Seretse hugged Ruth tightly, kissing her, then climbed into the tiny aircraft. As the plane taxied and then took off, Ruth watched quietly in her car.14 Then she started up the engine and drove off at top speed.15 ‘It was a sad day for both of us,’ said Seretse later, ‘when I kissed her goodbye at the airport and waved to my tribesmen as the plane lifted into the air.’ Down below he could see the sparse, dry, cattle-land of his beloved country. As the little plane climbed higher and higher, ‘I somehow had a feeling of foreboding that I was flying to certain disaster.’16
Shortly afterwards, Noel-Baker received a letter from the Bangwato Office in Serowe. ‘We regret,’ it stated, ‘that our Queen has been unable to come to you as you wished.’ But when they had asked for a promise of her safe return, this had been refused; consequently, ‘we have not found the way clear to permit her to undertake the journey to you’. Their apprehension had arisen from the ‘inimical talk’ of South Africa and Southern Rhodesia –
Throughout our history both these countries seem to have sought to dispossess us of our land and our rights and it was on account of this very apprehension that we originally sought the protection of Great Britain…
Assuring you of our genuine loyalty to His Majesty and his Government, we are, Sir, the Bamangwato.17
Ruth returned to Serowe from Francistown with a heavy heart. Three weeks without Seretse seemed unbearable, especially now that she was pregnant. But she had not been home for very long before her spirits were unexpectedly lifted. Margaret Bourke-White, who was about to leave Bechuanaland, had dropped in for a last cup of coffee.
Suddenly, through the open window, they heard the sound of ululating women – it began as a faraway sound, a blend of wailing and yodelling, which died away and rose again. As Ruth and Margaret looked far down the hill, they could see a procession of women winding single-file through the low bushes. They went out to the front porch as the file of women approached the house, and saw that each one carried on her head a pail of water or a basket of grain. Crooning and raising folded hands, they filed in a stately parade past the porch:
‘Isn’t it staggering!’ Ruth exclaimed. ‘Isn’t it simply staggering!’
Then a handful broke from the ranks. Led by a handsome young woman, they darted in swift circles, their tongues working visibly like little clappers as they shrilled [their] greeting…
Ruth sat down on a canvas chair under a spreading thorn tree, and the women seated themselves on the ground with their offerings of grain and water, which they had brought all the way from the well as gifts for Ruth. ‘We are glad our queen did not go with our chief to England,’ their leader said. ‘We were afraid they would keep her there. We have come to tell you we are happy our Mother has stayed with us.’ Then they sang a song which they had composed:
When the chief comes back
We will be waiting for him,
Seretse has dogs, and his dogs are the
Bamangwato people.
Our Queen will come with rain, and all will be
Well in the land.
Margaret was clicking away with her camera, absorbed in taking pictures. But then it grew suddenly darker:
‘Why is the light fading so?’ I wondered. I looked up toward the sky and dark clouds scudding in. ‘It can’t be!’ I thought to myself. Then a large drop fell on my wrist, followed by three drops on the lens. The tribal women, still singing, rushed for shelter on the porch. It seemed miraculous, but it was true. Their Queen had come with rain.18
Margaret had grown more and more fond of the Khamas. She saw that they were in a maze of troubles – ‘but the deeper their trouble, the closer they grew together’. She had enormous respect for Ruth,‘for the fact that she was genuinely in love with her husband’.19 Aware that Ruth was unable to go to any of the cities in South Africa to do any shopping, she gave her all her spare clothes. At least, she thought, Ruth would have the company of the cats, Pride and Prejudice, while Seretse was away.20
Seretse’s flying-boat reached Southampton Marine Airport on 15 February 1950. ‘Authority turns out to meet him with everything short of an Iron Curtain,’ observed a Pathe newsreel sympathetically, as it showed Special Branch officers milling around him, as well as numerous press photographers and newsreel cameramen. As Seretse put on his hat against the cold wind of the British winter, he looked tired; he gave a ‘half smile’ to the press but made ‘no comment’, reported the Pathe newsreel.21 John Keith was waiting for Seretse on the dock. He immediately whisked him up to London, to the offices of the CRO in Whitehall. Here, at ten minutes past six in the evening, Sir Percivale Liesching was waiting for him in his office.
