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I feel I have the right to live in the territory, no matter in which capacity. The statement [by Tshekedi] has confused the whole issue. We shall probably have to start negotiating all over again. As far as I can see the British Government will never let me return as Chief.7
Seretse’s genuine wish to be reconciled with Tshekedi was confirmed by a source close to David Astor, the editor of the London Observer. This source had examined the situation fully and reported that he could find no evidence whatsoever that Seretse had broken his agreement.8 He said, too, that a colleague who had visited Seretse had found him ‘very understanding and anxious for reconciliation’.9 Astor was taking an interest in the matter because he was a sympathetic supporter of the struggle against imperialism in Africa. He and Michael Scott, an Anglican minister in South Africa, were loyal friends of Tshekedi and were doing their best to support him.
On 13 December 1950, Seretse was summoned to the CRO. The purpose of the meeting was to consult him on a forthcoming visit to southern Africa by Gordon Walker – and whether or not it would be a good idea to include a few days in Bechuanaland. Seretse said that he welcomed the idea of such a visit, which would enable the Commonwealth Secretary to ‘see things on the spot’.10 Gordon Walker was convinced that he should go, though officials there had warned against the plan. ‘It’s never any use being cowardly – I can’t really go furtively around,’ he wrote in a note to Liesching.11 One of the officials who had discouraged the visit was the new District Commissioner of Serowe, Jean Germond. With his goatee beard, Germond not only looked different from other whites in the reserve – he was different. He tried to diminish the unofficial apartheid in the Reserve and had the partitions between Africans and Europeans removed in Post Offices and, so far as was possible, on the railways.12He got on well with Keaboka Kgamane, Senior Tribal Representative, and unlike his predecessor, MacKenzie, was generally liked by the Bangwato.13 Germond insisted that if the Secretary of State were to visit Serowe, then he would have to hold a Kgotla, or it would do more harm than good – ‘I can see no other convincing pretext for his visit here.’ He added that members of the Tribe would expect to give speeches themselves, on the matters uppermost in their minds: their wish for Seretse’s return and their determination never to let Tshekedi back.14
It was the worst time of year for the Bangwato to attend an assembly in Serowe – the season when everybody hoped for rain and went out to their lands to plough. But plans went ahead anyway for the first visit of a Cabinet Minister to Bechuanaland. Some rail coaches were brought up to Palapye from South Africa, to be used as his sleeping-quarters, and ox-teams neatened the road between the railway and Serowe. Red, white and blue ribbons were wound around the poles supporting the front of the Tribal Office.15 The police kept a careful watch on movements into the Reserve and turned back any of Tshekedi’s supporters who ventured near.16
Colonel Beetham, the new Resident Commissioner – a large and overbearing man known as Ted – wanted to lay on a ‘European/African tea party’. ‘If you can work in an odd unofficial into the tea party,’ he wrote to one of his officers, meaning a white who did not work for the government, ‘I think it would be a good thing.’ But, he added, ‘I don’t know whether you have any prominent unofficials and if you have whether they would object to having tea with Africans.’17Germond told Beetham that he was asking all the local government officers and their wives to a luncheon on the lawn under the poplar trees at the Residency – but ‘I am not asking any of the local Europeans except Mrs Page-Wood. The rest have little to recommend them and did not show up very well during the Seretse troubles.’18
But the big event was Gordon Walker’s Kgotla on 1 February 1951. About 10,000 people turned up, some of them arriving as early as 5.30 in the morning.19 From Francistown, in the north of the territory, more than 1,000 people – women as well as men – were brought in special trains. Several thousand also came in lorries and buses, all laid on by the Administration. Some arrived by ox-wagons.20 One reason for the large numbers was that Germond, who was widely trusted, had been travelling around the country, encouraging people to attend. But it was also because people were eager to hear from Gordon Walker when their Kgosi would be returned to them; some people hoped that he would be bringing Seretse with him and would produce him at the meeting.
