Tswana Bantu

The term “Tswana Bantu” refers to both ethnic peoples and a language. The Tswana Bantu population, related to the Sotho, divide themselves into subgroups (lineages): the Hurutshe,Gwaketse, Kgalagadi, Kgatha, Kwena, Malete, Ngwato, Rolong, Tawana,Thlaping, and Tlokwa. The country of Botswana (which literally means “Land of the Tswana”)bears the name of the Tswana, but only a small portion of them are citizens there (approximately 800,000 to 1 million), whereas most of the Tswana Bantu speakers (2.5 to 3 million) reside in Bophutatswana (“The Place Where Tswana Gather”) in the northeast of South Africa. Less than 25,000 Tswana Bantu reside in Namibia; perhaps25,000 to 30,000 live in Zimbabwe.

According to its technical linguistic designation, Tswana (Setswana)belongs to the Bantu subbranch of the Niger-Kordofanian language family. It is closely related to Western Sotho and is sometimes referred to as such. English is the official language of Botswana; however, more than80% of the population speak the Setswana (Tswana) dialect. Furthermore, Setswana is the language of the educational system and of the media. This does not pose a problem for those who speak other dialects of Tswana, for all of the dialects are mutually intelligible. Tswana was orally transmitted until the 1800s when British Protestant ministers (seeking Tswana Bantu converts) translated the Bible.

The issue of whether Sotho-Bantu speaking populations (such as the Tswana) came originally from northwest or eastern Africa is debatable, and a precise date is not available as to their arrival in southern regions of the African continent, nor is the actual reason for a mass migration known. However, one motivation may have been the gradual desertification of sub-Saharan Africa beginning approximately 10,000 to8,000 years ago. This may have caused Bantu populations to leave hypothetical homelands in successive waves. Only one thing is known with certainty: by 1600 the Tswana Bantu speakers inhabited certain regions of present-day Botswana, South Africa, Namibia, and Zimbabwe.

At that time, they lived in major towns with satellite villages and practiced swidden agriculture of domesticated millet, sorghum, beans, melons, and morama (a tuber). The Tswana also continued to hunt, fish, and gather. Traditional drinks include palm wine and homemade sorghum beer. The measure of wealth was cattle that were used to pay debts and contract political alliances, and upon marriage cattle comprised payments to the bride's family; thus cattle were imbued with symbolic value. The breeding and herding of cattle was the responsibility of boys and men who also raised sheep and goats. This work was forbidden to women. Men also raised the timber frames of houses, cleared new fields, and assisted the women and children in planting, weeding, and harvesting crops. All objects of skin, wood, bone, and metal were made [Page 2231]by men. This division of labor persists to the present time, except that after oxen were used as draught animals men began to plough. Today women no longer are forbidden to raise cattle; however, the herding and milking of cattle are still done by males.

In traditional households, women were responsible for children, tilling the fields, building huts and granaries, thatching roofs, cooking food, making beer, and raising fowl. Women made the pottery. However, separating subsistence activities into male and female spheres is problematic, as classic studies of the Tswana illustrate, because many tasks were shared by young and old, wives and husbands, brothers and sisters, as well as relatives of near and distant kin. Men and women made baskets, but these men and women belonged to certain specialist lineages. Iron and coppersmith families, traditional religious healers, and those specializing in the art of pottery also adhered to hereditary precedents. Knowledge of these particular trades was considered to be a sacred trust that was guarded zealously against all usurpers; it was to be transmitted only from elder to apprenticed youth of certain hereditary lineages (both male and female).

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