Colour Bar

by Susan Williams

  In the evening after the wedding, a cable arrived for Seretse from Tshekedi, who was unaware that they were now man and wife. ‘I wish you [to] pay attention to what Commonwealth Office advises you,’ he warned. ‘Your obstinacy can only result [in] serious consequences [to] yourself. On no condition can we agree to your marrying an English girl.’58 Next day, Seretse wired Tshekedi with the news that he was too late – that the wedding had already taken place.59 His uncle was outraged. ‘Formal signing of document in England does not constitute your marriage,’ he thundered back in reply, ordering him to come home, and adding:

  As far as we are concerned no marriage exists. Apparently you took my strong advice for a threat. We accept nothing short of dissolution of that marriage. Our decision firm. Welfare of tribe paramount in this case.60

  Seretse tried to reason with his uncle: ‘Tribe and you important to me. Suspension of allowance being felt.’ Then he made it clear that his commitment to Ruth was absolute: ‘Suggest passage for two. Dissolution unacceptable.’61

  3

  The Bechuanaland Protectorate

  The country of Seretse Khama was the Bechuanaland Protectorate – a vast expanse of sand dunes and scrub, with more animals than people. Herds of cattle wandered across the wide plains, together with sheep, goats and wild donkeys. In the more remote areas there was every sort of wild animal – lions, snakes, cheetahs, elephants, hippos, rhinos, zebra, crocodiles, hyenas and leopards. When Mandela sought refuge in Bechuanaland from apartheid in the 1960s, he fell in love with the country at first sight: it was a wilder Africa, he said, than the one he knew in South Africa and he was astonished when he saw a lioness crossing the road. After the jungle of Johannesburg, he reflected, he was in a place ‘where the survival of the fittest was the supreme law and where the tangled vegetation concealed all kinds of danger’.1

  The Protectorate was a landlocked country, bordering South Africa to the south and the south-east, Southern Rhodesia (later Zimbabwe) to the north-east, Northern Rhodesia (Zambia) on the other side of the Zambezi River in the north, and South West Africa (Namibia) to the west. Much of Bechuanaland was parched and inhospitable – about three-quarters of the western part of the country lay buried under the scrub and dust of the Kalahari, a semi-desert. Green grass would grow after good rains; but for much of the time, the soil was ravaged by drought. Water was so scarce that pula, the Setswana word for ‘rain’, was one of the most important and frequently used words. It was used to offer greetings and ‘Pula!’ was a shared cry of approbation at formal and informal gatherings. Thorn bushes were the chief source of shade from the blazing sun. Few of the roads in Bechuanaland were gravelled, and transport was limited to ox-drawn carts and wagons, although there were a few cars belonging to wealthy cattle-owners; the British officials drove around in lorries.2

  There were eight principal nations in the territory – the Bakgatla, the Bakwena, the Bangwaketse, the Balete, the Bangwato, the Baralong, the Batawana, and the Batlokwa.3 The largest of these was the Bangwato, to which Seretse belonged. The other inhabitants of the Protectorate included sub-clans and also the Basarwa, also known as the San or Bushmen, hunter-gatherers with very limited rights, who were widely used as servants.4

  Under British rule, the affairs of each nation were controlled by their own Kgosi, who was known as the Native Authority; he and his office were responsible for land tenure, educational arrangements, licensing, collection of taxes, administering justice within certain limits, and various other duties. He was subject to the overriding authority of the British Administration, which was represented in each reserve by a District Commissioner. But the Kgosi not only shouldered the secular leadership of his people: he was also responsible for his people spiritually and was at the centre of everything in their lives.5 There was a saying that the Kgosi ‘is a demigod, no evil must be spoken of him’ – Kgosi modingwana, ga a sejwe.6

  Bechuanaland had far fewer white inhabitants than any of its neighbouring countries in which white settlers had taken most, if not all, of the fertile land away from the indigenous populations and had developed their own communities. But in Bechuanaland in 1946, out of a total population of nearly 300,000 people, fewer than 1 per cent – just over 2,000 – were white.7 Most of these were farmers or traders, who were allowed to own land only in a few demarcated areas. Generally, white people were concentrated in or around Francistown, in the north of the Protectorate, which resembled a small Rhodesian or South African town in appearance and where Africans had to live in the ‘location’, an area demarcated for occupation by people who were not white. But elsewhere in the Protectorate, ‘Europeans’ were not allowed to purchase land. They had no title to the land upon which their houses and shops were built and held them at the discretion of the diKgosi.

