The Tswana peoples referred to in this paper inhabit the Bechuanaland Protectorate, where they number altogether about 270,000. In pre-European times they derived their subsistence mainly from animal husbandry and the cultivation of crops, each household producing its own food. Today they are still essentially small-scale subsistence farmers. But to satisfy the new wants developed by contact with Western civilisation over the past century, many persons also pursue new occupations, including above all temporary wage-labour for Europeans. In some areas more than half the able-bodied men are away every year working in the Union of South Africa. Their absence, often prolonged, has led to conspicuous changes in traditional customs and beliefs, and, as will be seen from some of the examples given below, has also given rise to new grounds for litigation.

Throughout British Africa today the future of the native courts (otherwise called African, customary, or local courts) is in the melting-pot, and is the subject of much discussion and deep concern. Considerable legislative and administrative changes affecting these courts are already being made, especially in West Africa. What are to be the relations between the superior courts of a territory, predominantly administering English law, and the native courts whose primary law remains African customary law? How are the law, practice and procedure followed by native courts to be moulded and modified to adapt them to the conditions of today and tomorrow? In the study of these important questions a backward glance at history does not come amiss, and may indeed help to illumine the problems of the present.

The more the self-government of Nigeria becomes a reality, the more important is the question of the independence of the judiciary and the more relevant is the question of the law of contempt of court. The judiciary is mainly staffed by British and Nigerian judges and magistrates drawn from the different national groups and regions of the Federation. It is therefore not impossible that as more cases of political interest go before the courts, the judges and magistrates may be exposed to unnecessary suspicion or pressures because of their places of origin, whatever the colour of their skins. Let me illustrate this point.