Ruth and Margaret became great friends. They both liked cats and Margaret decided to find some kittens as a present for Ruth. She could not find a single pet cat in Bechuanaland, so looked for some in Johannesburg. ‘At last,’ she wrote to her editor, ‘I found a pair of tiny kittens which I took back in a car to Serowe’:
For most of the way, the only shade was under the car, and I stopped at intervals to give the kittens saucers of milk and a brief respite from the heat in the shadow of the car. They soon lost interest in the fast-souring milk; they were panting like thirsty puppies with their tongues hanging out.
When she arrived in Serowe it was nearly midnight. But the lights were still on in the Khamas’ bungalow and the kittens, miraculously, were still alive, so she decided to take them to their new home. Ruth was enchanted with the kittens and Seretse immediately named them Pride and Prejudice.53
Ruth explained to Margaret the inaccuracies that had caused her to become embittered against the press. One of these was the claim that Seretse couldn’t cope with his studies because of Ruth. But in actual fact, Margaret wrote to her editor in New York, ‘she’s deeply interested in his career and keeps him at his studies’.54 Another false claim
was that she met Seretse in a dance hall. Another was that she was a typist. Also that Serowe is a place of baboons, hyenas and marauding lions – Ruth commented that the only baboons she had seen were the reporters. Finally, that ‘all Seretse’s wives’ would ‘have to bathe me and brush my hair – that’s so ridiculous, so silly,’ said Ruth.
In many ways, thought Margaret, Ruth ‘is a remarkable person who has overcome the difficulties of her fantastic situation to a creditable degree’. She had been boycotted ‘mercilessly’ by the European women – yet she had built up ‘a pretty complete life of her own’:
They ‘pity’ her loneliness. Yet in many ways her life is fuller than theirs, with a much closer degree of companionship with her husband, identification of herself with his interests, and intelligent understanding of the broader problems he has to face.55
‘When it comes to inequalities between blacks and whites,’ Margaret continued in her letter to New York, ‘she is fierce in her stand against such inequality’:
For example, she learned that the native nurses in the local Serowe hospital had recently had their pay slashed four pounds a month so as to raise the salaries of the white nurses. She is passionate in her denunciation of this injustice. When Seretse is given full powers as chief he hopes to change it, and she is fully airing her views.
Margaret thought that Ruth was a good influence on her husband:
She kept urging Seretse to decide things himself, act for himself, not pay any attention to what Government told him. She turned to me and talked about how the British Empire ‘doesn’t really try to help the people. That’s why they’re losing colonies right, left and center.’ Then she added, ‘I hate hypocrisy.’56
Margaret observed the treatment of the Khamas by the whites with distaste. Sunday was a big day in Bechuanaland, she observed, ‘and the small colony made the most of it’. She went along to a Sunday cricket match, ‘the weekly event of dusty Serowe’, on a day that was ‘a scorcher’:
On reaching the tiny cricket club, I saw that servants had erected a gay little striped awning and placed a couple of long, narrow picnic tables under its welcome shade. A handful of shopkeepers’ wives were engaged in that womanly task which English wives do so well the world over, preparing iced tea, lemonade, mounds of fresh-baked cookies and tiny flaked pastries.
The match had already started when the Khamas’ car drove into sight. It parked on the far side of the field, from where they could watch the game. There was an audible buzz from the feminine contingent under the striped awning: ‘Poor thing! She must be so lonely…’ ‘No one of her own kind to talk with…’ ‘Oh, I feel so sorry for her!’ But despite these protestations, noted Margaret, not one woman – or man – walked across the field to say hello or offer a glass of cold tea.57
From South Africa, millions of whites were watching in horror as Ruth settled down in Serowe. ‘Our colour problem,’ argued the Nationalist newspaper Die Burger, ‘will be detrimentally influenced if Seretse Khama and his white wife are permitted to assume the chieftainship’.58 Many whites felt sorry for Ruth’s European neighbours. ‘Please think of the little band of Europeans who have their homes in Serowe,’ pleaded a woman in Johannesburg in a letter to the Commonwealth Relations Office – how ‘degrading’ it was for them.59
Baring was sent a letter by the Dutch Reformed Church of Natal just days after Ruth’s arrival in southern Africa. It argued that:
This marriage (native and European) is a contradiction to age-long tradition and racial custom and a cause of internal hatred and splitting of the Bamangwato race. Acknowledgement of this marriage will mean social equalisation of black and white, and if this example of the King be followed – which certainly will be done – racial purity will gradually be wiped out. This will mean that European Christendom in South Africa has a dark future.
