Colour Bar

by Susan Williams

  By three in the afternoon, about 600 people had assembled outside the Kgotla and were shouting loudly. Dennis Atkins and a ‘European’ Sub-Inspector tried to take charge, standing in front of the police and trying to calm the people down. But the police were rushed at by the crowd and Atkins was attacked by stones and knocked down; he was rescued by the police, all of whom were wounded.

  Shortly afterwards, the Basuto reinforcements occupied the Kgotla. Then the police took up a position across its mouth, in a double line. They were faced by a huge crowd – over 800 people. Then Batho arrived, at 3.30 p.m. He ordered a police lorry to be driven right into the Kgotla and warned the crowd that if they did not disperse within five minutes, tear gas would be released. No one left. A police officer fired a gas shell and immediately there was panic and confusion. Some of the ex-servicemen were familiar with tear gas, because of their wartime experience. But many people had no idea what it was, so the gas had the opposite effect to that which was intended: people surged forward and rained showers of stones on the police, many of whom were themselves overcome by the gas.12 The scene was chaotic and an officer sounded a retreat, instructing the policemen to drive off in the waiting lorries.

  Some of the policemen had became separated from the main party and were left behind. One Basuto sergeant escaped to a village about a mile away but was found and hammered to death. Two other Basuto policemen were killed as well. One of them appeared to have been killed as he fell off the lorry that was driven into the Kgotla, crushed under the wheels of the lorry behind.13 In addition, about twenty policemen were admitted to hospital. Many of the Bangwato were badly injured, too, but few sought medical care at the hospital in case they were picked up by the police. Until late that evening, every Government vehicle moving within Serowe was stoned on sight.14

  The Police Superintendent from Francistown arrived to take charge and moved the police from the security camp to the low hill occupied by the European residents, who were terrified. The white women and children were corralled together. By this time, the telephone and telegraph line between Serowe and Palapye had been cut at several points and the only means of communication left was by wireless, for which conditions were poor. During the night, the police officer in charge of the Northern Protectorate arrived, as well as the Commissioner of Police from Mafikeng. Fraenkel phoned from Mafikeng and offered to go to Serowe and intervene, to avoid further bloodshed, but Beetham did not accept his offer.

  ‘Not a single police vehicle has now any glass left in it,’ reported Sir John to London next day.15 The first plane-load of British South Africa police from Southern Rhodesia arrived at 9.30 in the morning, with ‘ten Europeans and 70 African ranks’.16 By four in the afternoon there were about 5,000 people at the Kgotla, but no action was taken against them – there were just too many people to be dispersed. Seager and Cidraas went to the Kgotla, where people were singing hymns. Seager took a service, ‘choosing hymns as carefully as I could’. After the service the men explained why they were so distressed – ‘The Kgotla is ours.’17

  Police set up road-blocks, stopping every lorry, and the atmosphere throughout the Reserve was heavy and tense. The Administration was panicked by the fact that ‘everywhere in Serowe there is an inexhaustible supply of stones which tribesmen use as ammunition’ and several women collecting stones in buckets were arrested.18 But early patrols on Tuesday found the village quiet. There was now only a handful of people in the Kgotla: during the night there had been an exodus from Serowe by lorry and on foot. Thousands of people had packed up their things and trekked off to their cattle stations.

  In the late afternoon, lorries full of police, armed with tear-gas bombs, rifles and bayonets, truncheons, pick-handles and wickerwork shields, carried out sweeps of the area and made many arrests, including Keaboka and Peto.19 At Palapye the police encountered serious resistance: a crowd of about fifty men and women were waiting for them, armed with sticks, stones, pieces of iron and an axe.20 The crowd was eventually dispersed by tear gas and batons, but suffered many casualties in the struggle.21

