The pipeline: Botswana’s reception of refugees, 1956–68

Abstract

This paper covers Botswana’s emergence as a place of refuge from its troubled white‐ruled neighbours. Botswana’s reception of refugees is seen as a symptom of, and as a catalyst for, its growing identification as a distinct nation in the region. From 1956, Bechuanaland colonial authorities distanced themselves from apartheid South Africa, and from 1957–58 the country received significant influxes of political refugees. The paper pays particular attention to the ‘pipeline’ that took refugees north across the Zambezi. This was initially protected from local police interference probably by Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service (MI6). Nelson Mandela, alias ‘David Motsamayi’, used the pipeline ‘down’ as well as ‘up’ to re‐enter South Africa. Such arrangements continued through independence in 1966 but were almost terminated when guerrilla fighters tried to use Botswana as a refuge in 1966–67. Revaluation of policy towards refugees within Botswana government circles resulted after 1969 in more overt moral support for liberation movements and, boosted by new economic strength, more self‐confident assertion of national sovereignty against neighbouring countries. This set the scene for Botswana to receive a huge influx of refugees as a result of the Soweto rising of 1976.

Keywords:

• Botswana
• refugees
• ANC
• Pan Africanist Congress (PAC)
• Mandela
• Seretse‐Khama

1957–59 ¹

The first significant inflow of refugees into Bechuanaland in the second half of the century was of people fleeing from the tightening up of apartheid laws in South Africa that began in 1956, with resultant ‘peasant revolts’ in the western and northern Transvaal in 1957–58. This was also the time when alien residents not in formal employment were being rounded up and expelled over South Africa’s borders. The Mazezuru church followers of John Masowe or ‘Korsten Basket‐makers’ were taken from the south coast and dumped into Bechuanaland, through which they spread as far north as the Copperbelt, leaving significant congregations at places such as Shashe railway station near Francistown in Bechuanaland.

In March 1957 Kgosi (chief) Abram Moiloa of the BaHurutshe at Dinokana, about 25 km inside the Transvaal from the Bechuanaland border, was instructed to order the women of Dinokana to be registered for identity pass‐books. Abram refused, was deposed, and fled across the border into Bechuanaland, as did also Kgosi Gopane of nearby Gopanestad who had accepted women’s passes against the wishes of his people. The backbone of BaHurutshe resistance was local women, combined with returning migrant workers from Johannesburg who had gained experience in the anti‐pass demonstrations of the African National Congress (ANC). Resistance peaked and was quelled on 25 January 1958, when four women were shot dead by police with sub‐machine guns at Gopanestad, after which there was a steady flow of refugees to nearby Lobatse and further afield in Bechuanaland (Hooper 1960, Manson 1983). ²

Similar repression following enforcement of Verwoerd’s ‘grand apartheid’ in the northern Transvaal (Sekhukhuneland and Soutpansberg) resulted in BaPedi refugees crossing the Limpopo through to the Tuli Block into the BaNgwato Reserve. Those who fled to relatives across the river, such as the BaSeleka, were more easily accepted by the BaNgwato authorities at Serowe. Many such BaPedi were members of the Zion Christian Church (ZCC) and its offshoots, which now became well established for the first time at Serowe and in the Tswapong hills. There were even suggestions that the whole ZCC might transfer itself to the Bechuanaland Protectorate as its promised land (Delius 1996). ³

Tshekedi Khama, the former Regent of the BaNgwato who had alienated himself from most of his people by his opposition to his nephew Seretse’s marriage, tried to use the inflow of refugees to build up an alternative power base to Serowe, at his new village of Pilikwe, south of the Tswapong hills. Moiloa settled with Tshekedi at Pilikwe in early 1959, as did BaPedi and other BaHurutshe; and Tshekedi induced the Southern Rhodesian white activist Guy Clutton‐Brock to start a cooperative farming project nearby. The South African government complained to Britain’s high commissioner in Pretoria that Pilikwe had become a hotbed of subversion. ⁴

But Pilikwe declined in importance after Tshekedi’s death in June 1959. Moiloa left for Lobatse and Pitsane, which were much closer to home, and he eventually returned to South Africa. Another Hurutshe refugee, Frank Modise, left Pilikwe for Lobatse after failing to establish himself as a professional photographer in the village. He obtained a British passport, declaring he had been born on the Bechuanaland side of the border, and was considered a thorn in the sides of both government and liberation movements until he was finally ‘repatriated’ to London. ⁵

At least for the BaNgwato Reserve, political developments in the Rhodesias were equally significant as events in South Africa. A strike among workers on the Kariba dam in August 1958 was blamed on BaNgwato workers in combination with the Nyasaland African Congress (which had been founded 14 years earlier on the advice of a MoNgwato teacher, K.T. Motsete). One hundred and twelve BaNgwato workers were sent back to Serowe. Refugees from riots at Bulawayo included coloured South African social worker Peter Boorman, who took up work at Serowe community centre. Most of the BakaNswazwi people, who had found refuge from Tshekedi’s rule in Southern Rhodesia in 1946, also elected to return across the border to the BaNgwato Reserve in 1958–59 – though Kgosi John Nswazwi himself took some more years to follow. ⁶

From 1959 to beyond the year 2000 there was a complex history of refugees fleeing into Botswana and sometimes returning home to Namibia. This began with the Windhoek massacre of December 1959, after which many refugees fled into Bechuanaland. Both the South‐West Africa People’s Organisation and the South‐West African National Union made efforts to recruit support among refugees in Ngamiland, Chobe, Boteti and Mahalapye. ⁷

The BaNgwato Reserve (now Central District) was regarded as Botswana’s main centre of political activity and BaNgwato migrant workers were treated with suspicion as agitators abroad. ⁸ Among ANC activists in South Africa, both Z.K. Matthews and Joe Modise could trace their origins to the BaNgwato. The only Botswana citizen to be imprisoned on Robben Island, Michael Dingake, came from and returned to the BaNgwato Reserve. Motsamai Mpho from Ngamiland was one of those from Bechuanaland arrested in December 1956 and charged in South Africa’s Treason Trial. He returned in 1958 to pursue a political career based at Palapye within the BaNgwato Reserve. Another, Fish Keitseng (1921–2004) from Kanye – one of the unsung heroes of modern South African history – returned in 1959 to carry on the ANC struggle from his base at Peleng township in Lobatse (Dingake 1987, Mpho 1996, Keitseng 1999). ⁹

