Colour Bar

by Susan Williams

  Why, he asked, should the British Government ‘hand us over to the other people without asking us?’

  They hand us over like an ox, but even the owner of the ox looks to where the ox will get grass, and water, land, that sort of thing. I think they ought to have asked us, and found out what we think about it. Although we are black people we have tribes that we rule over, [and] if a chief wants to make a new law or anything he must speak with his people.

  ‘We were progressing very [well] under the Imperial Government,’ he said, ‘but now you are teaching us the word of war, and I think these things ought to cease.’22

  It looked at first as if the visit of the diKgosi would be wasted, because Joseph Chamberlain, the Colonial Secretary, simply told them to negotiate terms with Rhodes. But then the Jameson Raid took place in December 1895, when Jameson invaded the Transvaal from inside Bechuanaland, on Rhodes’s orders. It failed within three days and Britain was widely criticized for allowing its Protectorate to be used as a springboard for an attack on another country. Not wishing to be further discredited and aware, too, of the widespread support for the diKgosi from the British public, especially among Nonconformists and teetotallers, the Government refused to transfer the Protectorate to the British South Africa Company.

  Bechuanaland was still not safe from South Africa, however. For in 1908–9 the leaders of the Boers and of the British met to develop proposals for the unification of South Africa. Under this plan, the Cape, Natal, the Transvaal and the Orange River Colony would unite to form the Union of South Africa. It was assumed that Bechuanaland, along with Swaziland and Basutoland (later Lesotho) would also form part of the Union. Once again, however, the people of Bechuanaland protested strongly and pleaded with Britain to protect them from South Africa and, in the event, neither Bechuanaland, Swaziland, nor Basutoland were included in the Union. But the Union of South Africa Act of 1909 empowered the King to ‘transfer’ to the Union the government of any of these territories at any time, so long as their inhabitants had been consulted, their wishes had been considered, and the British parliament had approved. This left a prevailing feeling of vulnerability. On the one hand, many people had faith in the protecting power of Britain – in 1947, when George VI and his family visited Bechuanaland, Tshekedi greeted them in the full-dress uniform of the Royal Horse Guards, presented to Khama III by Victoria. But, on the other hand, there was a nagging fear that the transfer might take place some day.

  This fear was felt even more keenly after May 1948 – just months before Seretse’s marriage to Ruth – when the Afrikaner National Party, under Dr Daniel Malan, was voted into power by South Africa’s white minority, defeating the United Party led by General Jan Smuts. It was a victory that was described by Malan as ‘a miracle of God’. The Nationalists came to power on an election platform of apartheid, the dogma of the separate development of the races. Draconian legislation was rapidly prepared in order to maintain and to strengthen the domination of the majority by the few – of 8,500,000 black people by fewer than 2,500,000 whites, who owned nine-tenths of the land. But the idea of apartheid was hardly new. It was built on the foundations of the racist policies of the colonial-settler state, above all the 1913 and 1936 Land Acts that had placed the legal limit on African-owned land at 13.7 per cent of South Africa’s total area. In 1948, shortly before the Nationalists came to power, Alan Paton published Cry the Beloved Country: A Story of Comfort in Desolation – much admired by Seretse Khama23 – which painted a picture of a society that was riddled with racial injustice.

  The people of Bechuanaland continually opposed the idea of transfer to the Union, on any terms. But they could not avoid living under its shadow. The postal services were administered by South Africa, so the stamps were South African. The currency was the South African rand and customs, too, remained under South African control; Roman-Dutch law was in force. The only railway was a single-track system, operated by South African Railways, running inside the eastern border of Bechuanaland from Cape Town in South Africa to Bulawayo in Southern Rhodesia. Economically, the Protectorate was dependent on the Union. Even the administrative capital, Mafikeng, was located in South Africa – sixteen miles south of the southern boundary of Bechuanaland. It was the only capital in the world to lie outside the country it governed. This was a historical anomaly, but was consistent with the way in which Bechuanaland lay in the shadow of its southern neighbour. The houses and offices of the Protectorate Administration were on the edge of Mafikeng, on a square mile of land grandly called the Imperial Reserve.

