Colour Bar (16 page)

Then she got busy knitting.
⁶⁴
‘At last I've got my baby things together,' she told Margaret Bourke-White. She had made eight coats, six jackets, and four pairs of bootees. ‘This is all I'm going to do until I see whether it's a girl or a boy,' she said, holding up yards of white silk and white muslin and lace edging. ‘Then I'll make dresses if it's a girl and rompers if it's a boy.' Then Margaret said:

Ruth, I shouldn't ask you this. You don't have to answer it if you don't want to. But everybody wonders about it. How about the colour of your child? Do you do any thinking about that? How do you feel about it?

Ruth looked at her before answering the question and her eyes were very serious. ‘I couldn't care less,' she replied.
⁶⁵
‘And you could tell from her manner,' wrote Margaret to her editor in New York, ‘that she couldn't.
⁶⁶

When Ruth was up and about, Dr Moikangoa gave her strict instructions to take things easy. But this was out of the question. For in just ten days time, on 1 November 1949, the Judicial Inquiry was due to start, to determine whether Seretse was ‘a fit and proper person to discharge the functions of Chief'.
¹
The Inquiry was to be presided over by Sir Walter Harragin, Chief Justice of the High Commission Territories, who was based in Pretoria. Harragin was a tall, handsome man in his late fifties who – according to Noel Monks – was ‘the lion of the many society cocktail parties that are a never ending part of the diplomatic life of Pretoria, where he had his headquarters'. He was also, said Monks, a good, humane judge.
²
His background was unusual for a senior member of the colonial service. Born in British Guiana, he had been sent to school in Britain, but had not gone to Oxford or Cambridge. He was best known for his role as Attorney General in Kenya during the sensational trial in 1941 following the murder of Lord Errol, one of the Happy Valley set.

Harragin had few illusions about the motives of the British Government, but he insisted on correct procedure. ‘I fully realise that [the] Secretary of State does not wish to be embarrassed by a definite finding of [the] Enquiry contrary to his views,' he wrote drily to Baring's chief secretary, ‘but in that case he cannot pretend to appoint Enquiry under proviso to Section 3(1)'.
³
He had directed that Tshekedi should be regarded as plaintiff and Seretse as defendant, to facilitate procedure. He changed the wording, though, when Seretse's supporters complained that it put Seretse in the role of someone who had been accused of a crime.
⁴
But Seretse
was
being put in the dock and he understood this perfectly well. He engaged the services of a lawyer –
Percy Fraenkel, a clever and principled man of middle age, from the offices of Fraenkel and Herricke, in Mafikeng.
⁵
Fraenkel came up to Serowe to help Seretse prepare for the proceedings. Tshekedi, mean-while, had gone to Cape Town for consultations with his own lawyer, Douglas Buchanan.

Gerald Nettelton was selected as a member of the Inquiry, as was R. S. Hudson, who was in charge of the African Studies Branch at the Colonial Office. His invitation had followed hard upon a report he had sent to Creech Jones, outlining Seretse's unsuitability to be Kgosi.
⁶
The British Government was to be represented by A. C. Thompson, the Attorney General of the High Commission Territories – ‘the most unliked man in all the Protectorates', according to Monks.
⁷

Early on in the preparations, Baring set about marshalling his staff to deliver the result required by the CRO. His approach was cold and ruthless. ‘The indications are,' he wrote to Sillery, ‘that the Commonwealth Relations Office already contemplates reaching a position where we might not want to recognise Seretse and where Tshekedi's continued Regency would also be out of the question.' It would be a great mistake, added Baring, if any member of the Inquiry insisted on putting views opposed to such a solution.
⁸
Baring was ably assisted by his Chief Secretary, W. A. W. Clark. Some people thought of Clark as ‘Baring's
éminence grise
', said Sillery – or, as Harragin put it, ‘the Rasputin'.
⁹
The local administration, wrote Clark to Nettelton, were mistakenly assuming they must adopt an impartial attitude. But this was precisely what they should
not
do:

Whatever may be the viewpoint of individual local officers it is clear that the Administration per se must exert every effort to ensure that the weight of the evidence placed before the enquiry is
against Seretse
. I am doubtful whether in the absence of specific instructions to this effect the local administration will fully appreciate this important point.