The year of Africa (1960)

After the banning of the ANC in South Africa, Oliver Tambo and Ronald Segal were dispatched to set up an ANC/Congress Alliance structure in exile. They crossed the border in early April and reached Serowe, where they stayed with Lenyeletse Seretse, until they were joined by Yusuf Dadoo and then flew to Tanganyika. The length of their wait, inviting drastic intervention by South African security forces, so frightened the British authorities that it was decided that prominent individuals would in future be hustled through Bechuanaland as fast as possible. Bechuanaland, however, gained the reputation of being a relatively safe haven. Intelligence reports noted that people in general were sympathetic to refugees, and some key colonial officials had rather more sympathy with the ideals of liberation than their equivalents in Basutoland or Swaziland. ¹⁰

Over the next two months the trickle of refugees through Serowe and Palapye became a flood. The ‘escape route’ (the term used in an intelligence report of June 1960) to the north by plane from Serowe to Tanganyika was first organised by Ronald Watts, originally recruited by Tshekedi as an agriculturalist, as local representative of Canon Collins’s London‐based Christian Action. The private visit to Serowe of an official of the PAC‐aligned Ghana government may have been another incentive. The effect on public opinion in the BaNgwato Reserve was positively welcomed by the liberal district commissioner at Serowe, David Robinson, who reported:

Great interest throughout District and African sympathies wholly anti‐Union [of South Africa] Government. No sign resentment against B.P. Government; in fact standing enhanced by attitude to political refugees. ¹¹

Other visitors obliged to stay at Serowe until transit could be arranged northwards included the Revd Marcus Kooper, en route without a passport to New York, to testify before the United Nations committee on South‐West Africa; and South Africa’s Non‐European and non‐political chess champion, Isaac Moemane, anxious to get to the Netherlands for a world championship but denied a South African passport. A certain Pitso Andrew Raditsabeng, claiming that the purpose of his stay at Palapye was to study local Bushmen, was returned across the border as an obvious agent of the South African Police (SAP).

By September 1960 there were SAP checkpoints on previously unguarded main roads across the Limpopo border of Bechuanaland, reportedly to stop political detainees fleeing after their release from the Johannesburg fort. These policemen were also instructed to watch out for Clutton‐Brock and Herbert Bartaune. Clutton‐Brock was a frequent visitor from Southern Rhodesia to the BaNgwato cooperative farm near Pilikwe, and worked with Watts at Serowe to shepherd refugees northwards. Bartaune, a Belgian former Luftwaffe pilot, flew ANC personnel between Bechuanaland and Tanganyika (Watts 1997). ¹²

The flow of ‘discontented young men’, most of them ‘obscure’ and many of them rather ‘bewildered’, increased during November 1960. Frank Modise in Lobatse urged them on through his BaHurutshe contacts over the border, while Watts in Serowe counselled caution because of the impossibility of catering for such large numbers. Registered refugees were delayed in Bechuanaland by negotiations with Northern Rhodesian authorities for the right of transit to newly independent Tanganyika. (The inordinately expensive alternative – up to £600 for the hire of a plane – was to overfly Northern Rhodesia from Kasane to Mbeya.) But at this stage many unregistered refugees managed to pass quite quickly through Bechuanaland and Southern Rhodesia, claiming asylum on arrival by train in Northern Rhodesia.

Most refugees were still undetected by the Bechuanaland police. Among the apparently undetected were J.B. Marks (a native Setswana‐speaker) and Joe Slovo of the SA Communist Party, and Sam Nujoma the SWAPO leader who, the BBC reported in July 1960, had walked across Bechuanaland from South‐West Africa. ¹³

ANC veteran Z.K. Matthews had received permanent resident status in Bechuanaland in 1958, on ancestral grounds. He and his son Joe Matthews were also later admitted as local attorneys. Z.K. and his wife, however, went off to join the World Council of Churches in Geneva; and it was Joe Matthews who became a conspicuous visitor and temporary resident for a number of periods from 1961 onwards. Less conspicuous were Joe Modise and Jobe James Hadebe, who visited from Johannesburg to set up the ANC’s own escape route in 1960. Modise, with Serowe roots, could pass as a local, and escaped attention by colonial intelligence.

ANC safe houses along the line‐of‐rail were run by locals Fish Keitseng in Lobatse, Klaas Motshidisi in Palapye and Anderson Tshepe in Francistown – with contacts in border places such as Mochudi (the trader Sam Chand was murdered with his family by South African operatives 30 years later) and Bobonong, the home of ANC activist Michael Dingake. The ANC had many couriers in Zeerust who arranged border crossings both by road and by fence‐jumping.

The first large South African group accommodated by Keitseng at Lobatse consisted of 21 nurses trying to reach Tanganyika in December 1960. They were passed on to Serowe, the home of their effective leader Neo Raditladi, where they stayed until January 1962 when transit to Tanganyika was finally arranged.

The aerial pipeline (1961–62)

South Africa’s declaration as a republic and break from the Commonwealth in 1961 neutralised the internal threat of Afrikaner nationalism in Bechuanaland, as white settlers were given the choice of South African citizenship or remaining ‘British’. District commissioner David Robinson reported local responses at Serowe and in the Tuli Block:

… politically minded Africans were delighted, considering that territories bordering South Africa will get more attention and more assistance. Afrikaners it is reported were also pleased and look forward to the incorporation of the High Commission Territories as ready‐made Bantustans, which would save the European [sic] from losing land in the Union. ¹⁴

South Africa becoming completely foreign territory justified the existence of a parallel security structure in Bechuanaland, to run what was known in official documents as ‘the pipeline’ – for prominent refugees to pass through Bechuanaland as soon as possible. The pipeline’s operators consisted of a handful of key colonial officers and one police officer reporting direct to Resident Commissioner Peter Fawcus, who in turn reported to the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS, otherwise known as MI6) in London. The regular police Special Branch (or CID) continued to report to the old imperial security network known as MI5 – regarded as being compromised by its close connections with the police in Southern Rhodesia and, to a lesser extent, South Africa (Flower 1987, p. 15, Tlou et al. 1995, pp. 200–201, Parsons 1999, Parsons et al. 1999). ¹⁵

