Colour Bar (21 page)

No decision had yet been made on what to do about the Harragin Report – which contained ‘so much explosive material', Gordon Walker warned Attlee that it would be better not to publish it. He had spoken to men on the Conservative front bench, he said, who had agreed not to press for publication. He left the final decision with the Prime Minister:

I'm sorry that (owing to Seretse's irresponsibility) this has come up so suddenly that it will be difficult, if not impossible for you to consult the Cabinet. May I, therefore, have your decision about which course I should adopt?

‘I agree it would be better not to publish,' answered Attlee.
²

The day after Seretse's press conference, he and his legal advisers, Fraenkel and Lord Rathcreedan, were summoned to the CRO for a meeting with Gordon Walker, Liesching, and other senior officials. The Commonwealth Secretary immediately took the moral high ground, accusing Seretse of a breach of understanding; Seretse did not
bother to reply. Gordon Walker and Lord Addison then left the CRO for Westminster, to deliver a statement on Seretse's exile: Gordon Walker to the House of Commons; Addison to the Lords. Just after 2.30, Gordon Walker stood up to speak to his fellow Members of Parliament. Banishing Seretse had been necessary, he said, in order to achieve ‘the disappearance of the present tendencies to disruption which threaten the unity and well-being of the tribe'. It would be for a minimum of five years, at which point the situation would be reviewed. Tshekedi would be exiled from the Bangwato Reserve, though not from Bechuanaland, for so long as the chieftaincy was in suspense. In the meantime, the British Government was going to replace the current system of administration in the Reserve with direct rule. But, he added, a council of Africans would be set up as quickly as possible, in order to give the Bamangwato people a fuller say in the conduct of their affairs.

On the issue of the Harragin Inquiry, the Secretary of State explained that the Government had decided not to make its findings public, because they were simply ‘advisory':

It is only one of the many factors we have had to take into consideration in coming to our decision. It would give a disjointed appearance if this one factor of those we have had to take into account were made public. I hope, therefore, that I shall not be pressed to make the Report public.
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Seretse would be given the opportunity to return to Bechuanaland to attend the hearing of a legal case about his property, which had developed out of his conflict with Tshekedi. The dates of the visit would be arranged in such a way, he added, that he could be there before and during his wife's confinement. But he would only be permitted to go to Lobatse: he would not be able to go to Serowe or to any other part of the Bangwato Reserve. The Government hoped, added Gordon Walker, that Ruth would join Seretse in Lobatse and give birth there; it had good medical facilities, he said, and the distance from Serowe was ‘a small journey' (in fact, it was close to 250 miles of rough, dirt road).

Many MPs heard the Commonwealth Secretary's statement with deep misgivings. Gordon Walker was subjected to a ‘fairly rough passage' for half an hour and had to answer questions from all sides
of the House, reported Egeland in London to Malan in South Africa.
⁴
Fenner Brockway, a Labour MP, attacked the front bench. ‘I have rarely been more angry,' he wrote later, ‘than when I heard the Minister announce that he had deposed Seretse… It was beyond my belief that such a thing could happen under a Labour Government.'
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Brockway, who had been born in Calcutta, was the son of a missionary in the London Missionary Society. He was a highly principled man and had been elected a month earlier as the MP for Eton and Slough. Now 62 years of age, he had been an energetic champion of colonial freedom for a long time, with the result that some of his fellow MPs referred to him as ‘the Member for Africa'. As far as Brockway was concerned, the exile of Seretse highlighted the issue of the colour bar and he made ‘quite a scene' in the House. Quintin Hogg (later Lord Hailsham), MP for Oxford, joined in the protest from the Conservative side.
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Was this the first time, asked Sir Herbert Williams caustically, that ‘any British Government had imposed a colour bar in any part of the British Empire?' When Reginald Sorensen, a Labour backbencher, asked if South Africa had had any influence on the Government's decision, Gordon Walker denied it categorically: ‘we have had no communication from the Government of the Union nor have we made any communication to them. There have been no representations and no consultation in this matter.'

