ABSTRACT
The Ratshidi-Barolong remained on full alert during the first half of 1883. Kgosi Montshiwa cemented relations with his northern neighbours and negotiated an alliance north of the Molopo with diKgosi Gaseisiwe of the Bangwaketse and Sechele of the Bakwena, and with Kgosi Ikalafeng in the Marico of the western Transvaal. Bethell went to Kimberley, with one of Montshiwa’s sons to telegraph a renewed attempt to obtain ammunition legally for the Ratshidi. Bethell kept up a stream of correspondence directed at George Hudson and Acting High Commissioner Leicester Smyth in June and July 1883. The diamond millionaire businessman Cecil Rhodes had been elected to the Cape Colony’s House of Assembly in 1881, representing a constituency in Griqualand West, and soon became the rising star in Cape parliamentary politics. He raised questions in parliament about Cis-Molopo, and succeeded in being appointed to a boundary commission examining the Cape’s northern frontier in 1883.
