A marriage of inconvenience: the persecution of Ruth and Seretse Khama http://www.aluka.org/action/showMetadata?doi=10.5555/AL.SFF.DOCUMENT.crp3b10019 Use of the Aluka digital library is subject to Aluka’s Terms and Conditions, available at http://www.aluka.org/page/about/termsConditions.jsp. By using Aluka, you agree that you have read and will abide by the Terms and Conditions. Among other things, the Terms and Conditions provide that the content in the Aluka digital library is only for personal, non-commercial use by authorized users of Aluka in connection with research, scholarship, and education. The content in the Aluka digital library is subject to copyright, with the exception of certain governmental works and very old materials that may be in the public domain under applicable law. Permission must be sought from Aluka and/or the applicable copyright holder in connection with any duplication or distribution of these materials where required by applicable law. Aluka is a not-for-profit initiative dedicated to creating and preserving a digital archive of materials about and from the developing world. For more information about Aluka, please see http://www.aluka.org A marriage of inconvenience: the persecution of Ruth and Seretse Khama Author/Creator Dutfield, Michael Publisher U. Hyman (London) Date 1990 Resource type Books Language English Subject Coverage (spatial) Botswana, United Kingdom Source Northwestern University Libraries, Melville J. Herskovits Library of African Studies, 968.1 S483Zd Rights By kind permission of Heather Dutfield. Description The story of the marriage of Ruth Williams, a white "English girl", and Seretse Khama, an African prince from the British Protectorate of Bechuanaland, present-day Botswana. The book tells the story of their marriage, the threat it posed to the British government in Bechuanaland and throughout its colonies, their exile to England and the larger consequences of the British attacks on the psyche of the African public. Format extent 242 pages (length/size) http://www.aluka.org/action/showMetadata?doi=10.5555/AL.SFF.DOCUMENT.crp3b10019 http://www.aluka.org A Marriage of Inconvenience A Marriage of Inconvenience The Persecution of Ruth and Seretse Khama Michael Dutfield UNWIN LONDON HYMAN SYDNEY WELLINGTON First published in Great Britain by the Trade Division of Unwin Hyman Limited, 1990 (K Michael Dutfield, 1990 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of Unwin Hyman Limited. UNWIN HYMAN LIMITED 15-17 Broadwick Street London W1V 1FP Allen & Unwin Australia Pty Ltd 8 Napier Street, North Sydney, NSW 2060, Australia Allen & Unwin New Zealand Pty Ltd with the Port Nicholson Press Compusales Building, 75 Ghuznee Street, Wellington, New Zealand. -\ (C British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Dutfield, Michael A marriage of inconvenience: the persecution of Ruth and Seretse Khama. 1. Great Britain. Khama, Ruth. Interpersonal relationships with Khama, Sir Seretse, 1921-80. South Africa. Khama, Sir Seretse. 1980 interpersonal relationships with Khama, Ruth I. Title 941.085'092'4 ISBN 0-04-440495-6 Typeset in 11 on 121/2 point Palatino by Columns of Reading Printed in Great Britain by Hartnoll Ltd, Bodmin, Cornwall. To Margaret my mother and Heather my wife 16 17 19 14 Contents Preface page ix Introduction xi 1LondonLove 1 2 Children of the Kalahari 10 3 The Bishop Decides 25 4 Seeing Sense 35 5 Stern Realities 40 6 A Fire Burning 46 7 Seachange 58 8 Pula! 64 9 The Perfect Chief 74 10 God's People 79 11 For the Greater Good 85 12 In the Interest of the Nation 97 13 No Alternative 107 14 'Mrs Jones' Flies Out 113 15 Loaded Dice 121 16 Cover-up 130 17 The Invitation 139 18 Money on the Table 146 19 Tricked! 156 20MidsummerMadness 168 21 Shattered Faith 175 22 Sleepless Nights 188 23 Together at Last 198 24 Exile 202 Postscript 208 Bibliography 216 Index 218 List of Illustrations Map of Bechuanaland, now the Republic of Botswana page x Between pages 114 to 115 1. Clement Attlee (Top/am) 2. Patrick Gordon-Walker (Topliam) 3. The Right Revd William Wand, Bishop of London (Topliam) 4. Sir Evelyn Baring (Tophanl) 5. Philip Noel-Baker (Tophani) 6. Ruth's sister Muriel and their Mother and Father (Lady Khanla) 7. Tshekedi Khama (Hulton Picture Library) 8. Ruth and Seretse after their marriage (Lady Khamia) 9. The marriage certificate 10. Seretse pleading his case at the Kgotla 11. Ruth waves at the plane at Mahalapye (Lady Kiaima) 12. Ruth meeting Seretse as he arrives for a weekend visit (Lady Klzama) 13. Arriving in exile 14. Ian Khama as Paramount Chief (Lady Kianma) 15. The twins Tshekedi and Tony with Jacqueline (Lady