Winston Churchill, the leader of the Opposition, ‘led a persistent and prolonged interrogation' of Gordon Walker, according to
The Times
.
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He did not question the decision to withhold the chieftainship from Seretse, but he did want to know ‘whether this chief is being treated quite fairly as between man and man'. That was a point, he said, ‘which causes some anxiety'. In particular, he wanted to know whether Seretse had been warned that if he came to the UK he might be forbidden to return home. Or had he been ‘enticed' to Britain under false pretences? ‘Where is Mrs Khama at present,' he asked –

and where was she at the time when Seretse Khama took leave of her? Will the right hon. Gentleman not consider that Seretse has a right to go back to that very place and meet her at that very place before the Government take any further action in the matter?
⁸

Gordon Walker argued strenuously that Seretse had not been tricked in any way, and ‘got away with it,' wrote Brockway afterwards – ‘but only just'.
⁹

Churchill was not convinced, however. ‘It is a very disreputable transaction,' he growled.
¹⁰
When Ruth heard of Churchill's protest, it gave her ‘great heart', reported Noel Monks. Like her parents, she was a longstanding supporter of the Conservative Party and she believed that if it had been in power, her husband would never have been exiled. ‘When the Tories get in,' she said, ‘they will change it.'
¹¹
Seretse, too, though his political views were further to the Left than Ruth's, was encouraged by Churchill's intervention.
¹²

In Cape Town, Sir Evelyn Baring was becoming increasingly worried about the prospect of Seretse being allowed to visit the Protectorate. The best solution, he wrote to Liesching, would be to get Ruth out of Bechuanaland.
¹³
But Gordon Walker was far less worried about difficulties in Africa than about those at home in Britain, where opposition to the exile of Seretse was growing. On 10 March he complained to Baring:

You do not apparently propose to deal with what may prove perhaps at your end and certainly at ours to be one of the most criticised points in our decisions. It is that, whereas Tshekedi is excluded from the Reserve only, Seretse is excluded from the Protectorate.

Even those who sympathized with the Government's difficulties, he added, were regarding Seretse's banishment from the whole of the Protectorate for five years as unnecessarily harsh. ‘I should like you to consider,' he added with evident irritation,

whether there is a possibility that we have gone too far in excluding Seretse and Ruth from the Protectorate… If you still maintain your view that they cannot be permitted to reside there (or to reside within the Protectorate within such area as could be prescribed) for the full five-year period, I should need to be provided with the most cogent and convincing arguments for this.
¹⁴

Baring parried. ‘Am most grateful for firm line taken by the United Kingdom Government,' he cabled Gordon Walker. ‘A major disaster
has been avoided and [the] effect on relations with Union Government has been admirable.' He promised to do everything he could to ease difficulties in London. He was willing for Seretse to come to Lobatse at any time after the Kgotla in Serowe on 13 March, when he would announce the terms of Seretse's banishment to the Bangwato. But, he insisted, the removal of both Seretse and Ruth
had
to be enforced once their child had been born. In the meantime, he hoped Ruth would join Seretse in Lobatse. ‘I will try to suggest this to her,' he said, ‘but am told that she is so perverse that a direct suggestion might have [the] effect of confirming her in her idea of staying at Serowe.'
¹⁵

The colonial administration was preparing for the Kgotla. ‘British do
not
expect trouble,' said Robert Stimson, a BBC journalist, to the US attaché in Pretoria, because ‘[they] consider the Bamangwatos “gutless” – and have enough troops to handle anything'.
¹⁶
The Protectorate police were on high alert and the Southern Rhodesian government had sent reinforcements from their own police force.
¹⁷

But the press were far more difficult to manage than security. Almost as soon as Seretse had given his statement to the media on 7 March, the world's press had swooped down on Serowe. ‘You never saw such comings and goings,' wrote Ruth's friend Doris Bradshaw in a letter to friends in Britain – ‘aeroplanes galore with hundreds of reporters and photographers from all over the world.' The correspondent for the British
Daily Telegraph
, she said, was on a mission in Cairo – ‘but he abandoned that and flew to Serowe'. The
Daily Express
reporter was on a mission in Accra – but he too ‘abandoned that and flew to Serowe'. It was a delightful change in the daily routine of the Bradshaws. ‘We had a lovely time meeting all these famous people,' she said, ‘and could just about have swum in the drinks they offered, as they wanted news from us.'
¹⁸
Monsarrat and Clark hoped to encourage reports that were favourable to the government: they were planning to go early to Serowe ‘to feed material to the press, to try to drop ideas'.
¹⁹

