SEBELE II – FROM CORPORAL TO KING (12/2/1918)

 SEBELE II – FROM CORPORAL TO KING (12/2/1918)

On this day, 105 years ago., Kelebantse Sebele a Sechele II assumed bogosi jwa Bakwena as Kgosi Sebele II. At the time he had just returned from France where he had served on the First World War’s Western Front. After landing in Cape Town he rushed to Molepolole to reach his dying father, Kgosi Kealeboga Sechele II aSebele I.

Aged 25 at the time of his enthronement, Sebele II’s background was unique among diKgosi of the time. He was fairly well educated, though he dropped out of secondary school at Tiger Kloof, despite being a good student. Among Bakwena dikgosi, he was the first to be fully literate in English.

 

He had also gained additional experience outside the Protectorate. For several years he worked as a clerk in the Witwatersrand mines and witnessed the squalid and violent conditions of compound life. With the freedom and money to visit bustling Johannesburg, he also moved among a new community of urbanized Africans and tasted the pleasures of big city life. 

With the outbreak of the First World War, Sebele had ended a period of estrangement with his father and uncles while agreeing to lead a contingent of 74 Bakwena volunteers who were among the 555 Protectorate Batswana who served in France as enlisted members of the Fifth Battalion of the South African Native Labour Contingent. He thus witnessed the miseries of trench warfare on the Western Front while coming into contact with military and civilians of various races and nationalities. 

As suggested by its name, the Contingent was conceived by the racist authorities in Pretoria as a labour support unit only. The South African Government further insisted that all black troops under the command should not be given issued firearms. This experience was quite different from the Batswana who later served in the African Pioneer Corps during World War II, all of who were armed and many of whom performed frontline combat duties.

On the 10th of July 1917, Sebele was among a handful of SANLC NCOs, who were selected to meet with King George V and Queen Mary, accompanied by Edward Prince of Wales and General Haig, in Abbeville France. On that occasion, the King had assured the men that: “You are also part of my great armies fighting for the liberty and freedom of my subjects of all races and creeds throughout the Empire.”   

Notwithstanding such lofty sentiments, the SANLC was commanded by often cruel white officers. After some black troops (not from Bechuanaland) mutinied against these conditions it was decided to disband the unit, by which time Sebele had served his tour of duty.

On the whole, Sebele’s years in France and Gauteng made him a skeptic of “white civilization”. After returning to Molepolole, he freely voiced his doubts to those who came in contact with him, blacks and whites alike. As kgosi, it would be his stubborn rejection of his and his people’s subordinate position within their own homeland that led to his downfall.