1.1 âRunning Awayâ Through the âLand of the Desertâ
Most independent female migrants from colonial Botswana in the first half of the twentieth century were unauthorised ârunaways.â They âran awayâ without the permission of the patriarchal authorities in Tswana culture. While these migrant women were independent from men, they were highly dependent on other women. At the same time the ties of dependency to men loosened, women became increasingly dependent upon each other, creating new multi-generational female-and-children households residing in the homeland.
The Setswana phrase used by the women to describe their independent migration was âRe ne re ngwegaâ (âwe ran awayâ or âwe went without permissionâ).1 âRunning awayâ usually involved a series of carefully planned moves and strategies. Women usually ran away at night, daughters often waiting until their parents had fallen asleep. A few escaped by day, including Mokuduba: âThey say they are going to the shop, to go getting water. You just go and put your things in the bucket, then you just go. After that you run away with your friends. Sometimes you can go during the day, sometimes in the afternoon.â2 Runaways usually travelled in a female group for safety and companionship. This clique commonly consisted of three or four female friends, though sometimes up to a dozen. Others travelled with small groups of male migrants returning to Johannesburg.3
Sometimes women were desperate enough to leave alone without first arranging for companionship. Mmapula was one of these.4 She escaped alone, walked from Bokaa to the border, and then caught a bus from Siquane to Rustenburg. Lost, she accidentally met a girlfriend there who helped her find domestic work. Later, she caught a train from Rustenburg to Johannesburg. Mmapula escaped alone because of her unhappy family situation. She even left her only three-year-old child with her parents when she left. Most female runaways took no more than what they could carryâa blanket, one or two dresses, and a little stolen money from their parents. Most left immediately after finishing their last school year, or quit school to run away.5
The travelling strategies of ârunawayâ women were deliberately designed to reduce the chances of being intercepted or caught. Unlike authorised migrants who more often used public transport, women departing without their parentsâ permission, spouses, or the colonial administration often ran away on foot.6 Such âfootingâ was strongly associated with unauthorised migration. A few of the women who departed for the Lichtenburg diggings in the late 1920s took lorries, but most travelled by foot, alone, or with a small group.7
Women often walked considerable distances to escape, usually traversing unfamiliar territory. Some walked the entire 300â400 kilometres to the Rand, sleeping for two or three nights in the bush on the way. Mokuduba, a mere 12-year-old girl in 1915, âfootedâ from Kanye to Zeerust with a girlfriend. As she explained, âThere were no buses or train by that time ⊠The women and the men, everybody, they can walk long distance to Johannesburg, sleep along the way in the bush.â8
While most women escaped directly from their homes, others used alternate points of flight. Women from the border-straddling groups sometimes took advantage of the frequent cross-border movement of kin in order to escape. Motlapele described how she went with her family by ox-carts from Mochudi to Saulspoort to visit relatives. From there she fled to Johannesburg. Seipati vividly described the perils of the journey in this way: âWhen I first went to Johannesburg me and my mate had ran away and travelled on foot. There were no passport restrictions then. There were no hassles. Because of our fear for the Boers, we would walk and at sunset we would find a hiding place for the night. A particular incident was the one when we met a Boer who offered us food. After that the Boer told us that we had to work for that food. We worked all day and at night we ran away and went via Zeerust to Rustenburg.â9
In many cases, women walked only as far as their first job in town or on a farm in the Western Transvaal. There they took temporary employment as domestics or farm labourers until they had earned enough money to take a bus or train to the Rand. Even those without money would take the bus. As Elizabeth explained, âwhen the [bus] tickets were called, it was easy to hide under the chair, and then come out when others have finished paying.â10
Usually the women stayed only a few days or at most a few months in their first foreign abode, but occasionally this sojourn stretched into years. Dorah described how they stayed with male friends in Rustenburg while looking for work in the town.11 These men from Mochudi had travelled to Rustenburg to sell agricultural produce. Leah described how she persevered through the difficult life of a farm domestic servant thus: âPaul and his family were a cruel lot that believed in beating servants. The woman of the house would wake me up by throwing pieces of coal in my lodgings. After waking, I made the fire and breakfast. At the end of the month they would beat me up, but I worked on in this manner for six months ⊠I had obtained the job without knowing the nature of the Pauls.â12
Kgatla women also escaped from regimental work on Western Transvaal farms. Kgosi Isang frequently sent female regiments or ârebellious girlsâ to Letabi to pick cotton. When he returned to Mochudi for a brief period, some of these girls would âescapeâ to Rustenburg to work. He rewarded those who remained with blankets.