At 10.30 a.m. Gordon Walker arrived at the kgotla ground under a blistering sun, accompanied by the High Commissioner and the Resident Commissioner.21 Sporting a blue flower in his buttonhole, he sat in front of a table covered with a Union Jack, under a flag-draped roof. The breeze blew up the dust across the ground. First there were prayers and then a choir of school children sang ‘Morena boloka sechaba sa rona’ – ‘Lord, save our nation’. Gordon Walker was welcomed by a speech from Keaboka, whose pinched, thin cheeks and wrinkled forehead reflected the gravity of his feelings. Keaboka described the sorrow of the Bangwato at the banishment of Seretse and asked the Government to order Tshekedi’s followers out of the country.22
After his speech, Keaboka called on the representatives of the nine districts of the Reserve to speak; each one came from one of the allied clans ruled by the Bangwato, whom Tshekedi had claimed were on his side. Gordon Walker gave a nod or a wave to each of these men as they stood, then listened for several hours to their speeches, which were translated from Setswana into English by a man with a booming voice. ‘Loudspeakers were in use for the first time,’ reported John Redfern, the Daily Express correspondent, ‘and they really rattled under the assault of the men’s harsh and sorrowful voices, pleading for Seretse’s return.’23 Then Monametsi Chiepe, a prominent intellectual and a former Tribal Secretary, spoke for everybody there in a long, eloquent speech:
The eyes of a sorrowing people behold you today and hope is kindled in their hearts… We pray that it may please His Gracious Majesty’s Government to reconsider in due course this decision and return to us Seretse Khama who is by our law and custom the only legitimate heir to the Bamangwato Chieftainship. We do not want Tshekedi back in our country.
Chiepe reminded the Commonwealth Secretary of Britain’s obligation to protect Bechuanaland from South Africa:
Requests for the transfer of our country to the Union have been made from time to time. These requests come to us like a chilly and biting wind. We pray that whenever these requests to transfer us are made our Mother stretch her protecting wings all the closer about us and keep us warm, happy, confident and hopeful of growing into what we are destined by nature and healthy impulses to be.24
One woman near the front row held up her parasol to hide her tears during the speeches. Some of the speakers had told Mr Gordon Walker they thought he would be bringing Seretse with him to Bechuanaland. ‘Anyway,’ said one with a bitter chuckle, ‘we still feel that our Chief is in his pocket.’25
Then the Commonwealth Secretary began his address. He understood, he said, that it had been inconvenient for people to attend a kgotla at Serowe ‘at this difficult time of harvest when most of you would wish to be at work in your fields’. But, he added, ‘It is also very nice to see your women and your children in such great numbers singing.’ Then he moved on to the core of his speech: that nothing could be done about Seretse for five years, and possibly not even then. Referring to the White Paper, he said that His Majesty’s Government were keen for a system of District Councils to be set up, which would be given increasing responsibility until they had all the functions of a Native Authority. Then Gordon Walker made a promise. ‘I want you to know further, in reply to the speeches you have made to me,’ he told the many thousands of people facing him, ‘that the Government will never impose Tshekedi or anyone as Chief of the Bamangwato against the wishes of the majority of the people.’26
Straight after the Kgotla, Gordon Walker sent Liesching a telegram. ‘Ten thousand were present, extremely orderly,’ he reported with satisfaction. ‘Received nice lion skin.’ Then he went to Mafikeng to meet Tshekedi, who he thought was an ‘extremely able, ruthless, and
unforgiving man’.27 There was evidence, he told Liesching, of extremely strong feeling against Tshekedi, so they would have to abandon the idea of involving him in the affairs of the Bangwato. Otherwise, he believed, the pro-Seretse feeling would be fuelled. ‘Only policy now,’ he cabled, ‘is to make it clear Tshekedi is out and to allow anti-Ruth feeling to develop.’28
Gordon Walker may have wanted ‘to make it clear Tshekedi is out’ – but Tshekedi had other plans. The former Regent had been living at Rametsana in the Bakwena Reserve for well over a year, with the 1,200 people who had followed him there. But the move had only been intended as a temporary solution to hostilities and now Tshekedi wanted to go home to the Bangwato Reserve. In April 1951 he sailed to the UK with Buchanan, and embarked on an intense and energetic campaign to argue his case. It was ‘tremendously exciting if dreadfully exhausting’, commented Mary Benson, who became his assistant and later his friend and biographer. ‘Brilliant, fiercely energetic, obstinate, humorous, sagacious,’ she wrote, ‘he marshalled his arguments as a general would his troops… he ceaselessly lobbied MPs of both Houses as well as newspaper editors.’29
