‘The Root of All Evil?’: Cash Boom, Trader Misfeasance, and Poverty in World War II Bechuanaland Protectorate

ABSTRACT

Told here is a story of the manifestations of cash money’s unseen and unpredictable power in the expropriations of Bechuanaland Protectorate Africans by store owners or traders during World War II. Failure to secure essential commodities in a period when cash dominated the market and had become the motif of the colonial economy surprised even the colonial officials who had thought that the ensuing ‘cash boom’ would bring prosperity across the social divide. This article mines the extant war archives to retrieve the neglected history of the repercussions of the first-ever cash boom the Bechuanaland Protectorate experienced since the advent of cash during the nineteenth century. As many people gained access to more cash, traders of predominantly foreign descent hiked prices unduly, in most cases using the war as an excuse. The article addresses two mutually inclusive forms of trader misconduct. First, it explores the trajectory of profiteering as it spread from the urban areas to impact the initially unaffected rural peripheries during the war. Secondly, it demonstrates the differentiated ways in which a tripartite of conditional selling, price differentials, and food rationing became the driving forces of the ‘evil’ that was profiteering.

KEYWORDS:

• profiteering
• cash economy
• credit systems

Acknowledgements

This project draws on archival sources at the Botswana National Archives and Record Services (BNARS) in Gaborone and secondary source material from the University of Botswana library. We extend our heartfelt gratitude to staff at both institutions for their excellent and efficient service.

Notes

1 I. Schapera and J. Comaroff, The Tswana, revised ed. (London: Kegan & Paul, 1991), 20.

2 S. Ettinger, ‘South Africa’s Weight Restrictions on Cattle Exports from Bechuanaland, 1924–1941’, Botswana Notes and Records, 41 (1972), 21–30; G.R. Purnell and W.S. Clayton, Report to the Government of the Bechuanaland Protectorate on the Beef, Cattle and Meat Industry (Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, 1963); Great Britain Economic Survey Mission to Basutoland, Bechuanaland Protectorate and Swaziland, Basutoland, Bechuanaland Protectorate and Swaziland: Report of an Economic Survey Mission (London: His Majesty Stationery Office, 1960), 183; J. Halpern, South Africa’s Hostages: Basutoland, Bechuanaland and Swaziland (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1965), 297; C.F. Rey, Monarch of All I Survey: Bechuanaland Diaries, 1929–37, ed. N. Parsons and M. Crowder (Gaborone: Botswana Society, 1988), entries for 20 February and 10 November 1930; A. Pim, Financial and Economic Position of the Bechuanaland Protectorate: Report of the Commission Appointed by the Secretary of State for Dominion Affairs (Command Papers of the British Government 4368) (London, 1933), 110. Botswana National Archives and Records Services (hereafter BNARS), S. 605/1–9, Bechuanaland Protectorate Statistics/Blue Books, 1929–1946.

3 BNARS, S. 605/1–9, Bechuanaland Protectorate Statistics/Blue Books, 1929–1946.

4 A. Jackson, Botswana, 1939–1945: An African Country at War (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1999), 134.

5 C.J. Makgala, ‘Taxation in the Tribal Areas of the Bechuanaland Protectorate, 1899–1957’, Journal of African History, 45, 2 (2004), 282; Q. Hermans, ‘Towards Budgetary Independence: A Review of Botswana’s Financial History, 1900 to 1973’, Botswana Notes and Records, 6 (1974), 96.

6 S. Hutchinson, Nuer Dilemmas: Coping with Money, War, and the State (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996), 59.

7 Hutchinson, Nuer Dilemmas, 56–63.

8 Ibid., 73.

9 Amongst others see I. Schapera, ‘Economic Change in South African Native Life’, Africa, 1, 2 (1928), 170–188; H. Alverson, Mind in the Heart of Darkness: Value and Self-Identity among the Tswana of Southern Africa (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1978), 124; A. Kuper, Wives for Cattle: Bridewealth and Marriage in Southern Africa (London: Routledge and Keagan Paul, 1982).

10 J. Comaroff and J.L. Comaroff, ‘How Beasts Lost Their Legs: Cattle in Tswana Economy and Society’, in J. Galatay and P. Bonte, eds., Herders, Warriors and Traders: Pastoralism in Africa (Boulder: Westview Press, 1991), 33–61.

