Colour Bar

by Susan Williams

  With a reservation under the name of Mrs S. Jones, Ruth finally embarked on the BOAC flying-boat for Africa.43 All the crew knew who she was but kept her secret; not one of her forty fellow passengers discovered her identity. It was a far more leisurely way of travelling to Africa than an aeroplane. The flying-boat took four days to reach its final destination of Johannesburg and offered luxury travel: four-course meals and Pullman-style upholstery, with ample space to walk about and chat and enjoy refreshments. Ruth had expected the journey to be boring and tedious. But she loved it – ‘I could go on and on just taking off and landing on water, as one’s vision becomes completely screened by the water,’ she wrote to Betty. The first night stop was at Augusta in Sicily, the second at Luxor in Egypt, ‘where we looked over an old temple. It took 45 minutes, and was not worth missing, because the work was beautiful.’ The next night stop was Kampala, in Uganda, from where they flew to the Victoria Falls. This took her breath away. The original name for the Victoria Falls was Mosioathunya – ‘the smoke that thunders’. The spray, flung so far into the air as the Zambezi plunges into the gorge, looks like smoke – and as the sheer mass of water pours over the top, it makes a deafening roar. The falls ‘are indescribable’, Ruth told Betty in delight, ‘they are such a picture’.44

  When Ruth landed at the Falls on 19 August, she was taken to Livingstone. Here she was met by a portly British official, in khaki shorts and long socks. She looked slim and smart, in a dark coat and light scarf, with low heels. She was radiant with the anticipation of seeing her husband the following day.45

  II

  A Conspiracy of Nations

  6

  The dark shadow of apartheid

  Three days after the June Kgotla in Serowe, the British High Commission in South Africa cabled London to confirm the decision of the Bangwato.1 All that remained was to install Seretse as Kgosi. But the next day, there was an intervention from an unexpected quarter – from Dr Daniel Malan, the South African Prime Minister, a stout Afrikaner with a bald head, whose eyes peered out through thick glasses. He was a Doctor of Divinity and a Minister in the Dutch Reformed Church, the dominant religion of Afrikaners and the Nationalist Party, which believed in the superiority of whites over blacks. Now, in response to Seretse Khama’s marriage, Dr Malan told his Secretary for External Affairs, Douglas Forsyth, to send a top-secret telegram to Leif Egeland, the South African High Commissioner in London. Egeland was instructed to speak to the British Government and advise them to withhold recognition of Seretse’s Chieftainship.2 This issue – a local matter that should have been of no concern to anybody but the Bangwato – was now starting to assume international proportions.

  As soon as Egeland had read this cable, he went to see Philip Noel-Baker, the Secretary of State for Commonwealth Relations, and asked him to refuse to recognize Seretse as Chief. The Union Government was certain, he added, that it was within the power of the United Kingdom to do this. Egeland dressed his request in terms of concern about the Bangwato and the risk of losing Tshekedi – a ‘most serious loss not only to Bechuanaland, but to Africans in general, for Tshekedi was almost the only African leader who had shown real vision and statesmanship’. He elaborated, too, on the problems ahead for Ruth. ‘Coming from an English home,’ he argued, ‘she would find it extremely difficult to settle down to the kind of accommodation and living conditions which Seretse could offer her.’3 This comment betrayed Egeland’s prejudice: for the Bangwato royal family lived in brick houses that were far more spacious and comfortable than the flat in which the Williams family lived in London.

  Noel-Baker promised to consider the matter carefully. Then Egeland got up to go.

  Egeland was not at all reassured by his talk with Noel-Baker, a man now in his sixties who was well known as an idealist. Though the Commonwealth Secretary was ‘understandably non-committal’, he reported in an urgent telegram to Forsyth, ‘I did not, repeat not, get [the] impression that there was much prospect that recognition of Seretse’s chieftainship would be withheld.’ The best strategy, he believed, would be to concentrate on Sir Evelyn Baring, the British High Commissioner in South Africa. ‘I feel [the] United Kingdom Government will be largely guided by advice which will be received from Baring,’ he urged, ‘to whom no doubt strong representations will have been made at your end.’4

  As Forsyth had predicted, Noel-Baker immediately got in touch with Baring. ‘You will no doubt,’ he said, ‘be sending me shortly your recommendation on the whole question, and in particular as to confirmation of Seretse’s succession.’5 But Baring asked for a delay, because he was waiting for a report from Anthony Sillery, the Resident Commissioner. This report arrived on 5 July: Seretse’s election by acclamation, said Sillery, was so overwhelming that there was ‘really little more to say’, and the Kgotla had been ‘as representative as one could have hoped or as African meetings generally are’. In any case, he added, ‘The Batswana are fanatically attached to the principle of hereditary chieftainship.’ He concluded his report with a formal recognition of Seretse as chief:

  It only remains for me, in accordance with Section 3 of the Native Administration Proclamation… to recommend that Seretse Khama be recognised by you as Chief of the Bamangwato and that the Secretary of State’s confirmation be sought.6

  In this first week of July 1949, Baring shared Sillery’s assumption that Seretse should – and would – be installed as Kgosi. He had misgivings about Seretse’s marriage and, indeed, had said that he regarded the possibility of Seretse becoming Chief as the ‘worst development [that] might occur’.7 But he did not question the decision of the June Kgotla. He had already met with Seretse in South Africa and told him that he expected his confirmation as Chief to come through in a few weeks. The High Commissioner, noted Sillery,

  saw Seretse on Monday 4.7.49. HC is going to press for an early confirmation of Seretse’s appointment by S/S [Commonwealth Secretary of State]. And a telegraphic reply. I should say that if all goes well we shall hear by the end of the month… When that decision is made we must proceed to the installation as soon as we decently can.8

  But at this point, Sir Percivale Liesching intervened in the affair. Liesching was the Permanent Under-Secretary to Noel-Baker and therefore the official head of the Commonwealth Relations Office. On 8 July, he sent Baring a carefully worded telegram. ‘While outcome of tribal discussion on the Seretse affair appears to be clear,’ he argued, ‘the difficulties in our path are obvious.’ These difficulties, he said, were the objections of South Africa and Southern Rhodesia. Then Liesching introduced the idea of a new strategy: he asked whether there was any interim measure, in accordance with tribal custom, which could be used to produce a ‘cooling off’ period in the Seretse affair.9

  As it turned out, there was an interim measure that could be used to produce a delay. For on the day before Liesching’s cable arrived, Sir Evelyn had been handed a document signed by Tshekedi and about forty headmen who supported him, demanding a judicial inquiry into the question of whether or not Seretse should be Kgosi.10 He was given the document by Tshekedi’s lawyer, Douglas Buchanan, who had devised the plan. At first, Baring dismissed it out of hand. ‘I have given the High Commissioner a way out,’ complained Buchanan, ‘but he seems antagonistic thereto and I really do not think he grasps or understands the seriousness of the situation.’11 But Liesching’s suggestion prompted Baring to reconsider – an inquiry might be useful after all, as a way of holding things up. He badly needed time to think, and warned Noel-Baker that there would be a further delay before he could send a report, in view of ‘representations made to me by Tshekedi and of other developments’.12

  These ‘other developments’ included top-level talks with the South African Government. On 7 July, Baring had had his ‘first opportunity of seeking Forsyth’s help’, as he explained later to Sir Percivale. Forsyth, he told him, had discussed the whole matter in Cape Town with Dr Malan, who was ‘greatly worried and distressed’. Two key points had emerged. The fir
st was that the prospect of the official recognition of Seretse greatly offended Malan’s government and probably most white South Africans. The second was more of a threat – that the installation of Seretse as Chief would give ammunition to those groups seeking the transfer of the High Commission Territories to South Africa. Even more seriously, J. G. Strydom, who led an extreme faction of the Nationalists, would be strengthened against Dr Malan. These extremists, Forsyth had argued, would exploit the recognition of Seretse to appeal to the country for the establishment of South Africa as a republic – outside the Commonwealth.13