The aerial ‘pipeline’ ran from Lobatse via refuelling at Kasane, overflying Northern Rhodesia to Mbeya and Dar es Salaam in Tanganyika. It was operated by a new mini‐airline called Bechuanaland Safaris, later Bechuanaland Air Services, financed by a combination of the Bechuanaland Protectorate government (presumably using hush money from MI6) and Lobatse meat millionaire Cyril Hurwitz. Bartaune was resident director and operator based at Lobatse airfield. This enabled Bartaune to buy a second aircraft (adding a Cessna to his Beechcraft) and to hire another pilot besides himself, named Mildenhall. At about the same time a new hotel opened on the Chobe River at Kasane, suitable for an overnight refuelling stop inside Bechuanaland – though the plane itself had to hop to nearby Victoria Falls in Southern Rhodesia for the fuel (Keitseng 1999, p. 134n.). ¹⁶

March–May 1961 saw the passage through Botswana of Philip Kgosana from Cape Town, and of a number of wives and children of officials of the (temporary) ANC–PAC United Africa Front going to join their husbands in Dar es Salaam, Cairo or Accra. Such wives as Mrs Msimang and Mrs Hadebe stayed apart from other refugees at Serowe because they considered them too rowdy. PAC activist (and former Basutoland district officer) Patrick Duncan was accommodated on an overnight stop at Kasane’s newly opened hotel (near Kazungula), on the Bartaune air‐route, with an unnamed woman (Adelaide Tambo?) plus her children. Canon Collins and Patrick van Rensburg (still in London before coming to settle in Bechuanaland in 1962) instructed Watts to take special care of Bransby Jordan (Keitseng 1999, pp. 51–53, 133). ¹⁷

The most illustrious passenger on the aerial pipeline both ‘up’ (northwards) and ‘down’ (southwards) was the Black Pimpernel himself, Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela, who had gone underground in South Africa since the banning of the ANC. Using the Setswana alias of David Motsamayi, Mandela crossed the border in February 1962 and stayed with Keitseng, after being refused a room at the Lobatse Hotel in the high street. After a couple of weeks, Bartaune flew Mandela and Keitseng with Joe Matthews (whom the BP government believed to be in overall charge of the ANC’s pipeline) out of Lobatse, and returned Mandela and Keitseng (via refuelling at Kasane) to nearby Kanye in July 1962 – avoiding Lobatse where SAP agents lurked.

‘David Motsamayi’ then crossed back into South Africa undetected but was captured in his guise as a chauffeur in Natal in August. SAP enquiries as to how Mandela returned to South Africa put the Bechuanaland authorities into a tailspin, and panicked MI6 into withdrawing two key operatives and closing down its aerial pipeline operation via Kasane (Mandela 1994, p. 365, Sampson 1999, pp. 161–162, 170, 172, 599: nn. 3–10, 600: nn. 51, 64, citing inter alia Public Record Office (London) DO, 119/1222, 119/1229, 119/1478).

The closing of the aerial route was by no means the end of the ‘pipeline’, as the relatively few prominent individuals who passed through in 1961 were followed by large numbers of young recruits seeking to join the PAC and ANC in Tanganyika. In early October 1962, Keitseng found himself shepherding 27 ANC youths northwards, including Thabo Mbeki:

Thabo Mbeki was still a small boy then. He used to ask lots of questions. ‘Mr. Keitseng, when are we going to arrive at Palapye? How far is it? How far?’ I don’t know if I told him to shut up or not. I took them by Land Rovers to Palapye, and then Klaas Motshidisi drove us north to the border in a big truck which he hired. (Keitseng 1999, p. 64)

After crossing the border, the party of 22 males and 5 females led by Keitseng were picked up and detained at Plumtree by Southern Rhodesian police for about six weeks, before being put back on a train across the border to Palapye. After being threatened with deportation to South Africa, they were transported first to a tented camp at Gaborone and then put on a plane at Francistown which had been hired by Tambo to take them, and 15 more youths, to Tanganyika. ‘For a short while’ after that, remarks Keitseng in his memoirs, ‘I sent all the comrades to Francistown like that to catch the plane’ (Keitseng 1999, pp. 64–67).

While he was in detention at Plumtree, Keitseng missed the ‘big meeting’ of ANC leaders, internal and external, held in and around his house at Lobatse in October 1962. Tambo, Moses Kotane, Walter Sisulu and others discussed what to do with Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK) after Mandela’s capture. Though newspapers caught wind of the secret congress, the colonial authorities made no attempt to stop it. The authorities further asserted Bechuanaland’s sovereignty in November 1962, when police boarded a Rhodesia Railways train at Palapye and released Peter H. Katjavivi and two other SWAPO refugees being forcibly ‘repatriated’ from Rhodesia to South Africa (Halpern 1965, p. 327, Keitseng 1999, p. 66).

‘A continuous red carpet for South African saboteurs’ (1963)

The plight of anti‐apartheid refugees in Bechuanaland gained worldwide publicity in July–September 1963 because of the coincidence of three news stories – those of Arthur Goldreich and Harold Wolpe, Dr Kenneth Abrahams and Jack and Rica Hodgson. Such was the fury in South African governing circles that Hendrik van den Bergh, head of the SAP Security Branch, called a press conference in which he complained that Bechuanaland had become a ‘free port for runaways, Reds and saboteurs’, and added that there is one continuous red carpet for South African saboteurs from Lobatsi to Northern Rhodesia. In his view, Bechuanaland was not only a haven for political refugees but a base for sabotage against South Africa.

In August Arthur Goldreich and Harold Wolpe, members of MK captured at Rivonia, having escaped from the police, flew from Swaziland to Francistown to catch an East African Airways (EAA) charter DC3 that was ferrying refugees to Tanganyika. But the EAA plane was blown apart after arrival at Francistown airport. The culprits were never caught, but the airport – the hub for air transport of migrant workers from and to Central Africa – was owned and operated by WNLA, the Johannesburg‐based mine labour recruitment agency that ran a security network closely tied to that of the SAP. Eventually Goldreich and Wolpe flew in a Cessna charter plane from Palapye to Mbeya via Kasane. South Africa cancelled EAA landing rights at South African airports, and demanded that in future all planes crossing South Africa between Swaziland and Basutoland and Bechuanaland should land and be checked at a South African military airfield. (Beginning in July 1963, police road‐blocks on South Africa’s borders were converted into immigration posts, where passports rather than normal identity documents were necessary.)