Liesching had a challenging task ahead – persuading Seretse to summon his wife. Before any discussions began, Baring had insisted, they must get Ruth to London. But what would happen, wondered Herbert Baxter, a CRO official,
if Seretse refuses to send for Ruth, at least until hearing what we wish to say? He might well say that, if meanwhile we have nothing concrete to put to him, he will forthwith go back to Serowe. Could we then stop him going? And, if he went back, could we possibly repeat the process and summon him (and Ruth) again? We should have got into a position at once dangerous and ridiculous.
The furthest they could go, he thought, would be to put pressure on Seretse to send for Ruth. If he refused, then the secretary of state would just have to get on without her. The priority was to put to Seretse the proposals that had been agreed by Cabinet.22
Liesching had been carefully briefed for the meeting by Baxter, who had consulted Keith on ways of approaching Seretse. He was advised that
it wd be better to refer to the lady as your wife or Mrs Khama, rather than as Ruth or Ruth Khama. The form of address to the young man is more of a problem: on the whole he thinks you cd suitably address him as Seretse, as from an older man to a younger. When at Oxford, the boy called himself Mr S. Khama; but Seretse is more analogous to an English surname than to a Christian name, and Khama is an added patronymic.
Baxter proposed that Keith, who would be bringing Seretse to the meeting, should remain during their talk, ‘in case of distortions’.23
As soon as Seretse had arrived at the CRO and been introduced by Keith, Liesching launched into the object of the meeting. He told Seretse that the Commonwealth Secretary wanted Mrs Khama to join in discussions, because a matter affecting him so closely affected them both. Then, reported Liesching to Noel-Baker,
I paused for some reply but none came. It was not that we had not succeeded already in putting Seretse at his ease with us or that he looked either dour or obstinate. In fact he looked quite relaxed and cheerful.
Concluding that his silence was deliberate, he decided not to press him and the meeting came to an end.24
Seretse may have appeared ‘relaxed and cheerful’ to Liesching, but he was seething inside. After the meeting, he told Keith that he had been very annoyed by Liesching’s references to the absence of his wife. He added that if the Government were not going to let him be Kgosi, then he was determined to go home: he certainly did not wish to be in England. He hoped to see the Secretary of State next day and to return to Bechuanaland by the end of the week. He said, too, that in the view of the Tribe it was the British Government – and not Tshekedi – who was the villain of the piece.25
After the meeting, Seretse was taken to the little flat that had been provided for him at Airways House, off Haymarket. Just a few days before, he had been living with his wife in a peaceful, slow-moving village in southern Africa; now he was being driven through the fast streets and bright lights of London’s West End. Next morning, he was summoned to a meeting with Noel-Baker at 11.30 a.m. It was also attended by Viscount Addison, who was the Lord Privy Seal, Liesching, Sir Sidney Abrahams, as legal adviser to the CRO, and Lord Rathcreedan, who had been engaged as a legal adviser to Seretse. Noel-Baker began the discussion by asking Seretse to bring Ruth to London. Seretse explained that the Tribe had seen no reason why Ruth should come and were
afraid that this was a trick on the part of the United Kingdom Government. He felt bound to share these suspicions, he added, since the Resident Commissioner had refused to give a guarantee of her return. He then asked whether a guarantee could now be given, but Noel-Baker ignored the question.
‘The dangers of disintegration and faction within the Tribe,’ said Noel-Baker, disingenuously, ‘had caused Ministers great anxiety.’ He then came to the point: that Seretse should voluntarily relinquish his claim to the Chieftainship. If he accepted, he would receive an allowance to enable himself and his wife to live in the UK. Tshekedi, he added, would not be allowed to return to the Reserve or to become Chief, and the Tribe would be administered through the direct rule of the British Government. It would be ‘in the interests of all’, he added, ‘that the nature of the solution should not be publicly disclosed until the Election campaign was over’.
Seretse was taken aback. He was so surprised by the proposal that he treated it as a joke. Would a condition of his acceptance, he asked drily, be that he refrained from political activity – for example, from ‘Communist activities’? Noel-Baker treated this as ‘semi-jocular’, saying that he ‘did not think himself that a Labour Government would stop the allowance if Seretse chose to engage in Communist activities’. Then Seretse became grimly serious. He pointed out that in the autumn of 1948, Tshekedi had asked the Protectorate Government to intervene in the Tribe’s affairs, but it had refused. Then, after the June Kgotla the year before, the High Commissioner had assured him that he would be confirmed as Chief in a few weeks. But thereafter, ‘apparently doubts had arisen and a Judicial Commission had sat; then there was silence and the Tribe had been told nothing until the recent invitation to come to London was received’. Noel-Baker felt uncomfortable. He made a vague reference to the British Government’s ‘wide experience in other parts of Africa where similar difficulties had arisen from time to time’.
Then Seretse raised the issue of South Africa and Southern Rhodesia. The Tribe believed, he said, that confirmation was being refused for fear of annoying Dr Malan and Sir Godfrey Huggins. Both of their Governments believed in the persecution of native people – but it appeared that the UK Government thought it better to annoy the Tribe than to annoy Dr Malan. Noel-Baker flatly denied this. ‘It was no part of the policy of the UK Government to placate the South African Government at the expense of Seretse or of the Tribe,’ he lied. He wished this categorical statement, he said, to be clearly understood. Seretse repeated the accusation, but again Noel-Baker lied. ‘The Cabinet had not and would not,’ he declared, ‘deal with the matter on this footing at all, or look at it in this way.’
Seretse said that he alone could not respond to the Secretary of State’s suggestion. The Tribe had to be consulted, he insisted, ‘and it was now in the dark’. He warned that an interim period of direct rule would lead to trouble – ‘an imposed solution would not be welcome’. It would also destroy confidence throughout the Protectorate, because other tribes would ask, ‘Who next?’ He then proposed an alternative to Noel-Baker’s suggestion: that he be confirmed as Chief, but for a trial period. This was dismissed out of hand by Noel-Baker. Finally Seretse asked for a copy of the Report of the Judicial Inquiry, which was refused.26
Next day, Seretse complained to Keith that the Government were ‘not being wholly frank with him’. He was planning to write a memorandum before the next meeting with Ministers, setting out the terms he was ready to accept. He had cabled Fraenkel in Mafikeng, asking him to come to London, because Rathcreedan seemed to him to have no real understanding of the issues. Keith submitted a report of his meeting with Seretse to the CRO, adding that ‘Seretse was a gentleman, and had a lot of moral courage, and was behaving very well here, especially in his attitude to the Press.’27 But Seretse was miserable, and smoking heavily. He missed Ruth badly and wrote to her every day.28 He was adamant, though, that she should not be brought to London.29
But suddenly the Government dropped the Seretse Khama affair. Having brought Seretse to London and installed him in a flat 6,000 miles away from his pregnant wife and his people, they turned their attention to the imminent election.
This took place on 23 February. The contest was close: although Labour were returned to power, they had a majority of only six seats and there was a strong swing to the right. Attlee made Gordon Walker, who had been Noel-Baker’s Under-Secretary, his new Commonwealth secretary; he believed Gordon Walker had shown ‘exceptional ability’ and deserved promotion.30 His rise to power had been stellar: after just five years in Parliament and only 43 years old, he had now become a Cabinet Minister. The son of an Indian civil servant, he had grown up in the Punjab and gone on to shine as an academic – but then abandoned the life of an Oxford don for the world of power and politics. He was a tall, balding man, who smoked a pipe.
Noel-Baker, who had never impressed the Prime Minister, was sent to the Ministry of Fuel and Power. Liesching was delighted with the appointment of Gordon Walker, with whom he got on well. He was also relieved to see the departure of Noel-Baker – who always suspected that Liesching had been instrumental in his removal.31 Possibly it was Noel-Baker’s sloppy performance on the Seretse issue that had convinced Attlee: if Gordon Walker had not intervened in such a forceful way, the Prime Minister might still have been waiting to see the Harragin Report.