11 J. Comaroff and J.L. Comaroff, ‘Beasts, Banknotes and the Colour of Money in Colonial South Africa’, Archaeological Dialogues, 12, 2 (2006), 125–128.

12 For colonial Botswana, see W.G. Morapedi, ‘Migrant Labour and the Peasantry in the Bechuanaland Protectorate, 1930–1965’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 25, 2 (1999), 197–214. For postcolonial Botswana, see P. Peters, Dividing the Commons: Politics, Policy and Culture in Botswana (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1994), 65.

13 See, amongst others, J. Ferguson, ‘The Bovine Mystique: Power, Property and Livestock in Rural Lesotho’, Man New Series, 20, 4 (1985), 647–674; B. Carton, Blood from Your Children: The Colonial Origins of Generational Conflict in South Africa (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 2000); W. Beinart, ‘Joyini Inkomo: Cattle Advances and the Origins of Migrancy from Pondoland’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 5, 2 (1979), 199–219.

14 See, for example, T. Falola, ‘“Salt is Gold”: The Management of Salt Scarcity in Nigeria during World War II’, Canadian Journal of African Studies, 26 (1992), 421; A.M. Howard, ‘Freetown and World War II: Strategic Militarization, Accommodations, and Resistance’, in J. Byfield, C. Brown, T. Parsons, and A.A. Sikainga, eds., Africa and World War II (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 190–194.

15 Hutchinson, Nuer Dilemmas, 64.

16 See, for example, D.A. Schmitt, The Bechuanaland Pioneers and Gunners (Westport: Praeger, 2006); R.A.R. Bent, Ten Thousand Men of Africa: The Story of the Bechuanaland Pioneers and Gunners, 1941–1946 (London: HMO, 1952).

17 Jackson, Botswana.

18 B. Mokopakgosi, ‘The Impact of the Second World War: The Case of Kweneng in the Then Bechuanaland Protectorate’, in D. Killingray and R. Rathbone, eds., Africa and the Second World War (London: Macmillan, 1986), 172.

19 I. Schapera, Migrant Labour and Tribal Life: A Study of Conditions in the Bechuanaland Protectorate (London: Cambridge University Press, 1947).

20 K. Hart, ‘Heads and Tails? Two Sides of the Coin’, Man New Series, 21, 4 (1986), 637–656.

21 K. Hart, ‘Notes Towards an Anthropology of Money’, Kritikos: Journal of Postmodern Cultural Sound, Text and Image, 2 (2005), http://intertheory.org/hart.htm, accessed 31 August 2013.

22 E. Gilbert, ‘Common Cents: Situating Money in Time and Place’, Economy and Society, 34, 3 (2005), 357–388.

23 J. Parry, and M. Bloch, eds., Money and the Morality of Exchange (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990).

24 See, amongst others, A.G. Hopkins, ‘The Creation of a Colonial Monetary System: The Origins of the West African Currency Board’, African Historical Studies, 3, 1 (1970), 101–132; A.G. Hopkins, ‘The Currency Revolution in South-West Nigeria in the Late Nineteenth Century’, Journal of the Historical Society of Nigeria, 3, 3 (1966), 471–483.

25 J.I. Guyer, ed., Money Matters: Instability, Values and Social Payments in the Modern History of West African Communities (Portsmouth: Heinemann, 1995).

26 N. Swanepoel, ‘Small Change: Cowries, Coins, and the Currency Transition in the Northern Territories of Ghana’, in F.G. Richard, ed., Materializing Colonial Encounters: Archaeologies of African Experience (New York: Springer, 2015), 41–69.

27 E. Helleiner, ‘The Monetary Dimensions of Colonialism: Why Imperial Powers Created Currency Blocks?’, Geopolitics, 7, 1 (2002), 5–30; B. Naanen, ‘Economy within an Economy: The Manilla Currency, Exchange Rate Instability and Social Conditions in South-Eastern Nigeria, 1900–48’, Journal of African History, 34, 3 (1993), 427.

28 J. Fernandez, Bwiti: An Ethnography of the Religious Imagination in Africa (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1982).