Also in mid‐August 1963 a physician named Dr Kenneth Abrahams appeared in a Cape Town court charged with sabotage as chairman of the Yu Chin Chan guerrilla club. Dr Abrahams had not long before moved from Cape Town to practise at his wife’s home at Rehoboth in South‐West Africa. He alleged that he had been kidnapped by the SAP inside Bechuanaland, a mile outside Ghanzi on the road to Lobatse. His story was checked and found to be true by the press, which recalled the case of Anderson Ganyile who had been kidnapped by the SAP from inside Basutoland in 1961. Virulent protests by the British government to the South African government led to the prompt return of Abrahams and three fellow Rehobothers across the Bechuanaland border on 31 August.

Interwoven between these two newspaper stories was the tale of Jack and Rica Hodgson (and Michael Harmel). They had fled from police restriction in South Africa in May 1963, with the intention of buying a border farm near Lobatse as a conduit for MK operations. From their Lobatse flat they ordered a Land Rover from Germiston for the ANC pipeline, and taught Fish Keitseng to drive their VW beetle. However, their cover was blown and the Land Rover badly damaged in an explosion (reputedly set by agent Gordon Winter) in September. The Hodgsons retreated to Francistown, from which as British passport‐holders they were deported to England by air at government expense. By contrast, the passage through Bechuanaland in early October of Julius First (Ruth’s father) and of Ronnie Kasrils and his wife, courtesy of Keitseng, was relatively quiet (Halpern 1965, pp. 33–47, Winter 1981, pp. 75–76, Ellis and Sechaba 1992, Kasrils 1993, Wolpe 1994, Dale 1995, p. 41 and 181n., Slovo 1997; Keitseng 1999, pp. 68–72). ¹⁸

Freedom ferry (1964–65)

The break‐up of the Central African Federation in 1962–63, with the election of Ian Smith’s Rhodesia Front in Southern Rhodesia and self‐government in Northern Rhodesia (leading to the independence of Zambia in October 1964), opened up a new land route. It was a very rough road that ran from Francistown along the Bechuanaland side of the Rhodesian border, to Kazungula via Pandamatenga. Since 1961 the Chobe Hotel at Kasane had been operating a new ferry across the Zambezi at nearby Kazungula, to pick up weekend visitors from Livingstone in Northern Rhodesia, the tourist centre for the Victoria Falls. From 1963–64 onwards the Kazungula crossing became the ‘freedom ferry’ between white and black Africa. Keitseng and Motshididi spent their days driving refugees up the Pandamatenga road, and a few clandestine returnees down the road, sometimes making two trips a week.

In early 1964, 154 refugees fled into Bechuanaland from South‐West Africa (Epikiro Reserve) and were accommodated in the OvaHerero village at Makumba near the Mamuno/Buitpos border post. Well‐educated South Africans either unaffiliated with the PAC or ANC or with smaller parties (Non‐European Unity Movement, Society of Young Africa, etc.), such as the future novelist Bessie Head (arrived 13 March 1964) and a number of black South African teachers, had great difficulty in finding ways of moving northwards – and instead found employment in Bechuanaland schools.

The London‐based Joint Committee for Relief Work in the High Commission Territories (a loose alliance kicked off by Christian Action with Amnesty International, Oxfam, the Quakers, War on Want and the UK Labour Party) helped finance the Francistown refugee centre (the White House) and set up a new refugee reception centre at Mochudi (run by Sandy Grant). It had a tame accountant as financial officer in Lobatse (Keith Browlow) and its own ‘pipeline’ Land Rover running between Francistown and Kazungula (driven by Peter Mackay) – but seems to have operated mainly for the benefit of young PAC refugees seeking overseas scholarships.

Refugee work increasingly devolved onto the Botswana Council of Churches and the International Refugee Council of Zambia, with Z.K. Matthews helping to coordinate from Geneva. However, the security clampdown in South Africa became increasingly effective in 1964–65, and the refugee reception centre at Mochudi was barely used except as a local community centre. (However, the South African air force took care to buzz Mochudi with Harvard training aircraft on Independence Day in September 1966, as a warning to refugees of the wrath to come.) ¹⁹

Zambia’s independence on 24 October 1964 made little practical difference to the arrangements for refugees set up between the Ministry of Home Affairs in Lusaka and the Office of the Queen’s Commissioner (later prime minister and then president) in Gaborone – the so‐called ‘Thompson Convention’. It followed Home Office practice from London, particularly in the ‘doctrine of refoulement’: the refusal to consider giving asylum to a refugee already given asylum in the other country. It meant: ‘Our agreement with Zambia is that we will protect her as far as possible from illegal immigration from the south in return for an equivalent protection against returning illegal immigrants from the north’ (Dale 1995, p. 38). ²⁰

The toughening up of refugee policy by the British imperial authorities in Southern Africa – to ensure the rapid northward passage of anyone considered a security risk, and to prevent their return southwards – began with the Prevention of Violence Abroad Act imposed on all three High Commission Territories (Basutoland, Bechuanaland, Swaziland) in late 1963. The fear that was said to justify such legislation was the threat of ‘hot pursuit’ by white settler military forces across borders. In the case of Bechuanaland, such threats came equally from Southern Rhodesia as from South Africa and South‐West Africa.

Ironically, while the British government appears to have had a security plan for British military intervention during the break‐up of the Central African Federation in 1962–63, such plans were abandoned thereafter. The only British troops seen in Bechuanaland arrived after Rhodesia’s Unilateral Declaration of Independence in November 1965: to guard a MI5/MI6 listening post that was ostensibly a British government radio transmitter relaying Beatles’ tunes and BBC news broadcasts.

Internal self‐government (1965–66)

After Bechuanaland’s first general election based on adult universal franchise, Prime Minister Seretse Khama was sworn in on 9 March 1965. Her Majesty’s Commissioner, however, remained in charge of all external relations. Equally significantly, he continued to chair cabinet meetings until September of that year. The cabinet was faced with two types of refugee problem: how to choke off the ‘down’ pipeline sending ‘trained saboteurs’ to South Africa, and that of refugees who had settled down to stay – some of them despite attempts to encourage them to leave.

