LADY RUTH KHAMA: The marriage of a young, middle-class Englishwoman to a handsome black African would have caused comment and some unpleasant racial reactions in the England of 1948, but little more - except that, in this case, the young African was Seretse Khama, chief-in-waiting of the powerful Bamangwato tribe in the British colony of Bechuanaland. He was later to become first president of the independent state of Botswana.
Despite the description of the relationship by Julius Nyerere as a great love affair, its immediate result was tribal division and a political row involving Britain, South Africa and Southern Rhodesia, and eight years of official British hypocrisy.
The woman in question was Ruth Williams, who, as Lady Ruth Khama, died on May 22nd aged 78. Born in London, she was the daughter of a former Indian army captain. During the second World War, she left Eltham High School to join the Women's Auxiliary Air Force and serve as an ambulance driver. When the war ended, she became a clerk with a Lloyds underwriter.
Meanwhile, Seretse, after a year at Balliol College, Oxford, was studying law at the Temple. He met Ruth Williams at a London Missionary Society dance. After a year's courting, they decided to marry and, in September 1948, Seretse wrote to tell his uncle, Tshekedi Khama, acting regent of the Bamangwato tribe.
In Bechuanaland, the chief's wife was traditionally regarded as the mother of the tribe, and Tshekedi could not envisage a white woman in the role. Through the British high commissioner and the Colonial Office, he tried to prevent the marriage.Then the parson who had reluctantly agreed to marry the couple lost his nerve and referred their request to the Bishop of London who told them they could only marry if the British government agreed.
They advanced their wedding date from October, and were married in a register office. Ruth Williams was sacked from her job, and her father turned her out of the house. Seretse returned alone to Bechuanaland.
Tshekedi now called a kgotla, or tribal general council, at which 14 of the 15 most important royal blood relatives opposed the marriage. So Seretse returned to London to continue his law studies and, six months later, the colonial administration confirmed the rejection by the kgotla of Ruth Khama as tribal queen.
Meanwhile, the suspicion was fomented that Tshekedi wanted the chieftainship for himself, driving a further wedge between uncle and nephew. Seretse now returned to Bechuanaland to face 4,000 people at a second kgotla. Tshekedi addressed the meeting first: he said he would hand over the leadership to Seretse, but "if he brings his white wife here, I will fight him to the death". He asked those who supported him to stand; only nine did so.
After Seretse himself had spoken, 43 people stood up to indicate their opposition to him. Sensing that opinion was moving in his favour, he then asked those who supported him to stand, and the whole meeting rose with shouts of "pula" (rain). This vote of approval might have ended the affair: Ruth Khama was now in Bechuanaland, and pregnant, but at this point southern Africa's white racists became involved.
There was a furious regional reaction to claims of miscegenation. Sir Godfrey Huggins, then prime minister of Southern Rhodesia, told a cheering assembly that he had written to the high commissioner of Bechuanaland, Basutoland and Swaziland saying it would be "disastrous" if this "fellow" \ became chief of the Bamangwato.
The new South African prime minister Dr D.F. Malan, who had led the National Party to its first victory in 1948 specifically on an apartheid platform, cabled the British government urging it to oppose the marriage, which he described as "nauseating". Philip Noel-Baker, the Labour government's secretary of state for Commonwealth relations, invited Seretse to discuss the future administration of the tribe.
Once in London, however, Seretse was asked to relinquish all claims to the chieftainship in return for an annual tax-free allowance of £1,000. He refused, and was told he was banished from Bechuanaland for five years, despite earlier assurances that he would be free to return home. He cabled Ruth Khama: "Tribe and myself tricked by British government. Am banned from whole protectorate. Love. Seretse." He then gave a press conference, accusing the Labour government of double-crossing him.
Patrick Gordon Walker, the new Commonwealth relations secretary - who denied any pressures from South Africa - tried unsuccessfully to rebut the accusation, only to be reproached by the then Conservative opposition leader Winston Churchill, who said that it had been "a very disreputable transaction".
In South Africa, the nationalist newspaper Die Transvaaler crowed: "While trying to prop up with words the whitewashed façade of liberalism, the British government has had, in practice, to concede the demands of apartheid." In London, when the Conservatives returned to power in 1951, they extended Seretse's banishment indefinitely, saying his return would endanger peace and good government in Bechuanaland, where this decision was promptly met with riots.
Both the Labour and Conservative parties behaved dishonourably towards Seretse to appease white racism, something that the former Labour prime minister Clement Attlee was later to admit. At least, however, Seretse had been allowed to go home in 1950 for the birth of his first child, after which he brought Ruth Khama to England. She, in turn, was reconciled with her father.
In 1956, after the Bamangwato had cabled Queen Elizabeth II to ask for their chief, Seretse was finally allowed home. He promptly disclaimed the chieftainship, founded the Bechuanaland Democratic Party and won the 1965 elections, the prelude to Botswana's independence in 1966. Knighted that year, he served four terms as president.
After Seretse's death in 1980, she continued various charitable works - running women's clubs, acting as president of the Botswana Red Cross, and being involved with the girl guides. She and Seretse had a daughter and three sons, one of whom, Ian, is now vice-president of Botswana.
Lady Ruth Khama: born 1923; died, May 2002