  The overall authority in Africa for Bechuanaland was the British High Commissioner, who was based in South Africa. As he was also responsible for the British territories of Basutoland and Swaziland, the three countries were described collectively as the High Commission Territories – or, for the sake of convenience, as the HCTs. They were different countries in many ways, especially geographically. Whereas Bechuanaland was the size of Kenya or France, the other two were tiny by comparison. Moreover, Basutoland was entirely enclosed by South African territory; Swaziland, too, was dominated by South Africa, except where it shared a border with Mozambique.

  Bechuanaland was managed by the British on a shoestring and little was provided in the way of formal education and health care. What services did exist were segregated along racial lines, with hugely preferential facilities for whites. At most of the few African and ‘coloured’ schools, classes were often held under a tree, and the children used slates, not paper. Nor were there any secondary schools for Africans until Tshekedi decided to build Moeng College. Few places had electricity or running water. Serowe did have piped water, but it had to be collected in buckets. Many of the children and adults in Bechuanaland were malnourished and suffered from preventable diseases; malaria and yellow fever were endemic and diphtheria widespread.24 Throughout the period of British administration, at least a third of all children did not live to the age of 5.25

  There was no official colour bar in Bechuanaland but the practice of segregation was firmly rooted in daily life. The small white community – or ‘Europeans’, as they called themselves, although most of them came from South Africa – regarded black people as inferior.26 If a black person went to the home of a white, he or she was expected to go to the back door. In the shops and post-offices, black and white people were served separately, with blacks receiving summary service.27 One young colonial official, Michael Fairlie, was appalled by the level of separation between the lives of blacks and the lives of whites when he first arrived in Bechuanaland in the late 1940s. He found that ‘there was no social contact at all with the local Africans’ and even Tshekedi, who was widely respected by the Administration, ‘was never invited into a European’s house for a cup of tea, let alone a meal’.28 Fairlie wanted to invite some of the people who lived near him to his home, but white public opinion ‘would have been scandalized at this breach of the racial code’. He was already the subject of gossip for playing tennis on the government court with his African staff.29

  On the trains, segregation did not stop once the train had crossed the border from South Africa into the Protectorate. Some trains were wholly reserved for whites. But even on the ‘mixed’ trains, the rule of net blankes– ‘whites only’ – applied to the first- and second-class coaches. Black people had to make do with third and fourth class, which were far less comfortable. Nor were they allowed into the dining cars. At the stations, there were separate waiting rooms and facilities for whites and blacks.30 The nearest train station to Serowe was at Palapye, thirty miles away. Facing the station was the Palapye Hotel, which had a front entrance for whites, surrounded by pink bougainvillea bushes and tall palm trees, providing shade. It had a dingy back entrance for blacks, who were not allowed inside unless they were servants.

  In the early days of his Regency, when he was only 28, Tshekedi Khama was briefly deposed by the British Administration. A number of cases of European men seducing Bangwato girls had come to his attention and he made
repeated complaints about this to the Resident Magistrate, but nothing was done. Then, in August 1933, a young white man called Phineas McIntosh, who was a wagon-builder and had been a frequent offender, struck a black youth during a quarrel over a young Bangwato woman. Tshekedi summoned McIntosh and did the unthinkable – he sentenced him to a flogging, even though he was white. The Resident Commissioner, Charles Rey, who didn’t like Tshekedi anyway, took this opportunity to have him removed from office. He asked the Acting High Commissioner, Admiral Evans, who was Commander of the British fleet in South Africa, to depose the Regent. Evans immediately sent armed marines from his Simonstown naval base all the way to Bechuanaland, which was a journey of some 1,000 miles.

