Colour Bar
Page 17
There is a danger to peace and good order if you have either of them [Seretse or Tshekedi]… We thought that you would get the position of the feud between Tshekedi and Seretse, whatever the position at this moment is, that there would develop one in which the feud between Tshekedi and Seretse would become worse, and then you have disasters… We think that with either in the saddle we are going to have almost endless trouble in the near future.
Then he developed the idea that Gordon Walker had put forward to the House of Commons – that Seretse’s banishment was a progressive measure aiming at greater democracy.39
The first questions of the press were about the role of South Africa, to which Baring unhesitatingly lied, just as Gordon Walker had done in the House of Commons:
PRESS: Has the present position arisen through the Union Government?
HE [HIS EXCELLENCY, BARING]: The Union Government has taken no action whatever.
PRESS: I mean by action an approach to the United Kingdom Government saying if you do this then we will do something else.
HE [HIS EXCELLENCY, BARING]: The Union Government has taken no action, except banning Seretse Khama from Union territory. The Union Government has made no approach to the British Government.40
Redfern was impressed by the way in which Baring carried the press conference off. ‘This was the British colonial chief at his best,’ he thought. ‘So calm, so cool, an oasis in a desert of exacerbation.’41 But however calm Baring appeared, deep down he was apprehensive. He had even been boycotted by Ruth, who had gone to Palapye to spend the weekend with the Bradshaws, in order to avoid him.42 He had the uncomfortable knowledge that news of his failure would very soon reach Britain and every corner of the Empire, through newspaper reports and newsreels. Liesching sent him a message of sympathy. ‘This Seretse business is very troublesome,’ he said, ‘but we always knew it would be.’ He put the blame squarely on Seretse: ‘I am sorry that the Serowe situation turned so sour on you for the Kgotla. Our original plan would of course have timed the announcement of the decision here with your appearance in Serowe.’43
Baring was afraid, he confided to his wife Mary, that he might get the sack over the Seretse Khama affair.44 He suspected that the Government were considering plans to rescind or modify the exclusion order on Seretse – and he was right. On the very day of the failed Kgotla, even before the news reached London, Gordon Walker told Liesching that he was increasingly doubtful about their policy. ‘We have had a very bad reception: not too good even in some Union papers,’ he observed in dismay. ‘We cannot ignore this,’ he added, ‘indeed it may in the end prejudice our whole policy. We must, therefore, see what we can do, whilst keeping our principal policy intact.’ The policy of non-recognition must be sustained, he thought, but he hoped for a compromise on Seretse’s return to the Protectorate:
The question of where Seretse resides is I think a matter only of law and order. I don’t think the mere residence of Seretse plus Ruth in the Protectorate or Reserve would unite and inflame S. African opinion.
And he added:
It strikes me that if Seretse’s appearance in Lobatse at this moment does not endanger order, his permanent residence could not do so either. Indeed, we will be on weak ground if, basing ourselves on the law and order argument, we let him go back now and remove him later. There is also the point that Seretse in the Protectorate may be much less of an embarrassment and a source of disorder than in London, where he has organisations and the whole Press at his disposal.45
Then the situation in Bechuanaland deteriorated even further. The boycott of the Kgotla was now being followed by a boycott of the Administration. Six senior headmen signed a letter stating that the tribe would not obey any orders ‘by or emanating from a newly constituted Native Authority and would not pay further taxes without the authority of Seretse’.46 Nor would they elect a new Kgosi – because he was born, not elected.47 In other words, the Bangwato were on strike. The Tribal Treasury stayed open, but collected no revenue; the Kgotla was deserted except for a few old men; and in the course of their work, government officers were met by polite preoccupation.48 Nobody attended a Kgotla called by the District Commissioner, in his position as Native Authority, and the native courts ceased to function.49 The campaign was further strengthened when the diKgosi of other nations in the Protectorate joined in.50 Feelings ran high.51
