THE NGWATO OF BECHUANALAND PROTECTORATE 73
selects his district governors from among them, and he may delegate them to try cases on his behalf, supervise the execution of his verdicts, and undertake other duties of a similar kind. If he is ill, or away from head-quarters, his heir, if old enough, or else some other very close paternal relative, acts as his deputy. For such minor tasks as carrying ordinary messages, he uses any tribesman at hand, and he also has a few official policemen of his own, who see that his decrees are enforced and act as messengers of his court on most routine occasions. Within recent years he has also begun to employ paid secretaries and other assistants to handle his correspondence, collect tax, issue passes and receipts, and attend to other routine business of the same kind. The chiefs principal secretary, owing to his access to all confidential documents and the close association in which he works with the chief, has become one of the strategic men in the tribal administration; and many royal headmen regard with resentment Tshekedi's employment of a Kalaka headman in this capacity, whereas Kgama and Sekgoma II both relied upon very close relatives.
Major enterprises are organized through the system of age-regiments (mephato) into which the whole tribe is divided. A regiment consists of people of the same sex and of about the same age, and every adult in the tribe must belong to one. The regiments are formed at intervals of several years apart, when all the eligible boys or girls, as the case may be, are grouped together into a single body. In the olden days they simultaneously went through an elaborate series of initiation ceremonies, but nowadays they are simply called together and told the name of the new regiment to which they henceforth belong. Each regiment of men is commanded by a member of the chief's own family (his brother, son, or fraternal nephew); while each group of men in it belonging to the same section, district, community, village, or ward is led by some similarly close relative of the appropriate headman. The headman himself leads the men of his group in his own regiment. The heir to the chieftainship commands his own regiment during the lifetime of his father, but on succeeding to office ceases to do so, the effective leadership passing to the member of the royal family next in rank. The women's regiments are organized along similar lines.
The men's regiments originally constituted the tribal army in the event of war, and were used at other times as a labour force.