Colour Bar

by Susan Williams

  The General Secretary of the MCF was Douglas Rogers and the Assistant Secretary was Joseph Murumbi, the General Secretary of the Kenya African Union, currently in exile in the UK (later to become the Foreign Minister of newly independent Kenya, and then Vice-President). The Treasurer was Anthony Wedgwood Benn, Brockway’s Parliamentary ally on the Labour Left. ‘Now,’ wrote Wedgwood Benn with satisfaction to a fellow member of the Movement, ‘we have a chance to be really effective!’8

  Sufficient funds were raised – through membership, cultural events and appeals, as well as affiliations with organizations ranging from the Fire Brigades’ Union to constituency Labour parties – to pay for modest offices on Regent’s Park Road in London, a small staff, the publication of a bi-monthly journal, campaign material, and private and public meetings. The Movement was sponsored by up to 100 MPs and it had an individual membership of about 1,000; its regional, national and international affiliations brought the total number of people involved up to about 3 million.9 For the first time, the issue of imperialism and the future of British colonies, especially in Africa, was being pushed high up the national and colonial agenda.10

  The MCF had many different committees, including the Southern Africa Protectorates Committee, which carried on the campaign to end the exile of Seretse Khama; Monica Whately, who had been the Chairman of the Campaign Committee, was appointed Chairman of this Committee too. Seretse and Ruth were grateful for the efforts made on their behalf. But they also continued to search for other ways to negotiate a return to Bechuanaland. One Labour MP complained that he had seen Seretse in the House of Commons having interviews with representatives of each of the political parties, which he regarded as unscrupulous.11 But Seretse’s bitter experience at the hands of both the Labour Party and the Conservative Party had taught him not to put his faith in any particular political colour.

  On 17 May 1954, Seretse once again proposed to the Government that he renounce the Chieftainship of the Bangwato and be allowed to take his family home. He and Rathcreedan met with John Foster and senior officials at the CRO. If he resigned his claim to the Chieftainship, he suggested, and undertook to go round the Reserve to persuade the Bangwato to accept his resignation, would the Government allow him to return? But the answer was no. The first objective, said Foster, must be the establishment of a new Chief: ‘The programme… might be first the renunciation of the Chieftainship by Seretse, the establishment of a new Chief, short visits and then finally his return.’ But it would not be possible, he added, to give any guarantee of a return or to say how long the process might take. Foster asked Seretse to make a statement of renunciation on these terms. But Seretse refused. He objected that the guarantee would be all on his side, and none on the Government’s.12

  In Bechuanaland, Rasebolai had been installed as native authority and he was living in the house of the Kgosi, by the Kgotla in Serowe – the house which had been burnt down in anger against Tshekedi in 1950, and had now been rebuilt.13 He was vested with all the powers of a Chief that depended on Government proclamation; and of those powers that were traditional, he assumed what he could. He and Batho had selected a number of subordinates to carry out his rule.14

  The Bangwato were miserable and adopted a policy of non-cooperation, just as they had done in 1950, although they continued to pay tax.15 Despite their loyalty to the British monarchy, there was barely any celebration of the Coronation of Elizabeth II on 20 June 1953. ‘Only 30 tribesmen turned up at Serowe,’ reported Fraenkel to Rathcreedan. ‘In spite of there being many pots of cooked meats and invitations extended to people walking in the street to participate,’ he added, ‘they refused to do so saying they were not vultures.’ No disrespect was intended to the Queen, explained Fraenkel – it was simply a protest at the imposition of Rasebolai upon them.16 At the end of a sports event in Serowe to celebrate the Coronation, the District Commissioner called on the schoolchildren to give a vote of thanks to the Native Authority and his committee. But the children responded with shouts of disapproval.17 ‘As a result of the unfair treatment of the tribe by Government,’ reported a letter to London, ‘the Coronation day was characterised by a gloomy atmosphere around Serowe and the whole Reserve in general.’18

