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Suddenly, a group of women burst into the Kgotla. ‘For the first time in the history of the tribal Kgotlas,' reported the
Rand Daily Mail
, ‘women came into the picture':

They stood in front of the dais, shouting and gesticulating and screaming:‘We want Seretse' and ‘May you die where you're sitting.'

Said Mr Batho: ‘I'll give you a hearing when you've given me one.'

One woman shouted: ‘Seretse should lead us… You have tried to rule us with a rod of iron. You treat us like ants. We won't have you.' Then a group of women surrounded the offices near the Kgotla, at which point Batho fled to his car. They chased after him as he drove off.
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Next day, Keaboka and the Serowe elders wrote a letter to the British High Commissioner, stating their refusal to accept any Kgosi other than Seretse and announcing a fresh campaign of non-cooperation.
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Sir John Le Rougetel worried that the Administration was losing control. He decided it was time to take action against ‘the Keaboka group' and authorized the Resident Commissioner to close the Kgotla.
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On the morning of Saturday 31 May, officials toured Serowe in a lorry. They shouted out through a loud-hailer that the Kgotla was closed, which was met with shouts of angry protest. Four policemen were then stationed in the Kgotla and a white line was drawn across the mouth of the entrance, beyond which no one was allowed to go. In the afternoon it was announced, again by loud-hailer, that the law against brewing and the consumption of liquor would be strictly enforced. At 5.30 p.m., Batho was told that over 100 people had pushed past the police pickets and assembled in the Kgotla. He went straight there and gave them five minutes to disperse, but about forty men – including Peto and Keaboka – refused to go and were taken to gaol. About 300 people, including women, followed them and sang hymns outside the gaol. The prisoners were released the following morning, but were warned that a summons would be issued against them.

The Administration had called for reinforcements from Basutoland of African police, who arrived before daybreak on Sunday morning. Then some people started to assemble outside the Kgotla – about 50 men and 200–300 women. They wanted to hold a religious service in the kgotla and had asked Reverend J. Cidraas, a minister of the LMS, to conduct it for them. Cidraas consulted Batho, who said that so long as it remained a religious service he would not interfere – but people must disperse immediately, once it was over.
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Hymn-books were issued and people started their service, singing hymns for several hours; speeches were also made, demanding the return of Seretse. Batho went to the Kgotla and tried to speak, but each time he did so, his voice was drowned out by a crescendo of hymns. Eventually he shouted through a megaphone that they must finish their singing before 2.30 p.m.
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At lunchtime, people left.

By three in the afternoon, about 600 people had assembled outside the Kgotla and were shouting loudly. Dennis Atkins and a ‘European' Sub-Inspector tried to take charge, standing in front of the police and trying to calm the people down. But the police were rushed at by the crowd and Atkins was attacked by stones and knocked down; he was rescued by the police, all of whom were wounded.

Shortly afterwards, the Basuto reinforcements occupied the Kgotla. Then the police took up a position across its mouth, in a double line. They were faced by a huge crowd – over 800 people. Then Batho arrived, at 3.30 p.m. He ordered a police lorry to be driven right into the Kgotla and warned the crowd that if they did not disperse within five minutes, tear gas would be released. No one left. A police officer fired a gas shell and immediately there was panic and confusion. Some of the ex-servicemen were familiar with tear gas, because of their wartime experience. But many people had no idea what it was, so the gas had the opposite effect to that which was intended: people surged forward and rained showers of stones on the police, many of whom were themselves overcome by the gas.
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The scene was chaotic and an officer sounded a retreat, instructing the policemen to drive off in the waiting lorries.