The boycott drew on the precedent of the civil disobedience campaign that had been led in India by Mahatma Gandhi against British rule. Gandhi had first used this method of protest – Satyagraha – in South Africa, in the Transvaal, between 1906 and 1912, to resist the racist laws of the Government.52 It was a form of opposition that suited the people of Bechuanaland, who preferred to negotiate a solution to a problem, rather than to fight. ‘We are sure the natives won’t raise a hand and use violence,’ wrote Doris Bradshaw to her family in the UK. ‘They are just taking it quietly and resisting passively.’53 She believed that the Administration would have preferred violence. ‘There’s been such a lot of dirty work by the Gov,’ she wrote to her sister in the UK. ‘You’ve no idea. They seem to be trying hard to create disturbances but the natives are too shrewd to be stampeded into anything the Gov could use against them or Seretse.’54
Baring assumed that his problems with the Bangwato had been caused by a few ringleaders and he was especially bothered by the ‘participation of certain local Europeans’. The worst offender, he told Gordon Walker, was the representative of the Native Recruiting Corporation, Alan Bradshaw. He resolved to remove him from Bechuanaland without delay. ‘When passing through Johannesburg,’ he reported to London, ‘I asked formally for his transfer and was told that this would be arranged at once.’55 Within just three days, Bradshaw got a telegram telling him that he was on ‘immediate transfer’ to Vryburg in South Africa, about 150 kilometres south-west of Mafikeng.56 When the telegram arrived, Doris was helping Ruth make baby clothes. She showed it to Ruth, who commented sadly, ‘Doris Bradshaw is the only white woman in this whole territory whose home is open to me. She is the only white woman I can confide in at this rather trying time for me.’57
‘We don’t like Vryburg very much,’ wrote Doris shortly after her arrival,
though we have a nice house in the centre of the town, with electric light and indoor sanitation – a treat after Palapye. But it’s so cold here, the people are all Afrikaans and speak only Afrikaans and don’t like us because we are English.
They were especially unpopular because of their known support for Seretse and Ruth. ‘Poor Seretse,’ sighed Doris, ‘they’re treating him like a leper aren’t they? Ruth has all the guts and courage in the world… We feel ashamed of being English when we see what’s going on.’58 The tribe ‘do not and never have trusted the Administration, who only order them around and never hardly listen to their point of view,’ wrote Alan to Doris’s sister.59
Baring decided to inject some fresh blood into the Administration in Serowe. He brought in Forbes MacKenzie, the Government Secretary of Swaziland, who was a Rhodesian and famous throughout the Protectorate for his height – 6 feet 7 inches. MacKenzie was told on 1 April 1950 ‘to take control of the situation’60 and was appointed the new District Commissioner. This meant that he was also designated ‘Native Authority’, under the new regime of direct rule by the British Government. MacKenzie started to develop the machinery for the direct rule of the Bangwato Reserve and appointed Keaboka Kgamane as ‘Senior Tribal Representative’ and Senior Judicial Officer. Keaboka was one of Seretse’s principal supporters and was fourth in the line of succession to the kingship of the Bangwato.
Throughout Bechuanaland, there was dismay and concern at the idea of direct rule in the Bangwato Reserve. In Maun, in the north of the country, the Regent of the Batawana, Mrs Moremi, who was well known as a progressive and just administrator, said that it raised ‘an important point of principle’.61 Not only in Bechuanaland, but also in Basutoland and Swaziland, the other two High Commission Territories, there
were protests. From their point of view, it created an unhappy precedent – ‘This might happen to us.’62
12
Cover-up
In London, Seretse was taking legal advice on what course to follow to return to his wife and his country. He was much heartened by messages of support. ‘Britain’s 20,000 Negroes rallied around me,’ he wrote, gratefully.1 The day after Gordon Walker’s speech to the House of Commons, concerned individuals and organizations in the UK – including the West African Students Union (WASU), the African League, the League of Coloured Peoples and the Council for Overseas Indians – met together in London and immediately formed the ‘Seretse Khama Fighting Committee’.2
Learie Constantine, a veteran campaigner on issues of injustice relating to colour and race, played a leading role in setting up the Committee and was appointed Chairman.3 Nii Odoi Annan, a law student from the Gold Coast and Financial Secretary of WASU,4 was Joint Secretary of the Fighting Committee along with Billy Strachan, a Jamaican who was the Secretary of the Caribbean Labour Congress and had served with distinction as a pilot in RAF Bomber Command during the war. Joe Appiah, President of WASU, was also involved. The Committee was based at the WASU hostel on the Chelsea Embankment and was publicly supported by numerous other organizations, ranging from the University of Oxford Socialist Club to the Birmingham Trades Council.5 The Afro-American Association in the USA, which had a membership of 15 million people, had sent rep resentatives to Britain and was in touch with Seretse.6 Edinburgh set up its own Fighting Committee, to support the campaign from Scotland.