  Nearly 170 people were arrested altogether, including 40 women.22 Fraenkel, who had come up to the Reserve at the urgent request of the Bangwato, protested against the violence of the police. On one occasion, he complained, the prisoners were beaten up by African police in the presence of European police, who looked on and laughed. They were also kept in miserable conditions. Seventy-eight men, with only one blanket each, were gaoled in a motor shed that was open on one side to the chill night of Bechuanaland’s winter. When Peto, Keaboka and nineteen other men were moved from Serowe in the middle of the night to Gaberones gaol in the south of the Protectorate, 200 miles away, they were taken in an open motor truck, with nothing to wear except the clothes in which they had been arrested. Keaboka was sentenced to fourteen days intensive hard labour for spitting at a white Sub-Inspector. Women prisoners had the additional humiliation of being conducted by male police into the veld when they needed to relieve themselves.23

  The High Commissioner had no illusions about the reason for the riot. ‘We must accept as a fact,’ he stated in a telegram to London on 9 June, ‘the general desire of the tribe to have Seretse as their Kgosi.’24 He added that he was hoping to rally the support of the many tribesmen who – however much they wanted Seretse back – were opposed to violence. For this reason, he asked the CRO to be extremely careful to avoid giving the false impression that the rioters were a mob, and the worse for drink. ‘Any suggestion that responsible tribesmen are already on our side or that the rioters were merely a drunken rabble’, he warned, ‘will have precisely the opposite effect.’25

  But Sir John’s request went unheeded. John Foster reported to the House of Commons that the attacks in the Serowe Kgotla on 1 June had been made by a big crowd – ‘many of them the worse for drink and among whom were many women’. The rioters, he added, were ‘a minority rabble’.26 Churchill summed up his account: ‘Indeed a terrible position. An angry mob, armed with staves and stones, inflamed by alcohol, and inspired by Liberal principles.’27

  But Jennie Lee was convinced this was not true and tackled Foster on his statement, especially his allegation that the women were drunk. ‘There was one passage in the hon. and learned Gentleman’s statement,’ she said, ‘which I should like to have clarified’ –

  when he used the phrase ‘the worse for drink’, he at the same time said that the women took a very active part in those demonstrations. I know we all want to be careful about statements which go out from this House, and I think the impression could legitimately have been given that the women were drunk, and that therefore their action was irresponsible and unrepresentative.

  I think it is very important that we should have this point clear, because Mrs Seretse Khama got on very well with her husband’s tribeswomen. There is a good deal of strong feeling there.

  Then she reminded MPs of the excellent impression that had been made by the recent envoys from Bechuanaland:

  Many of us were impressed by the members of the delegation to this country. They seemed responsible and, in fact, distinguished men, and therefore it is very hard for us to accept the impression given in the statement that this was just an unrepresentative rabble and that the women taking part were drunk.28

  Because of Jennie Lee’s intervention, the CRO was obliged to ask the High Commissioner’s Office for a report on whether or not women had been drunk. The reply from Africa was unmistakeable: ‘On I June women were in state of extreme excitement but there is no evidence that this was due to drink. Of the men only some appeared to be drunk.’29 But no statement was made to the House of Commons to correct Foster’s earlier announcement.

  Of the 167 people arrested, twelve men were charged with murder, all of whom were imprisoned in a barbed-wire cage in the thorn scrub at Lobatse, including one man who was blind.30 Bail was set so high – as high as £1,000 for each of thirteen people – that no one could possibly afford to pay.31 In London, the Seretse Khama C
ampaign Committee opened new committee rooms near Paddington to raise money for the defence of those on trial. The Guardian reported that among the first to come forward were Africans attending British universities.32 The Campaign Committee had changed its name from ‘Fighting Committee’ under its current Chairman, Monica Whately, a Catholic feminist and pacifist, who was a strong advocate of colonial freedom and had worked with Ellen Wilkinson and Krishna Menon in the 1930s in the India League, which had campaigned for self-rule.