Some of the policemen had became separated from the main party and were left behind. One Basuto sergeant escaped to a village about a mile away but was found and hammered to death. Two other Basuto
policemen were killed as well. One of them appeared to have been killed as he fell off the lorry that was driven into the Kgotla, crushed under the wheels of the lorry behind.
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In addition, about twenty policemen were admitted to hospital. Many of the Bangwato were badly injured, too, but few sought medical care at the hospital in case they were picked up by the police. Until late that evening, every Government vehicle moving within Serowe was stoned on sight.
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The Police Superintendent from Francistown arrived to take charge and moved the police from the security camp to the low hill occupied by the European residents, who were terrified. The white women and children were corralled together. By this time, the telephone and telegraph line between Serowe and Palapye had been cut at several points and the only means of communication left was by wireless, for which conditions were poor. During the night, the police officer in charge of the Northern Protectorate arrived, as well as the Commissioner of Police from Mafikeng. Fraenkel phoned from Mafikeng and offered to go to Serowe and intervene, to avoid further bloodshed, but Beetham did not accept his offer.

‘Not a single police vehicle has now any glass left in it,' reported Sir John to London next day.
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The first plane-load of British South Africa police from Southern Rhodesia arrived at 9.30 in the morning, with ‘ten Europeans and 70 African ranks'.
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By four in the afternoon there were about 5,000 people at the Kgotla, but no action was taken against them – there were just too many people to be dispersed. Seager and Cidraas went to the Kgotla, where people were singing hymns. Seager took a service, ‘choosing hymns as carefully as I could'. After the service the men explained why they were so distressed – ‘The Kgotla is ours.'
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Police set up road-blocks, stopping every lorry, and the atmosphere throughout the Reserve was heavy and tense. The Administration was panicked by the fact that ‘everywhere in Serowe there is an inexhaustible supply of stones which tribesmen use as ammunition' and several women collecting stones in buckets were arrested.
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But early patrols on Tuesday found the village quiet. There was now only a handful of people in the Kgotla: during the night there had been an exodus from Serowe by lorry and on foot. Thousands of people had packed up their things and trekked off to their cattle stations.

In the late afternoon, lorries full of police, armed with tear-gas bombs, rifles and bayonets, truncheons, pick-handles and wickerwork shields, carried out sweeps of the area and made many arrests, including Keaboka and Peto.
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At Palapye the police encountered serious resistance: a crowd of about fifty men and women were waiting for them, armed with sticks, stones, pieces of iron and an axe.
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The crowd was eventually dispersed by tear gas and batons, but suffered many casualties in the struggle.
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Nearly 170 people were arrested altogether, including 40 women.
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Fraenkel, who had come up to the Reserve at the urgent request of the Bangwato, protested against the violence of the police. On one occasion, he complained, the prisoners were beaten up by African police in the presence of European police, who looked on and laughed. They were also kept in miserable conditions. Seventy-eight men, with only one blanket each, were gaoled in a motor shed that was open on one side to the chill night of Bechuanaland's winter. When Peto, Keaboka and nineteen other men were moved from Serowe in the middle of the night to Gaberones gaol in the south of the Protectorate, 200 miles away, they were taken in an open motor truck, with nothing to wear except the clothes in which they had been arrested. Keaboka was sentenced to fourteen days intensive hard labour for spitting at a white Sub-Inspector. Women prisoners had the additional humiliation of being conducted by male police into the veld when they needed to relieve themselves.
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The High Commissioner had no illusions about the reason for the riot. ‘We must accept as a fact,' he stated in a telegram to London on 9 June, ‘the general desire of the tribe to have Seretse as their Kgosi.'
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He added that he was hoping to rally the support of the many tribesmen who – however much they wanted Seretse back – were opposed to violence. For this reason, he asked the CRO to be extremely careful to avoid giving the false impression that the rioters were a mob, and the worse for drink. ‘Any suggestion that responsible tribesmen are already on our side or that the rioters were merely a drunken rabble', he warned, ‘will have precisely the opposite effect.'
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But Sir John's request went unheeded. John Foster reported to the House of Commons that the attacks in the Serowe Kgotla on 1 June
had been made by a big crowd – ‘many of them the worse for drink and among whom were many women'. The rioters, he added, were ‘a minority rabble'.
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Churchill summed up his account: ‘Indeed a terrible position. An angry mob, armed with staves and stones, inflamed by alcohol, and inspired by Liberal principles.'
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But Jennie Lee was convinced this was not true and tackled Foster on his statement, especially his allegation that the women were drunk. ‘There was one passage in the hon. and learned Gentleman's statement,' she said, ‘which I should like to have clarified' –

