Fetakgomo o sware motho (Sepedi) ("Leave the cow and catch the person") | |||||||
| Capital | Sekhukhune (Jane Furse - administrative); Mohlaletse (ceremonial and royal) | ||||||
| Largest city | Mashishing (Lydenburg) | ||||||
| Other cities | Tubatse (Burgersfort), Steelpoort, Marble Hall | ||||||
| Language official |
Sepedi (Northern Sotho) | ||||||
| others | English, Ndebele, Swazi, Tsonga | ||||||
| Demonym | Bapedi | ||||||
| Government | Semi-constitutional monarchy | ||||||
| Legislature | Parliament | ||||||
| King | Thulare III | ||||||
| Prime Minister | Aaron Motsoaledi | ||||||
| Population | 704,000 | ||||||
| Independence | from South Africa | ||||||
| declared | 1986 | ||||||
| Organizations |  Azanian League
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The small, poor, densely populated kingdom of Bopedi sits in an elevated grassland in the central part of Transvaal in the former South Africa. It is the homeland and nation-state of the Pedi people and the restoration of a kingdom with origins in the seventeenth century. Bopedi was the only traditional kingdom in the Transvaal to assert its independence after South Africa collapsed. It is surrounded by revolutionary republics that were formed during the same era and is allied with them as a member of the Azanian League.
Background[]
The name Pedi is the root of all other names used to refer to the people and kingdom. In English, Pedi is the standard adjective. For other names, the following native forms are preferred:
- Bopedi: the land or kingdom (compare Botswana, land of the Tswana). Sekhukhuneland was used in the colonial and apartheid eras.
- Bapedi: the people (compare Basotho, the Sotho people). The names Marota, Maroteng, and BaMaroteng, which come from the royal house, are used less often and mostly in historic contexts.
- Sepedi: the language (compare Sesotho, the Southern Sotho language). The same language is called Northern Sotho outside the kingdom.
The title of the Pedi king is Kgosikgolo, meaning Supreme Ruler - kgosi means "chief" in Sotho and related languages. The same term could be translated as "Paramount Chief," but in the case of the Bapedi, the ruler has always been considered a king and part of the top rank of the Southern African nobility.
Bopedi's traditional territory corresponds closely to the middle stretch of the Olifants River basin. It rises from flat plains in the west, through several ranges of foothills, to the mountains of the Drakensberg and Wolkberg along the eastern border. The plains are the country's breadbasket, while the hills and mountains contain valuable mineral resources.
The Bapedi emerged as a distinct people in the seventeenth century. Oral histories tell of a prince who broke away from his tribe because of a conflict with other heirs; he took a large group of followers eastward and settled in the sheltered area later called Sekhukhuneland or Bopedi. Later the Bapedi, using marriage and diplomacy as much as force, established a regional hegemony known to historians as the Pedi or Marota Empire. Thulare I, who ruled around 1800, is especially associated with this age of greatness.
Attacks by the nascent Matabele kingdom nearly wiped out Bopedi. It was restored starting in the mid-19th century by Sekhukhune I, Bopedi's most famous king. In the 1870s, stories of Sekhukhune's fierce, stubborn resistance to the colonizers were printed around the world. He fought first the Boers, then the British. His army dug in to defend the kingdom, holding out for years. The king refused to pay tribute or reach any other accommodation; ultimately he was captured and imprisoned, and Bopedi was partitioned among new local authorities and White landowners.
Under apartheid a good deal of the territory became part of the Lebowa homeland. Lebowa was never a stable place; it lumped together numerous tribes that all spoke varieties of the Northern Sotho language but considered themselves distinct from each other. Lebowa's short history saw a good deal of tension among the different ethnicities. There were repeated requests to divide it along ethnic lines.
