The Bamangwato (more correctly BagammaNgwato, and also referred to as the BaNgwato or Ngwato) is one of the eight "principal"

Tswana Tswana may refer to: * Tswana people, the Bantu languages, Bantu speaking people in Botswana, South Africa, Namibia, Zimbabwe, Zambia, and other Southern Africa regions * Tswana language, the language spoken by the (Ba)Tswana people * Tswanaland, ...

chieftaincies of

Botswana Botswana, officially the Republic of Botswana, is a landlocked country in Southern Africa. Botswana is topographically flat, with approximately 70 percent of its territory part of the Kalahari Desert. It is bordered by South Africa to the sou ...

. The modern Bamangwato formed in the Central Serowe, Palapye & Mahalapye District, with its main town and capital (after 1902) at

Serowe Serowe (population approximately 60,000) is an urban village in Botswana's Botswana Central District, Central District. A trade and commercial centre, it is Botswana's third largest village. Serowe has played an important role in Botswana's histor ...

. The paramount chief, a hereditary position, occupies one of the fifteen places in

Ntlo ya Dikgosi The ''Ntlo ya Dikgosi'' ( Tswana for "House of Chiefs") in Botswana is an advisory body to the country's parliament.Bakwena The Bakwena or Bakoena ("those who venerate the crocodile") are a large Sotho-Tswana clan in Southern Africa of the Bantu peoples, southern Bantu group. They can be found in different parts of southern Africa such as Lesotho, Botswana, South Africa ...

people, but members in the Bamangwato kingdom came from many sources, as was the case with all of the major 19th-century African kingdoms.

Sir Seretse Khama Sir Seretse Goitsebeng Maphiri Khama, Order of the Bath, GCB, Order of British Empire, KBE (1 July 1921 – 13 July 1980) was a Motswana politician who served as the first President of Botswana, a post he held from 1966 to his death in 1 ...

's paternal forebears, the chiefs of the Bamangwato, had built several prior capitals including Shoshong and Phalatswe, also known as Old Palapye. (Before the advent of colonial administration and fixed infrastructure, it was common for a tribal town to move when the local environment degraded.) Khama and the Protectorate administration created the modern borders of the Central District in Botswana. The Sengwato language caused excitement in linguistic circles in 1998 when scholars realized that it contained a unique f-s sound."African dialect uses unexpected sound"
''Science News'' (31 Oct 1998), Retrieved 3 Jan 2006

Seretse Khama Sir Seretse Goitsebeng Maphiri Khama, GCB, KBE (1 July 1921 – 13 July 1980) was a Motswana politician who served as the first President of Botswana, a post he held from 1966 to his death in 1980. Born into an influential royal famil ...

, Botswana's first president, was the ''

Kgosi A (; ) is the title for a hereditary leader of a Batswana and South Africa peoples tribe. Usage The word "kgosi" is a Setswana term for "king" or "chief". Various affixes can be added to the word to change its meaning: adding the prefix ''di- ...

'' (king/chief) of the Bamangwato. His son, Ian Khama, is Botswana's fourth President and the tribe's ''de facto'' paramount chief.

References

External links

Botswana History Pages
By Neil Parsons of the University of Botswana
Ethnologue
Languages of Botswana Ethnic groups in Botswana {{Africa-ethno-group-stub

See also

References

External links