Pinning Demerit Badge on Chief Boy Scout

Robert Baden-Powell, the British war hero who founded the Scouting movement, coined the popular motto “Be Prepared.” But even the world’s No. 1 Scout could not have anticipated the multimillion-dollar dispute now tainting his legacy in the country where he made his claim to fame.

Traditional leaders in Mafikeng, a dusty provincial capital about 175 miles west of here, have filed a $5.9-million petition with the British government. The Barolong-Boora-Tshidi Tribal Authority is seeking compensation for promises it says then-Col. Baden-Powell never kept when enlisting blacks to fight alongside the British in the Boer War nearly 100 years ago.

It was the so-called Siege of Mafikeng that launched Baden-Powell’s military celebrity and helped shape his ideas for Scouting. For 217 days, the outnumbered British successfully defended the frontier town at the start of a bloody struggle between English-speaking and Afrikaans-speaking whites for control of South Africa’s vast mineral riches.

But the Barolong leaders say Baden-Powell’s victory came at a steep price for blacks in the “native stadt,” as Mafikeng’s adjoining black settlement was known. About 600 Barolong soldiers recruited by the British were deprived of their wages and payment for rations. Untold numbers of cattle--the main currency in rural Africa--were confiscated for the war effort. To add insult to injury, the leaders say, Baden-Powell reneged on a British pledge to return ancestral lands in nearby Polfontein in exchange for Barolong cooperation against the Boers.

And perhaps worst of all, hundreds of blacks were condemned to death when the besieged town ran low on food and Baden-Powell, ensuring that sufficient supplies were available for whites, ordered them to leave or starve, the Barolong allege.

“This has been simmering for a long time, but because of apartheid we had no freedom to pursue it,” said Stanlake Kukama, a Barolong leader who recalls his grandparents complaining about what they saw as Baden-Powell’s betrayal. “This isn’t something that we have just come up with. It is nothing but the truth that happened 100 years ago.”

The current round of Baden-Powell reappraisals is inspired by the approaching centennial of the war. South Africa is awash with fresh accounts of the period, many of which highlight the largely unrecognized role of black combatants, whose contributions were played down or denied by both sides for many years.

Journalists Play Role in Demand for Money

The Barolong demand for damages was the brainchild of freelance journalists Pat Hopkins and Heather Dugmore, the Johannesburg authors of one of the more sensational newly released books, “The Boy.” The popularized account of the Siege of Mafikeng argues that Baden-Powell acted as a war criminal in his treatment of blacks. He is described as the “Monster of Mafikeng,” whose transgressions were either covered up by military authorities or excused by war correspondents eager for a good story.

Some Barolong leaders are so embittered about the outstanding grievances that they are urging blacks to boycott Scouting, a movement they regard as a tribute to an undeserving hero. Kukama said Scouting, founded by Baden-Powell in 1907, is a colonial anachronism with no relevance to Africans.

“Blacks who join the Scouts do so out of ignorance,” he said. “Once you understand how we have been treated, you understand what this white man was really like.”

The Barolong complaints have provoked a “barrage of correspondence” from Scouts urging that the record be set straight, according to John Hunneyball, chief executive of the South African Scout Assn. About 90% of the country’s 120,000 Scouts are black, he said, and while Baden-Powell’s shortcomings are recognized, they should be measured against his life experience, not the narrow prism of a single event.

“There are many cases of transformation of ideology in history,” Hunneyball said. “Baden-Powell is one of them. From militarism and jingoism, he converted to pacifism and world brotherhood. Our black Scouters who have been around for many years consider him a very strong symbol.”

Brouhaha’s Timing Awkward for Scouts

The Baden-Powell brouhaha could not have come at a more awkward moment for the Scouts. Next week, for the first time in the organization’s history, South Africa is hosting the World Scout Conference, which brings together about 1,000 delegates from more than 150 countries and territories.

In preparation for the event, a monument to Baden-Powell and the birth of Scouting was placed at a new environmental center outside Mafikeng last week. At the end of the Scouting conference in Durban, delegates are scheduled to tour the erstwhile British outpost and attend a banquet.

“We have a unique asset here and we want to show it off,” Hunneyball said.

Baden-Powell credited various inspirations for Scouting, but he frequently referred to the Siege of Mafikeng as a founding example of Scouting principles at work.