An example of the latter was Jane Kerina and her three children at Serowe, who had been left behind by her husband Dr Mburumba Kerina, chairman of NUDO (National Unity Democratic Organisation of South‐West Africa), when he had been declared a prohibited immigrant on 24 December 1964. Mrs Kerina was a US citizen with a rich mother in Los Angeles, hence the US government’s refusal to repatriate her and her family as paupers. The solution was to allow her another six months’ residence for NUDO to arrange for her passage to New York. ²¹

On the other hand, there was the case of one refugee who had been welcome to stay in Bechuanaland, but who had recently been arrested on the border by the SAP, and was now imprisoned in Pretoria. Gordon Xhallie was a well‐connected Capetonian, who had been brought up in the household of Anglican Bishop Clayton. He had left South Africa as a PAC refugee via Bechuanaland in 1960, leaving his wife and family in Cape Town. He had become a senior member of the PAC/United Front in Dar es Salaam, but had become homesick and disillusioned with the PAC’s external leaders. He arrived at Francistown in September 1962, hoping to be reunited with his wife and family, but they refused to join him in exile.

Xhallie then found employment first at Moeng College and then at Sherwood Ranch Hotel, near Martin’s Drift on the Limpopo border. Intelligent and affable, he was extremely popular among hotel customers, but made the mistake of trying to recover his employer’s crying child who strayed just a few metres beyond the SAP barrier at Martin’s Drift/Groblersbrug. He was nabbed by the SAP sergeant and carted off to Pretoria. (He later returned to Botswana, reportedly a broken man, and took up residence in the Xhosa community at Mahalapye.) ²²

Many, if not most, transients through Botswana were South African students, without passports, hoping to pick up scholarships overseas or elsewhere in Africa. Those who could show affiliation with the PAC or ANC or SWAPO were allowed to accumulate at Francistown prior to being ferried northwards. More youthful refugees declared their allegiance to the PAC than ANC. The new Bechuanaland government was determined to stop the flow, and had no qualms about handing back casual chancers, liable to become a burden on the body politic, to the SAP at Lobatse border post. The government also decided to take the bull by the horns by removing the incumbent PAC, ANC and SWAPO representatives at Francistown, who were seen as magnets attracting refugees.

The National Council for Civil Liberties (NCCL) in London expressed concern about Thelma Noma Xorile, 17, and Fidelia Sidzumo, 26, who had jumped the fence in April 1965 and claimed they were going to colleges in the United States that autumn. After declining to apply for refugee status, they were ‘returned’ and detained in Zeerust jail. The government response to the NCCL inquiry was: ‘we follow international practice in not placing any premium on mere preferences for education, economic advancement or personal betterment’ (Dingake 1987, Barrell 1990, Keitseng 1999). ²³

Daniel Tloome, the ANC representative in Francistown was smoothly removed a few months after Zambia agreed to accept him in March 1965. Probably there was some top‐level negotiation with Lusaka ANC headquarters, possibly between ‘old friends’ Seretse Khama and Oliver Tambo. Tloome was replaced by local citizen Michael Dingake, but he was arrested that year inside Southern Rhodesia, and his ‘attempting to form a bigger ANC structure’ inside Bechuanaland came to a halt. Instead, Dingake spent the next 20 years on Robben Island.

The back of the PAC organisation had been broken by a joint Basutoland police/SAP raid in April 1963, but the PAC still maintained its forward base in Maseru. At Francistown, Solly Ndlovu had replaced Matthew Nkoana as PAC representative in July–August 1963. He was disliked by the authorities because of his close collaboration with rabid anti‐colonialist (and occasional SAP informant rather than ‘informer’) Phillip Matante of the Bechuanaland People’s Party. The chance to ‘get’ Solly came with the interrogation of Elliot Sihandipa Magwentshu (alias Enoch Fitha, Alfred Mocezo, Alfred Sithole, etc.), who had entered Bechuanaland illegally through Kazungula in February 1965. Magwentshu was the third clandestine member of the PAC Military Council to be assisted by Solly Ndlovu, but the first caught by the Bechuanaland Protectorate police. (Gasson Ndlovu had reached Basutoland and was currently on trial there under the local Prevention of Violence Abroad Act.)

Magwentshu admitted that ‘the purpose of his visit was to establish a safe route through the Territory for use by returning saboteurs on their way initially to Basutoland, and to organise a two‐way courier service between the two Territories’. The PAC office in Francistown was raided for Magwentshu’s papers – a map showing roads through Bechuanaland with sufficient traffic to cover guerrilla movements, and a letter remarking on changed conditions in Bechuanaland on the eve of independence and on the inefficiency of PAC operations: ‘There is a strong hostility here towards our Party, and the carelessness which is being experienced by our forces must come to an end’. ²⁴

SWAPO Francistown representative Maxwell Joseph (or Joseph Maxton) had arrived as a refugee at Maun in July 1961 and taken up residence in Francistown in January 1962. But he was mistrusted by the Bechuanaland authorities as a possible SAP agent provocateur, seen as compromising Bechuanaland’s relations with Zambia by false declarations about refugees, and was himself frequently away by air in Tanganyika and Cairo. The chance to ‘get’ Joseph came with the mistake of his deputy, Gideon Kasheta, ‘smuggling’ Angolan refugees through Francistown, belonging to the Union of People of Angola (UPA), under the guise of being SWAPO refugees – on the grounds that they were Ovambo/Kwanyama and thus close kin. The Bechuanaland government feared that this would encourage yet another refugee inflow. ²⁵

On 3 May 1965 the Ministry of Home Affairs presented for cabinet a review listing 21 prominent refugees, graded by recommended actions – long‐term permit, permit for six months, declare as prohibited immigrant, etc. A further review with personal details of 17 ‘refugees of importance’ (including some missed in the May list) was presented on 2 June. Abdool Karrim Essack, Cassim Kikia, Alexander Sobantu Mlondi, Lawrence Jonginthaba Nota and Sefton Siphiwo Vutela were identified as Unity Movement or Society of Young Africa (SOYA), some mild and some dangerous. PAC members listed were Godfrey Bill Hamathi, Samuel Setlabi Matsebe Maimela, Cuthbert Alban Ramasodi Motsepe and Solly Ndlovu. Bessie Head was described as ex‐PAC and ‘very unstable mentally’. Albino Pereira Francesco Chicole, Horace Themba Mathiso and Daniel Tloome were listed as ANC in Francistown; and Ismael Ahmed Cachalia, Ismael Matlhaku, Alan Joe Makgatla (McCarthy) and Gertrude Shope (wife of Mark William Shope of the South African Communist Party (SACP)) were ANC in Lobatse and the south‐east. Two people, Hamathi (PAC) in Gaborone and Mathiso (ANC) in Francistown, were suspected of being SAP agents or informers. ²⁶