The late 1970s saw a major dispute over the kingship. King Morwamoche had died when his heir Rhyne Thulare was too young to take over, so the boy's mother Mankopodi ruled as regent. After a while a faction grew dissatisfied with Mankopodi and urged her son to force her to step down. He refused to challenge his mother. The same faction argued that this amounted to an abdication from the throne and accordingly installed his brother Kgagudi Kenneth, known as "KK", who took the title of "Acting King" and the regnal name of Sekhukhune III. By 1983 Rhyne had a three-year-old son of his own, Victor Thulare, and was considering mounting a legal challenge to recover the kingship.
History[]
Revolution[]
Transvaal province was the scene of escalating political violence throughout 1984 and 5, and in 1986 South African rule collapsed with a speed that surprised everyone. The parties and militias that ousted the government began fighting among themselves almost as quickly. The cities of Pretoria and Johannesburg were the main prizes, but they also competed to seize farmland from White owners. Revolutionaries arrested any government officials they could and for good measure rounded up the leaders of the bantustans, seen as collaborators with the apartheid system.
Like other members of the aristocracy, KK Sekhukhune had also participated in bantustan politics. But the confusion and uncertainty of the collapse presented an opportunity to transform from an Acting King into a true sovereign. He had some advantages that put him in a better position than most other traditional kings. The territory of Bopedi was compact, well-defined, and defensible. The Bapedi had a strong sense of nationhood, a sense activated by the politics within Lebowa. Sekhukhune could frame his seizure of power as a movement to liberate the Bapedi from apartheid and from the unpopular Lebowa homeland. In addition, Bopedi was small but rather densely populated; Sekhukhune could count on plenty of manpower that he could use to seize White-owned towns and farms in the area - something absolutely necessary if he was to consolidate the new kingdom.
Sekhukhune also took advantage of discontent with the revolutionaries while presenting himself as part of the anti-apartheid struggle. Many villages in Bopedi had been beset by officers from different factions demanding conscripts for their armies - first the African National Congress, then the Pan-Africanist Congress of Azania. KK promised to help his people resist these impositions and stay out of the deepening civil war.
King Sekhukhune III
KK Sekhukhune issued a declaration of independence in December of 1986 and promulgated new laws for his now-independent kingdom. He convened the traditional council and other tribal institutions, but he concentrated the practical power of administration in himself. Bopedi was an absolute monarchy for the early years of independence; the king and his supporters argued that dictatorial rule was necessary to fight against the chaos and instability all around.
Contrary to many expectations, the kingdom successfully maintained its independence. It fell between zones controlled by the ANC and PACA. Both of those sides came to view the kingdom as a valuable buffer. By the end of the decade, with the civil war dying down, Bopedi's independence was secure.
Azania[]
Throughout 1989, the liberators of the Transvaal sought peace. Mediators, most famously Desmond Tutu, helped the factions find common ground, while the Orange Free State provided them with a common enemy. The Orange provincial government was now operating independently, and it had managed not just to maintain apartheid, but to retrench it throughout its territory. A future war seemed inevitable. The quarreling militias needed not just peace but alliance and mutual protection so that they would not lose what they had so recently won.
Most of the smaller factions agreed to join one of three republics that now partitioned the province among themselves. These were the South African Republic, dominated by the ANC; the Azanian People's Republic, dominated by PACA; and the Republic of Azania, dominated by the Azanian People's Organization. Bopedi alone managed to hold on to independence outside of these three republics. Its geographic situation made it viable as an independent nation, and KK Sekhukhune's pursuit of sovereignty had become relentless; he refused to accept anything besides full independence for his kingdom, and neither the ANC nor PACA felt strong enough to force him aside.
The Azanian League was inaugurated in January 1990 by Sekhukhune and the revolutionary leaders of the three republics. Bopedi was the smallest Azanian member by far, its only monarchy, and its only member with a distinct ethnic identity. This changed a few years later when Swaziland joined the League.
Consolidation[]
At the start of the 90s the entire Transvaal was in a state of collapse. All the normal functions of business and administration had ceased, thanks first to the global collapse of 1983 and second to years of revolution and civil war. Mining, which had sustained the region's economy for a century, was no longer a viable option because there was nobody to sell to. Perhaps someday the industry could come back, but food production was the only way to survive in the medium term.
