerane
Publisher:
ISBN:
Khumisho Moguerane begins Morafe with a humble but far-reaching claim: that the making of “nation”, “people”, “family” and “personhood” in the colonial and frontier zones between what is now South Africa and Botswana was never merely something imposed from above (by conquest, treaties and colonial administrations). It was also lived, argued over and forged in salons, on church steps, in farms, in frontier courts and in the intimate dramas of marriage, inheritance and moral standing.
In this monumental, richly documented book, Moguerane gives us an account of two generations of the Molema family. Her lens turns what might have been yet another political or constitutional history of Bechuanaland into an urgent, engrossing and morally subtle answer to the question: how do people make “morafe” when the political ground is shifting under them?
.......
“Morafe” is not synonymous with “tribe” in the static, bounded sense that colonial officials often preferred; rather, it is dynamic, contested and rooted in kin, custom, land and changing moral claims.
.......
Moguerane chooses the Setswana term morafe (a word with many overlaid meanings: people, tribe, race, nation, polity) as her title, and with good reason. From the first pages, she shows how the Molema family inhabited these different senses, sometimes in tension with one another. “Morafe” is not synonymous with “tribe” in the static, bounded sense that colonial officials often preferred; rather, it is dynamic, contested and rooted in kin, custom, land and changing moral claims.
By tracing how literate, Christianised, chiefly families like the Molemas sought to reshape what it meant to belong, to be a person, to have moral standing and to command respect, Moguerane draws out how morafe could be a project of aspiration as much as of rooted identity. The English translations are never perfect; each carries colonial freight. Moguerane shows that what was at stake was less a fixed identity than a moral claim to personhood, to being present (“Re teng!”) in a world structured by power, race, generosity, mobility and custom. In so doing, she aligns more with Terence Ranger’s view that the nation or polity must allow people to feel that tradition and “existing tradition” give them a sense of themselves, even when that tradition is marauded and transformed by colonialism and modernity.
At the heart of Morafe is the Molema family: Silas Molema, his children (especially Sebopioa, Modiri and Harriet) and their relationship with kindred figures such as Solomon Plaatje. Moguerane casts them as “border people” who are geographically, socially, morally and politically challenged by a fast-changing world. In the late nineteenth century, the boundary between British Bechuanaland, the Bechuanaland Protectorate and adjacent territories was porous; skin colour, colonial classification and legal status were shifting, uncertain and contested.
.......
Moguerane shows that in the 1880s, the frontier was a zone of flux where people moved freely, and skin colour did not always correlate with legal rights; chiefly status carried limited weight, Christian missionaries spoke with forked tongues, African teachers became aristocrats, and rich black people proliferated.
.......
Silas Molema emerges as a local leader and astute business entrepreneur who knew how to take advantage of every situation, including vaguely defined borders and racial policies. He embraces Christianity, literacy, innovations in farming and dress, and even the adoption of “foreign” languages; yet, he does so as part of building a claim on persons who can command recognition, who can stake property claims, or who can be “in” public life without being simply subject to colonial paternalism. There were many in the Eastern Cape, particularly, who behaved in this manner, and they were called Amagqobhoka (the Turncoats) – the Converts. The younger generation, his children, inherited the wealth and status he achieved, but were set uncharted territory of moral frailties, political pressures and anxieties about what “Sechuana” (or “Sechuana” as educated, proper behaviour) should mean. They were left in uncharted territories between custom and modernity, between filial duty and political activism.
Modiri Molema’s relationship with Solomon Plaatje (teacher, polyglot, translator of the empire’s archives and ANC’s first general secretary) is especially revealing. Moguerane shows how Plaatje’s own moral imagination and love of letters, theatre and public life drew on the Molema milieu, but also diverged into direct opposition against colonial forces and governments. In their early days, Plaatje was almost a “walking library”, as Moguerane recounts, easily quoting Shakespeare, Keats and Ruski, whom he had read and interpreted against the frontier domestic space. Yet, his complexion, his mixed ancestry (real or perceived) and his social reception all complicated his belonging. As Moguerane writes, people called him Tsoeunyane, “the Whitish One”, even accusing some of his in-laws of misalliance.
One of the major contributions of Morafe is how it dramatises the coming into being of the colonial boundary of contrived borders, the forged line of demarcation, and the structure of power, classification, identity and moral economy. Moguerane shows that in the 1880s, the frontier was a zone of flux where people moved freely, and skin colour did not always correlate with legal rights; chiefly status carried limited weight, Christian missionaries spoke with forked tongues, African teachers became aristocrats, and rich black people proliferated. But, by the 1950s, the colonial order had hardened. Race classification, legal categories, land laws, migrant labour regimes, chiefly authority and nationalist politics converged to impose sharper divides, and robbed black people in particular of their economic gains and land.