The big story of mid‐1965 was the mass emigration of Frelimo refugees out of Swaziland. On 8 May more than 90 Frelimo refugees, who had crossed Swaziland from Mozambique in the previous few months, decided to stage a mass breakout through the Transvaal to Bechuanaland – ‘to obtain transport to take them to Dar‐es‐Salaam’. The push was raids by Swaziland police and activity by Portuguese agents in Swaziland, and the pull was the call by Frelimo headquarters (Eduardo Mondlane) in Dar for military recruits. The first three to arrive in Francistown were driven by William John Morgan in his swish Ford Zephyr 6. Morgan was a middle‐aged, moustachioed white Swazilander, a member of the left‐wing Ngwane National Liberatory Front but considered to be a possible SAP agent. Morgan drove off north by himself to Dar via Rhodesia and Zambia to obtain finance and ‘grease the pipeline’ for the Mozambicans who were being denied access to Zambia.

No fewer than 75 Frelimo women, children and men left Swaziland and were packed into a large furniture van that was taking them across the Transvaal from the Swaziland border to the Bechuanaland border. Petrol station attendants in Middelburg (Transvaal) saw what happened before the 75 were interned in Middelburg jail:

… at about 3 a.m. on May 9 a large pantechnicon turned into Jan Van Riebeeck Street. Suddenly a traffic control car with red light flashing pulled up … A man in uniform signalled the pantechnicon to stop. He tested the vehicle’s brakes, lights and wheels and then demanded to see inside the pantechnicon.

A further 15 Frelimo members arrived in Bechuanaland, most in taxis from as far as Mafeking, crossing the border fence at night. They then stayed with Fish Keitseng at Lobatse. The South African authorities made no attempt to block their passage to Bechuanaland and were evidently anxiously to be rid of them. At least Frelimo member one was hastened on his way by the SAP after being taken off a train. The Bechuanaland chief of police noted: ‘Fish Keitsing [sic] is not prepared to look after them indefinitely and is anxious that they should move on to Francistown’. It was reported that 15 more remained in Swaziland, under ‘Mario Mondlane the Frelimo representative there’, and ‘almost all the FRELIMO men intend to undertake military training in Tanzania before returning to Moçambique to fight the Portuguese’.

The Bechuanaland government decided to fly the Frelimo arrivals from Francistown back to Swaziland, under the ‘doctrine of refoulement’ for return of refugees to the country of accepted asylum. Swaziland objected ‘We have no wish … to be part of your pipeline [sic] … if Frelimo refugees are returned to Swaziland they will be here for good with little chance of escape’. While waiting for an RAF Beverley aircraft to arrive and take them back to Swaziland, permission came through on 22 May to take the refugees through Zambia to Tanzania by land. Peter Mackay of Amnesty International took them to Livingstone via the Pandamatenga road to the Kazungula ferry on 24 May. A misreport in the British press said that 2000 freedom fighters were being airlifted from Mozambique to Basutoland and Bechuanaland.

Meanwhile, ‘a continuous trickle’ of Frelimo people continued to arrive in Bechuanaland in the latter part of May, while 13 Angolans (Angola People’s Union (União das Populaç[otilde]es de Angola (UPA), changed its name to Frente Nacional de Libertação de Angola (FNLA) in 1962)/ Govêrno revolucionário de Angola no exílio (GRAE)) and three South West Africa National Union (SWANU) people were added to the refugees in Francistown during that month. (Samora Machel was among the last Frelimo to arrive, staying with Keitseng at Lobatse.) Two ‘ordinary criminals’, wanted for murder or attempted murder, were returned to Southern Rhodesia, over the protests of Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU) in Lusaka (Halpern 1965, p. 424, Smith 1965, p. 1). ²⁷

The pipeline was now effectively being run by Peter Mackay on behalf of Amnesty International and the International Refugee Council of Zambia. Fish Keitseng claims to have taken some ANC people ‘up’ the pipeline from Francistown to Kazungula as late as 1969, but the ‘down’ pipeline appears to have been largely choked off by the time of Botswana’s independence in September 1966. Mackay’s pipeline eventually became redundant, as the combination of political repression with economic betterment in South Africa choked off the supply of refugees, and he found employment instead as Oxford University Press manager in Lusaka (Tlou et al. 1995, p. 233, and personal observation by author in 1971).

Testing Botswana’s independence (1966–68)

Seretse Khama, as prime minister, began chairing the Bechuanaland cabinet in October 1965. One of his first acts was to protest at Britain’s unilateral decision, without consulting his cabinet, to post a British army detachment in Francistown. In a small, weak state that was not to have its own army for another decade, the new prime minister feared provocations of Rhodesia or South Africa that might provide a pretext for their post‐independence intervention and Botswana’s re‐colonisation (Tlou et al. 1995, p. 221).

The strategic weakness of newly independent Botswana was to be tested by Zambia‐based liberation movements in September 1966. Just a couple of days prior to independence on 30 September, Bechuanaland police picked up a handful of ANC and ZAPU guerrillas smoking dagga under a tree on the Rhodesian border after crossing the Zambezi on the ferry. The very first cabinet meeting of the new Botswana government considered handing them over to Rhodesia and South Africa, but instead deported them to Zambia, where President Kaunda lectured his guests on respecting the sovereignty of Botswana.

Seretse must have found it difficult to believe that his old friends Oliver Tambo and Joshua Nkomo, the leaders of the ANC and ZAPU, had supposed him to be so gullible. Perhaps, on reflection, he even saw it as their little joke on him (Tlou et al. 1995, p. 251).

Such leniency on the part of Botswana resulted in much more determined use of Botswana territory by ZAPU, ANC and SWAPO guerrillas in the following year. In March 1967, 10 SWAPO guerrillas from Zambia attacked South African forces in or near the Caprivi Strip; eight were killed, one captured, and one fled to refuge at Maun. In August 1967, 33 ANC and ZAPU guerrillas succeeded in reaching refuge across the Botswana border after fighting Rhodesian forces in the Wankie game reserve. This time the Botswana government decided to act firmly, before deporting the guerrillas back to Zambia, to remove any excuse for South African/Rhodesian military intervention. After surrendering to the Botswana police, the guerrillas were sentenced to between three months and three years in jail: seven men, including Chris Hani, served two‐year terms in Gaborone jail.

