THE NGWATO OF BECHUANALAND PROTECTORATE 63
authorities, he is assisted in his work by his close paternal relatives and other personal advisers. But on occasion he also invokes the aid of wider councils and other forms of assembly drawn from the tribe as a whole, and so binding its people together still further.1 Sometimes he consults the headmen alone, but more frequently he summons all the men of Serowe, or even of the whole tribe, to a meeting where public business is discussed, while through the regimental organization he may bring them together for work or, in the olden days, for war. These forms of assembly cut across the parochial loyalties of ward, village, and community, and so are among the most conspicuous means of uniting the members of the tribe.
This system of central administration still prevai s, but since the establishment of the Protectorate it has been somewhat modified. The European Administration has not only limited the powers of the chief and other tribal authorities, and altered the structure of their courts; it has also introduced its own governmental institutions. The Ngwato are now ruled by both European and Native authorities, and the latter occupy the subordinate position. It will be as well, therefore, to review briefly the part played by the European Administration in the regulation of tribal affairs before we proceed to discuss in more detail the past and present powers and functions of the chief and his councils.
Bechuanaland Protectorate, together with Basutoland and Swaziland, is under the general legislative and administrative control of a High Commissioner responsible to the Secretary of State for Dominion Affairs in Great Britain. The Territory itself is directly governed by a Resident Commissioner, with headquarters at Mafeking.2 The Ngwato Reserve, one of the twelve administrative districts into which it is divided, is under the immediate jurisdiction of a District Commissioner stationed at Serowe. He is assisted to maintain law and order, and carry out his other duties, by a small body of police and a few subordinate European and Native officials. Some technical officers representing the medical, agricultural, and veterinary branches of the
1 For a more detailed sketch of these advisers and councils, see below, pp. 71-2.
2 Mafeking, oddly enough, is located in the Union of South Africa, and not in Bechuanaland Protectorate itself, whose southern border is twelve miles north of the town. This anomalous position is a survival of the days (1885-95) when what is now British Bechuanaland, in the northern Cape Colony, was included in the Protectorate.