The Inquiry was turning into something more than a means of buying time: it was being set up as an expedient to achieve a particular result.
¹⁰

‘Quite clearly,' wrote Baring to Sillery, ‘having appointed a judicial enquiry, we cannot
lead
direct evidence about the Government view on the decision at issue.' But, he insisted, ‘we must ensure that the
relevant facts and considerations, important from our point of view, are brought forcibly to the notice of the enquiry.' Tshekedi and Buchanan would give useful evidence, he thought, but might omit some key points. Ellenberger, who had attended the third Kgotla as the Government Representative, would be a key witness, so Baring arranged for him to come to Pretoria to be briefed. He also asked Sillery to arrange for any Chiefs who supported Tshekedi against Seretse to give ‘their opinions about the undesirability of a white wife. Perhaps Bathoen could be very discreetly inspired to speak about the real interests of the tribe and of the Protectorate.' The important thing was

to ensure that a position does not develop in which the enquiry has to listen to a mass of evidence from Seretse's followers supporting his appointment and hears little or nothing from Tshekedi on the other side. This is what we must avoid at all costs.
¹¹

For Sillery in Mafikeng, it was a far less straightforward business than Baring seemed to imagine. ‘It is by no means easy for this Administration to inspire African witnesses to give evidence of the kind required,' he told the High Commissioner. ‘First, because all African notables in this Protectorate who would be willing to give evidence are committed to one side or the other and secondly, because they are extremely suspicious of Government's aims and objects.' He sent a list of ‘independent' people giving evidence, either called by Tshekedi or ‘inspired by Government'. Tshekedi fully understood the importance of ‘non-party evidence', he added, and had gone to Johannesburg to get some.
¹²

New instructions arrived daily on Sillery's desk from the High Commissioner's Office. ‘I hope you will take all possible steps to make sure that Chief Kgari gives evidence, and evidence which will be useful to us,' wrote Baring. ‘Have you been able to do anything to prevent Mrs Moremi and Kgosi Molefi from giving evidence in favour of the marriage?' he asked, referring to the Regent of the Batawana and the Kgosi of the Bakgatla. ‘What about Haile? Do you think he should be called?' It would be advantageous, he thought, ‘if both a Catholic and a London Missionary Society missionary witness spoke generally against the marriage'.
¹³

By the last weekend of October, all the members of the Inquiry had
arrived in Serowe and everything was ready. Then, on the very eve of the Inquiry – on the evening of 31 October – South Africa delivered a carefully timed reminder of its antagonism towards Seretse and Ruth Khama. The Union Government declared that they were prohibited immigrants: it had taken this step, it said, to prevent the Khamas from emigrating to South Africa in the event that Seretse was found unfit to serve as Chief.
¹⁴
But this was not the reason, since the Khamas would almost certainly not live in apartheid South Africa. The real reason was to stack the argument against Seretse – for if he was unable to cross the border into Mafikeng, the capital of Bechuanaland, it would be difficult for him to perform adequately the duties of Kgosi.

Speaking in Bloemfontein a few days earlier, on 25 October, Dr Malan had announced that he had already taken every possible precaution to prevent Seretse being acclaimed as Chief, and that he had sent a telegram to the British authorities to this effect. The great danger of the marriage, he argued, was that ‘natives' might take it as a sign that a new path had been opened for all of them.
¹⁵
This repeated an earlier statement by Malan about a month before, in a speech to the Nationalist Party Congress. On this occasion, too, he had stated that his Government had despatched a telegram to the British Government, and that Southern Rhodesia had done the same.
¹⁶
In fact, South Africa had not sent any telegram, preferring to speak ‘off the record' to individuals at the highest level of the British Government. But Malan needed to reassure his party that he was dealing with the problem.