ANC–ZAPU–SWAPO military intervention backfired. Botswana turned its back on support for armed struggle for at least the next two or three years, and then expressed only strong moral support for the principle of liberation until the mid‐1970s when limited logistic support began to be offered. The liberation movements based in Zambia themselves went through a crisis of re‐organisation and re‐inspiration – beginning with an ANC delegation to Vietnam in 1968 to study the Vietcong’s strategy of ‘armed propaganda’. But at least the official parlance in Botswana now referred to ‘freedom fighters’ rather than ‘terrorists’ (Barrell, 1990, Mali 1993, Tlou et al. 1995, pp. 255, 264, Keitseng 1999). ²⁸

Formulation of refugee policy

Botswana’s famous balancing act between south and north, supporting African liberation while remaining tied to white neighbour economies, only emerged clearly in 1969. Much of the prior credit for this assertive new policy should be given to Professor Z.K. Matthews and to President Kaunda of Zambia.

Matthews, recruited from the World Council of Churches to become Botswana’s first ambassador at the United Nations until his death in 1968, successfully steered Seretse Khama’s government away from its initial post‐independence refugee policy. Khama’s inaugural presidential speech on 6 October 1966 had indicated that refugee policy had not yet been formulated. But the Refugee (Recognition and Control) Act passed in early 1967 was unduly harsh, particularly in denying refugees any chance of earning a living. A more liberal Refugee Act, potentially allowing refugees to become citizens, was passed later in the year.

Equally important was the welcome given to Seretse Khama and the new Republic of Botswana by President Kenneth Kaunda and the Zambian government – if not always by the Zambian press, which laughed off Botswana as South Africa’s ‘hostage’ until the mid‐1970s. By contrast, President Kamuzu Banda of Malawi, the new apostle of rapprochement with South Africa, treated Seretse Khama with disdain (Matthews, 1981, Tlou et al. 1995, pp. 253–255, 260–261, 267–270). ²⁹

By 1968 the refugee influx from South Africa, Rhodesia and South‐West Africa had abated. In July that year a correspondent from Johannesburg’s Star newspaper visited the White House 2 or 3 km outside Francistown, rebuilt since it had been blown up in 1964. Some 44 out of approximately 500 refugees (mostly from Rhodesia) in Francistown lived there. The correspondent reported with some glee that the local ANC representative, Jerry Mbuli, who had a white (US Peace Corps?) girlfriend, had been caught running an illegal shebeen.

However, the largest influx of refugees of all during the 1960s was to be seen in 1968. Three thousand Mbukushu fled from Portuguese repression in south‐eastern Angola across the Caprivi Strip to their relatives in Botswana north of the Okavango Delta. (A much smaller number of Yei also fled into Botswana from the Caprivi Strip.) The problem of these refugees was solved by recognising them as productive citizens of Botswana by the Citizenship Act of 1969 – which also recognised as citizens all members of 21 other ‘alien’ village communities who had entered on or before 24 April 1958, a date which included the first wave of Hurutshe refugees who had arrived from the Transvaal 30 years previously (Larson 1970, 2000).

Conclusion

The notion of Botswana as a place of refuge is central to its identity. Six plinths stand on either side of the national monument to the Botswana nation’s founders erected since 2000 in the new Central Business District of the capital city, Gaborone. The first plinth, referring to the Southern African wars of the 1820s–50s, is marked BOTSHABELO, translated as ‘Refuge’. Indeed, bafaladi, translated as ‘refugees’, are considered to be one of the four basic building blocks (together with royals, commoners and serfs) of the ‘tribal’ state structures that emerged from those wars.

The tradition of refuge continued into the early twentieth century with the crossing of refugees from the Boer republics and German South‐West Africa, and was revived, as we have seen, around 1957–58. But, though common pre‐colonial and colonial experiences brought the ‘tribal’ nations together into a loose federal alliance, it is difficult to date any unified Botswana national identity before the 1940s – when the three High Commission Territories (Basutoland, Bechuanaland and Swaziland) were, temporarily in wartime, treated as British colonies separate from the Union of South Africa. But in 1946 Bechuanaland’s pre‐war subservience to South Africa was re‐imposed. The territorial integrity of Bechuanaland/Botswana was not revived until the return of Seretse Khama from exile in 1956. The continuing influx of refugees then developed the idea of Botswana not only as a place of refuge but also – to adapt the words of Pope John Paul II visiting the country in 1988 – as a distinctive island of peace in a regional sea of turmoil.

Paradoxically, this growing sense of nationality, because of pride in Botswana’s status as a place of refuge, was also to mean an increasing gulf between nationals and aliens. Previously arbitrary international borders became increasingly fixed and permanent in people’s minds. When South Africa became completely foreign (i.e. a non‐Commonwealth territory) in 1961, the newspaper Naledi ya Batswana suggested that Bechuanaland’s longest serving and most vigorous parliamentarian (as well as ANC activist) Dr S.M. Molema should be barred from sitting on government councils because he resided a few kilometres over the border. ³⁰ The gulf between nationals and aliens widened with the rise of the national economy after 1968, when refugees in increased numbers were seen as potential competitors for jobs. It is said that 4000 refugees passed through (rather than stayed in) Botswana in the 10 years of independence before 1976. It is difficult to believe, as was claimed at the time, that only four were returned by Botswana to their country of origin (Tlou et al. 1995, p. 255). ³¹

A small but significant number of well‐educated South African and Rhodesian/Zimbabwean migrants, whether or not refugees, chose to stay on in independent Botswana and to take out citizenship. The most famous is the novelist Bessie Head. Others who took leading roles in society include the educationists Patrick van Rensburg, Cuthbert Motsepe and Jakes Swartland, and history professors Leonard Ngcongco and Thomas Tlou, the founding fathers of the University of Botswana.

The main thrust of this paper has been to demonstrate how newly independent Botswana inherited refugee problems and security procedures from a relatively progressive latter‐day colonial regime, and how an emerging governmental class then began to adapt policies to fit its own interests. Significant questions remain about British intelligence relations with the national liberation movements that sent activists and refugees through Bechuanaland/Botswana. It appears, at least in regard to the 1960–61 aerial pipeline, that ‘progressive’ MI6 represented metropolitan interests in favour of decolonisation, while the old boy network of ‘reactionary’ MI5 upheld a military‐colonial worldview.

