THE NGWATO OF BECHUANALAND PROTECTORATE 71
to the London Missionary Society in his Reserve has also been a source of subsequent trouble with immigrant communities professing some other variety of Christian faith.
On all questions of tribal policy the chief is expected to consult with his immediate paternal relatives. The sectional headmen and other prominent local leaders are also held to be among his rightful advisers. When any matter of outstanding importance arises, he further summons a general meeting of headmen, and so obtains the views of all the important men in the tribe before taking any action. Except for such meetings, held very infrequently, the chief's advisers were until recently not organized into a definite body with limited membership. He consulted them, severally or collectively, whenever he wished, and varied them according to the issues involved. He relied only upon the men whom he could trust, and ignored others, however important their standing, who were openly hostile to him or whom he regarded with suspicion.
In November, 1925, however, immediately after the death of Sekgoma II, the tribe, at the suggestion of the Resident Commissioner, elected a Council of thirteen to assist the temporary acting chief (Gorewang, son of Kgama's brother, Kgamane). The Council was not at all popular, the people feeling that it was an Administrative device to undermine the chief's power by limiting his freedom of action; and Tshekedi, when he returned from school in February, 1926, to take over from Gorewang, successfully insisted upon its abolition. The Native Administration Proclamation has now reintroduced the idea of a well-defined Tribal Council. It requires the chief to nominate publicly, and with the approval of the tribe, the men entitled to advise him as councillors, and directs him to consult with them in the exercise of his functions. A councillor's tenure of office is subject to the discretion of the Resident Commissioner, and not of the chief, whose powers are thus limited in another direction. This was one of the features in the Proclamation against which Tshekedi most strenuously protested, maintaining that such a limited body as it proposed to set up was alien to the tribal system; and the court, in giving judgement, found that it was undoubtedly a departure from the traditional method of government.
This is not the only change that has taken place. During and since the time of Kgama, the chief has come to rely upon European