Much of the best land in the kingdom had been seized from or abandoned by its former White owners, and this gave the crown a very high level of control over planning and production. The most powerful state body in these years was not the traditional council, but the Agricultural Board, assembled from some of the best-educated leaders in the kingdom. The board took charge of securing Bopedi's food supply. It took an extremely conservative approach to land reform. The crown held on to much of the seized land, and the bulk of what was redistributed was put under the control of chiefs rather than ordinary people. This was justified as necessary to get through the crisis, but it became a cause of growing discontent after the food supply became stable.
By 2000, the kingdom's economy was not much higher than a subsistence level. Pretoria and Johannesburg were just beginning to revive as centers of trade and industry; as their wealth grew, Bopedi came to rely more on them. Pedi citizens looked for work in the cities. The governments of the republics gave aid to the kingdom. More generally it benefited from being part of the economic zone of Azania.
Sekhukhune permitted only a few small reforms to give the appearance of democracy. In 1995 Bopedi held elections to a new lower house of Parliament; the cheifs then constituted the upper house. But the king kept a great deal of control over the members and their deliberations. Parliament was widely considered a rubber stamp for the king's decisions.
Succession[]
Thulare III in ceremonial garb
Beginning in the 90s, Rhyne Thulare began to press his claim for the throne. He contended that his brother had come to power in an illegal coup; KK in turn continued to claim that Rhyne had renounced his right when he refused to confront his mother over the regency. In 1997 Rhyne was forced to leave the kingdom but went no further than Johannesburg. He spent the rest of his life seeking supporters within Bopedi and in the Azanian institutions. He never gathered enough support to make his move. He died in 2004.
But his son, Victor Thulare, was more politically adept. The young prince formed links with democracy movements and cultivated an image as a populist, reformer and liberal. By the end of the 2000s he had tied his claimed birthright to a clear and explicit agenda: more power to elected officials, more progress on the redistribution of land, and new investments to stimulate the economy. In 2009 he visited several villages in the kingdom, carefully avoiding the main towns. Crowds flocked to see him, and Sekhukhune did not dare arrest him.
Still, the movement advanced slowly. Thulare met with members of the Azanian League Council seeking confirmation of his claim; the council as a body refused to interfere in an internal matter, but Thulare found that many were sympathetic to his cause. A growing number of chiefs and royalty from other parts of Azania weighed in publicly on the succession dispute, and overwhelmingly they supported Victor.
The succession contest reached its climax in 2013. Large demonstrations for democracy and land reform took on a decidedly pro-Thulare character. KK Sekhukhune repressed them with police and soldiers. The Azanian neighbors decided finally to send in their own troops to help keep the peace. The outside troops largely protected the protestors, and the standoff stretched on. In the end Thulare won the support of a key group of chiefs who wanted peace and were open to reform, tired of KK's heavy-handed rule. The chiefs persuaded some senior officers to declare for Thulare, at which time KK agreed to negotiate. The two claimants agreed to a sixteen-month period of transition, after which Sekhukhune would step down after 36 years ruling as Acting King.
Even after this, KK Sekhukhune attempted to hold onto power. He sought ways to lengthen the time of the transition. But the Azanian republics held him to the agreement. In early 2015 Victor Thulare ascended the throne as planned under the regnal name of Thulare III.
Reform[]
Democratization turned out to be a slow process. Bopedi had no experience with it, and Thulare found that it was not so easy to transfer power to institutions that were still struggling to find their footing. The new Kgosikgolo had hoped to institute a comprehensive new democratic constitution; instead, a piecemeal series of organic laws placed some limits on his power and set up the beginnings of a responsible elected government. But the king still retained a great deal of power.
Bopedi remained involved in South African regional politics, most often condemning the lingering forces of colonization and apartheid. The kingdom denounced the DSA's war and occupation of KwaXhosa; the unification of the two White-ruled republics of Heiligdom and Orange; and the breakup of the New Union of South Africa, all of which reignited racial tensions in the region.