Kiama) 16. Lady Ruth Khama (Lady Kizama) Preface This is a work of fact. None of the characters is fictitious, none of the events imagined. It is a synthesis of the memories of those who were involved and of the hitherto secret documents left behind by powerful men now dead. The better to engage the reader, the book is written in a narrative style. This has involved the creation of dialogue in direct speech. On every occasion, such creations are based on clear documentation or the vivid recollection of one of the participants. The long speeches given by various tribesmen in the Kgotla meetings in Serowe, for example, are based on the detailed notes taken down by the resident missionary at the time, and translated and typed up by him every evening. Those notes and other relevant London Missionary Society documents are stored at the School of Oriental and African Studies, London University. The confrontations between Seretse Khama and various British government ministers are drawn directly from contemporaneous notes written by civil servants present at the meetings. Similarly, other discussions between officials and ministers, secret until now, reflect exactly the official records. Those documents, stored in the British Public Record Office, are listed in the Bibliography. I hope that by adopting an accessible style based rigorously on documented evidence and vivid memory, the reader will enter into the drama and emotion of the events here depicted assured that what is read is as true to what actually happened as surviving testimony will allow. M.J.D. London, January 1990 ix Map of Bechuanaland, now the Republic of Botswana. Introduction The door opened in a blaze of African sunlight and Lady Khama swept into the room. As slim as in the 40-year-old photographs I had seen, her hair still more blonde than grey, she greeted me brusquely and suggested we drive into town for morning coffee. It was a suggestion which sounded like an instruction. Parking near the central shopping area, we walked quickly through the glare and the heat to a hotel verandah. On either side of us people watched her, nodding a greeting when she caught their eye. The widow of the dead President commanded deep respect in Botswana. The waiter showed us to a shaded table and she ordered. I had only a few hours in the country before catching my flight to London that afternoon and had managed to reroute my ticket on my way home from an assignment in neighbouring South Africa. She had agreed to meet me. For four years I had been writing to her and reading the published reports of her life. I had been little more than a year old when her name had been in headlines from Britain to South Africa, India to the USA. Then, as Ruth Williams, a 24- year-old English girl, she had met Seretse Khama, an African prince and heir to the chieftainship of a tribe of more than 100,000. They had fallen in love and married, setting heads shaking and tongues wagging from the London of their courtship to the tribal capital on the edge of the Kalahari Desert which was his home. To begin with, that marriage between black and white had been no more welcome in the round, mud huts of Africa than in the smart restaurants of the West End. But even the prejudice and bitter rejection they had both suffered then were nothing to what followed. Within a year of their wedding, the young couple had provoked an astonishing sequence of events that has never been explained. For reasons it never justified, the British government had embarked on what appeared to be a vendetta against them, robbing Seretse of his Introduction birthright and his people of their chief. In the process, he and Ruth had been forcibly separated at the very time when she needed him most. When, at last, the British drove them both into exile, the loyalty of blacks throughout the Empire was undermined and the moral basis of the whole government was shaken. Why had it happened? What had this young couple done to deserve such hostility? What had been their crime? Why should a marriage provoke such vindictiveness? Was it simply that he was black and she white? Was it because of pressure from South Africa whose policy of apartheid was even then enslaving 15 million blacks? If so, what hold did South Africa have over Britain to enforce her will? A hundred questions were asked at the time but had never been answered and the world had moved on. Those answers, I knew, were only partly to be found in the person sitting opposite me sipping coffee. There were clues to be discovered in a string of villages along the south-eastern edge of the Kalahari with names like Palapye, Mahalapye, Mmadinare and Shoshong.