  The Bangwato lived a hard, but peaceful, existence, depending on their cattle for survival; crops were of secondary importance, because of the lack of good soil and rain. The capital of the Bangwato Reserve was Serowe, where about 30,000 people lived in neat clusters of family groups, in mud huts thatched with straw. It was one of the largest villages in Africa, sprawling for five miles through shallow, parched valleys. The village was clean and tidy, but it was also rocky and dusty, with huge red ant-hills everywhere. Most people had three homes: one in their village; one at their lands; and one at the cattle-post where they kept their cattle. It was customary for boys to spend their childhoods at the cattle-post. Families lived in their village from about June to October or November, when the rainy season started and they moved to the lands to start ploughing. Women carried pots of water and grain on their heads, with their babies on their backs.

  The royal family lived in the centre of Serowe in cool brick houses, near the tribal offices and the Kgotla ground – the place where a Kgotla, or Tribal Assembly, was held. It was a large open space, semi-circular in shape, and surrounded by tall camel-thorn trees. Overlooking the Kgotla place was a rocky hill, at the top of which was the sacred burial ground of the Bangwato royal family. There were a few stores scattered around the town – tin-roofed buildings, which were mostly owned by the few ‘Europeans’ and so-called ‘coloureds’, the South African term for people of mixed race. All traders had to construct their buildings out of corrugated iron and wood, so that if they had to be expelled for any reason, they could simply dismantle them and leave.8 The British officials lived on a hill-top in the south-west of the town, in brick houses. The largest building in Serowe was the LMS Church, which had been opened in 1912.

  Serowe was a quiet, peaceful world, into which Seretse Goitsebeng Khama was born on 1 July 1921. He was the grandson of Khama III, who was also known as Khama the Great. Khama had been converted by missionaries to Christianity when he was a young man, and when he became Kgosi he gave a monopoly on religion in the Bangwato country to the London Missionary Society, which had had strong roots there ever since Robert Moffatt and David Livingstone had been sent on missions to Bechuanaland in the nineteenth century. No other religious sect or society was allowed to operate under Khama and in effect the LMS became a state church. But Khama kept the missionaries firmly in their place and when he disagreed with any of them – which happened quite frequently – he sent them away.9

  Under Khama’s influence, Christianity spread through the land. He banned polygamy and rainmaking ceremonies and outlawed the custom of the bride price. He also published an edict that there should be no cruelty towards ‘subordinate peoples’. But he did not simply ban traditional customs; rather, he changed and modified them, as in the case of the initiation of young men. From time to time, a new group of young men – known as an ‘age regiment’ – was created and all those who had become adult since the previous regiment were enrolled in it. In the past, the young men had been taken into the bush, where they were circumcised and challenged with endurance tests which sometimes, it was maintained, led to the death of an initiate. Khama abolished these practices, but he did not abolish the age regiments themselves: instead, the initia
tion was transformed into a ceremony with prayers and lectures. The regiments were then given community projects to carry out, such as building a school, church or house. There were also age regiments of girls, who were given projects such as gardening and sewing. Under Khama’s reforming zeal, a new order was created, which emphasized self-help, compassion and the needs of the community.