The Committee organized a Mass Protest Meeting at Denison House in London on the evening of Sunday 12 March, which was chaired by Constantine and attended by about 800 people. Seretse attended the meeting although he was not feeling very well; he was fit and athletic, but the blow he had been given in the past week had sapped his strength. On behalf of the Bangwato he thanked the audience for coming: ‘I am sure that the people back home, disappointed as they are at what I consider a rather undemocratic decision, will take heart when they know they are not the only ones in this battle.’ ‘I am happy to say’, he added warmly, ‘that, even though this action has been taken by the British Government, the British people have not associated themselves with it.’7
At the meeting a resolution of protest was passed and it was agreed to distribute a copy of this to the King, the Prime Minister, Churchill, the United Nations, the world press, embassies in different parts of the world, and the National Council for Civil Liberties – to make them aware of ‘the stand of all the Colonial People’. The Fighting Committee also resolved to send frequent cables to Ruth in Bechuanaland.8
A week later, on 19 March, a large rally was held in Trafalgar Square, at which Seretse and Fenner Brockway both spoke. The Labour Party had been asked to send a speaker, but had said they were unable to supply one. The Reverend Reginald Sorensen, however, although a Labour MP, joined the protest in a private capacity. He said he was attending on behalf of many friends inside and outside the House of Commons.9 Sorensen, a Unitarian minister, took a keen and active interest in movements for colonial liberation.
The exile of Seretse was seen to highlight the evil of the colour bar in Britain and her colonies. It was high time, asserted the African League, that ‘the world knows the root of the troubles in Africa. In their relations with Africans, most Europeans consider themselves “gods” and “goddesses”. They take this fantastic attitude in order to prevent the Africans from attaining equality with them.’10 This was the reason, claimed the Fighting Committee, that British newspapers had made such a great play of the story that Ruth was a typist – the idea being that a white woman would only marry a black man if she were a ‘social reject’.11
The Colonial Office was gloomily predicting increased trouble with nationalist elements in all of the African colonies because of the Seretse affair.12 The Foreign Office, too, said one of the CO officials, was ‘seriously concerned (like us) as to the disastrous effect of this on world opinion’.13 Certainly the effect on opinion in the Commonwealth was disastrous. Krishna Menon, India’s High Commissioner in London, went to see Gordon Walker to register a protest from the Indian Government.14 In the Ceylon Parliament, it was announced that the banishment would ‘rouse the opposition of all coloured people against the Commonwealth’.15 In Kingston, Jamaica, all the political parties joined together to warn the British Government that it risked losing the support of ‘countless millions of colonial people’.16 Citizens of Trinidad pledged to support any move to release ‘the monarch of Bechuanaland’.17 From all over the Commonwealth, letters and telegrams of objection and complaint poured in – to the CRO, to the Colonial Office, and to the Prime Minister.