Young boys trapped in Mafikeng during the 1899-1900 siege were organized by British officers into a cadet corps, later described by Baden-Powell as the Mafikeng Boy Scouts. The cadets delivered messages, carried orders and performed other tasks, thereby freeing up soldiers to defend the town.

“We then made the discovery that boys, when trusted and relied on, were just as capable and reliable as men,” Baden-Powell once told an interviewer.

Mafikeng also holds special meaning for Scouting, historians say, because Baden-Powell would never have commanded the international following needed to launch the movement without the star billing he gained from the siege. Public fascination with the drama, which was covered extensively by the media, can be compared to such contemporary events as the death of Princess Diana and the 1979 hostage taking at the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, said historian Allen Warren of the University of York in Britain.

“Baden-Powell became an iconic figure for that generation,” said Warren, who has written about the history of Scouting. “The siege gave Baden-Powell a public, patriotic and international stature he never lost.”

But as with most larger-than-life personalities, Baden-Powell’s legacy has come under periodic scrutiny in the decades following his death in 1941. He has been accused of anti-Semitism and supporting Nazi Germany because of laudatory remarks he made about the Hitler Youth movement, which his defenders say were not unusual at the time.

He has been described as a repressed homosexual, a latent pedophile and an avid cross-dresser, though there is no conclusive evidence, unless it be that he wore costumes in theatrical productions, that he was any of these things. Even his defense of Mafikeng has been revisited, with some historians concluding that he was a master of hype and self-promotion, while others suggest he bumbled his way through crisis after crisis.

Many grievances of the Barolong have surfaced as well. Some, such as the starvation allegation, have been strongly disputed by several historians and biographers, although there is general agreement that blacks were ordered out of town during the siege and that many of them died as a result.

Other complaints have been documented. A petition for wages and compensation for the aggrieved Barolong soldiers, for example, was first registered in 1903. It was apparently ignored by the British authorities.

Journalist Hopkins said he approached the Barolong about reviving the 1903 claim after stumbling across the original petition among historical papers at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg.

He hired an accountant to calculate the present value of the unpaid wages and rations. Last month, he forwarded the $5.9-million demand by e-mail to the British Embassy in Cape Town on behalf of the Barolong-Boora-Tshidi Tribal Authority, which represents about 85,000 people in the Mafikeng area, according to census estimates. Barolong King Montshioa says the wider Barolong population exceeds 500,000.

“I am just horrified to see what happened to the Barolong over the past 100 years,” Hopkins said. “They were never able to recover; the tribe lost all of its wealth . . . because a matter of honor was not upheld.”

Michael Doig, spokesman for the British Embassy, said the claim has been referred to London for investigation. He said the petition is believed to be the first in Africa, where the British once held vast colonial territories.

“The question is how far do you go back on that kind of thing,” Doig said. “Obviously, while there are still living relatives of people who suffered, there must come a point where you draw the line.”

Kukama, the Barolong leader, said time is not the issue.

“It is a matter of sincerity,” Kukama said. “The British were never sincere. They treated us like animals. We still have that memory. They now have the obligation to honor the promises made by Baden-Powell.”

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Scouting Around the World

1907: British army officer Robert Baden-Powell opens a trial camp for 22 boys on Brownsea Island off England.

1908: Baden-Powell publishes the first Boy Scout manual.

1909: A British Boy Scout helps American businessman William D. Boyce through a London fog. The next year an impressed Boyce and others found the Boy Scouts of America.

1910: Baden-Powell and his sister Agnes found the Girl Guides in Britain.

1912: Juliette Gordon Low of Savannah, Ga., founds its U.S. counterpart, the Girl Scouts of the U.S.A.

1916: Baden-Powell begins the Wolf Cubs in England for boys under 11.

1920: First worldwide Scout jamboree held.

1930: Cub Scouts is started in the U.S. for boys ages 6 to 10.

1950: World membership reaches 5 million in 50 countries.

1969: World membership reaches 12 million.

1999: 151 countries now participate in Scouting, with 25 million members.

Sources: Encyclopedia Britannica, World Book, Boy Scouts of America Web site, World Scout Movement Web site, Girl Scouts of the U.S.A. Web site

Compiled by researcher John Jackson