  A trial was held. Douglas Buchanan came up from Cape Town and did his best to defend Tshekedi; McIntosh, in any case, said he had no complaint against him. But it was announced that Tshekedi was not fit to be Regent, because he had unlawfully inflicted corporal punishment on a white man. A formal ceremony was held to sentence him, at which Tshekedi was made to stand on the ground in front of a wooden dais that had been specially constructed, bearing the Union Jack. Powerful guns were trained on him and on the 15,000 Bangwato people who had come to show solidarity with their Regent.31 On the dais stood Admiral Evans, Percivale Liesching, who was the Deputy Commissioner for the United Kingdom and was dressed in full ceremonial regalia, including a sword and feathered hat, and Colonel Rey, who wore khaki uniform, pith helmet and knee-high boots. Tshekedi was told he was suspended. He was then marched to his car and banished to Francistown, in the north of Bechuanaland.32

  Tshekedi immediately sought to reverse this injustice by following the model set by his father, Khama III, and appealed to supporters in Britain. This led to heavy criticism of Evans and Rey in the press and in the House of Commons. A Movietone newsreel interviewed Tshekedi, who reminded viewers of the kindness of the British people towards Khama III in 1896.33 Meanwhile, the Bangwato resisted Rey’s attempts to replace Tshekedi and no one would agree to act in his place as Native Authority. This created an impossible predicament for Evans and Rey, who needed a way out. This was offered by Tshekedi himself, who declared that he had never assumed it was his right as Native Authority to sentence a white man – a statement they seized on, announcing that he had ‘apologized’. Within weeks of deposing Tshekedi, a humiliated Evans had to return to Serowe to reinstate him.34

  The episode generated a great deal of sympathy for Tshekedi in the Protectorate and in liberal circles in Britain. For, as Learie Constantine drily observed, ‘though a white man may flog or kill a black one, no black man may flog a white one on a Court order or under any circumstances’.35 But it also led to support for Tshekedi from an unexpected quarter: from many of the whites in Britain, South Africa and Southern Rhodesia who were opposed to sexual contact between the races. Tshekedi’s action against McIntosh, they argued, demonstrated that he felt as strongly about this as they did. Fifteen years later, his hostility to the marriage of Seretse and Ruth suggested that perhaps they were right.

  4

  The decision of the Bangwato Assembly

  Seretse returned to Bechuanaland just three weeks after his marriage. It was not a good time to go: he longed to stay with Ruth and he was planning to take the second part of his Bar exam in December. But he felt obliged to explain himself to his family and his people. After a long and tiring journey, he finally arrived home in Serowe. The sun was harsh and very bright, because this was the beginning of summer, when temperatures could reach a blistering 44°C. Seasons here were the opposite of Britain – Ruth in London would have been dressing up warmly against the cold and damp of autumn.

  Almost as soon as Seretse returned home, his uncles reprimanded him on his failure to consult them on his marriage. Tshekedi told him that he must give Ruth up, suggesting that some kind of financial compensation could be offered to her.1 But Seretse adamantly refused. Since neither side would back down, it was decided to hold a Kgotla in Serowe to discuss the issue. The Kgotla ground was the centre of the moral and political life of the Bangwato people, where every important issue was discussed. Every adult man was entitled to attend and sometimes many thousands of men would arrive from all over the Bangwato territory. Everyone who wished to speak was encouraged to give his view and assemblies lasted until it was clear that nothing new was being said. Only then could the Kgosi sum up the discussion and the overall consensus. There were many small Kgotlas in the small wards of the village and elsewhere throughout the Reserve, but the Kgotla in Serowe was paramount.

  The Kgotla to discuss Seretse’s marriage started on 15 November 1948 and lasted four days. Between 2,000 and 3,000 men travelled to Serowe on foot, on horseback, on donkeys, and in trucks, some of them bringing stools or chairs to sit on. As was customary, it was opened with a prayer; people sat in a semi-circle, facing the Regent and his senior advisers. Tshekedi, who was an eloquent speaker in both Setswana and English, explained his objections to Seretse’s marriage. Then Seretse apologized for not marrying according to custom, but added that he was very much in love with his wife. In the discussion that followed, only seven men spoke in favour of the marriage, while seventy-eight opposed it.2 However, this was not necessarily the consensus of Bangwato society. For one thing, women were prohibited from attending Kgotla meetings. For another, Tshekedi had banned men under 40 years of age from speaking, on the grounds that the issue was beyond their understanding.3

