Perpetual motion: resettlement patterns in the Western Transvaal and Southeastern Botswana since 1750 FRED MORTON∗ [published in Historia: Journal of the Historical Association of South Africa, 48, 1 (May 2003): 265-282. Long ago the Bakgatla Tribe in the Transvaal lived at the cattle posts on account of there being plenty of room because no white people had yet come there, there was much freedom and plenty of water. Every Headman knew where the Chief was [and] the lands and cattle were near. Everyone was near the lands and pasture and worked on the spot. In the morning the man would go off hunting game for meat, the woman would go to the lands to hoe or weed, or harvest, and the boys of the family would drive the cattle to the pasture lands and herd them there. In the evening the man would return with some game for the pot, the woman would bring in green mealies or pumpkins, and the boys—after driving the cattle home—would bring milk to their mothers.Each one of the family would bring home different things at night…. With our present mode of living in Stadts, great distances have to be covered to get to the cattle posts and to plough our lands, and all the game is finished around the Stadt and consequently there is no meat or milk to eat. ISANG PILANE 1 Though romanticized in that it ignores the recurrent conflict and dangers of the pre-European period in the South African Transvaal, this Kgatla recollection of how settlements were dispersed yet interconnected for practical, day-to-day advantages perhaps is closer to the truth than the present historical literature might suggest. For example, recent analysis of settlement in the Transvaal and other southern African regions has produced two, closely-related models of ∗ Fred Morton is professor of History, Loras College, Dubuque, Iowa (USA). A specialist on the Kgafela Kgatla of southeastern Botswana and Rustenburg district, he has collaborated on series of publications on nineteenth-century South Africa and Botswana, starting in 1994 with Slavery in South Africa: Captive Labour on the Dutch Frontier with Elizabeth Eldredge (Westview, Natal); The Historical Dictionary of Botswana: New Edition (1995) with Jeff Ramsay and Barry Morton (Scarecrow); “Brokers and Agents in Transvaal History,” articles featured in South African Historical Journal, 36 (1997): 136– 255 with Johannes du Bruyn; and most recently “To Make Them Serve”: The 1871 Transvaal Commission on African Labour (2003) with J.S. Bergh (Protea Booksellers). 1. Bechuanaland Protectorate Native Advisory Council minutes, 10th session, 15 Apr. 1930: 19.