AFRICANWARSAND WHITEINVADERS
Tswana, and the Venda thus managed to equipthemselves
with firearms
and ammunition.
Although their guns were generally obsolescent models
in European terms and they often ran short of ammunition,
Africans in-
creased their capacity to resist the invaders.?"
The Tswana occupied open terrain between the Transvaal republic and
the Kalahari Desert. Divided among half a dozen major chiefdoms that
had a history of conflict between one another and were also rent by internal
rivalries, they never succeeded in cooperating
against their successive in-
vaders. Instead, under Afrikaner republican pressures, several chiefdoms
split into two or more entities, some of which were incorporated
in the
Transvaal republic, others of which preserved their autonomy on the edge
of the desert.
Searching
for allies against
republican
aggression,
the
Tswana were particularly
susceptible to missionary in:fluences. Several of
their chiefs converted to Christianity
and tried to enforce their mission-
aries' social prescriptions, outlawing such customs as the payment of bride-
wealth and the convening of initiation schools-actions
that created yet
another line of cleavage in a sorely divided society.77
The medley of Bantu-speaking
communities that occupied the north-