Colour Bar (15 page)

it is not only against the law but it is also strictly against Khama's most stringent edict against liquor of any kind… While admittedly Khama's law is now more honoured in the breach than in the observance, since the Bamangwato tipple as freely as anyone else, at the same time Government cannot abet an offence against tribal tradition any more than it can break its own law.
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On the day that Ruth arrived in Serowe, Seretse's uncle Tshekedi went into voluntary exile – ‘for as long,' he announced, ‘as the white woman Seretse has married stays here'.
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Tshekedi and the headmen who were leaving made a public declaration about the crisis before they left. They were compelled to take this ‘drastic step', they said, not because they did not love their country, but because of their concern for the future of the Protectorate. Nor did they challenge the position of Seretse as heir-apparent, but they questioned the legality of the steps that had been taken by his supporters. The administration, worried that violence between the two camps would break out, were maintaining a high level of police in Serowe: ‘three Europeans and 37 African ranks'.
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About forty senior men of the Bangwato went with Tshekedi, with their families and their cattle. They were headed for Rametsana, in the Bakwena Reserve, about 200 miles to the south of Serowe and two miles outside the Bangwato Reserve. The Bakwena territory was the domain of Kgosi Kgari. Rametsana, reported the London
Observer
, lay on the ‘unfriendly fringe of the Kalahari Desert… everywhere sand lies ankle-deep like powdered mud'; it was as ‘inaccessible as it is friendless… sprawled among the leafless camel-thorn trees'. In this wilderness, almost entirely uninhabited, was a ‘thirstland given over almost entirely to herds of impala, springbok, ostriches and lions'.
⁴⁵

‘If we had stayed,' recalled one of the men who went with Tshekedi, years later,

there would have been bloodshed… This has always been an African tradition. Whenever it was felt that tensions had built up, either an uncle or son would remove himself from the main body of the tribe and this has recurred so frequently and is so much a part of our history, that the stories are really endless.

But it was very hard to go into exile:

I was among those two hundred and what at first seemed a joke, turning our whole life upside down. My father had died, so I packed up with my wife, mother and family. Tshekedi bought four red trucks and the women and children were transported on them, while the men took wagons and their cattle on foot.

‘Those of us who left,' he added, ‘had all been at the head of the tribal administration – senior treasurers, tax collectors, heads of tribal police and so forth – and we'd all been in a position to judge the quality of Tshekedi's character.' Rametsana was infested with lions, which ‘used to come right inside the village and kill our cattle – I was the first man to shoot a lion there!' They had to start from scratch and build a school. ‘It was not a question of loving power or position, which we all had,' he said. ‘It was a question of moving off with a man we could not do without. It takes a man years to build his home, so you can see what it cost us. That is our history and that is the way our history always turned out. It broke our lives.'
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The world was watching events in Serowe. For many months, the village had been flooded with reporters, who were sending regular reports to Britain, the USA, and other countries. ‘The little wooden post office,' said Noel Monks, ‘where an ex-Royal Navy signaller did service as postmaster and telegraph operator – and yeoman service it was! – became the hub of the sprawling mud-hut capital.' There was so much traffic over the single telegraph line to the outside world, that extra operators had to be sent down from Salisbury, 500 miles away to the north. ‘I always felt that the thirty or so Europeans in Serowe resented our intrusion on their back-bush privacy,' added Monks. ‘They certainly resented
both
sides of the Seretse Affair being sent out to the world, having been used to one side only, the Administration's.'
⁴⁷

It was quite true that some of the journalists who came to Serowe over the next few months gave the Khamas' side of the Seretse Affair. Noel Monks was sympathetic, especially towards Ruth. ‘You can't help admiring her,' he said. ‘She's not a tart, she's a respectable girl with ideals.'
⁴⁸
But this was not true of all the journalists, and certainly not of Fyfe Robertson, who came to Serowe to write a feature for the British magazine
Picture Post
. Robertson, tall and thin in his khaki safari outfit, was uncomfortable about the Khama marriage. ‘One of our strongest taboos, particularly to a girl of Ruth's class,' he told his readers, ‘is the marriage of a white girl and a black man.' He disliked Ruth:

the more I saw of her at Serowe the less I liked her… She is of medium height, with hair between corn and red, the very fair complexion that often goes with this… She often uses, when speaking, an appealing and beautiful turn of the lips, and her voice is good but monotonous.