  Forsyth had also told Baring that the installation of Seretse would endanger the prospects of reaching an agreement on defence measures; the same point had been made to Baring by General Beyers, Chief of the South African General Staff.14 A number of defence issues were currently being negotiated between South Africa and the UK. That very month, the South African Defence Minister had gone with General Beyers to London for discussions: South Africa wanted to extract promises of arms supplies, while Attlee was anxious to secure a commitment by South Africa to the defence of the Middle East.15 There were other defence issues, too. One of these was uranium, which had been discovered in South Africa just a few years before and was regarded as vital for the British atomic weapons programme.16 These defence issues assumed particular importance in the context of the developing Cold War between East and West. It was seen as particularly necessary for the West to secure atomic superiority, because of Russia’s successful testing of an atomic bomb the year before.

  As well as having discussions with Forsyth and receiving advice from Sir Percivale, Baring was under pressure from Sir Godfrey Huggins, the Prime Minister of Southern Rhodesia. ‘I am writing to you re your White chieftainess-to-be (?) in Bechuanaland,’ wrote Huggins to his old friend Baring, in a jocular fashion. Then he became deadly serious: ‘As you can imagine, I am being bombarded to interfere in a matter of no direct concern of ours, but which has the possibility of repercussions here.’ He did not know, he said, what Baring and the Secretary of State were going to do about it,

  but I do want you to know (if you do not know already) that we consider an official Native–European union in Bechuanaland would increase our difficulties here, and also add a little fuel to the flames of the fire kept burning by our, fortunately diminishing, band of anti-Native Europeans.

  You will appreciate why I have to write this letter re a domestic problem of another state.17

  After writing this letter, Huggins drove to the colonial-style Parliament building in the centre of Salisbury (now Harare). Here the all-white Legislative Assembly presented him with a resolution – agreed by all the political parties – protesting against Seretse’s marriage and his installation as Chief; it demanded that Huggins officially inform the British Government of this view. ‘If we allow the principle of mixed marriages to expand in Southern Rhodesia,’ argued the leader of the Opposition, ‘those of us who have been brought up in the country know that it will lead to nothing but misery, confusion and degradation.’ What would be the position, he asked, ‘with regard to the offspring of such a marriage? What will be their status in society, in this country, whether native or European?…’ It was necessary to think ‘not only of ourselves,’ he argued with false concern, ‘but of the masses of natives throughout Africa’–

  If we are proud of our purity, so is the native. Charity of course begins at home. First of all we think of ourselves and of our own natives, but I feel confident that by this motion we are doing the Bamangwato tribe a great and invaluable service…

  Huggins replied that the Government’s view was very largely the same. ‘There is no doubt,’ he assured the House, ‘that the tribesmen’s decision is a disastrous one. First, it shows lack of racial pride in Bechuanaland; secondly, it is disastrous from the effect it will have on neighbouring territories.’ He said that he had already written to the British High Commissioner but promised to follow this up with a further communication, ‘informing him of the opinion of this House and how disastrous it would be if this fellow is allowed to become Chief of Khama’s people’.18

  Huggins’s statement to the Legislative Assembly in Salisbury was widely reported in Southern Africa. His dismissive description of Seretse as ‘this fellow’, which was standard language by white South Africans to refer to black men, led to a complaint to the British High Commissioner from the African Tribal Affairs Committee at Retreat, a town in the far south of South Africa. ‘We strongly object,’ they wrote, ‘to that term they used, fellow.’ The Committee demanded respect for Seretse – ‘all our Africans observe him as our Prince, we would not like anyone to call him by funny names. The Man we want is an able man, we are not concerned about his Wife, who she is, or how she is.’19

  ‘Fellow’ was used by whites in central and southern Africa to refer to black men who had been educated. Less well-educated black men, especially servants, were routinely referred to as ‘boy’, regardless of their age. Kenneth Kaunda, who became president of Zambia (formerly Northern Rhodesia) in 1964, described this offensive usage in his autobiography. In one incident in 1957, when he was visiting a town called Kitwe in Northern Rhodesia with Harry Nkumbula, they found themselves in a white area of town and went to a cafeé which, according to their driver, would sell them food so long as they did not ask to take their meal there. They went inside the cafeé and Kaunda asked for some sandwiches, to which a young white girl of about 17 replied that ‘boys’ were not served at the counter. When he told her that he was not a ‘boy’ and only wanted some sandwiches, she consulted an elderly white woman, who repeated that ‘boys’ were not served at that counter. At this point, recalled Kaunda,