  The Administration was edgy and nervous about its ability to control the Reserve, relying heavily on intelligence reports. The ‘Relationship between European and African’ was a regular item in these reports and was described in June 1954 as ‘good except for Mahalapye where once again Lenyeletse and Theo Tamoucha have indicated their anti-European feelings’: ‘They attempted to sit in chairs reserved for Europeans at a circus on the 10th. They were heard to say that there was no colour bar and that their money was [as] good as that of Europeans.’19 Leading members of the Bangwato who remained adamantly loyal to Seretse were regarded with deep suspicion by the Administration. George Winstanley, a junior British official, who had recently arrived in the Protectorate, noticed that their names ‘figured largely in the various intelligence reports that landed on our desks’. On each of these pages were the words, in deep red, ‘UK Eyes Only’. ‘I thought this was very curious,’ wrote Winstanley later, ‘seeing that many of the senior officials who compiled and read them had been born in South Africa.’20

  Rasebolai was firmly backed by the District Commissioner, Bruce Rutherford, who had taken over from Batho in September 1954. Rutherford was also a harsh, unfeeling man and the people of the Reserve complained that they were unfairly treated. Although the customary fine for killing an eland or giraffe was one ox, a man was fined eighteen head of cattle, two horses and his rifle for shooting an eland. People were being flogged for minor misdemeanours, and fined or imprisoned for not turning up to meetings. Members of the Zionist Church – which had been forbidden by Khama III from operating in the Reserve – were arrested and imprisoned for two weeks. During their imprisonment they were forced to work without payment and were ordered to carry water with their hands tied to poles; they were also made to sleep sitting up. In addition, people objected that they were denied their right to free speech in the Kgotla and to hold meetings; they were not even allowed to meet their legal advisers.21 Rasebolai was demanding unpaid labour in the Kgotla, which was considered unjust.22

  On 8 September 1955, the last of the men imprisoned for the riot of 1 June were finally released, triggering another clampdown by the Native Authority. In November 1955, Peto Sekgoma complained to the Commander of the Police that a man who had visited him had been tied by a trek chain to lion traps for some days and that he had also been flogged – simply because he had gone with Peto over the border to South Africa, to buy goods for his shop. He complained, too, that women and children were being flogged in the Kgotla in public.23 A copy of this letter found its way to the desk of Fenner Brockway, who immediately called for an investigation.24 The CRO duly made inquiries and were given some background to the com-plaints – though no denials. Where there were no tribal lock-ups, it was explained, it was necessary to tether people to poles and lion traps; the women who had been flogged were prostitutes.25 The CRO dismissed the allegations about the flogging of women in public, on the grounds that they were ‘general and therefore unworthy of attention’. But on 7 August 1956, Martin Wray, who had by now replaced Forbes MacKenzie as the Resident Commissioner of Bechuanaland, telephoned the CRO in London to report that he had ‘found to his horror that the stories about the flogging of women in the Kgotla are indeed true’.26

  Bechuanaland was visited in 1955 by John Hatch, the Labour Party’s Commonwealth officer. He was sent to find out the opinions of the Tribe, so that the party could carry out its commitment to a review of the case after five years. The Bangwato found it hard to take seriously yet another investigation into their opinion, which they thought was bound to be overlooked. As a letter handed to Mr Hatch in Francistown pointed out, the attitude of the Tribe had already been given on several occasions to the British Government:

  1. The Commission of Enquiry,

  2. Mr Go
rdon Walker,

  3. The Three Observers,

  4. The Bamangwato Delegation, and you are the fifth.27

  But, polite and courteous as always, they answered the questions that were put to them. Many of the older men had tears in their eyes as they explained that everyone was waiting for Seretse to return. Rasebolai and his advisers, too, said that they still regarded Seretse as the rightful Kgosi and wanted him to return. In fact, said Hatch, Rasebolai had told him that his own position with the people was weakened whenever the Government suggested that he was replacing Seretse.28