Land reform was one area where Thulare could move forward with his agenda. The redistribution of White-controlled land seized in the revolution had stalled, with corruption and favoritism characterizing many stages of the process. Many Bapedi families now received farms from land under Crown or chiefly control. The land reform program also offered help with obtaining equipment and fertilizer, though this was not easy to achieve on the kingdom's budget.
Government[]
The royal capital Mohlaletse is a small farming village.
Bopedi has a bicameral parliament. The lower chamber is elected while the upper consists of hereditary chiefs. The government is responsible to both the largest party or coalition in parliament and to the king himself; members of the Cabinet must be acceptable to both. There is a separate judiciary, but the king retains the right to hear appeals.
The town of Jane Furse was chosen as the capital because of its central location, relatively decent infrastructure, and proximity to the traditional royal capital, Mohlaletse. Mohlaletse is little more than a village and contains the palace. Jane Furse was renamed Sekhukhune in the early 90s after the nineteenth-century king and in reference to the region's former designation "Sekhukhuneland". The fact that it shared the name with the then-current king was presented as a welcome coincidence. The next and present king kept his uncle's name as the capital but sought to emphasize the historic king by commissioning a statue and several murals. Sekhukhune is the site of most administrative offices as well as the parliament and the high court.
Economy[]
Pedi farmers threshing maize
Bopedi is a very poor country. Agriculture is the main economic activity. The mountains at the east end have some productive mines; products include coal, iron, vanadium, chromium, platinum, kaolin clay, and asbestos. Most mining activity ceased in the 80s and it has been redeveloped only slowly alongside the demand for industrial minerals. Many citizens work for part of the year in Johannesburg and the mines of the Witwatersrand.
Bopedi has no metropolis. Sekhukhune has grown somewhat since becoming the capital, attracting some of the service industries necessary to support the administration, but it still has the character of a farming town. Mashishing and Tubatse, the largest cities, are likewise nothing more than slightly larger farming and mining towns.
Demographics[]
A Pedi house made of traditional materials in the Drakensberg foothills
In the Rainbow Nation of Southern Africa, Bopedi stands out for its remarkable homogeneity. Ethnic Bapedi comprise just under 90% of the population, and nearly all of them speak Sepedi as their primary language. The rest of the population is affiliated with other Black ethnic groups. Whites comprise no more than about 1% of the population; the presence of other racial groups is negligible.
This uniformity has led to wide support for the use of the Sepedi language in education, media, and public affairs. English plays a greater role at the higher end of the secondary school curriculum. The kingdom's only institution of higher education is Sekhukhune Technical College; it uses both Sepedi and English. The University of the North, not far across the border in the South African Republic, is open to Bapedi students and primarily uses English. English is also the language of the Azanian League institutions.
Symbols[]
Pedi clans make wide use of totemic symbols. The porcupine is associated with the royal house and therefore with the kingdom as a whole. It is regarded as the distinctive symbol of the Pedi nation. Upon independence, the kingdom adopted a flag with a porcupine in the pan-africanist colors in order to present itself as on par with the African liberation parties occupying other parts of the Transvaal.
The national coat of arms is a cowhide Nguni shield, a form also used by a number of other nations in the region. The crown and leopard supporters allude to the king's traditional regalia.
The national motto fetakgomo o sware motho is an old Sepedi proverb. It means "Leave the cow and catch the person" - in other words, people are more valuable than wealth. This sentiment has been connected to the kingdom in its heyday when it gained power through diplomacy, seeking allies rather than making enemies. It was also used as the name of a midcentury anti-apartheid group.
International relations[]
The Azanian League is a tight alliance or confederation. Members have wide autonomy to govern themselves, but most foreign affairs are conducted by the League. It represents Bopedi, along with the other members, in the League of Nations.
Bopedi engages in bilateral relations with some nations of Southern Africa. The republic of Good Hope, always eager to promote stability in the region, has helped Bopedi run its elections and draft some reform laws, over the objections of some of the Azanian governments.
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