In all earnestness, the Church wishes to request his Excellency the British High Commissioner to advise the British Government that this marriage not only be denounced but also that Seretse Khama will not be admitted to succeed to the throne of the Bamangwato people.60
Ruth was happy and content in Serowe. But one day, at lunch, the room started to swim and she slipped to the floor.61 She recalled later:
Unfortunately I was not to have long to settle in my new life. I had barely become used to being called ‘Mother’ by the tribal women when I was taken ill…
Seretse brought Dr Don Moikangoa, the junior government doctor at Serowe Hospital, to see me. He sent me to bed for six weeks.
No doubt the heat had triggered the collapse, as well as nervous exhaustion from an accumulation of difficulties in the first year of her marriage – rejection by her parents, separation from Seretse by thousands of miles, harassment by the press, contempt from so many people in her own home country, and vilification by the whites of Serowe, South Africa and Southern Rhodesia. But there was another reason, too: she and Seretse discovered, to their great joy, that they were going to have a baby.62
Ruth arranged for Dr Moikangoa, a South African who had trained at the University of Witwatersrand, to look after her pregnancy. She also booked a room for the confinement at Serowe’s hilltop hospital on the edge of the village – the Sekgoma II Memorial Hospital, named after Seretse’s father, which had been a personal gift from Edward, Prince of Wales, on a visit to Serowe in 1925.63
Then she got busy knitting.64 ‘At last I’ve got my baby things together,’ she told Margaret Bourke-White. She had made eight coats, six jackets, and four pairs of bootees. ‘This is all I’m going to do until I see whether it’s a girl or a boy,’ she said, holding up yards of white silk and white muslin and lace edging. ‘Then I’ll make dresses if it’s a girl and rompers if it’s a boy.’ Then Margaret said:
Ruth, I shouldn’t ask you this. You don’t have to answer it if you don’t want to. But everybody wonders about it. How about the colour of your child? Do you do any thinking about that? How do you feel about it?
Ruth looked at her before answering the question and her eyes were very serious. ‘I couldn’t care less,’ she replied.65 ‘And you could tell from her manner,’ wrote Margaret to her editor in New York, ‘that she couldn’t.66
8
The Harragin Inquiry
When Ruth was up and about, Dr Moikangoa gave her strict instructions to take things easy. But this was out of the question. For in just ten days time, on 1 November 1949, the Judicial Inquiry was due to start, to determine whether Seretse was ‘a fit and proper person to discharge the functions of Chief’.1 The Inquiry was to be presided over by Sir Walter Harragin, Chief Justice of the High Commission Territories, who was based in Pretoria. Harragin was a tall, handsome man in his late fifties who – according to Noel Monks – was ‘the lion of the many society cocktail pa
rties that are a never ending part of the diplomatic life of Pretoria, where he had his headquarters’. He was also, said Monks, a good, humane judge.2 His background was unusual for a senior member of the colonial service. Born in British Guiana, he had been sent to school in Britain, but had not gone to Oxford or Cambridge. He was best known for his role as Attorney General in Kenya during the sensational trial in 1941 following the murder of Lord Errol, one of the Happy Valley set.
Harragin had few illusions about the motives of the British Government, but he insisted on correct procedure. ‘I fully realise that [the] Secretary of State does not wish to be embarrassed by a definite finding of [the] Enquiry contrary to his views,’ he wrote drily to Baring’s chief secretary, ‘but in that case he cannot pretend to appoint Enquiry under proviso to Section 3(1)’.3 He had directed that Tshekedi should be regarded as plaintiff and Seretse as defendant, to facilitate procedure. He changed the wording, though, when Seretse’s supporters complained that it put Seretse in the role of someone who had been accused of a crime.4 But Seretse was being put in the dock and he understood this perfectly well. He engaged the services of a lawyer – Percy Fraenkel, a clever and principled man of middle age, from the offices of Fraenkel and Herricke, in Mafikeng.5 Fraenkel came up to Serowe to help Seretse prepare for the proceedings. Tshekedi, mean-while, had gone to Cape Town for consultations with his own lawyer, Douglas Buchanan.