29 K. Pallaver, ‘The African Native Has No Pocket: Monetary Practices and Currency Transitions in Early Colonial Uganda’, International Journal of African Historical Studies, 48, 3 (2015), 471–499; J. Guyer, ‘Introduction: The Currency Interface and Its Dynamics’, in J. Guyer, ed., Money Matters: Instability, Values and Social Payments in the Modern History of West African Communities (London: James Currey, 1995), 1–34.

30 J. Comaroff and J.L. Comaroff, ‘Colonizing Currencies: Beasts, Banknotes, and the Colour of Money in South Africa’, in W. van Binsbergen and P. Geschiere, eds., Commodification, Things, Agency and Identity – The Social Life of Things Revisited (Leiden: Brill, 2005), 145–173.

31 A. Kaler, ‘When They See Money, They Think It’s Life’: Money, Modernity and Morality in Two Sites in Rural Malawi’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 32, 2 (2006), 335–349.

32 Ibid., 337.

33 Guyer, ‘Introduction: The Currency Interface and its Dynamics’, 1–29.

34 Zelizer, cited in Kaler, ‘When They See Money’, 337.

35 Comaroff and Comaroff, ‘Colonizing Currencies’.

36 Kaler, ‘When They See Money’, 339.

37 Ibid., 340.

38 Schapera, Migrant Labour and Tribal Life.

39 Kaler, ‘When They See Money’, 341.

40 Ibid.

41 Ibid., 341.

42 Ibid., 343–345.

43 M. Bloch, ‘The Symbolism of Money in Merina’, in J. Parry and M. Bloch, eds., Money and the Morality of Exchange (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 166.

44 M. Mauss, The Gift: The Form and Reason for Exchange in Archaic Societies (New York: Norton, [1950] 1990); M. Russell, ‘Beyond Remittances: The Redistribution of Cash in Swazi Society’, Journal of Modern African Studies 22, 4 (1984), 595–615.

45 Jackson, Botswana.

46 N. Parsons, ‘Khama and Company and the Jousse Trouble, 1910–1916’, Journal of African History, 16, 3 (1975), 385; M. Mogalakwe, ‘How Britain Underdeveloped Bechuanaland Protectorate: A Brief Critique of the Political Economy of Botswana’, Africa Development, 31, 1 (2006), 79.

47 W. Morapedi, ‘Cattle, Trade and the Peasantries of Botswana: The Case of Gantsi and Ngamiland, 1938–1953’, Pula: Botswana Journal of African Studies, 18, 2 (2004), 95–110; BNARS, S.13/4, Government Circular No. 61 of 1925.

48 Mogalakwe, ‘How Britain Underdeveloped Bechuanaland Protectorate’, 80.

49 D. Wylie, A Little God: The Twilight of Patriarchy in a Southern African Chiefdom (Johannesburg: Witwatersrand Press, 1990); Morapedi, ‘Cattle, Trade and the Peasantries of Botswana’.

50 Mogalakwe, ‘How Britain Underdeveloped Bechuanaland Protectorate’, 81; A.C.G. Best, ‘General Trading in Botswana, 1890–1968’, Economic Geography, 6, 4 (1970), 598–611.

51 BNARS, S.134/4/1, District Commissioner/Francistown to Government Secretary/Mafikeng, 21 September 1939; BNARS, S.134/4/1, District Commissioner/Gaborone to Government Secretary/Mafikeng, 23 September 1939; BNARS, S.134/4/1, Circular Dispatch No. 2, 20 December 1939.

52 BNARS, S.134/4/1, District Commissioner/Francistown to Government Secretary/Mafikeng, 21 September 1939.

53 BNARS, S.134/4/1, District Commissioner/Gaborone to Government Secretary/Mafikeng, 23 September 1939.

54 Mogalakwe, ‘How Britain Underdeveloped Bechuanaland Protectorate’, 81.

55 BNARS, S.134/4/1, Circular Dispatch no. 2, 20 December 1939.

56 Ibid.

57 Ibid.

58 Jackson, Botswana, 134.

59 BNARS, Minutes of the European Advisory Council Session of March 1945.

60 BNARS, DCS. 33/10, Extract from Census for the Year 1946.

61 R.J. Gordon, ‘The Impact of the Second World War on Namibia’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 19, 1 (1993), 147–165.