South Africa was working hard to maintain pressure on the British Government. Douglas Forsyth used a conversation in the middle of October with Gordon Walker, Noel-Baker's Parliamentary Secretary, to emphasize the ‘Union's continuing anxiety that at [the] earliest moment after [the] judicial commission has reported [a] satisfactory solution should be found'.
¹⁷
Then, on the second day of the Inquiry, Malan gave notice to Attlee, through Sir Evelyn Baring, of his intention to make formal representations for the transfer to the Union of the High Commission Territories. Attlee replied that it was not an opportune time to raise the matter, as any proposal for transfer would be unlikely to receive support from Parliament or from public opinion in the UK. All it would achieve, he argued, would be to strain the good relations between the UK and the Union.
¹⁸

Under the shadow of these threats from South Africa, the Commission commenced its sittings in a large brown marquee, which had been specially erected in Serowe. Inside, reported the
Daily Mirror
, it was ‘steaming'.
¹⁹
Outside, without any protection from the blazing sun, more than 3,000 Bangwato men were sitting in a semi-circle. At this time of year, if there was no rain, the temperature during the day could climb to over 30 degrees, even in the shade.

The chairman read aloud the document submitted by Tshekedi to Baring, which argued that the decision of the Kgotla to accept Ruth had been a mob decision and was politically motivated.
²⁰
This document was Baring's pretext for the Inquiry, although it did not raise the issue of whether or not Seretse was ‘a fit and proper person to be Chief'. But it successfully deflected responsibility away from the British Government, setting up the Regent as a target for all the anger and frustration of Seretse's supporters.

After Harragin had opened the Inquiry, Buchanan introduced an unexpected difficulty. He read a petition from Tshekedi, which asked the Inquiry to take his evidence at Lobatse – a small town 250 miles away in the south of the Protectorate, which housed the judicial court. Tshekedi was making this request, he said, because he felt unsafe in the Bangwato Reserve. Harragin was cross: he argued that the former Regent had been moving about freely in the Reserve, so could not have been all that worried. Harragin was also aware that many of the Bangwato had travelled long distances to Serowe, in order to be at the Inquiry: for them to travel on to Lobatse would have been impossible. But he grudgingly agreed to Tshekedi's request. As a result, only A. J. Haile and Ellenberger were heard on the first day. Haile gave an account of the efforts by the LMS in London to stop the marriage. Afterwards, Haile reported to London. Seretse ‘can't be allowed to get away with it altogether,' he insisted. ‘The present mood of the tribe is to forgive him everything, but I feel pretty sure the Judicial Commission will come down heavily on the side of stricter Gov[ernment] control – I certainly hope so.'
²¹

Next day, a letter of protest about the move to Lobatse was handed in for delivery to the High Commissioner; it was signed by 136 senior men, who gave their names and their village. ‘We the undersigned
heads of the Bamangwato tribe,' they stated firmly, ‘wish to draw His

Excellency's attention' to

our astonishment and alarm whence our protest at the step decided upon and dropped like a bombshell in our midst yesterday by His Majesty's honourable Commissioners of the Judicial Enquiry as arising from the latest petition of Ex-Regent Tshekedi Khama read to us yesterday morning.

‘From time immemorial,' they continued, ‘our Kgotla has been invested with authority in the determination of our affairs equivalent to that of Parliament to the British people' – and for the first time in their history, a decision taken in the Kgotla was being treated with contempt. They were being sacrificed to the Government's wish to appease South Africa and Southern Rhodesia ‘in their detestable and oppressive Native Policy'.
²²

But the letter had no effect on proceedings. Everyone packed up and went to Lobatse, where the Inquiry reassembled in the baking tin-roofed court house on 4 November. Tshekedi's evidence began. He fully accepted that Seretse was the heir to the chieftaincy, stated Buchanan, but he challenged the procedure of the June Kgotla: appealing to people to vote was contrary to custom. Tshekedi had nothing against Ruth as a European, but was opposed to marriage without the consent of the Kgosi and the elders. Ten witnesses who supported Tshekedi's case were then examined. One of these was from South Africa: Selope Thema, who had been the editor of
Bantu World
since it was established in 1932, and who had been a founder member of the African National Congress. Thema said that although he was not against inter-marriage as such, he objected to Seretse marrying a white woman, because he was Kgosi and their children would be ‘coloured'. He was also concerned about the status of Ruth's family: