1 - A Writing Life – A Riting Life –A Rioting Life

Summary

Kgositsile was born on 18 February 1938 in rural Dithakong, on the outskirts of Mafikeng. The town of Mafikeng as a colonial urban centre under the British protectorate is historically important. In the early nineteenth century, the capital of the Batlhaping sub-branch of the Barolong people was in Dithakong (erstwhile Dithakwaneng). Towards the mid-nineteenth century, the sub-branch of Kgositsile's lineage of the Barolong, the Molema, settled in small, clustered villages on the banks of the Molopo River, producing a flourishing urban area that the Dutch called ‘the Stadt’, or ‘the city’. Towards the end of that century, in 1895 Mafeking was selected as a location for the British colonial administrative offices of the Bechuanaland Protectorate outside the colony of Bechuana (now Botswana). This administration leased land from the Tswana chief immediately adjacent to the village clusters.

As a British protectorate, Mafeking became the ground for territorial fighting between the Dutch and the British during the Anglo-Boer war, with both sides waging a fierce battle for that region between 1899 and 1900 in what is known as ‘the Siege of Mafeking’. As a ‘final frontier’, Mafeking was a prime location, as it was near both the border and the railway between Bulawayo and Kimberly. The latter was a booming mining town at the time since diamonds had been discovered there in the 1860s. The ‘Siege of Mafeking’ also politically conscientized a young Barolong court interpreter and journalist, Solomon Plaatje, who, funded by the Tswana chief Silas Molema, founded the newspaper Koranta ea Becoana (Newspaper for Batswana) and later, Tsala ea Becoana (Friend of Batswana).

Plaatje's work through the newspaper medium addressed the Batswana directly, asking them to maintain a love for the Setswana language, cultures, and identity. He asked them to use Setswana even when the British were teaching them English language and mannerisms; he asked them to love their language, pray in it, study it, and develop it. This sensibility was crucially instilled in him by the womenfolk of his matricentric upbringing, whom Plaatje acknowledges in his various published works.