62 BNARS, S.DCG 3/8, Government Secretary/Mafikeng to District Commissioner/Gaborone, 5 October 1943.

63 For insights into the political economy of Bechuanaland see P. Steenkamp, ‘“Cinderella of the Empire?”: Development and Policy in Bechuanaland in the 1930s’, Journal of Southern Africa Studies, 17, 2 (1991), 292–308.

64 Schapera, Migrant Labour and Tribal Life, 203.

65 Jackson, Botswana, 138.

66 BNARS, S.246/6, District Commissioner/Molepolole to Government Secretary/Mafikeng, 1940; BNARS, S.140/3, Annual Reports-Kweneng, 1940, S.246/6.

67 BNARS, S.134/4/1, Resident Commissioner/Mafikeng to Mackenzie, 30 March 1943.

68 Mokopakgosi, ‘The Impact of the Second World War’, 172.

69 Jackson, Botswana, 134.

70 BNARS, S.134/4/1, Resident Commissioner/Mafikeng to Mackenzie, 30 March 1943.

71 Ibid.

72 BNARS, S.DCG 3/8, District Commissioner/Gaborone to Government Secretary/Mafikeng, 28 September 1939.

73 Ibid.

74 Ibid.

75 BNARS, S.134/4/1, Resident Commissioner/Mafikeng to Mackenzie, 30 March 1943.

76 BNARS, S.139/1/1–2, African Auxiliary Pioneer Corps (AAPC), 1942–44.

77 BNARS, S.140/3, J.W. Joyce to Administration Secretary, 31 March 1945. The colonial archive does not provide numerical details regarding the pay increases. See BNARS, S.136/7, Government Secretary/Mafikeng to High Commissioner/Cape Town, 17 December 1943.

78 BNARS, Minutes of the European Advisory Council Session of March 1946.

79 BNARS, S.DCG 3/8, District Commissioner/Gaborone to Government Secretary/Mafikeng, 28 September 1939.

80 BNARS, S.134/4/1, Letter to Government Secretary/Mafikeng, December 1941.

81 BNARS, S.445/8, District Commissioner/Maun to Government Secretary/Mafikeng, 28 November 1945.

82 BNARS, S.429/4, Priestman’s report, 13 July 1942.

83 Ibid.

84 BNARS, S.331/3, District Commissioners’ conference, 1941, Agenda item.

85 BNARS, S.143/3/3, District Commissioner/Francistown to SMO HCT Troops, 4 November 1948. See also BNARS, Annual Report for Molepolole, 1943.

86 Schapera, Migrant Labour and Tribal Life, 203.

87 BNARS, S.331/3, District Commissioners’ conference, 1941, Agenda item.

88 B. Mauer, ‘The Anthropology of Money’, Annual Review of Anthropology, 35 (2006), 28.

89 D. Graeber, Toward an Anthropological Theory of Value: The False Coin of our Own Dreams (New York: Palgrave, 2001), 114.

90 J. Robbins and D. Akin, ‘An Introduction to Melanesian Currencies: Agency, Identity, and Social Reproduction’, in D. Akin and J. Robbins, eds., Money and Modernity: State and Local Currencies in Melanesia (Pittsburg: University of Pittsburg Press, 1999), 28.

91 BNARS, S.143/3/1, A. Germond to Government Secretary/Mafikeng, 18 March 1946.

92 John Iliffe, The African Poor: A History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987).

93 BNARS, S.135/2, District Commissioner/Maun to Government Secretary/Mafikeng, 14 May 1946.

94 BNARS, S.134/4/2, District Commissioner/Serowe to Government Secretary, 10 September 1946.

95 BNARS, S.135/3, District Commissioner/Gaborone to Government Secretary/Mafikeng, 7 March 1945.

96 BNARS, S.135/2, District Commissioner/Molepolole to Government Secretary/Mafikeng, 18 May 1945.

97 BNARS, S.135/3, District Commissioner/Gaborone to Government Secretary/Mafikeng, 7 March 1945.

98 R.K.K. Molefi, A Medical History of Botswana (Gaborone: Botswana Society, 1996), 79–80.

99 BNARS, S.393/1/1, Resident Commissioner/Mafikeng to High Commissioner/Cape Town, 25 September 1930.

100 BNARS, Annual Report for Ghanzi District, 1946.

101 BNARS, Annual Reports for Kanye, 1945–1946.

102 C. Lévi-Strauss, Introduction to the Work of Marcel Mauss, trans. F. Baker (London: Routledge and Keagan Paul, [1950] 1987), 63–64.

