1. Sechele I was converted to Christianity by David Livingstone and in his role as ruler served as a missionary among his own and other African peoples.
18 Facts About Sechele I
1. 2.
Sechele I led a coalition of Batswana in the Battle of Dimawe in 1852.
3.
Sechele I was born in 1812, the son of the chief of the Kwena tribe of Tswana people of what is modern-day Botswana.
4.
When Sechele I was ten years old, his father was killed and the leadership of the tribe was divided between his two uncles.
5.
Sechele I spent some years among the Ngwato people and married Mokgokong, a daughter of Chief Kgari.
6.
Sechele I was eager to learn to read and write and was an adept student, learning the letters of the alphabet in two days.
7.
Sechele I became so keen on learning that he rose early and breakfasted before dawn.
8.
Sechele I later sent five of his children to be educated by another missionary, Robert Moffat, at Kuruman.
9.
Sechele I had to give up his role as the local rainmaker.
10.
Sechele I fell into conflict with the Livingstone over his marriage to five women.
11.
Sechele I was powerfully committed to Jesus Christ, such that he made this commitment at a time when it was politically and personally inconvenient to do so and, after Livingstone left him, he continued as missionary to his own and other people.
12.
Whereas most African converts simply assumed the ideas of European Christianity, Sechele I went back to the original source, the Bible, and tried to work out a more African kind of Christianity.
13.
Sechele I set out for England with the intention of seeking the protection of Queen Victoria, but his resources ran out by the time he reached Cape Town.
14.
Sechele I had a profound knowledge of the Bible and a commitment to spreading Christianity.
15.
Sechele I began with his own people, teaching them to read and introducing them to the Bible.
16.
Sechele I travelled many hundreds of miles to evangelise other African peoples.
17.
When Moffat led a group of missionaries into Matabeleland in 1859, he discovered that Sechele I had preceded him and that the local Ndebele people held Christian prayers.
18.
Neil Parsons, of the University of Botswana, stated that Sechele I "did more to propagate Christianity in nineteenth-century southern Africa than virtually any single European missionary".