When I came back to Canada from Botswana, I somehow wanted to keep connected to that country. At the same time the early history of Botswana had always intrigued me, and so I started to take an interest in the topic. And that led me into postal history, in other words, the little pieces of paper in the form of stamps that are able to give us a bit of an insight into that distant period. That interest of mine then evolved into a stamp collection that is almost complete, and covers Bechuanaland for the time period from 1880 to 1930. Here I just want to give a few snapshots of how postal history can link to important and interesting events of the time. I am not a historian, and I am not well read up on the topic, but I thought I could share the snippets of information I picked up along the way. And hopefully this may awaken an interest in the early history of our beloved Botswana, and may lead others to look further into its most interesting history. So now I am just showing a few of my stamps, and telling the stories that are connected to them. Should it then happen that anyone is interested in the topic of Bechuanaland Postal history, needless to say, I would be happy to show the whole collection, or to share some of my insights regarding collecting the early stamps of Bechuanaland. One of my most prized possessions is this stamp. The cancel reads “KURUMAN” and the date is August 2, 1893. The stamp is pre-Bechuanaland, and at the time the postal system was linked to the then British “Cape of Good Hope” colony (now Capetown). Kuruman today is outside the Botswana border, but back then it belonged to a region known as Bechuanaland. The town is historically significant because it was the seat of a mission of the London Mission Society. The first missionary there was Robert Moffat, who became much liked and appreciated by the rulers of the surrounding Bechuanaland tribes, and the mission did much good work. Later, the London Mission Society decided that Robert Moffat needed some help, and sent out a young missionary by the name of David Livingstone. But he only stayed there long enough to marry Robert Moffat’s oldest daughter, Mary. Missionary work turned out not to be to David’s liking, and he took off north to parts then unknown and unexplored. The rest is history, but we will meet Robert Moffat again. Another stamp from Bechuanaland is this Cape of Good Hope example, and here too the cancel is from a town now outside of Botswana’s borders. The cancel clearly reads Bechuanaland, and the date is March 17, 1899. Taungs (now called Taung) is not directly linked to the history of Botswana, but has become famous in another sense. In 1924, at the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, a young British professor, Raymond Dart, was tasked with setting up an anatomy department. He needed specimens, and encouraged his students to go collecting during their holidays. One student came from Taung, and there, in a local limestone quarry, she found a fossilized monkey skull. Dart then asked the quarry foreman to be on the lookout for other fossils. One day, when Dart was just getting ready for a wedding, two crates from Taung arrived. He had to see what they contained, and what he found made Raymond Dart almost miss the wedding. In the box was a skull, now named the Taung Child, and given the Latin name Australopithecus africanus. This find was the first pre-human fossil found in Africa, and was to revolutionize paleo-anthropology, and put the name of Taung forever on the map. It also made Raymond Dart famous as the father of African paleo-anthropology. Later on, extensive finds by the Leakey family in Kenya were followed by many more important finds in Ethiopia and elsewhere. But these later finds can not diminish the importance of the fact that the first pre-human fossil was found in Taung. We are now familiar with the stamps of the Cape of Good Hope used in Bechuanaland. In 1882 the Boers established two short-lived independent colonies in the interior of Southern Africa. These were Stellaland with the capital Vryburg, and Goshen with the capital Mafeking. Then, in 1885, a British force moved into the area, and occupied both Goshen and Stellaland. There the British established the Crown Colony of British Bechuanaland, and soon after, a rudimentary postal system was established. It was still using the stamps of the Cape of Good Hope, but these stamps were now locally overprinted with the text “British Bechuanaland”. The stamp illustrated is cancelled “Mafeking” and dated AUG 8, unfortunately the year is not legible. And as we may know, Mafeking remained the capital of Bechuanaland, and had the distinction of being the only capital of a country in the world being located outside that country. Vryburg is located in that large slice of land south-west of Mafeking which is to this day populated by Tswanas, but is now part of the South African Province of Northern Cape (as is Taung to the south and Kuruman to the west). Before the establishment of British Bechuanaland in 1882, Vryburg was the capital of the short-lived Boer Republic of Stellaland. In 1885 the area came