‘Most people', he said – referring to the small numbers of Europeans in Serowe – ‘thought her laugh affected. She appears to take quick dislikes, and to nurse them tenderly. Her humour takes the form of sarcasm, aimed at friend or foe, and she goes embarrassingly out of her way to be cutting to people she dislikes.' But he had some grudging praise. ‘Though she can be peremptory with them, I liked the way she addressed her servants,' he said. And he could not help but admire her for her courage: ‘Few women would bear up as she did under her
difficulties.' He was sure, too, that ‘Ruth is very much in love with Seretse'. His personality, he thought, ‘was much more pleasing' than Ruth's:

He will be a big man, for already he is thickening about the hips. His complexion is surprisingly light, and his face is Negro rather than Negroid – he has not the finer features, showing Nilotic influence, found among many Africans. His lips, over fine teeth, are thick, the lower one rather pendulous. His upper lip is long, his nose short, broad, flat. He has wit, a quick intelligence, wide knowledge and a sense of humour, proof against misfortune. He never breaks a promise.

‘He is obviously,' he added, ‘deeply in love with Ruth.'
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Margaret Bourke-White was very sympathetic to Seretse and Ruth, although she had difficulty persuading Ruth to be formally interviewed or to have her photograph taken. ‘I hate to disappoint you,' wrote Ruth politely in a note, ‘but I just don't want to have my picture taken. Please understand that this is not personal, but drop in on us any-time to sample my coffee.'
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Finally, after long weeks of argument, Margaret told Ruth that getting a story in
Life
would help her husband. Ruth went to ask Seretse if he thought so and when he said that he did, she finally agreed.
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Margaret thought that Seretse had been on her side all the time: during one of their conversations, he had wandered in from time to time and said with great amusement, ‘Haven't you girls come to a decision yet?'
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Ruth and Margaret became great friends. They both liked cats and Margaret decided to find some kittens as a present for Ruth. She could not find a single pet cat in Bechuanaland, so looked for some in Johannesburg. ‘At last,' she wrote to her editor, ‘I found a pair of tiny kittens which I took back in a car to Serowe':

For most of the way, the only shade was under the car, and I stopped at intervals to give the kittens saucers of milk and a brief respite from the heat in the shadow of the car. They soon lost interest in the fast-souring milk; they were panting like thirsty puppies with their tongues hanging out.

When she arrived in Serowe it was nearly midnight. But the lights were still on in the Khamas' bungalow and the kittens, miraculously, were still alive, so she decided to take them to their new home. Ruth
was enchanted with the kittens and Seretse immediately named them Pride and Prejudice.
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Ruth explained to Margaret the inaccuracies that had caused her to become embittered against the press. One of these was the claim that Seretse couldn't cope with his studies because of Ruth. But in actual fact, Margaret wrote to her editor in New York, ‘she's deeply interested in his career and keeps him at his studies'.
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Another false claim

was that she met Seretse in a dance hall. Another was that she was a typist. Also that Serowe is a place of baboons, hyenas and marauding lions – Ruth commented that the only baboons she had seen were the reporters. Finally, that ‘all Seretse's wives' would ‘have to bathe me and brush my hair – that's so ridiculous, so silly,' said Ruth.

In many ways, thought Margaret, Ruth ‘is a remarkable person who has overcome the difficulties of her fantastic situation to a creditable degree'. She had been boycotted ‘mercilessly' by the European women – yet she had built up ‘a pretty complete life of her own':

They ‘pity' her loneliness. Yet in many ways her life is fuller than theirs, with a much closer degree of companionship with her husband, identification of herself with his interests, and intelligent understanding of the broader problems he has to face.
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‘When it comes to inequalities between blacks and whites,' Margaret continued in her letter to New York, ‘she is fierce in her stand against such inequality':

For example, she learned that the native nurses in the local Serowe hospital had recently had their pay slashed four pounds a month so as to raise the salaries of the white nurses. She is passionate in her denunciation of this injustice. When Seretse is given full powers as chief he hopes to change it, and she is fully airing her views.

Margaret thought that Ruth was a good influence on her husband:

She kept urging Seretse to decide things himself, act for himself, not pay any attention to what Government told him. She turned to me and talked about how the British Empire ‘doesn't really try to help the people. That's why
they're losing colonies right, left and center.' Then she added, ‘I hate hypocrisy.'
⁵⁶

Margaret observed the treatment of the Khamas by the whites with distaste. Sunday was a big day in Bechuanaland, she observed, ‘and the small colony made the most of it'. She went along to a Sunday cricket match, ‘the weekly event of dusty Serowe', on a day that was ‘a scorcher':

On reaching the tiny cricket club, I saw that servants had erected a gay little striped awning and placed a couple of long, narrow picnic tables under its welcome shade. A handful of shopkeepers' wives were engaged in that womanly task which English wives do so well the world over, preparing iced tea, lemonade, mounds of fresh-baked cookies and tiny flaked pastries.

The match had already started when the Khamas' car drove into sight. It parked on the far side of the field, from where they could watch the game. There was an audible buzz from the feminine contingent under the striped awning: ‘Poor thing! She must be
so
lonely…' ‘No one of her own kind to talk with…' ‘Oh, I feel so sorry for her!' But despite these protestations, noted Margaret, not one woman – or man – walked across the field to say hello or offer a glass of cold tea.
⁵⁷

From South Africa, millions of whites were watching in horror as Ruth settled down in Serowe. ‘Our colour problem,' argued the Nationalist newspaper
Die Burger
, ‘will be detrimentally influenced if Seretse Khama and his white wife are permitted to assume the chieftainship'.
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Many whites felt sorry for Ruth's European neighbours. ‘Please think of the little band of Europeans who have their homes in Serowe,' pleaded a woman in Johannesburg in a letter to the Commonwealth Relations Office – how ‘degrading' it was for them.
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Baring was sent a letter by the Dutch Reformed Church of Natal just days after Ruth's arrival in southern Africa. It argued that:

This marriage (native and European) is a contradiction to age-long tradition and racial custom and a cause of internal hatred and splitting of the Bamangwato race. Acknowledgement of this marriage will mean social equalisation of black and white, and if this example of the King be followed – which
certainly will be done – racial purity will gradually be wiped out. This will mean that European Christendom in South Africa has a dark future.

In all earnestness, the Church wishes to request his Excellency the British High Commissioner to advise the British Government that this marriage not only be denounced but also that Seretse Khama will not be admitted to succeed to the throne of the Bamangwato people.
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Ruth was happy and content in Serowe. But one day, at lunch, the room started to swim and she slipped to the floor.
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She recalled later:

Unfortunately I was not to have long to settle in my new life. I had barely become used to being called ‘Mother' by the tribal women when I was taken ill…

Seretse brought Dr Don Moikangoa, the junior government doctor at Serowe Hospital, to see me. He sent me to bed for six weeks.

No doubt the heat had triggered the collapse, as well as nervous exhaustion from an accumulation of difficulties in the first year of her marriage – rejection by her parents, separation from Seretse by thousands of miles, harassment by the press, contempt from so many people in her own home country, and vilification by the whites of Serowe, South Africa and Southern Rhodesia. But there was another reason, too: she and Seretse discovered, to their great joy, that they were going to have a baby.
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Ruth arranged for Dr Moikangoa, a South African who had trained at the University of Witwatersrand, to look after her pregnancy. She also booked a room for the confinement at Serowe's hilltop hospital on the edge of the village – the Sekgoma II Memorial Hospital, named after Seretse's father, which had been a personal gift from Edward, Prince of Wales, on a visit to Serowe in 1925.
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