  I was dragged out of the café by my clothes by a European man who had already dragged Harry Nkumbula outside the cafeé. This white man hit Harry and called him a cheap, spoiled nigger. Five other white men joined him in attacking us and we defended ourselves. White men and black men passing joined in the fight, and an apartheid type of brawl took place.

  Kaunda and Nkumbula were taken to the charge office, where Nkumbula began by saying that the girl at the counter had refused to serve them. But before he could finish his sentence, the white superintendent of police said, ‘You cannot call a white lady a “girl” or a “woman”.’ Harry ignored this and went on speaking, describing the behaviour of the elderly woman. But again,

  before he could finish his sentence, the superintendent said, ‘I say, you cheeky nigger, you cannot call a European lady a woman.’

  Then this police officer called Harry to a room and closed the door and beat him up. Harry told this officer that he was lucky he was wearing Her Majesty the Queen’s uniform, or one or other of them would have been killed.20

  The whites of Northern Rhodesia were as bitterly opposed to the idea of Seretse being Chief as were their white neighbours in Southern Rhodesia. In their Legislative Council in Lusaka, the capital, one Member of Parliament received rapturous applause on 8 July 1949 when he said that he hoped mixed unions would not be permitted in Northern Rhodesia. He was also opposed, he said, to the practice of European men cohabiting with native women.21

  Baring reflected on the arguments that had been put to him by Forsyth and Huggins. He could have dismissed them and backed the decision of the Serowe Kgotla. But he did not. Instead, he decided to go ahead with Tshekedi’s request for an inquiry. On 11 July, he finally sent Noel-Baker the report he had promised. Ordinarily, said Baring, Seretse would be installed as a matter of course – but the situation bristled with complications. He drew attention to the possibility of ‘external repercussions which I cannot ignore’:

  Adverse reactions in the local press are widespread and forceful. The Prime Minister of Southern Rhodesia has stated in the Legislative Assembly that his Government too is addressing to me official protests. I need not, I am sure, emphasise how repugnant mixed marriage of this nature is to the great majority of people in Southern Africa. It is apparently the possibility of immedi
ate official recognition of Seretse and his wife which arouses most criticism.

  He therefore proposed holding a judicial inquiry into whether or not Seretse should be chief. This would put the whole problem on hold for a period, during which time any number of developments could occur, such as the disillusionment of Ruth with life in Serowe.22

  This shift in opinion had been swift. In the space of just one week – between telling Seretse on 4 July that he would be confirmed as Kgosi, and his despatch to Noel-Baker on 11 July – Baring had changed his mind about the recognition of Seretse. ‘Baring told Stimson [Robert Stimson, a BBC journalist] after June Kgotla’, noted the US Embassy in South Africa, ‘that HMG would have to see Seretse through and not knuckle to Malan, but a week after strong statements by Malan and Huggins he had completely about-faced.’23

  Baring sent a long letter to Liesching. He believed, he said, that they were faced with a ‘choice of evils’. On the one hand, refusal to recognize Seretse as Chief ‘would open us to accusations of having surrendered to representations made by the Union Government and of having flouted the views of the tribe’. But on the other hand, the recognition of Seretse during the next months – rejecting the representations made by Dr Malan – ‘would lead to a head-on collision with the Union’ at the worst possible time and for the worst possible reason. ‘We must play for time,’ he urged. ‘At any rate,’ he added, getting to the point, ‘we should avoid a snub to the Union Government. We would show that we realised the seriousness of the position.’24 Only one day after sending this long letter, Baring followed it up with a cable. He was grateful, he said, for Liesching’s suggestion of a measure to produce a ‘cooling off’ period. ‘It was a great relief,’ he went on, ‘to find that our minds were working along the same lines.’25