under the administration of the Cape Colony. By the early 1890s the British colony was well enough established to include a postal service. Here shown is a one shilling stamp with the cancel “VRYBURG” and the date 18 February 1892. And this stamp is now inscribed “British Bechuanaland” and it became the proper postal use in the area. Later, when the Bechuanaland Protectorate was proclaimed north of the Molopo River, the sector to the south, including the towns of Vryburg and Mafeking, was annexed to the Cape Colony, and thus British Bechuanaland ceased to exist. The movement of Boer settlers into the Northern Cape became a great concern to the local Tswana Tribes, and they felt powerless to stop it. The three main Tswana chiefs, under the leadership of Khama the Great, together with Chief Sebele and Chief Bathoen, decided that the best way to try to solve this problem was to seek counsel from their English Missionary friend Robert Moffat in Kuruman. According to lore, Robert Moffat told the three chiefs that there was only one solution: they had to seek the protection of their great Mother the Queen. And so, in 1885 it was decided that missionary Moffat and the three chiefs would travel to London and seek an audience with Queen Victoria. They travelled by train to Capetown, where the chiefs were outfitted in tuxedos and bowler hats, before taking the steamship to England. The three chiefs caused quite a commotion in London, but they were successful in persuading Queen Victoria to establish a Protectorate north of the Molopo river, which was proclaimed on the 30th of September 1885. Needless to say the three chiefs also had a good look around, and took a few lessons home as to how the white man lived. This may have had a profound influence on the future direction of the development of Botswana. Illustrated is a stamp of British Bechuanaland, but now overprinted “Protectorate”. The town cancel is Shoshong (west of Mahalapye) and the date of AP 25, 1889. Only a few years later the Boers rebelled against the British, in order to re-establish their independence. However, the British would have none of it, and so it came to the Boer war of 1899 to 1902. The British were used to a traditional type of war where two armies confronted each other, but they had no experience with a guerrilla type of warfare, where the enemy was scattered and conducted a mobile warfare based on familiarity with the environment, using the terrain and local knowledge to their advantage. As a result, the British armies experienced several crushing defeats. They desperately needed some good news from a war they were losing. And the town of Mafeking provided just that. The local commander and his militia were able to hold off the Boer troops, and while his town was besieged, it was never taken. That commander was Baden-Powell, an archetypal British soldier. He had mobilized the male population of Mafeking, and successfully repelled the Boer troops again and again. He was also able to maintain a postal system linking the town north into Bechuanaland. Here is a stamp of the Cape of Good Hope overprinted “Mafeking” and “Besieged”, with the cancel “MAFEKING” and the date May 11, 1900. Because of this feat, Baden-Powell became the great hero of the Boer war, but whether it was due to his capability, or to simply being at the right place at the right time, is a question historians can better answer. Baden-Powell’s main problem was the severe shortage of capable men to defend the perimeter of the besieged town. He needed every capable body to man these defences. That left him severely handicapped by not being able to communicate with these outposts, especially when it came to relying on warnings of an impending attack. To solve the problem, he decided that the boys of the town could just as well fulfil that crucial task of linking the outposts to his central command post. And so he established a corps of runners between his centre and the outposts, and was most impressed as to how well the system worked. After the end of the Boer war, he was received as a hero back in England. But he always remembered his runners, and decided to establish an organization of youths to fulfil just such a supportive role. Thus Baden-Powell’s name will always associated with the founding of the Boy Scouts. A knighthood seemed a proper reward for his achievements. When Mafeking ran out of Cape of Good Hope stamps, Baden-Powell was forced to produce his own Mafeking stamps, in order to keep the postal system going. What more appropriate than a stamp with his own portrait, and the text “MAFEKING BESIEGED”, here with a cancel MAFEKING, and the date 10 April 1900. Here a link to Botswana needs to be mentioned, since a British armoured train was stationed south of Kgale in a fortified location. Once in a while that train would build up steam and run down the track towards Mafeking to shoot up any Boer war parties. And when the situation got too hot, the engineer would throw her into reverse and run back to Kgale.
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April 2021
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