103 A. Bohlin, ‘A Price on the Past: Cash as Compensation in South African Land Restitution’, Canadian Journal of African Studies, 38, 3 (2004), 677.

104 Kaler, ‘When They See Money’.

105 BNARS, Med. 1/8, Annual Medical Report for Kanye, 1947.

106 P.P. Molosiwa, ‘“The Big Cough”: Tuberculosis, Popular Perceptions and Beliefs in the Eastern Bechuanaland Protectorate, 1932–1964’, Limina: A Journal of Historical and Cultural Studies, 22, 1 (2016), 1–18; D. Wylie, ‘The Changing Face of Hunger in Southern African History, 1880–1980’, Past and Present, 122 (1989), 177; Molefi, A Medical History, 54–67.

107 BNARS, Minutes of the 37th Session of the European Advisory Council, 24–25 September 1945.

108 Ibid.

109 Ibid.

110 BNARS, S.135/5, Resident Commissioner/Mafikeng to all District Commissioners/Bechuanaland Protectorate, 13 August 1945.

111 See BNARS, S.143/3/3, District Commissioner/Francistown to SMO HCT Troops, 4 November 1948. See also BNARS, Annual Report for Molepolole, 1943; Schapera, Migrant Labour and Tribal Life, 203.

112 BNARS, S.134/4/2, District Commissioner/Tsabong to Government Secretary, 10 January 1946. See also BNARS, S.134/4/1, District Commissioner/Tsabong to Government Secretary, 13 November 1942.

113 BNARS, S.134/4/2, District Commissioner/Tsabong to Government Secretary, 10 January 1946.

114 BNARS, DCG.1/19, District Commissioner/Gaborone to Government Secretary/Mafikeng, 9 August 1945.

115 BNARS, S.134/4/2, District Commissioner/Gaborone to Government Secretary/Mafikeng, 12 September 1945.

116 BNARS, S.135/2, District Commissioner/Molepolole to Government Secretary/Mafikeng, 18 May 1945.

117 BNARS, DCS.24/24, Bangwato District Annual Report, 1947.

118 Ibid.

119 E.P. Thompson, ‘The Moral Economy of the English Crowd in the Eighteenth Century’, Past and Present, 50 (1971), 76–136.

120 BNARS, S.134/4/2, District Commissioner/Serowe to Government Secretary, 10 September 1946.

121 BNARS, S.134/4/2, Government Secretary (Nettleton)/Mafikeng to District Commissioner/Serowe, 15 December 1945.

122 BNARS, S.134/4/2, District Commissioner/Gaborone to Government Secretary/Mafikeng, 29 August 1945.

123 Ibid.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Phuthego Phuthego Molosiwa

Phuthego Phuthego Molosiwa holds a PhD in African History from the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities Campus, United States. He is currently a member of faculty in the School of Social Sciences at the Botswana Open University where he holds the position of senior lecturer. Molosiwa is also a research fellow at the Department of History of the University of Free State and faculty affiliate of the History Department at the University of Botswana. His main research focus is the modern history of Africa, with special reference to southern Africa. Molosiwa’s key areas of publication include disease and health, environmental history, and ethnicity, gender, and identity in colonial and postcolonial Botswana.

Maitseo M. M. Bolaane

Maitseo M. M. Bolaane graduated with Doctor of Philosophy from the University of Oxford (2004). She is currently an associate professor in the Faculty of Humanities at the University of Botswana, teaching various courses in African history (including the understanding of China–Africa relations and the changing power relations globally around China). She has been involved with the University of Botswana–University of Tromsø Collaborative Programme for San Research and Capacity Building for some time. She is the former head of the History Department and serves as director of the San Research Centre at the University of Botswana. Bolaane has published widely in the field of environmental history of Botswana.