  The defendants’ counsel, Mr Vieyra, argued that one of the policemen killed in the riot had not been murdered, but struck by a lorry. Under cross-examination, a police lieutenant admitted that the crowd had been orderly when the police arrived.33 Mr Vieyra described the closing of the Kgotla as the trigger for the violence:

  the riot took place for closing the Kgotla – an unprecedented incident. The Kgotla is their traditional meeting place and this closing annoyed them. Although the action of the District Commissioner, as Native Authority, may be justified in law… it is against native law and custom and such action would not be understood by the accused.34

  The trials reached their conclusion in November 1952. Seven of the men charged with murder were sentenced to three years’ hard labour, including Keaboka and Peto. ‘Hard labour’ meant long hours of useless and exhausting work in the hot sun – such as breaking rocks or digging a hole and then filling it up.35 The remaining men who had been charged with murder were either discharged or acquitted. Twelve months’ hard labour was the sentence given to two young mothers, one of whom had a baby only a few weeks old.36

  The riot of 1 June 1952 had left the Bangwato Reserve in a state of shock and grief. ‘We are very surprised at the recent happenings and to see women in riots,’ commented one man unhappily – but the whole community was suffering without Seretse. ‘If you pass small children not more than three years old in this village,’ he said, ‘you will hear them talking about the nomination of Seretse. Even the children are sad about it.’37 The memory of the riot would remain vivid for a generation and the babies born at that time were called Mokubukubu, ‘the children of the riots’.38 The atmosphere remained tense. The police reinforcements from neighbouring countries were kept in the region and ammunition permits were refused to Africans, who were told to use poison to keep down lions and leopards, instead of guns.39

  Now that Keaboka and Peto were in prison, there was a vacuum in the leadership of Seretse’s supporters. To maintain the campaign for the return of their Kgosi, a new organization called the Bamangwato National Congress was founded by Leetile Raditladi, with the support of Lenyeletse Seretse, Monametsi Chiepe and some others. One of their aims, explained Raditladi in Naledi ya Batswana on 2 August 1952, was to find a way of uniting the different factions of the Bangwato. As part of their manifesto, they nominated Oratile as acting Kgosi – ‘Princess Oratile Sekgoma Khama, the highest scion of blue blood in the land, to be the Head of the Bamangwato People and Administration’, assisted by a representative and elected body of men.40 Oratile, whom Ruth described as ‘a lovable and generous person’,41 commanded wide respect and affection. After the riot, she was often in Lobatse, supporting and helping the men and women on trial at the High Court.

  This was the second time that Oratile had been put forward as a leader to replace the banished Seretse. Two years earlier, she had been nominated as President of a Council and the proposal had been rejected outright by the Resident Commissioner and the Government. But this time, the Resident Commissioner thought that Oratile might offer a solution to their problems: a Chief who would be approved by the Tribe as an alternative to Seretse.42 He sent this view to the High Commissioner’s Office. But next day a strongly worded message came back from Sir John – that Oratile would not do.43 London took the same line. The appointment of Oratile, wrote Salisbury to Sir John was ‘out of the question’ – she was not suitable and Tshekedi would never rest so long as she was in office. The Tribe had to be reminded, he said, that there was ‘no precedent in Bamangwato history for [the] appointment of a woman as chief’.44

  Salisbury was right that there was no precedent in the history of the Bangwato for a woman Chief. But women in other parts of the Protectorate had taken leadership roles. Among the Bangwaketse, Gagoangwe and her daughter Ntebogang had served as Regents for Kgosi Bathoen II from 1923 to 1928.45 And when Oratile’s name was put forward in 1950 and 1952, Mrs Moremi was the Regent of the Batawana.46 The reason for Salisbury’s objection to Oratile was not that she was a woman, but that she was closely linked to Seretse. As Le Rougetel warned, many Bangwato would regard her appointment ‘as keeping the Chief’s chair warm for Seretse’.47

  The Commonwealth Secretary set out to the British High Commissioner the details of a three-point programme: getting Seretse out of the Chieftainship and the Protectorate for a long time; getting Tshekedi back into the Reserve as a private individual; and promoting the appointment of Rasebolai Kgamane as Chief.48 Rasebolai was next in royal seniority after Tshekedi. However, he was not of the House of Khama, like Seretse, Tshekedi and Oratile, but of the House of Kgamane, Khama’s brother, which had a reputation as warriors rather than statesmen. The CRO argued that Kgamane’s war record, as the only regimental Sergeant-Major from Bechuanaland in the Second World War, made him eminently suitable for office. In the view of his Commanding Officer, ‘RSM Rasebolai had not only all the real dignity of an African of good breeding, but he had a modesty of demeanour and above all, that rarest of all things in the African, a capacity for understanding the white man.’49 But the chief reason for Rasebolai’s appeal to the CRO – especially to those mandarins who continued to back Tshekedi, notably W. A. W. Clark – was his close relationship with the former Regent: he had gone with Tshekedi to Rametsana in 1950 and was his leading supporter. If he were to become Kgosi, he would become a channel through which Tshekedi could exert control over the Bangwato.