  Hatch came back to the UK with no doubts – the Bangwato would never appoint anyone as an alternative Kgosi to Seretse. He also returned with a strong distaste for the racial attitudes and the discrimination he had seen in the Protectorate. Officially, there was no colour bar and the separate entrances for Africans had been removed from the post offices, but an unofficial apartheid still operated. In shops, the whites walked behind the counters to be served, while Africans remained on the outside. The schools and healthcare facilities were segregated according to colour – and the services provided for whites were immeasurably superior to those for blacks.29 Hatch had discovered that an African with the same responsibility and doing the same job, was paid on a lower scale than a European.30 He discovered, too, that in the hospitals there were no African Sisters: ‘what concerned me most was not the absence of African sisters, but the apparent absence of intention or desire by European Matrons to encourage their African nurses to the point of becoming efficient Sisters’.31

  Hatch’s return, which was heavily publicized in the UK, raised the profile of Seretse’s case. So too did the publication in July 1955 of a book by John Redfern – Ruth and Seretse. ‘A Very Disreputable Transaction’. It was the outcome of the many years he had spent reporting on the story. The Manchester Guardian was full of praise. ‘He brings out perhaps more clearly than has been done before,’ it said, ‘the human side of the story, the dignity and decency of Ruth and Seretse Khama, the clash of personalities, the dissolving doubts and later the passionate loyalties of the tribesmen.’ All these things, it went on, ‘add weight to the case for reconsideration’.32 The Nationalist newspaper in the Transvaal, Die Transvaler, was annoyed about the fuss made of the book and responded with an article entitled, ‘The Bamangwato are only a handful. The British public is not aware of this.’33

  Yet another event which reminded the public of the injustice against Seretse was the return home in October 1955 of the exiled Kabaka of Buganda, to the great joy of his people. All along his route from Entebbe airport to the royal palace, triumphal arches were erected. When he arrived, there was a long procession of cars to greet him, decorated with leaves from banana trees. As he drove slowly along the 25 miles to Kampala, the road was lined on both sides by cheering crowds, waving banana leaves; when he passed, people knelt down and clapped to show their respect and their happiness to see him back.34 But the CRO in London was not happy at all, as they feared that the end of the Kabaka’s exile would fuel the campaign on behalf of Seretse. In 1954 Lord Swinton had warned:

  Public opinion regards the two cases as parallel; and when a comparison is made it will be said with truth that the Kabaka’s behaviour was more reprehensible than Seretse’s. Indeed, the removal of Seretse can only be justified as an act of State in the interest of the Tribe.35

  By the end of 1955, there had been a significant change at the top of the CRO: in April, Lord Swinton had been replaced as Secretary of State by the patrician Alec Douglas-Home, the 14th Earl of Home (who became Prime Minister in 1963). He was a considerate and courteous man and someone, observed Macmillan, ‘who represents the old governing class at its best’.36 Although he was widely criticized for his backing of the Federation of the two Rhodesias and Nyasaland, on most other issues regarding the empire he took a progressive – though paternalistic – approach and he strongly denounced apartheid in South Africa.37

  There had also been substantial changes in the senior officials at the CRO who were dealing with Seretse’s case. Sir Percivale Liesching, who as the official head of the CRO had been instrumental in Seretse’s exile, had gone to South Africa to take up the appointment of High Commissioner to South Africa in March 1955. The new Permanent Secretary was Sir Gilbert Laithwaite, a very different sort of man. They were almost the same age and had both served with distinction on the front line in the First World War. But whereas Liesching was old-fashioned in his spirit, and a model of the Establishment – and even, with his lean figure and sharp features, looked the part – Laithwaite was rather different. Solidly built, he was a Roman Catholic and a homosexual, who never married, with a keen interest in fine arts. He had a reputation for fairness and got on well with the Deputy Under-Secretary, Joe Garner, who had been in post since 1953. Garner was the son of a draper and was married to an American. He was a personable man of integrity, who condemned racism.

  Another fresh and progressive recruit to the senior levels was Eleanor Emery, who had moved up the ranks of the civil service and joined the CRO in 1955; she had been born in Glasgow and then grew up in Canada. She was the first woman official to be involved in the Seretse Khama case – indeed, one of the first women ever to be appointed as a principal at the CRO – and she quickly introduced a more human and sympathetic approach. Michael Fairlie, another principal, had worked as an official in the Bechuanaland administration and had regarded the racial segregation and treatment of Africans as inhuman. This new stable of mandarins at the CRO held modern attitudes and was very different from the one that had backed the exile of Seretse and Ruth. As a consequence, Lord Home was given far more enlightened advice than that which had been given to previous Commonwealth Secretaries – Noel-Baker, Gordon Walker, Ismay, Salisbury and Swinton.

