A Short History of Barolong.(part 2)

The Origin of the Barolong.

It is difficult to say with certainty where the original home of the BaRolong may have been. Like all the Bantu now living in the South they must have come from somewhere north of the Zambezi where African tribes speaking languages related to theirs in structure if not in vocabulary, and resembling them in physical features are to be found.

According to their own traditions, although they do not know the name of the country from which they came, their old men relate that their forefathers had dim recollections of a land in which rain was plentiful, which was traversed by great rivers and expansive lakes and where the fertility of the soil made things grow relatively easily.s This description seems to point to the region of the Great Lakes of Central Mrica as the original home of the BaRolong.

We have no information as to the reasons which led the BaRolong and other Bantu tribes to leave a country such as this which appears to have had all the elements of a land flowing with milk and honey.

We can only suppose that they were driven from their desirable home either by internal dissensions, especially in connection with succession to the chieftainship, which were so common in the old tribal days and which would perhaps have been no less common today but for the Pax Brittanica, or by the invasion of their land by more powerful peoples under whom they were not prepared to live, or by the dreadful pests dangerous alike to human and animal life which thrive in tropical countries and to this day render vasts tracts of the African continent uninhabitable.

Whatever the cause of their southward migration the BaRolong appear to have been preceded by other tribes in their southward march, for when they reached the part of South Africa which they have since made their home, they did not find it uninhabited.

They found dwelling in it other tribes, some of them speaking languages not altogether unintelligible to them and with physical features not unlike their own." In the struggle
that ensued for the mastery of the country the BaRolong proved too much for, at least, some of the earlier inhabitants.

When they had duly subdued them they pressed them into their service to perform their menial and unpleasant tasks, the men of the conquered tribes taking charge of their cattle posts often at great distances from their central villages, in contact with wild beasts against which the stock had to be protected, while the women did duty as maidservants drawing water, hewing wood, building and keeping in good condition both the interior and exterior of their houses, taking care of the children of their conquerors and generally making themselves useful about the home.

The tribes which were subjugated in this way included the Bakgalagadi and the BaLala, and today when these tribes have largely ceased to be under BaRolong domination to the same extent, their tribal names-Bakgalagadi and BaLala-have passed into ordinary BaRolong speech as terms of abuse or contempt.