Moguerane argues that the nation-state (or what would become two neighbouring nations, South Africa and Botswana) was not created simply in political halls, treaties or African Congress meetings, but in the ordinary, the familial and the domestic of trying to outwit oppressive policies. The moral hierarchies of respect, generation, gender, landholding and inheritance all became terrains of political meaning. As the boundaries between public and private, colonial authority and chiefly authority, modern and customary, were contested, so too were moral authority and status.
......
Morafe is a work of scholarship and artistry. Moguerane’s archival research is formidable. She uses missionary records, court cases, personal letters, legal documents and newspaper archives to reconstruct how lives were lived and felt.
......
Morafe is a work of scholarship and artistry. Moguerane’s archival research is formidable. She uses missionary records, court cases, personal letters, legal documents and newspaper archives to reconstruct how lives were lived and felt. Her prose is elegant. Often, she pauses to dwell on moments of tension: Sebopioa’s anxieties, Modiri’s sense of inheriting both promise and grievance, Plaatje’s sense of exclusion despite brilliance. The moral and emotional texture of this history gives it urgency for the present. It reminds us how much of our own politics and identity – of race, of belonging, of migration – has a deep history that is not reducible to the macro narratives of colonialism versus resistance.
If I must offer critique, it is that in emphasising the Molema and Plaatje coexistence as morally rich and generative, the book sometimes underplays the voices of those beyond the educated, converted elite – women outside the Molema family, non-Christian communities, those who rejected the main moral order offered by Christian chiefs and who were sometimes condescendingly termed unprogressive Amaqaba (ochre daubers) who resisted change. There are hints of these voices, of course, in the book, but a richer sense of moral conflict from below would sharpen the contrast Moguerane so often draws between the moral worlds people aspired to and those they inherited or resisted.
Also, the book’s periodisation (1880s to 1950s) is largely apt, but one wonders whether closing in the 1950s (as Moguerane does) misses the immediacy of the post-1950s transformations, like the emergence of Botswana’s independence, apartheid deepening in South Africa, migrations of labour, and urbanisation. One imagines what turn the book would have made had those later disruptions been factored in, even as a continuation of the moral conversations the Molemas were part of.
In the present moment, when questions of borders, xenophobia, racism, uneven citizenship, migrant belonging and identity politics dominate debates globally, Morafe offers a powerful corrective. She tries to teach us that identity is not declared only in constitutions or nationalist manifestos, but is lived, argued over, inherited and contested in daily life. The anxieties over “proper” behaviour, over moral authority, over what it means to belong, are not relics of colonialism, but are ever-present. What do you make of the Xhosa tribes who live in Zimbabwe? Didn’t King Mzilikazi KaMashobane, after quarrelling with King Shaka in the 1830s, lead a group of people – the Ndebele (or Matabele) – from what is now South Africa to present-day Zimbabwe in the establishment of the kingdom of Matabeleland, located between the Limpopo and Zambezi Rivers? Now, you try to reinforce fake colonial and apartheid borders by calling your brethren Amakwerekwere.
.......
Morafe: Person, family and nation in colonial Bechuanaland, 1880s-1950s is a landmark achievement. Khumisho Moguerane has written a history that matters for our time by filling the lacunae in southern African historiography.
.......
Moreover, Moguerane shows that colonialism did not simply erase local moral orders, but transformed, co-opted, courted, destroyed and also depended on them. The Molemas, as both Christian modernisers and custodians of chieftaincy, mediated between worlds, their contradictions, vulnerabilities and moral choices illuminate how African political modernity was not just racist imitation, but an imperial creation.
Morafe: Person, family and nation in colonial Bechuanaland, 1880s-1950s is a landmark achievement. Khumisho Moguerane has written a history that matters for our time by filling the lacunae in southern African historiography. It should help us understand that nationhood, identity and belonging are processes lived and felt – born in clan, tribal, family and moral order and in daily choice, before they become constitutions or flags. For anyone interested in African history, in moral philosophy and in the politics of belonging, this is a book not to be missed. It compels us to remember that we are always not only citizens, but persons, that morafe is not given but made, remade, claimed and resisted, and that in claiming it we also lay claim to the future and who we want to become.
Also read:
The importance of oral history in southern African historiography
PenAfrican: Sir Herbert Baker: a biography by John Stewart – a book review
PenAfrican: A reflection on Journey Kwantu by Vusumzi Ngxande
PenAfrican: In search of Nongqawuse by Treive Nicholas – a book review