  On 9 August 1955, Home met with a delegation from the Labour Party, led by James Griffiths and including John Hatch, who recommended a conference of tribal representatives in London to find a settlement. But Home replied that ‘it was necessary to face the fact that Seretse could not go back as Chief with a white wife’.38

  At the Labour Party Conference in Margate in October 1955, Seretse and Ruth sat in the front row of the Press Gallery. ‘On the question of Seretse Khama,’ observed one Labour MP, ‘we cannot pat ourselves on the back overmuch.’ Fenner Brockway was more blunt. Seretse’s only crime, he argued, was that he had affronted Dr Malan and South Africa.39 Griffiths, speaking for the National Executive Committee, observed that the period of five years, for which Seretse had been excluded from the Bangwato Reserve, was shortly to expire. He said that Labour had made a commitment in 1950 to review Seretse’s case in five years – and they were determined to do this. On the strength of the evidence gathered by Hatch, he added, they hoped to arrange a meeting of tribal elders in London.40 When he had finished speaking, the Conference Chairman extended a welcome to the Khamas, sitting together in the Press Gallery. There was an outburst of applause, which swelled into an ovation when Seretse and Ruth responded to shouts of ‘Stand up!’. As they left the Conference Hall, they were loudly cheered again.41

  The Commonwealth Secretary, Lord Home, a principled man, was troubled by the Seretse Khama issue. On 29 November, he sent a paper on the situation in the Bangwato Reserve to the Prime Minister, who was now Anthony Eden. ‘I thought I would show you this,’ he said, ‘because these situations are apt to blow up quickly, and I do not want to be unprepared.’42 The paper by Home described increased unrest in the Reserve, which he attributed to Hatch’s visit. In the previous few months, he added, Rasebolai had been opposed in the Kgotla by the pro-Seretse faction on important issues, and it had been necessary to send a security force to the north of the Reserve, to deal with an outbreak of violence. He was wondering, he said, whether the Government ought to review their policy on Seretse, though on balance he supposed they should leave it as it was.43 He asked Eden for advice about whether or not to circulate this paper to Cabinet. Eden replied promptly, telling him to go ahead
. ‘Socialist party’, he added, referring to Hatch’s visit and to Labour’s demands for a review of the permanent banishment, ‘appears to be behaving very badly.’44

  Meanwhile, in Addiscombe, the Khamas waited and hoped. One great pleasure during this period was a visit to their home by Mrs Lilian Ngoyi, a leader in the struggle against apartheid. The daughter of a washerwoman, Mrs Ngoyi had become the National President of the Federation of South African Women in 1954. In 1955, she went to the World Congress of Mothers in Lausanne with Dora Tamana, a leader of the ANC.45 Then they travelled through various countries, including England:

  In Uganda, she sat in the same cinema as white people… At the hotel in Rome, an Italian man opened a door for her.

  For a dreadful moment Lilian thought she was being shown to the kitchen, but the man simply smiled and asked her what she would like to drink…

  More eye-openers awaited the two of them in London. They saw white men digging in the streets, swinging huge pickaxes as they worked… On an overcrowded train, two white men stood up and offered Lilian and Dora their seats. Lilian was amazed. ‘Am I dreaming?’ she asked herself.46

  During her visit to London, Lilian struck up a firm friendship with Ruth.47

  A correspondent from The World went to visit the Khamas and asked Seretse if he would like to return to Bechuanaland. ‘I should like to go very much,’ he replied. ‘Otherwise I would not be continually approaching the Commonwealth Relations Office.’ He talked about his wish to improve people’s lives:

  The Government, I know, have big plans for Bechuanaland. Big plans which they cannot at present push ahead because there is no life, no enthusiasm, among the people there.

  They feel they have been deprived of something. Those plans concern not only administrative matters but matters of development in the way of agriculture, cattle, minerals and so on.