It was not long before his campaign produced results. There were many letters to the press protesting against his banishment, as well as a long letter to The Times from Tshekedi himself.30 He had the support of the Observer, the Manchester Guardian, The Economist, the News Chronicle and Tribune, the left-wing Labour weekly, and the backing of groups ranging from the Anti-Slavery Society to Christian Action.31
To some extent, Tshekedi’s high profile was the result of his charismatic and forceful personality. It was also because of his reputation as an enlightened leader. Frequent references were made in the press to Tshekedi’s concern to educate his people and, especially, to the building of Moeng College: hardly anyone in Britain was aware of the sufferings this project had caused for the Bangwato. ‘His schemes of education,’ enthused Fyfe Robertson in Picture Post, ‘showed him at his far-seeing best.’ Robertson described him as the ‘Black Smuts’:
Lords and Commons have discussed his fate, and to millions of Africans, his treatment, and the use that is made – or not made – of an outstanding man who understands the difficulties on both sides of the black – white problem, will show the way the wind is blowing for black people in Southern Africa.
Tshekedi, he added, ‘is the African chief best known in Britain today. He had made himself a legend in his thirties, and now at 46 he is one of the most influential Africans in all southern Africa.’32
So successful was Tshekedi’s campaign that on 26 June 1951 the Labour Government was threatened with defeat in the Commons, on an Opposition motion calling for an end to his banishment from the Bangwato Reserve. Gordon Walker’s back was now against the wall. But he was an agile politician and, as if out of a hat, he produced a last-minute strategy to buy time. Recalling the Kgotla he had attended in February that year, he proposed sending a delegation to the Protectorate, to obtain the views of a general Kgotla on whether or not Tshekedi should return as a private citizen.33 This quick thinking saved the vote.
During Tshekedi’s visit to London, efforts were made by David Astor to bring Tshekedi and Seretse together. With the help of Mary Benson and Michael Scott, he tried to arrange an overnight stay for the Khamas at his home in Berkshire, where Seretse would have consultations first with Scott and then with Tshekedi; he described the planned meeting as the ‘Two Power talks’.34 But Seretse was evidently unwilling to discuss such important matters on territory that was dominated by Tshekedi’s friends, entirely on their terms. He scrawled a curt note to Scott: ‘Unable to come willing to meet Tshekedi my place any time except Saturday and Sunday. Seretse.’35
On 24 July 1951 the government finally sent to Bechuanaland their team of observers – Professor W. M. Macmillan, Director of Colonial Studies at St Andrews University, Daniel Lipson, a one-time Independent MP for Cheltenham, and H. L. Bullock, a former President of the Trades Union Congress.36 When the three men arrived in Palapye, they were met by Sir Evelyn Baring for a briefing. Railway carriages in a siding had been arranged for their accommodation. As they toured the region, the Observers were given the same message again and again – that the Bangwato people wanted Seretse back as their Kgosi. One speaker pointed out that however hard they tried to tell the Government their views, they were never heard: ‘we don’t know what happens to words we tell people when they return overseas. As we speak it seems that we are singing a song – the words simply go into the air.’ First they had told Sir Walter Harragin, then they had told Gordon Walker, but still Seretse wasn’t allowed to come home. ‘Now we suspect,’ he said, ‘that nothing will happen to the words we speak to you.’37
The Observers’ itinerary included a visit to Tshekedi, who had now returned to Rametsana from London. Tshekedi, wrote Bullock to Gordon Walker afterwards, may have been a tyrant but he was ‘a great man’ and also charming, with ‘an answer for everything’. But everywhere they went, he added, the cry was for Seretse, though some people said that Tshekedi could return if Seretse was there. There was a danger, he warned, ‘of the Tribe going to pieces. This would be a great pity as they are a polite, courteous, friendly folk, whose strongest weapon seems to be their tongue. They can talk an Englishman out of existence.’38
