Pinning Demerit Badge on Chief Boy Scout

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa — 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.