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PENGUIN BOOKS
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Susan Williams is the author of many books, most recently The People’s King: The True Story of the Abdication (2003), The Children of London (2001) and Ladies of Influence (2000). She has also edited several anthologies, of which The Penguin Book of Modern Fantasy by Women won the World Science Fiction and Fantasy Award for Best Anthology in 1996. She grew up in Zambia and has worked in Britain, Zimbabwe and Canada. She lives in London and is a Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of Commonwealth Studies, University of London.
SUSAN WILLIAMS
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The triumph of Seretse Khama and his nation
PENGUIN BOOKS
PENGUIN BOOKS
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First published by Allen Lane 2006
Published in Penguin Books 2007
1
Copyright © Susan Williams, 2006
All rights reserved.
The moral right of the author has been asserted
Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject
to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent,
re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s
prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in
which it is published and without a similar condition including this
condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser
EISBN: 978–0–141–90092–6
For Gervase
Contents
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgements
Note on Language
Map
PROLOGUE: Letter from Nelson Mandela on the death of Sir Seretse Khama
I
The House of Khama
1 From Africa to wartorn Britain
2 Love match
3 The Bechuanaland Protectorate
4 The decision of the Bangwato Assembly
5 Ruth
II
A Conspiracy of Nations
6 The dark shadow of apartheid
7 Our Mother – Mohumagadi
8 The Harragin Inquiry
9 ‘A fit and proper person to be Chief’
10 Tricked by the British Government
III
Lies and Denials From Whitehall
11 The humiliation of Sir Evelyn Baring
12 Cover-up
13 In Africa, but kept apart
14 Together in Lobatse
15 Into exile
IV
Exile
16 Livingin London
17 Six thousand miles away from home
18 Banished forever
19 Envoys for justice
20 Sorrow in Serowe
V
Colonial Freedom
‘The BigIssue of This Century’
21 A watershed in opinion
22 The campaign intensifies
23 The ending of exile
24 ‘Before their eyes it rained’
25 The wind of change
26 Pula! Botswana 1966
List of Abbreviations
Notes
List of Archive Repositories
Select Bibliography
Index
List of Illustrations
(Photographic acknowledgements are given in parentheses)
1 Seretse Khama aged four with Semane, 1925 (Khama family collection)
2 Seretse Khama and Charles Njonjo walkingdown a London street (Khama family collection)
3 Regent Tshekedi Khama leaving the Office of the British High Commissioner, South Africa, Pretoria 1949 (MuseuMAfrica, The Star)
4 Seretse Khama walkingin Serowe, 1950, photograph by Bert Hardy (Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
5 Ruth Khama with kittens in Serowe, 1950 (Khama family collection)
6 Seretse and Ruth Khama sharing a meal with Kgosi Mokgosi, Serowe, 1950, photograph by Margaret Bourke-White (Time Life Pictures/Getty Images)
7 Seretse Khama, Percy Fraenkel and Bangwato elders at a Kgotla, 1950, photograph by Margaret Bourke-White (Time Life Pictures/Getty Images)
8 Bangwato women visit Ruth Khama with gifts, 1950, photograph by Margaret Bourke-White (Time Life Pictures/Getty Images)
9 Ruth Khama, family and friends listen to the radio, Serowe 1950, photograph by Margaret Bourke-White (Time Life Pictures/Getty Images)
10 Uriah Butler from Trinidad speaks at a protest rally in Trafalgar Square, London, to support Seretse, March 1950 (TopFoto)
11 Daniel Malan and family at tea, Pretoria 1950, photograph by Margaret Bourke-White (Time Life Pictures/Getty Images)
12 The Khama family disembark from a flying-boat at Southampton Marine Airport, 1950 (TopFoto)
13 Seretse, Ruth and Naledi Khama with Ruth Khama’s family, 1950 (Khama family collection)
14 Seretse and Ruth Khama with their children, 1953 (Hulton-Deutsch Collection, CORBIS)
15 The Bangwato delegation arrive at London airport: still from Pathe newsreel ‘In Support of Seretse’, 14 April 1952 (ITN/Pathe)
16 The Council for the Defence of Seretse Khama, set up in 1952 (Muriel Sanderson)
17 Seretse Khama and family at a press conference, October 1956, photograph by Brian Seed (Brian Seed)
18 Seretse Khama walks to his plane at London Airport to return home, October 1956, photograph by Brian Seed (Brian Seed)
19 Seretse Khama’s rapturous welcome home in Bechuanaland, October 1956, photograph by Terrence Spencer (Time Life Pictures/Getty Images)
20 Cartoon by Leslie Illingworth: ‘The New Africa’, 1960, (The National Library of Wales Solo Syndication/Associated Newspapers)
21 Seretse and Ruth Khama campaigning in elections, Serowe, 1965 (TopFoto)
22 Seretse and Ruth Khama, Khwai River Lodge, Botswana, 1960s (Khama family collection)
Every effort has been made to contact all copyright holders. The publishers will be happy to make good in future editions any errors or omissions brought to their attention.
Acknowledgements
This book is based on a mass of evidence, in a number of countries. I could not possibly have carried out such extensive research without the assistance of many people and institutions.
First and foremost, I should like to thank the family of Sir Seretse and Lady Ruth Khama for their support and help. Before starting work, I went to Botswana to seek the approval of Sir Seretse and Lady Ruth’s children: Vice-President Lt General Seretse Khama Ian Khama, Jacqueline Khama, Tshekedi Khama and Anthony Khama. They were kind enough to give me their approval. They have also given me valuable help with my research and allowed me privileged access to private family papers and photo
graphs. Vice-President Ian Khama set up key meetings for me with important witnesses in different parts of Botswana. Former President Sir Ketumile Masire was kind enough to spare some of his valuable time to discuss the legacy of Sir Seretse Khama.
I am indebted beyond measure to Jackie Khama. She has taken an active role in the research, giving me vital information. She also read every draft of every chapter, with care and insight, offering comments and suggestions that have been indispensable.
Naledi Khama, Sir Seretse Khama’s sister, granted me long interviews. She also took my husband and me on a tour of Serowe and I shall never forget my excitement as we drove up to the gate of the house in which Seretse and Ruth made their first home in Africa. Muriel Sanderson, Lady Khama’s sister, was very welcomingand was generous with her time and her memories. Goareng Mosinyi enriched my understandingof the situation in Botswana in the 1950s.
Vice-President Khama put me in touch with Charles Njonjo in Kenya, Seretse’s close friend from their years at school, who gave me several fascinatinginterviews and also allowed me to telephone him in Nairobi with queries. Vice-President Khama also enabled me to speak to family relatives and friends in the UK, includingRuth’s cousin John Goode and his wife Esme, with whom I spent a delightful afternoon. Another wonderful contact and a new friend was Betty Thornton, Ruth’s friend at the start of her marriage.
I am grateful to Tony Benn not only for his recollections of many years of friendship with Seretse and Ruth, but also for his kindness. For most of this book, the writingwent ahead smoothly. But I had one horrible block – when I was totally confused by the different strands of attitudes on the Left to British colonialism in the 1950s. I explained this to Tony Benn, who carefully and clearly unpicked it all for me until I understood.
Clement Freud, another friend of the Khama family, was kind enough to share his memories of Seretse and Ruth in the 1950s. The Hon. Gerard Noel recalled his friendship with Seretse Khama in the late 1940s at the Inns of Court.
Several members of the UK Botswana Society have shared their recollections. Alan and Juni Tilbury helped me to understand the difficulties faced by Botswana’s new government in 1966, which are analysed in Botswana: The Road to Independence (2000), by Peter Fawcus and Alan Tilbury. I am also grateful to George Winstanley for kindly sendingme Under Two Flags in Africa. Recollections of a British Administrator in Bechuanaland and Botswana (2000).
For a study of this nature, I was dependent on archives and libraries. I am grateful to the government of Botswana for granting me a Research Permit and I should like to acknowledge the assistance of archive repositories in Botswana, South Africa, the UK, the USA, and Canada.
In Botswana, I was given valuable assistance by the Botswana National Archives and Records Services in Gaborone and should like to thank the director, Kelebogile Kgabi, Rre Gilbert Mpolokeng, and Kebafentse Modise. I am grateful to Maria Tali at the SADC Secretariat Library in Gaborone, who went out of her way to help me with an important document.
At the Khama III Memorial Museum in Serowe, I was given expert assistance with the archive collection by Scobie Lekhutile, the curator, and by Gase Kediseng and Kelly Golekwang. Scobie was kind enough to share with me his reflections on Botswana’s history and his memories of Nelson Mandela’s visit to Serowe in 1995. The Phuthadikobo Museum in Mochudi enriched my understandingof Botswana’s history. I am grateful to Sandy and Elinah Grant for taking me round the exhibitions and for helpingme with my research.
The staff at the National Archives of South Africa in Pretoria were most helpful and I was able to benefit from the openingof many relevant files since the endingof apartheid in 1994. Where I was unable to complete my research in South Africa itself, Zabeth Botha followed up my inquiries with great efficiency. At the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, I am indebted to two archivists in particular: Michele Pickover at the William Cullen Library; and Marius Coetzee at the Central Records Office.
I am deeply indebted to Verne Harris and Anthea Josias at the Nelson Mandela Centre of Memory and Commemoration Project in Johannesburg. Verne and Anthea responded to my endless inquiries with a high level of expertise, as well as genuine interest. They helped me to find a number of key documents in different repositories in South Africa, includingone that had eluded me for two years. The Centre of Memory was launched in September 2004 to document Mandela’s life and promote his legacy. It seems to me to represent all that is best in an archive repository and its approach is wholly original. Because materials documenting Mr Mandela’s life and work are fragmentary and scattered, both geographically and institutionally, the Centre is pullingthem together in different ways to create a priceless resource for the world. It is also findingnew and excitingways to take the archive out to the people of South Africa and beyond, not restrictingit to academics and to people who are able to visit the institution. The Centre’s materials – and the Centre itself – tell the story of a continuingwalk to freedom, in the context of the broader struggles for justice in South Africa.
In the UK, the Royal Archives at Windsor Castle enabled me to see relevant pages of Queen Victoria’s Journal. I am grateful to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II for permission to make use of these papers.
I have examined well over 1,000 files at The National Archives in the UK. Studyingthem took many longmonths of hard work and I was fortunate to have the expert help of Mandy Banton. Many key files were still closed or retained when I started my research, but Penny Prior at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office facilitated the opening of these files with prompt efficiency.
Lucy McCann, at Rhodes House Library, University of Oxford, was unstintingin her assistance and I always enjoyed the restful space of Rhodes House. Anna Sander of Balliol College unearthed valuable information about Seretse Khama’s student days at Oxford. I was also helped in Oxford by Janet McMullin of Christ Church College, and by the staff in the Modern Papers and John Johnson Reading Room at the Bodleian Library.
At the University of London, I am indebted to the archives and library of the Institute of Commonwealth Studies, especially to Ian Cooke, and to the staff of the library and archives at the School of Oriental and African Studies. Clare Rider, the archivist at the Inner Temple, gave me valuable time and information.
Darren Treadwell of the Labour History Archive and Study Centre, at the John Rylands University Library of Manchester, discovered some important documents. I am also indebted to the staff at the University of Sussex Special Collections; to Pearl Romans at the University of Southampton; to Ieuan Hopkins and Ruth Hammond at the Churchill Archives Centre at Churchill College, Cambridge; to the staff at Durham University Library; to John McAleer at the British Empire and Commonwealth Museum in Bristol; and to Jim Davies at the British Airways Archive and Museum.
The staff of the British Library in London are efficient and courteous and I am indebted in particular to the staff of Humanities 2 and of the newspaper collection at Colindale. I am also grateful to the London Library for its excellent collection and its forbearingattitude towards long-term borrowing.
In the USA, staff at the National Archives and Records Administration in Washington DC were very helpful, notably Michael Hussey. I am grateful to Greg Murphy for follow-up research at NARA and also to Cliff Callahan for his work at the Library of Congress. Many archivists in the USA assisted me well beyond the call of duty: Joan R. Duffy at Yale Divinity School Library; Michael Roudette at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York Public Library; and Nicolette A. Schneider at the Special Collections Research Center, Syracuse University Library, New York.
At the National Archives of Canada in Ottawa, Peter Stockdale followed up my inquiries with care and genuine interest.
I should like to acknowledge a debt to key books, especially Seretse Khama, by Thomas Tlou, Neil Parsons and Willie Henderson (1995), which is the definitive biography. Two other invaluable books for my research were Gasebalwe Seretse’s Tshekedi Khama: The Master Whose Dogs Barked At. (A Cri
tical Look at Ngwato Politics) (2004) and Michael Dutfield’s A Marriage of Inconvenience. The Persecution of Seretse and Ruth Khama (1990).
Newsreels have been a unique source of information and I have been given expert help by Luke McKernan, Head of Information at the British Universities Film and Video Council.
I am fortunate to have an academic ‘home’ at the Institute of Commonwealth Studies in the School of Advanced Study, University of London. Tim Shaw, the director, has created a stimulating and supportive environment in which scholars thrive, and which has been ideal for writingthis book. Robert Holland has helped in various ways and I enjoyed presenting a paper relating to this book in his Commonwealth History seminar series, which generated valuable feedback.
At the University of Botswana, I should like to thank Peter Sebina, who has been a source of invaluable and inestimable advice and information. Neil Parsons has been generous and helpful with his vast fund of knowledge.
It has been an immense pleasure, and very stimulating, to discuss aspects of this book with Pam Ditchburn, Lesley Hall, Mungai Lenneiye, Gugu Mahlangu and Myfanwy Williams.
Margaret Hood, Ann Oakley, James Sanders and James Thomas contributed in various ways. Michelle Millar carried out some difficult research for me with flair, imagination and persistence. Vivien Burgess did some last-minute research with great efficiency. Janet Tyrrell is a thorough and thoughtful copy-editor, who is unruffled under pressure. Many other people helped me with their constructive interest: Richard Aldrich, Melissa Cinque, Dennis Dean, Theresa Hallgarten, Raymond Harris, Roger Hewitt, Jackie Lee, Tina Perry, Kate Philbrick, Clea Relly, Desna Roberts, Robert Smith, Sandra Stone, David Thomas, James Williams, Joan Williams, and Margaret Wynn.
Reading a book in draft is a time-consuming and arduous task and I am more than grateful to the people who did this for me. Jackie Khama and Gervase Hood read several drafts of the book, including the first – and very long– one, offering important suggestions. Richard Aldrich, Dennis Dean, Jackie Lee, Mungai Lenneiye, Peter Sebina, and Myfanwy Williams read the penultimate draft and gave me invaluable criticism and comments.