  Seretse made preparations to leave the village. But before going, he asked for another Kgotla to be held; he believed that many of the younger men did not object to his marriage and he was still hopeful that it would be accepted. On 28 December 1948, over a month after the first Kgotla, a second Assembly took place. This time, between 3,000 and 4,000 men made their way to the kgotla ground and the discussions lasted two days. Seretse stated emphatically that if his wife was not acceptable to his people, he would not come back.4 The Nationalist South African newspapers Die Burger and Transvaler were quick to report that this second Kgotla demonstrated that Africans wanted ‘racial purity’ as much as the white Nationalists.5 But the Kgotla showed no such thing. In fact, it was inconclusive and men spoke for each side. One visiting Kgosi from another region of Bechuanaland, who was watching the faces of the men, noticed that many favoured Seretse but were afraid to speak.6 It was apparent that there had been a shift of opinion since the Kgotla of November. Doubts had grown that Tshekedi was trying to keep the kingship for himself and there were fears of losing Seretse for ever, even though he was the rightful Kgosi.

  ‘Tshekedi’s stock is low,’ reported the LMS to London.7 According to Lenyeletse Seretse, Seretse’s cousin, there was a section of the community that believed in magic, who were ‘absolutely convinced’ that Tshekedi wanted the kingship for himself and had stumbled upon a particularly potent potion which had made Seretse marry a foreign woman, so that he would remain Kgosi.8

  No consensus was reached. This meant that the matter would have to be discussed again, at a further Kgotla. Gerald Nettelton, the Government Secretary of Bechuanaland, suggested to Seretse that he go to England for now, complete his examinations, and then come back in June. By now, believed Alan Seager, the LMS missionary in Serowe, Tshekedi was close to a nervous breakdown.9

  Seretse left for London. On his way to Johannesburg airport, he stopped off in Mafikeng to speak to the Resident Commissioner, Anthony Sillery. After the visit, Sillery sent a report to the British High Commission; Sir Evelyn Baring was on leave, so it went to Sir Walter Harragin, the Chief Justice for the HCTs, who was Acting High Commissioner. ‘There is no opposition to Seretse’s claims to be Chief,’ reported Sillery. ‘These are completely accepted by all including Tshekedi. Opposition is concentrated on his European wife.’ But, he added, ‘Seretse was unwaveringly loyal to his wife, and his attitude remains what it has always been: that the Tribe, if it wants him as Chief, must accept his wife.’10 Harragin praised Sillery for his impartiality. ‘I am extremely pleased that y
ou seem to have been able to preserve an attitude of strict neutrality in the whole matter,’ he wrote, ‘so that it can never be said in the future that Government had influenced the decisions in any way whatsoever.’ He could not help feeling, he added uneasily, ‘that there are some who would like to consider Seretse as a young man who has committed some wrong, whereas in fact all he has done is to make an honest woman of his wife.’11

  On 7 January 1949, Seretse was met at the Heath Row aerodrome by his wife. The joy of their reunion was captured by the press in photographs: Ruth, sparkling with happiness, in a dark suit and hat, and a beaming Seretse, swinging a walking cane.12 Ruth took him to their new home in north London – a garden flat in a cheerful house at 34 Adolphus Road. Knowing how much Seretse disliked cramped quarters, she had managed to find a larger flat before his return.13

  They settled into a happy routine, where she kept house and he returned to his law studies. Ruth did what she could to encourage him with his preparation for the Equity exam: he loved reading detective stories but whenever he picked one up, she firmly took it away and put a textbook in his hands.14 As the evenings grew warmer, friends would fill their little garden and the velvet voice of Leslie – ‘Hutch’ – Hutchinson, singing Gershwin and Porter, rang out from their gramophone player.15

  Five months after his return from Bechuanaland, Seretse had to return for the third Kgotla, as he had promised. ‘Once more my spirits fell,’ sighed Ruth. ‘Yet another separation!’16

  When he arrived in Serowe on 15 June 1949, he quickly found that people’s attitudes had grown in his favour. ‘The people [had become] just as adamant that Tshekedi was trying to steal the chieftainship from Seretse,’ recalled one of Tshekedi’s friends, years later. ‘I remember standing up in kgotla one day,’ he said, ‘and trying to set the facts straight on this point, but I was shouted at from all sides.’ By June, he added, life had become impossible for Tshekedi or anyone who supported him in Serowe.17