when he used the phrase ‘the worse for drink', he at the same time said that the women took a very active part in those demonstrations. I know we all want to be careful about statements which go out from this House, and I think the impression could legitimately have been given that the women were drunk, and that therefore their action was irresponsible and unrepresentative.

I think it is very important that we should have this point clear, because Mrs Seretse Khama got on very well with her husband's tribeswomen. There is a good deal of strong feeling there.

Then she reminded MPs of the excellent impression that had been made by the recent envoys from Bechuanaland:

Many of us were impressed by the members of the delegation to this country. They seemed responsible and, in fact, distinguished men, and therefore it is very hard for us to accept the impression given in the statement that this was just an unrepresentative rabble and that the women taking part were drunk.
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Because of Jennie Lee's intervention, the CRO was obliged to ask the High Commissioner's Office for a report on whether or not women had been drunk. The reply from Africa was unmistakeable: ‘On I June women were in state of extreme excitement but there is no evidence that this was due to drink. Of the men only some appeared to be drunk.'
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But no statement was made to the House of Commons to correct Foster's earlier announcement.

Of the 167 people arrested, twelve men were charged with murder, all of whom were imprisoned in a barbed-wire cage in the thorn scrub at Lobatse, including one man who was blind.
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Bail was set so high – as high as £1,000 for each of thirteen people – that no one could possibly afford to pay.
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In London, the Seretse Khama Campaign
Committee opened new committee rooms near Paddington to raise money for the defence of those on trial. The
Guardian
reported that among the first to come forward were Africans attending British universities.
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The Campaign Committee had changed its name from ‘Fighting Committee' under its current Chairman, Monica Whately, a Catholic feminist and pacifist, who was a strong advocate of colonial freedom and had worked with Ellen Wilkinson and Krishna Menon in the 1930s in the India League, which had campaigned for self-rule.

The defendants' counsel, Mr Vieyra, argued that one of the policemen killed in the riot had not been murdered, but struck by a lorry. Under cross-examination, a police lieutenant admitted that the crowd had been orderly when the police arrived.
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Mr Vieyra described the closing of the Kgotla as the trigger for the violence:

the riot took place for closing the Kgotla – an unprecedented incident. The Kgotla is their traditional meeting place and this closing annoyed them. Although the action of the District Commissioner, as Native Authority, may be justified in law… it is against native law and custom and such action would not be understood by the accused.
³⁴

The trials reached their conclusion in November 1952. Seven of the men charged with murder were sentenced to three years' hard labour, including Keaboka and Peto. ‘Hard labour' meant long hours of useless and exhausting work in the hot sun – such as breaking rocks or digging a hole and then filling it up.
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The remaining men who had been charged with murder were either discharged or acquitted. Twelve months' hard labour was the sentence given to two young mothers, one of whom had a baby only a few weeks old.
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The riot of 1 June 1952 had left the Bangwato Reserve in a state of shock and grief. ‘We are very surprised at the recent happenings and to see women in riots,' commented one man unhappily – but the whole community was suffering without Seretse. ‘If you pass small children not more than three years old in this village,' he said, ‘you will hear them talking about the nomination of Seretse. Even the children are sad about it.'
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The memory of the riot would remain vivid for a generation and the babies born at that time were called Mokubukubu, ‘the children of the riots'.
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The atmosphere remained tense. The police reinforcements from neighbouring countries were kept in the region and ammunition
permits were refused to Africans, who were told to use poison to keep down lions and leopards, instead of guns.
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