  The drinking of liquor was strictly prohibited under Khama’s laws. ‘Drink puts devils into men,’ Khama told a British official, ‘and destroys both their souls and their bodies for ever.’ When some European traders got drunk in his territory one weekend, he summoned them before him and told them to leave:

  Well, I am black, but if I am black, I am chief in my own country at present. When you white men rule in the country, then you will do as you like; at present I rule, and I shall maintain my laws which you insult and despise…10

  Khama III died in 1923, leaving his son Sekgoma as Kgosi of the Bangwato. But after only two years, Sekgoma II died, which meant that Seretse – who was Sekgoma’s son, by his fourth and last wife, Tebogo – was now officially Kgosi. But he was just a small child, so the tribal elders decided in 1926 to recall Tshekedi from Fort Hare, where he was studying, to act as Regent until Seretse was old enough to take on the role of Kgosi; as the son of Khama and Khama’s fourth wife, Semane, Tshekedi was second in the line of succession. He was installed as Regent at an elaborate ceremony, which was attended by 4-year-old Seretse, dressed in the clothes that had been brought by the Scottish missionaries – a kilt, sporran, plaid and silver-buckle shoes. Tshekedi’s mother Semane, in a dress of black silk and a long shawl, rested her hand gently on Seretse’s shoulder.11

  Tshekedi, like Khama III, was a devout Christian and a man of austere discipline who loathed alcohol. He was also highly charismatic. His manner was ‘always quiet and fatherly’, said a woman school-teacher, but ‘there was something else indescribable about him that was very magnetic, like a force. I’d say one felt towards him what one felt about God.’12 Growing up under Tshekedi’s rule, observed a school-teacher, ‘we were encouraged to learn and education often went beyond book learning – there was a great stress on character building’. After school and family chores, the children were sent off in the evenings to Bible classes:

  We were given simple Bible stories, the singing of psalms and hymns and yearly there’d be a competition for all the [Bible study] groups in the village. This way of life affected us all – it created a people who were keen to learn, responsible.

  ‘No other man,’ she added, speaking of Tshekedi, ‘cared for us as much as he did.’13

  Tshekedi had great plans for his nephew. At first Seretse’s childhood was managed by his mother Tebogo. But gradually his care was taken over by Tshekedi, who called him ‘Sonny’; Seretse, in turn, addressed Tshekedi as ‘Father’. They rode together round the cattle-posts, inspecting the vast herds owned by the Khama family. The British Administration had wanted Seretse to go to Dombashawa, a vocational school in Southern Rhodesia, but Tshekedi vigorously resisted this: he was adamant that his nephew should receive a rigorous academic education in South Africa.14

  When he was 15, Seretse – dressed in wing collar and black tie – was best man at Tshekedi’s wedding. This marriage ended in divorce and, three years later, Seretse was once again best man at his uncle’s wedding. Tshekedi’s second bride was Ella Moshoela, who had been a teacher and was a trained nurse; her father was a Methodist minister. This was a happy marriage, producing five children.

  Tshekedi was utterly committed to the needs of his people and wanted to better their lives, especially through the building of schools and the improvement of the water supply. But his methods were not always appreciated. He had numerous work projects going on at the same time, for which the labour provided by the age regiments was his only resource.15 This led to widespread resentment, especially in connection with his pet project, the building of Moeng College. Tshekedi had no money to pay for the College and had to rely completely on tributary labour and on cattle donations which were supposed to be voluntary, but were often enforced.16 Seretse’s age regiment, which was called the Malekantwa, had been compelled by Tshekedi to take part in this work. Lenyeletse Seretse, a cousin and close friend of Seretse, belonged to this regiment and described ‘the suffering we went through’:

  It was 1948. It was a year of drought. It was hot, as only drought years can be and we worked all day outdoors. Each man had to bring along his own rations, paid for out of his own pocket, but it didn’t really work out. Those of us who had more means were forced to share with those who had less. Soon, we were all starving. Some members of the regiment had brought their horses. They died. We ate them. We ate wild rabbits or anything we could catch in the bush.17

  Most of the men wanted to leave but dared not, because men who left a work regiment were put on trial and punished.

  Tshekedi’s methods were harsh. But, on the other hand, his projects were often admirable – such as building the only secondary boarding school in the whole of Bechuanaland. Tshekedi had radical, progressive ideas for the College: for example, he wanted black and white teachers to live together in the same hostel as equals.18 Tshekedi also wanted to protect the freedom of people in other parts of the region: when Jan Smuts sought to incorporate mandated South West Africa into South Africa, he vigorously opposed the merger.

  All over British colonial Africa, people had to pay a hut tax; in Bechuanaland, the hut tax had been introduced in 1899 for every man of 18 years or more. Since traditionally most families’ wealth lay in cattle and grain, which would not pay taxes, men were forced into wage labour. Most of the able-bodied men of the Protectorate went to South Africa to find work: some of them were employed on farms or in domestic service, but most worked in the gold mines of Johannesburg and the diamond mines of Kimberley.19 The working conditions of miners in South Africa were brutal. Margaret Bourke-White, an American journalist from Life, went on a fact-finding journey to South Africa in the 1940s and was appalled by what she saw. Although a miner worked an eight-hour day, he was often underground for as many as eleven hours:

  The white-skinned foremen must come up first, before the elevators take up the blacks. On each landing stage, as I made the ascent, I saw the black gold-miners clustered in large groups, awaiting their release to the outside air and open sky. They would see little of this sky.

  The miners had to endure harsh living conditions: ‘They would sleep in concrete barracks, without windows, rolled up like sausages on the floor, forty to a room, crowded into compounds surrounded with barbed wire.’20 Only once a year were the miners allowed to return home for a visit. For the women left behind in Bechuanaland, life was very hard.

  Bechuanaland was a Protectorate. This meant that African traditional leaders kept some of their powers but were subject to British rule; the British Government was regarded as a sort of trustee for the population. This was a very different situation from Southern Rhodesia and Kenya, which were self-governing colonies with almost Dominion status; their governments were controlled by large white settler communities, entirely excluding the black majority of the population.

  There were a number of Protectorates in the British Empire, including Nyasaland and Northern Rhodesia. But the designation of ‘protectorate’ had a very particular meaning for the people of Bechuanaland – that of protection, in the most literal sense, from a threat of incorporation by South Africa. Bechuanaland had always been vulnerable to South Africa, because it was directly on its border. In the 1880s it had come under attack from the Transvaal Boers, which led the diKgosi to appeal for British protection. This was backed by Cecil Rhodes, for his own purposes, and in 1885 Bechuanaland was proclaimed to be under the protection of Queen Victoria.

  Then, in 1894, people were horrified to hear that Rhodes had asked Britain to transfer the Protectorate to the British South Africa Company. To prevent this happening, the three leading diKgosi – Khama III of the Bangwato, Bathoen II of the Bangwake
tse and Sebele of the Bakwena – went to Britain in 1895 to appeal for help. They emphasized that they wished to remain under the protection of Queen Victoria, who received them at Windsor Castle. She wrote in her diary:

  After luncheon I went to the White Drawing-room to receive 3 Chiefs from Bechuana Land, who are Christians… The Chiefs are very tall & very black, but their hair is not woolly. One of the Chiefs is said to be a very remarkable & intelligent man [presumably Khama]. One of their chief objects in coming was to obtain a permit from the Govt. to suppress strong drink, which demoralises & kills the poor natives. Alas! everywhere this terrible evil, which has such a fatal effect on the population, seems to follow civilisation!

  She was given skins of leopards and jackals by the diKgosi and to them she gave New Testaments and framed photographs of herself, as well as Indian shawls for their wives.21

  As they toured the country, the three diKgosi were explicit about their fears for their land. At a chapel meeting in Leicester, Khama explained that:

  We think that the Chartered Company will take our lands, that they might enslave us to work in their mines. We black people work on the land; we live on the farms. We get our food from the land, and we are afraid that if the British South Africa Company begin in our country we will not get these things and that it will be a great loss to us.