At midday on Saturday 11 March, Baring flew in his private aircraft to Mafikeng, where he met with Tshekedi and then Sillery. Meanwhile, British officials in Serowe were getting ready for the High Commissioner's visit. At the kgotla ground, chairs were put out for the dignitaries and junior officials practised taking the salute.
²⁰
This would
be Baring's first visit to Serowe. ‘It will always seem incredible to me,' observed Noel Monks,

that, up to this moment, Sir Evelyn Baring, in Pretoria, had not come to Bechuanaland to see for himself what lay behind the Seretse Affair, whether the marriage was a good thing or bad for the Bangwato. Indeed, he had never met Ruth or Seretse in his life.
²¹

But just before Baring left Mafikeng on the night train for Bechuanaland, alarm bells started to sound. News arrived that a petition had been received from Fraenkel's office, requesting a postponement of the Kgotla on the grounds that without a Kgosi, it was not possible to hold an assembly. Baring's reaction was firm: the Kgotla would go ahead. Then he and his staff embarked on the long rail journey north to Palapye.

But the alarm bells grew louder as they went further north. When the train eventually steamed into the station of Palapye, the District Commissioner was waiting with worrying news – that the day before, the headmen of the Bangwato had come to tell him that the Kgotla would be boycotted.
²²
The High Commissioner quickly consulted his staff, recalled Sillery later:

Baring asked Sullivan what the chances were, and I heard Sullivan say, ‘Fifty-fifty, sir.' But Nettelton said that the Ngwato were too keen on politics to forgo a meeting, and the High Commissioner, who had Clark with him, decided to proceed.
²³

The government party went on to the Residency, on a hill high above Serowe.

That night, Peto Segkoma delivered a message to the press. In his soft voice, he explained that at a meeting on Saturday afternoon of thirty-five leading headmen, it had been decided to boycott the Kgotla. The meeting had been attended by Fraenkel's legal partner, A. A. Gerricke, who had flown to Serowe earlier that day; Fraenkel himself had not been able to come as he was still in London with Seretse.
²⁴
They had tried to warn the Government, explained Peto, because they didn't want to embarrass the High Commissioner – but officials just wouldn't believe them.

Throughout the night, Peto, Goareng Mosinyi, Serogola Seretse and
Lenyeletse Seretse went around the villages talking to people, making sure that everyone knew about the boycott.
²⁵
Concerned that their action might provoke the enforced removal of Ruth, they posted a secret guard in the hills surrounding Serowe, to keep a close watch on her safety, night and day, in addition to the bodyguard they had appointed to be with her constantly.
²⁶

When Baring drove up to Serowe early in the morning of 13 March, there was no sign of the thousands of men who had been expected to arrive.
²⁷
‘The BP Gov officials were running round Serowe in circles,' wrote Doris to friends in the UK, ‘begging natives to go to the meeting.'
²⁸
But still nobody came. The dusty kgotla ground remained silent and deserted, except for the press and about twenty-five European spectators sitting under a tree. ‘There were no Africans,' observed John Redfern, the
Daily Express
reporter, with amusement. ‘Sir Evelyn had travelled 1,000 miles to speak to the Bamangwato and the Bamangwato were missing.' The whites had been at the kgotla ground long before it was supposed to start:

The men wore well-pressed tropical suits and ties, and looked quite different from their normal shorts-socks-and-shirts. They were bursting with loyalty and anxiety and stood about, a baffled group.

Where were the Africans? Fifteen minutes after the High Commissioner was due to receive the opening salutes, there was
one
African, by name ‘Basket', Mrs Page Wood's employee. He was on duty, looking after his mistress's requirements.
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