  In August, the exclusion order on Tshekedi was finally lifted. He was now allowed to return to the Bangwato Reserve, though he was not allowed to take part in political affairs. But he and his followers did not return to Serowe, knowing they would not be welcome. Instead, they established a new village called Pilikwe, south of the Tswapong Hills, about fifty miles from Serowe.50 Under Tshekedi’s iron rule, Pilikwe swiftly became a model village. A new junior official from Britain, George Winstanley, was impressed. ‘The thatching was immaculate,’ he found, ‘and untended sheep and goats were not tolerated in the village. There was not a scrap of litter to be seen.’51 In his office, Tshekedi had a plentiful library – classics, Shakespeare, Dickens, modern novels, works on law and colonial legislatures, history and economics, horse and cattle breeding, irrigation and education, as well as manuals of instruction on mechanics, fruit-growing and football.52

  Winstanley was surprised, though, by the extreme deference accorded to the former regent. One day, when he was taking tea with Tshekedi on his veranda, one of Tshekedi’s women servants brought him a message. When she approached her master, she was ‘so low that she was almost on her knees and after he had received the message she retreated in similar fashion’. Winstanley wondered if the woman was disabled, but Tshekedi explained that his servants usually approached him in this way. ‘Nobody ever walked past him without acknowledging his presence,’ said Winstanley. ‘The villagers stopped and bowed and greeted him with a gentle soundless clapping of their hands.’53

  Le Rougetel was putting pressure on the Administration to deliver the results demanded by Salisbury. At the start of September, Beetham distributed letters throughout the Bangwato Reserve, in English on one side and Setswana on the other, announcing the return of Tshekedi and the need to choose a new Chief.54 Batho held a meeting with royal headmen of the Bangwato as well as diKgosi from other parts of the Protectorate, who agreed that an Assembly should be held on 11 November. For this, the Serowe Kgotla would at last be opened.55

  But many people were unhappy about the proposed Assembly, especially because Kea
boka and Peto were still in prison. At a meeting in the village of Sefhare, strong feelings were expressed. ‘The government is a snake, or chameleon,’ complained one man, ‘it changes colour every day.’ Then he referred indignantly to the presence at the meeting of an informer:

  I see a policeman at the meeting. I know that he represents the DC and I know that he will report the things that we say in this meeting. We are going to fight again. If a Rametsana man were to touch me now, I will fight him. I do not care if I am arrested. I have been in gaol before.

  The policeman who was exposed made careful notes. The overall tone of the meeting, he reported, was highly charged: ‘Most men appeared to be very angry. They seemed to shiver as they spoke.’56

  Early in the morning of Monday 10 November 1952, the Kgotla was officially opened by Batho, for the first time in over five months. Security police stood by, with two armoured cars. Up to 2,500 men had come from every direction and the diKgosi of six other nations had also arrived. So had Fraenkel, at the request of the Bangwato. Tshekedi, who had been visiting Serowe, greeted the diKgosi and then left, as he was debarred from taking part in politics.57

  Batho told the Assembly about the need to appoint a new Chief and he renewed the Government’s promise that no Chief would be imposed. Then he opened up the discussion. Raditladi made the first speech, in which he argued that Rasebolai had not been accepted back in Serowe by the Bangwato people; this was heard with enthusiastic applause.58 By the next day, well over 3,000 men had assembled. ‘Government promised not to force a Chief on us,’ objected Oabona Nthobatsang, ‘and it is shameful that Government should now try to force one on us. You can kill us but we stick to our decision – we want Seretse only. He has committed no wrong.’ This was followed by long and hearty applause and pulas.59 On the third day of the Kgotla, low rain-clouds hung over Serowe and the men looked anxiously at the sky, reported the Star, ‘thinking of their lands, which should have already been ploughed’. No decision had been reached, but Batho dispersed the assembly: