On September 30, 1966, Botswana, located in southern Africa, achieved its independence from the United Kingdom, marking the beginning of a new era for the nation as it embarked on a path of self-governance and development.
According to downtoearth.org.in, Most of us don’t know much about the country. Those who are regulars with current affairs know that it recently got into a spat with the European Union about elephants, of which Botswana boasts one of the largest populations in Africa and the world.
Some who would know a bit more would tell you that the country borders South Africa, Namibia, Zambia and Zimbabwe and most of it is dominated by the Kalahari Desert and the Okavango Delta, which makes it the location of some of the best wildlife parks and game reserves in Africa.
Now that your crash course on Botswana is over, it is also important to know that at the time of independence, Botswana was in dire straits.
However, as historian and biographer Neil Parsons, a former professor of history at the University of Botswana, Gaborone, notes, one man would transform the country.
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“He inherited an impoverished and internationally obscure state from British rule, and left an increasingly democratic and prosperous country with a significant role in Southern Africa.”
The ‘He’ was Sir Seretse Khama (1921-80), founding President of Botswana, who ruled the country from 1966-80.
Does the name ring a bell? Those of you who watched a 2016 movie named A United Kingdom may well be acquainted with Khama’s life story. But it is nevertheless important to recount it again on Botswana’s Independence Day.
In white and black
Botswana is dominated by the Tswana, a Bantu people of southern Africa. Their ancestors may have spread to the region with the so-called ‘Bantu migrations’, where Bantu peoples from West Africa migrated to eastern, central and southern Africa in successive waves over millennia.
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By the 19th century, the colonial British authorities recognised the Tswana people in the form of the Bechuanaland Protectorate.
Seretse Khama was born to the Kgosi (king or ‘paramount chief’) of the Bamangwato or Bangwato, one of the principal ruling clans of the Tswana on July 1, 1921.
His father, Sekgoma Khama died in 1925 and the four-year-old was declared the Kgosi. His uncle, Tshekedi Khama, ruled as regent till Seretse came of age.
“The lonely and often sickly child was sent to boarding schools in South Africa, but developed into a healthy and gregarious adolescent sportsman. He attended Fort Hare University College and graduated with a general BA degree in 1944. In August 1945 he was sent to England for a legal education. After a year at Balliol College, Oxford, he enrolled for barrister studies at the Inner Temple, London,” writes Parsons.
It was in London that Seretse met Ruth Williams.
“It was while he was in London, living near Marble Arch and studying for his bar examinations that Seretse met Ruth Williams, a clerk in the claims department of Lloyd’s underwriters, Cuthbert Heath,” Claire Rider wrote in a 2002 article for The Inner Temple.
Williams was the daughter of a retired British Indian army officer. “…she had served in the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force during the Second World War, and was apparently ‘an independent-minded girl in her early twenties’ when she met Seretse at a London Missionary Society dance,” writes Rider.
Their shared love of jazz drew them together and by September 1948, “Seretse sent an air-mail letter to his uncle, Tshekedi, announcing that he planned to marry Ruth on 2nd October”.
All hell broke loose on both sides of the colour bar.
The older Khama was worried that Seretse would not be able to claim his chieftainship of the Bamangwato since the wife of the chief was also the ‘mother of the entire tribe’. Having a white woman as the chieftainess was simply inconceivable.
The younger Khama and Ruth, both Anglicans, wanted to marry under the Church of England. But church authorities refused to officiate the union till the British authorities gave the green light.
“Meanwhile Ruth had become estranged from her father, who thoroughly disapproved of the relationship, and was informed by her employers that, in the event of her marriage, she must choose between a transfer to their New York office or redundancy. Nevertheless, on 29th September 1948, in the face of all opposition, Seretse Khama married Ruth Williams at Kensington Registry Office,” according to Rider.
A diplomatic crisis
Seretse was immediately summoned to his homeland and asked to explain himself to his people in three tribal assemblies or kgotla. While initially, the tribe favoured his uncle’s viewpoint, lingering suspicions about the regent’s true intentions caused the tide to eventually turn in Seretse’s favour.
“In this unexpected turn of events, Tshekedi found his authority overthrown by the vast majority of the tribe which he had ruled with a firm hand for over twenty years. In a bid to regain support, he threatened to leave his people and settle in voluntary exile in the Bakwena Reserve. His bluff called, Tshekedi left his homeland unopposed, accompanied by a small band of loyal followers,” writes Rider.
But as opposition from his own people was starting to die, Seretse now faced opposition from another quarter, a much more formidable one.
Botswana was home to and surrounded by countries with white settler populations.
South Africa, where a Union had been declared in 1910 with the aim of uniting white British and Boer populations after the bloody Second Anglo-Boer War of 1899-1902, had officially adopted the policy of apartheid or ‘racial separateness’ after the Afrikaner-dominated National Party of Daniel Francois Malan won in the 1948 elections. Malan had called Williams and Khama’s marriage ‘nauseating’.
Namibia, the former German Southwest Africa, was governed by South Africa. Northern Rhodesia (Zambia today) and Southern Rhodesia (Zimbabwe today) also had white-dominated elites and settlers.
Parsons cuts a long story short: “The Labour government in Britain desperately needed South African gold and uranium. It agreed to bar Seretse Khama from chieftainship. The Commonwealth relations minister denied that the government was bowing to racism, and lied about this before the House of Commons. A judicial enquiry was set up to prove Seretse’s personal unfitness to rule. However, Justice Harragin concluded that Seretse was eminently fit to rule. His report was therefore suppressed by the British government for thirty years. Seretse and his wife were exiled to England in 1951, and in 1952 the new Conservative government declared the exile permanent.”
Ruth and Seretse were allowed back in Bechuanaland only in 1956 as private citizens.
“Seretse’s treatment at the hands of the British government made him a cause célèbre, helping propel forward the formation and growth of the Bechuanaland Democratic Party and his successful presidential campaign in 1965,” Jordan Farrell wrote in a blog for The National Archives, UK last year.
Lasting legacy
Parsons writes that the newly independent Botswana under Seretse Khama began with an ‘image problem’. It was heavily in debt to Britain and highly impoverished.
Khama set to work.
“Under President Khama’s leadership, prudent policies and wise investment of state resources, Botswana underwent rapid economic and social development, boasting one of the world’s fastest growing economies. Within a span of 16 years, Botswana went from being one of the poorest African countries to one of the wealthiest (measured by gross domestic product),” the Government of South Africa notes on its website.
Though Parsons terms Botswana as a ‘paternalistic democracy’ where only Khama’s party dominates, the legacy of Seretse, who died in 1980, endures.
Botswana is currently the third-least corrupt country in Africa, according to the Corruption Perceptions Index published by Transparency International.
The ‘unfortunate marriage’ of Seretse and Ruth, as per the British government, not just transformed Bechuanaland but also ended happily. Two of their four children, Ian and Tshekedi, have been leaders of the country.
While both Seretse and Ruth are gone, their story continues to inspire in what is increasingly, a fractured world.