Godfrey Huggins, the Prime Minister of Southern Rhodesia, was as delighted as Liesching with the replacement of Noel-Baker by Gordon Walker.32 He liked Gordon Walker and the warmth was mutual: when Huggins arrived at London Airport in 1950, the Commonwealth Secretary not only came to welcome him, but took his arm.33
Seretse Khama was waiting impatiently for his stay in London to end. Usually a mild and good-humoured man, he was now thoroughly exasperated. Then, five days after the general election, towards the end of February 1950, Liesching resurrected the affair. He wrote a secret memorandum to his new Secretary of State, Gordon Walker, and to Addison, the Lord Privy Seal, to report on a recent communication by Sir Evelyn Baring, who had argued that little progress would be made until the Government said clearly that they were not able to recognize Seretse. Liesching said he shared this view. He and Baring also agreed, he added, that it would be ‘very dangerous’ to allow Seretse to return to Serowe, even temporarily; he might be allowed to visit Lobatse, but he should be kept out of the Bangwato Reserve. Ruth’s pregnancy should not be allowed to prevent her from coming to the UK: she was not due to give birth until May or June and she could be accompanied by a suitable person or nurse. ‘But the fundamental need,’ concluded Liesching, ‘is for a firm decision by His Majesty’s Government on the question of recognition’34 – that is, a firm decision of non-recognition.
Once again the Cabinet took up the issue of the chieftainship of the Bangwato at Gordon Walker’s instigation. At the second meeting of its new term, on Friday 3 March, it was the first of just two items on the agenda. Gordon Walker put to Cabinet members a new strategy: that Seretse should be banished from Bechuanaland. Any decision about the chieftainship should be postponed for five years, during which time Seretse and his wife should not be allowed to live in any part of the Protectorate. Tshekedi should also be exiled, but only from the Bangwato Reserve; and the Bangwato should be governed through direct rule. He asked the Cabinet for authorization to carry this through. It was a brutal plan.
The Cabinet initially recoiled from the proposal, but Gordon Walker argued persuasively. It was the best way forward, he insisted, for the Bangwato themselves – to protect them from South Africa. His fellow Cabinet members agreed in principle and the matter was put on hold until the next meeting of the Cabinet.35 This took place on 6 March, when it was the second of two items on the agenda. Approval of the plan was confirmed, so long as the Attorney General agreed that the banishment would be legal.36 Within only a week of taking office, Gordon Walker had forced through a decision on the Seretse issue – to disregard the decision of the Bangwato and to exile their acclaimed kgosi.3
7
Seretse and Fraenkel were summoned to the CRO straight after the Cabinet meeting on 6 March. As soon as they were ushered into the meeting room, at 6 p.m., Seretse sensed that a decision had been taken against him. But he was stunned when Gordon Walker read out to him the details of the Cabinet’s decision. ‘All talk of British justice sounded empty and hollow in my ears,’ he said later. ‘Exiled for five years! I simply could not believe it.’ The Secretary of State’s ‘calm and unemotional manner,’ he said,
was as unfeeling as if he was asking me to give up smoking, or surrender old school [examination] papers that I had accumulated while at Oxford. I doubt that any man has ever been asked to give up his birthright in such cold, calculating tones.38
Seretse protested that he could not under any circumstances accept this judgement and suggested a two-year trial as Chief. But Gordon Walker dismissed the idea without a second’s thought. He asserted, falsely, that one of the reasons for the decision was to introduce direct tribal administration, as a way of giving the Bamangwato ‘a more democratic’ say in their own affairs.39
Seretse had been in London for three long weeks. Throughout this period, he had refused to speak to journalists. But now, from his tiny flat, he chose to issue a statement to the press. A newsreel entitled ‘Seretse Khama Talks to Movietone’ filmed him as he spoke, looking troubled and grave:
I wish to say that I am thoroughly disappointed with the undemocratic decision of the British Government in exiling me from my country…
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