Gerald Nettelton was selected as a member of the Inquiry, as was R. S. Hudson, who was in charge of the African Studies Branch at the Colonial Office. His invitation had followed hard upon a report he had sent to Creech Jones, outlining Seretse’s unsuitability to be Kgosi.6 The British Government was to be represented by A. C. Thompson, the Attorney General of the High Commission Territories – ‘the most unliked man in all the Protectorates’, according to Monks.7
Early on in the preparations, Baring set about marshalling his staff to deliver the result required by the CRO. His approach was cold and ruthless. ‘The indications are,’ he wrote to Sillery, ‘that the Commonwealth Relations Office already contemplates reaching a position where we might not want to recognise Seretse and where Tshekedi’s continued Regency would also be out of the question.’ It would be a great mistake, added Baring, if any member of the Inquiry insisted on putting views opposed to such a solution.8 Baring was ably assisted by his Chief Secretary, W. A. W. Clark. Some people thought of Clark as ‘Baring’s éminence grise’, said Sillery – or, as Harragin put it, ‘the Rasputin’.9 The local administration, wrote Clark to Nettelton, were mistakenly assuming they must adopt an impartial attitude. But this was precisely what they should not do:
Whatever may be the viewpoint of individual local officers it is clear that the Administration per se must exert every effort to ensure that the weight of the evidence placed before the enquiry is against Seretse. I am doubtful whether in the absence of specific instructions to this effect the local administration will fully appreciate this important point.
The Inquiry was turning into something more than a means of buying time: it was being set up as an expedient to achieve a particular result.10
‘Quite clearly,’ wrote Baring to Sillery, ‘having appointed a judicial enquiry, we cannot lead direct evidence about the Government view on the decision at issue.’ But, he insisted, ‘we must ensure that the relevant facts and considerations, important from our point of view, are brought forcibly to the notice of the enquiry.’ Tshekedi and Buchanan would give useful evidence, he thought, but might omit some key points. Ellenberger, who had attended the third Kgotla as the Government Representative, would be a key witness, so Baring arranged for him to come to Pretoria to be briefed. He also asked Sillery to arrange for any Chiefs who supported Tshekedi against Seretse to give ‘their opinions about the undesirability of a white wife. Perhaps Bathoen could be very discreetly inspired to speak about the real interests of the tribe and of the Protectorate.’ The important thing was
to ensure that a position does not develop in which the enquiry has to listen to a mass of evidence from Seretse’s followers supporting his appointment and hears little or nothing from Tshekedi on the other side. This is what we must avoid at all costs.11
For Sillery in Mafikeng, it was a far less straightforward business than Baring seemed to imagine. ‘It is by no means easy for this Administration to inspire African witnesses to give evidence of the kind required,’ he told the High Commissioner. ‘First, because all African notables in this Protectorate who would be willing to give evidence are committed to one side or the other and secondly, because they are extremely suspicious of Government’s aims and objects.’ He sent a list of ‘independent’ people giving evidence, either called by Tshekedi or ‘inspired by Government’. Tshekedi fully understood the importance of ‘non-party evidence’, he added, and had gone to Johannesburg to get some.12
New instructions arrived daily on Sillery’s desk from the High Commissioner’s Office. ‘I hope you will take all possible steps to make sure that Chief Kgari gives evidence, and evidence which will be useful to us,’ wrote Baring. ‘Have you been able to do anything to prevent Mrs Moremi and Kgosi Molefi from giving evidence in favour of the marriage?’ he asked, referring to the Regent of the Batawana and the Kgosi of the Bakgatla. ‘What about Haile? Do you think he should be called?’ It would be advantageous, he thought, ‘if both a Catholic and a London Missionary Society missionary witness spoke generally against the marriage’.13
By the last weekend of October, all the members of the Inquiry had arrived in Serowe and everything was ready. Then, on the very eve of the Inquiry – on the evening of 31 October – South Africa delivered a carefully timed reminder of its antagonism towards Seretse and Ruth Khama. The Union Government declared that they were prohibited immigrants: it had taken this step, it said, to prevent the Khamas from emigrating to South Africa in the event that Seretse was found unfit to serve as Chief.14 But this was not the reason, since the Khamas would almost certainly not live in apartheid South Africa. The real reason was to stack the argument against Seretse – for if he was unable to cross the border into Mafikeng, the capital of Bechuanaland, it would be difficult for him to perform adequately the duties of Kgosi.