In the afternoon of 16 August, at the school-house in Serowe, an unprecedented event took place – the Observers met a group of at least 1,000 women, at their own request; they were dressed in ‘brilliant coloured frocks and headdresses’, according to the Rand Daily Mail, and had their babies and children with them.39 When the meeting was opened to the floor, there was a short silence. Then, hesitating, a woman put up her hand. She asked, ‘Where is Seretse? Where is Ruth, and where is the baby?’ She was followed by speeches from twenty women in turn, who spoke with great feeling. Without exception, each one said that she did not want Tshekedi back, in any capacity. He was a ‘hard hearted man,’ complained one woman, starting to weep, ‘whose judgements were severe even to widows. They were beaten and banished and all the widows remember him with bitterness.’ At this point many of the other women burst into tears as well, and it was some minutes before the meeting could continue. The women handed over a memorandum. According to their custom, it stated, ‘a wife of a chief (no matter what the colour of her skin is) contributes very little or nothing at all to communal manual work, and in the circumstances Seretse’s wife will be exactly in the same position’. It was therefore not true that Ruth would not be able to do the work of a chief’s wife and the women begged the Observers to let her come back.40
On 30 August, the Observers had their last meeting in Bechuanaland and left for the UK. Although they had argued with each other on some matters, with the result that Macmillan and Bullock produced a joint report and Lipson wrote his own, shorter, report, their conclusion was the same: that Tshekedi’s return to the Reserve would be bitterly resented. In the course of his period in power, he had exiled many royal relatives who opposed him, used regimental labour freely for public projects that people did not want, and had a reputation as a man ‘who never forgets or forgives’. The crisis over Seretse’s marriage, they said, came at a time when Tshekedi was engaged in his greatest enterprise – the building of the Bangwato National College at Moeng, for which a prohibitive levy of oxen was imposed on the community and for which regimental labour was used on a monumental scale. ‘The chief fear’, emphasized Macmillan and Bullock’s report ‘is that if Tshekedi returns in the absence of a superior he will and must step as of right into the position of Chief and bring about a counter-revolution – and this in spite of what amounted to his constitutional displacement by the Kgotla in 1949.’41
After the observers had gone, the Bamangwato Women’s Association in Serowe asked the Government for the return of Ruth and her daughter, if only for a short visit. ‘We, on behalf of the women of the Bamangwato Tribe,’ they wrote to Germond,
respectfully request that you make representations to His Ma
jesty’s Government to allow our mother Ruth Khama and her baby to visit us at Serowe for two or three months.
We had grown to love and cherish them when they were snatched away from us. We have grieved and suffered through their absence and the absence of our Chief Seretse. We still grieve that our mother is being kept away from us and we are puzzled at the reason for their banishment.
We humbly request therefore that they soon be allowed to return to their home and take their rightful place among us and so bring peace and happiness to the unhappy and heartbroken people.42
The Observers’ reports were ready in September but they were not published, because a general election had been set for 25 October 1951: the Cabinet was worried that publication might weaken Labour’s standing with the electorate. But, as it turned out, Labour lost in any case – the Conservative Party was voted into power, with an overall majority of seventeen seats. Winston Churchill was now Prime Minister. For Seretse and Ruth, who had now been living in exile for over a year, there seemed real grounds to hope for a reversal of Government policy. For one thing, Churchill had told the House of Commons in March 1950 that Seretse’s banishment was a ‘very disreputable transaction’. For another, Gordon Walker had been replaced as the Commonwealth Secretary, so was no longer in a position to exert power over the Bangwato. Nor was Sir Evelyn Baring, whose appointment as British High Commissioner in South Africa had ended in September 1951.
G. M. Kgosi immediately wrote from Kimberley, South Africa, to congratulate the new Prime Minister:
Sir, re: Recent British General Elections: Churchill’s victory: Bamangwato welcomed British New Government: Pula Pula Pula!!!
Please convey to the British Parliament and People, the warmest congratulations of the Bamangwato, a Chiefless tribe.