Notes on contributor

Neil Parsons is professor of history at the University of Botswana.

Notes

1. This paper is based on intelligence records, many of which would otherwise have been destroyed, or would have been kept secret in British archives for many decades hence, had it not been for the chance survival of an archive in Francistown that should have been ‘weeded’ in 1964 when the position of Divisional Commissioner (North) was abolished. The Botswana National Archives (BNA) in Gaborone houses intelligence reports (IR) for the northern half of Botswana to 1964 in the Divisional Commissioner North (DCN) series. Intelligence reports from the Office of the President (OP) for 1965 onwards were archived in the early 1980s, but have since been re‐numbered in the BNA’s OP series and have even been placed in other archival series. Some intelligence files have been ‘reclaimed’ by the Special Branch of the Botswana Police and by the OP. I have not been able to locate all the files concerning refugees or to reconstitute the files as a chronologically continuous series; this paper is therefore a piecemeal and selective account.

2. BNA: DCN 9/6; DCN 12/11. Hooper was an Anglican missionary at Zeerust who then transferred to Manzini in Swaziland, where he organised the 1962 aerial escape by Arthur Goldreich and Harold Wolpe to Bechuanaland. For Mazezuru see BNA: DCN 9/6; DCN 9/8; DCN 12/13. For ZCC, see a dispassionate report by Winstanley in DCN 9/5, and an alarmist report by the SAP in OP I/6/2983.

3. BNA: DCN 9/7; DCN 12/11.

4. Ngwato District Intelligence Report (hereafter NDIR) for November 1959 (BNA: DCN 9/3).

5. NDIR March 1959 (BNA: DCN 9/3); BNA: OP I/8/3037.

6. NDIR for August 1959 (BNA: DCN 9/3).

7. NDIR for November 1959 (BNA: DCN 9/3).

8. NDIR for October 1959 (BNA: DCN 9/3).

9. Another person from the BP in the Treason Trial was Theo Mmusi, who returned home and devoted himself to supporting P.G. Matante’s political party.

10. NDIR for April and May 1960 (BNA: DCN 9/3). Among district administrators the name of Phil Steenkamp appears consistently as sympathetic to liberation, earning him threats of assassination from fellow Afrikaners. Two names appear consistently as unsympathetic to liberation among B.P. officials – Billings as DC Lobatse, and Webb as police officer at Mahalapye and Kasane.

11. Ngwato District Tergos (Territories’ Gossip confidential report) for April 1960 (BNA: DCN 9/2).

12. NDIR for May 1960 (BNA: DCN 9/2 and 9/3); Mahalapye IR for September 1960; NDIR for September 1960 (BNA: DCN 9/3).

13. NDIR for July 1960 and November 1960 (BNA: DCN 9/3).

14. Ngwato District Tergos for March 1961 (BNA: DCN 9/2).

15. MI5 and MI6 have been distinguished as the ‘gamekeepers’ and the ‘poachers’ because whereas ‘the main function of MI5, the Security Service, is to preserve the nation’s secrets and concentrate on counter‐intelligence; MI6, the Secret Intelligence Service, operates abroad to acquire intelligence by any means, particularly from hostile nations’ (Flower 1987, p. 15).

16. Northern Divisional IR for August 1961(BNA: DCN 9/3); Chobe IR for May 1961 (BNA: DCN 9/3).

17. NDIR for April and May 1960 (BNA: DCN 9/3).

18. Dale, following Winter’s Inside BOSS, mistakenly dates the Land Rover explosion to November, but also cites The Star, 19 September 1963, p. 5.

19. Her Majesty’s Commissioner Gaberones (hereafter HMC) to Colonial Office London (CO), 5 April 1965 (BNA: OP/27/79).

20. HMC to CO, 17 May 1965 (BNA: OP/27/79).

21. Permanent Secretary (hereafter PS) Ministry of Home Affairs (hereafter MHA) secret minute, 22 March 1965 (BNA: OP/27/79).

22. Chief of Police Gaberones (hereafter CoP) to PS of MHA, 1 April 1965 and enclosures (BNA: OP/27/79).

23. HMC to CO, copy to British Ambassador Cape Town, 10 May 1965 and enclosures (BNA: OP/27/79); personal experience of author in arranging a UK scholarship for PAC member Vincent Segwai in 1964.

24. Criminal Investigation Department (hereafter CID) Francistown to CoP, 29 April 1965; Cabinet Memorandum (CAB/MEM/27 of 1965) declaring Prohibited Immigrants 6 April 1965; and attachments including biographical note on Solly Ndlhovu aka George Zulu; HMC to CO telex, 30 March 1965 (BNA: OP/27/79).

25. Biographical note on Maxton Joseph; Cabinet Memorandum by MHA, 29 April 1965; CO to HMC, 15 May 1965 (BNA: OP/27/79).

26. PS of MHA to HMC savingram, 3 May 1965 (BNA: OP/27/79; OP I/6/2992 ex SP 37/5‐I).

27. Divisional Special Branch (hereafter SB) (North/Francistown) to Head of SB, encl. in CoP to HMC, 6 May 1965; HMC Bechuanaland to HMC Swaziland telex, 11 May 1965; Memorandum by Principal ‘A’ to PS of MHA, 14 May 1965; HMC Swaziland to HMC Bechuanaland, 14 May 1965; Memorandum by Head of SB, 13 May 1965; draft CAB/MEM/63 of 1965 by Deputy HMC, n.d.; HMC to CO, 17 May 1965; CO to HMC, 18 May 1965; HMC to CO, 20 May 1965; HMC to British DLS (Dependencies Liaison Service?) Pretoria and British Ambassador Cape Town, 25 June 1965; HMC to CO, 25 May 1965; Divisional SB (South/Lobatsi) to Head of SB, 25 May 1965; CoP to PS of MHA, 25 May 1965; Divisional SB (South) to Head of SB, 25 May 1965; CO to HMC Bechuanaland and HMC Swaziland, 25 May 1965; David Finlay for prime minister to George Nyandoro, Lusaka, 28 May 1965.

28. BNA: POL D/7/1092. Chris Hani was still bitter four or five years later about his imprisonment in Botswana (author’s personal reminiscence).

29. OP I/8/3037.

30. Bechuanaland Protectorate Tergos for April 1961 (BNA: DCN 9/2).

31. BNA: OP I/8/3037.