Often, female migrants leaving for or returning from South Africa encouraged others to follow their lead both directly (through strong verbal encouragement) and indirectly (through the wearing of desirable western clothing and hairstyles). This snowball effect played a role in the escalation of emigrant numbers in the 1920s and 1930s. Leah noted âthese girls would be the envy of other girls when they came back, and this prompted other girls from Mochudi to start running away to Rustenburg for work.â South African girls returning home from their Bechuanaland schools also induced local girls to migrate. Leah never attended school but she had connections with some female pupils. She and two other Mochudi girls met up with a Kgatla pupil in Sikwane who was returning home to Morwe. They passed through several places (including Morwe where they left the Sikwane student) before arriving on a white farm where they found a job for picking oranges.
On return, women boasted of their far-off adventures and new freedoms. According to some interviewees, their western clothing and urban hairstyles also made other women wildly envious. As a teenager, Naomi remembered seeing female migrants in the village wearing âvery niceâ clothes. She added, wistfully, that she too âused to be beautiful, wearing beautiful clothes.â13
Mokuduba explained âSometimes the girls who are not married, they are wearing nice things. They say, âYou are stupid ⊠why do you agree to be married, look at us, we are nice and good.â And then you just despair ⊠the friends make you to escape from the husbands. Those ones who are working outside of Botswana is the one who make you to run away.â She describes the sense of entrapment felt by many married rural women.14 In this context, the symbolism and lure of western garb were clearly very powerful. Fine clothing and new hairstyles heightened some womenâs perception of themselves as attractive and proud. Many interviewees confided that their initial desire to travel to South Africa was to buy beautiful clothes and shoes, as there were none in Bechuanaland.
While many women responded to the demonstration effect of their peers by migrating themselves, others were torn between temptation and obligation. Naomi, for example, described how on more than one occasion, she made plans to escape with her friends, only to pull out at the last minute. Although she personally knew many young women from Bokaa who âran awayâ to South Africa, she was initially too scared of South African whites to leave. Her friends often entreated her to run away or to accompany them on the walk to Rustenburg. Twice she actually went with them and then turned back after only a few miles. Her stated reason was that she thought she would miss her mother in Johannesburg. Eventually even this could not keep her and she finally left for South Africa.
1.2 Striking Out Alone
As the twentieth century progressed, new household arrangements and categories of women emerged in Tswana society. In particular, the number of single, divorced, widowed, and separated women began to mount as women increasingly rejected male control and struck out on their own. Some returned to their natal family; others formed their own households. Most women nourished close links with their natal family. For many of them, the previous norm of marriage and gradual incorporation into the husbandâs lineage was less important than their dependable natal ties. Women also cultivated strong links with their own parents, siblings, and children.
Increasingly, divorcees returning to their natal home or unmarried mothers formed their own households within their parentsâ or male guardiansâ compound. Schapera discovered that between one quarter and one half of households contained unmarried women with children before World War II, a trend that accelerated during the decades that followed.15 Although male relatives cared for most unwed mothers, older daughters had increasingly closer economic ties with their mothers. As traditional marriage began to disintegrate, more unwed mothers lived with their mothers rather than in the traditional patrilocal home. This created new genealogical connections through women as children born with no bride wealth took their motherâs name. A pattern of matrilineality increasingly developed where the female line decided descent.
In response to the erosion of traditional marriage arrangements, women increasingly began to form their own female-headed households. Some of these households were the poorest in Bechuanaland. As kinship ties loosened, âhusbandlessâ women could rely little upon their male kin to help them ...