‘Embassy believes British have blundered,’ reported the US embassy in South Africa to the office of the American President. ‘Believes British action jeopardizes their reputation for fair dealing with Natives.’18 Most of the American press, though, were taking a ‘moderate line’.19 This was hardly surprising, given that thirty out of the forty-eight states had legislation prohibiting mixed marriage and enforcing segregation; in the Southern states, a system of laws known as ‘Jim Crow’ segregated black people from whites in all areas of society, ranging from schools and buses to theatres and parks. American liberals, however, were generally shocked by the British Government’s treatment of Seretse, and the African-American community was outraged.20 W. E. B. Du Bois and the Council on African Affairs telegraphed Sir Oliver Franks of the British diplomatic corps, as well as Trygve Lie, Secretary-General of the UN, to protest against Seretse’s exile. There were 65 signatories to the telegram, including many pastors.21 ‘The Negro press – which is a highly influential medium – is full of the Seretse debacle,’ reported a leading trade union journalist. It was the first time, he added, that ‘the Negro press has ever, to my knowledge, been critical of the British Labor Government. It’s lost a good many friends for the Government among our Negroes.’ It would be difficult, he added,
to exaggerate the repercussions of the Seretse affair among some quarters here. Some of us like to think that the Labor govt policy is pretty free of the common stultification of American racial attitudes. Our Negro performers and troops come back from England raving about the British enlightenment etc etc. Then this.22
Among blacks in Africa, there was bitter condemnation. Walter Sisulu, the general secretary of the ANC, sent a telegram to the Resident Commissioner in Mafikeng, deploring the decision. He feared that it had ‘destroyed perhaps forever what confidence Africans had in the integrity and honour of the British Government’.23 The Kroonstad African Community sent a similar telegram to Attlee, as did the South African Indian Congress.24
But white South Africa, with few exceptions, approved.25 The Anglican Bishop of Bloemfontein asserted:
We who know South Africa well and its native life know the aversion which most natives have to mixed marriages… It is no question of morality – presumably an Englishman can morally marry an Eskimo or a Hottentot – but it is very decidedly a question of wisdom. All I have seen of ‘coloured’ people in South Africa makes me perfectly aware that it is a terrible mistake. The coloured hate their strain of black blood, and the natives despise them. That is just sheer fact, and has to be faced.26
‘The natives have got more insolent since Seretse and his wife came here,’ complained a white in Cape Town to Attlee:
Riots in Durban and Jo-burg, sly pushes as they pass the whites, cheeky in the shops, and innumerable pin pricks which will certainly grow if they aren’t checked. I suppose by now they think they are as entitled to a white woman as Seretse.27
The opinion of South African newspapers followed predictable lines. Of the ‘white’ papers supporting the United Party, there was approval of the banishment from the Argus in Cape Town and the Afrikaans Suiderstem and Volkgtem. On the other hand, the more liberal Rand Daily Mail, the Johannesburg Star, and Durban’s Natal Mercury were critical. The Cape Times took a po
sition between the two: that the decision might have been justified, but no single argument had been put forward. Among the Nationalist papers, Die Burger in Cape Town and Volksblad in Bloemfontein praised the courage of the UK Government; the same line was taken by Vaderland, the Afrikaner Party paper. The Transvaler, an extremist paper, rebuked the British Government for slowness in reaching its decision.
All the leading vernacular papers in southern Africa were published by ‘Associated Bantu Newspapers’, an umbrella group that was heavily controlled by the editorial director, B. G. Paver, and based in Johannesburg. This press group published, among many other newspapers, Naledi ya Batswana, which was aimed at Bechuanaland, and Bantu World, the main newspaper read by black South Africans.28 The leader columns of most of his newspapers, Paver assured Baring, supported the British Government’s policy, although Umthunywa did not toe the line. ‘Our associated paper Umthunywa published a leader attacking the British Government,’ explained Paver in a report to Baring, ‘but I consider that this is of no special significance, for Umthunywa is run by a private printer who is inclined to leave his leaders to a rather wild and woolly African editor.’ He added, reassuringly, ‘When we have the capital, we shall take over this paper.’29
In Britain, public opinion was growing increasingly hostile. ‘If the Bamangwato do not object to a white consort and the prospect of a half-breed succession,’ argued The Times, ‘it would not seem to be for the imperial Government, pledged before the nations to respect the equal rights of all races, to overrule them in their own domestic concerns.’30 Many letters to newspapers were describing the affair as another Munich, except that this time it was South Africa that had been appeased.31 A letter of protest, signed by over 100 students, was sent to The Times from Balliol, Seretse’s college at Oxford.32