Speaking in Bloemfontein a few days earlier, on 25 October, Dr Malan had announced that he had already taken every possible precaution to prevent Seretse being acclaimed as Chief, and that he had sent a telegram to the British authorities to this effect. The great danger of the marriage, he argued, was that ‘natives’ might take it as a sign that a new path had been opened for all of them.15 This repeated an earlier statement by Malan about a month before, in a speech to the Nationalist Party Congress. On this occasion, too, he had stated that his Government had despatched a telegram to the British Government, and that Southern Rhodesia had done the same.16 In fact, South Africa had not sent any telegram, preferring to speak ‘off the record’ to individuals at the highest level of the British Government. But Malan needed to reassure his party that he was dealing with the problem.
South Africa was working hard to maintain pressure on the British Government. Douglas Forsyth used a conversation in the middle of October with Gordon Walker, Noel-Baker’s Parliamentary Secretary, to emphasize the ‘Union’s continuing anxiety that at [the] earliest moment after [the] judicial commission has reported [a] satisfactory solution should be found’.17 Then, on the second day of the Inquiry, Malan gave notice to Attlee, through Sir Evelyn Baring, of his intention to make formal representations for the transfer to the Union of the High Commission Territories. Attlee replied that it was not an opportune time to raise the matter, as any proposal for transfer would be unlikely to receive support from Parliament or from public opinion in the UK. All it would achieve, he argued, would be to strain the good relations between the UK and the Union.18
Under the shadow of these threats from South Africa, the Commission commenced its sittings in a large brown marquee, which had been specially erected in Serowe. Inside, reported the Daily Mirror, i
t was ‘steaming’.19 Outside, without any protection from the blazing sun, more than 3,000 Bangwato men were sitting in a semi-circle. At this time of year, if there was no rain, the temperature during the day could climb to over 30 degrees, even in the shade.
The chairman read aloud the document submitted by Tshekedi to Baring, which argued that the decision of the Kgotla to accept Ruth had been a mob decision and was politically motivated.20 This document was Baring’s pretext for the Inquiry, although it did not raise the issue of whether or not Seretse was ‘a fit and proper person to be Chief’. But it successfully deflected responsibility away from the British Government, setting up the Regent as a target for all the anger and frustration of Seretse’s supporters.
After Harragin had opened the Inquiry, Buchanan introduced an unexpected difficulty. He read a petition from Tshekedi, which asked the Inquiry to take his evidence at Lobatse – a small town 250 miles away in the south of the Protectorate, which housed the judicial court. Tshekedi was making this request, he said, because he felt unsafe in the Bangwato Reserve. Harragin was cross: he argued that the former Regent had been moving about freely in the Reserve, so could not have been all that worried. Harragin was also aware that many of the Bangwato had travelled long distances to Serowe, in order to be at the Inquiry: for them to travel on to Lobatse would have been impossible. But he grudgingly agreed to Tshekedi’s request. As a result, only A. J. Haile and Ellenberger were heard on the first day. Haile gave an account of the efforts by the LMS in London to stop the marriage. Afterwards, Haile reported to London. Seretse ‘can’t be allowed to get away with it altogether,’ he insisted. ‘The present mood of the tribe is to forgive him everything, but I feel pretty sure the Judicial Commission will come down heavily on the side of stricter Gov[ernment] control – I certainly hope so.’21
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