A giant step for mankind.

Mixed race marriages have become so common these days that nobody bats an eyelid when a mixed-race couple passes them on the street. But it wasn't always like that. Fifty-nine years ago, the marriage of the Botswana prince, Seretse Khama, to what one British MP described in the House of Commons as "a London typist", Ruth Williams, raised such hue and cry that the very foundations of the British Empire shook. As we celebrate the 20th anniversary of Black History Month UK, Osei Boateng takes us down memory lane, thanks to a wonderful new book on Seretse Khama's marriage written by Susan Williams (no relation), entitled "Colour Bar--The triumph of Seretse Khama and his Nation". It is one book which every African worth their salt must read.

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In September 1945, a 24-year-old student called Seretse Khama arrived in England from his home in Bechuanaland, then part of British colonial Africa. On 30 September 1966, Bechuanaland became independent Botswana. Soon after the departure of the British, diamonds were discovered in huge quantities, thank God! The rest, as they say, is history.

But back in September 1945, Britain had just celebrated victory in Japan and the country was at last emerging from the trauma of the Second World War.

It was a very different country from Seretse's. The British Protectorate of Bechuanaland was not only 6,000 miles away from London, it was a dry scrubland stretched out far into the distance, and not much talked about by the British because it was a poor territory, unlike the mineral-rich colonies elsewhere in Africa.

Seretse had come to study law at Oxford University. Tall and long-legged, with a strong build and genial good looks, he was the heir to the kingship of the Bangwato, the largest nation in Bechuanaland.

"His uncle, Tshekedi Khama, who was ruling the Bangwato as regent," recalls Susan Williams, "was grooming him carefully for his future role as Kgosi [or king] and had long been interested in the idea of Seretse studying law in Britain. European law, he thought, would help him to deal from a position of strength with the colonial administration.

"He also wanted to remove Seretse from the racial segregation and inequalities of Southern Africa, which had made his nephew bitter. Seretse himself admitted years later: "I had adopted certain attitudes towards a certain race, if I may put it that way, and that is the white race. I disliked them intensely because I thought that they disliked me. I suppose some of them did."

"All whites seemed to him cruel and unjust," Susan Williams continues, "and he had 'just no trust at all for any white man', he told his uncle. 'Well,' replied Tshekedi, 'that is all the more reason why you should go to the United Kingdom to continue your studies'.

By then, Seretse was already well educated. He had attended the premier schools for Africans in South Africa: Adam College, a mission school near Durban; the missionary-run Lovedale College in Alice in the Eastern Cape; and Tiger Kloof in Vryburg, which was not very far from the Bechuanaland border and was run by the London Missionary Society.

Seretse had distinguished himself at these schools, and when he went to the Fort Hare Native University near Lovedale in Alice, which was the only black university in South Africa, he found himself in good company. He took courses in Native Law, Native Administration, Roman-Dutch Law, History, English and Setswana, and obtained his BA degree in 1944.

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Seretse left Africa for Britain and became an Oxford student, enrolling at Balliol College. His initial plan was to study Law and a combined course of Politics and Economics, which he hoped would add up to an Oxford BA.

Here, too, like the other schools he had attended, Seretse made an excellent first impression. His academic adviser, Sir Reginald Coupland, wrote about him soon after his arrival: "I have seen Seretse Khama. What a very good sort he is!"

But, as Susan Williams recounts, "Seretse had trouble settling in. The British students showed no interest in getting to know him and there were hardly any students from Africa. In 1945, there were about 750 students from Africa in the UK, but most of them were at the universities of Edinburgh (where Julius Nyerere was a student of history), Aberdeen and London, or at the Inns of Court in London.

"I was miserable the first term," recalled Seretse later. "I thought I was intensely disliked because nobody talked to me or showed any interest in me and I thought it was just another way of showing me that I did not belong." This isolation was especially painful because he had always been popular with his peers at Fort Hare.

Seretse felt, too, that in Britain he was always identified by his colour: that people did not see him as a student from Bechuanaland, but as a 'coloured' man or 'negro'. There was no official colour bar, but black people in Britain were routinely refused employment and accommodation. They also encountered colour prejudice in their everyday contacts with the general public, on public transport, and in restaurants.

"Seretse watched the World War II victory parade in London in 1946, in which some Bechuanaland veterans marched. They were loudly cheered by the British spectators, but instantly forgotten. Seretse thought it was odd that the British people, who were so proud of their Empire, appeared never to have heard of Bechuanaland and were unaware of its contribution to the war," says Williams.

This bred anger in him, that men who had been seen as equal in war and death, were no longer seen as equal in the postwar political and economic life of the colonies. This feeling was shared in British colonies across Africa and was a contributing factor in the outbreak of the riots that rocked the cities of the Gold Coast (now Ghana) in February 1948 and in the Mau Mau uprising in Kenya in the early 1950s.

According to Susan Williams, "one of the Bechuanaland veterans who spoke to Seretse at the victory parade noticed that Seretse 'did not seem taken up with the English. He said to me: 'The English like to show you their nice side but they hide their poverty and slums'.

Even still at Oxford, Seretse enrolled in the Inner Temple in London, as part of his plan to study for the Bar. He was so determined to become a barrister, as Bechuanaland did not have a single native lawyer. His uncle, Tshekedi, relied on a white advocate in Cape Town, Douglas Buchanan. Tshekedi himself had been studying law at Fort Hare when he was recalled to Bechuanaland in 1926 to take up the role of regent.

But in the spring of 1946, Oxford put a spanner in the works for Seretse. Just before the end of his first year, the university told him that he was not eligible to sit the law examinations because he had not qualified in Latin. "What?", he muttered under his breath.

Before coming to Oxford, he had been assured that a course he had taken at Wits in Roman-Dutch Law was an adequate substitute. But now Oxford was changing the goalposts, insisting that the exemption was only valid if he had done military service.

This meant he had to give up Law, although he attached more importance to his studies for the Bar, than politics and economics. "I know that Oxford has got a very big name," he conceded to his uncle. But this name would not help him, "if I cannot do what I have come here for--to study adequately".

In early 1947, Seretse decided to leave Oxford and to focus his energies instead of the Bar exams at the Inner Temple. Pressure was put on him to stay, but he would not bulge. By now, he had completed five terms at Oxford--nearly two years. It was time to move on--and to London he came, and his life was never the same after that.

His new home in London was Nutford House, a hostel for colonial students run by the Colonial Office, not far from Marble Arch in the West End of London. "After Oxford, Nutford House was a haven," says Susan Williams. "As soon as he crossed the threshold, he met other young men from Africa and from colonies all over the Empire."

One of them was his old friend, Charles Njonjo, a Kenyan who had been with him at Fort Hare and who was now enrolled as a student at the Middle Temple. The two had rooms next to each other, and what an opportunity to relive old times.

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But, all unbeknown to Seretse, something was going to happen to change his life forever. Susan Williams tells the story better:

"One evening in June 1947, after a dinner dance at Nutford House, Seretse rushed off to find Charles Njonjo. In great excitement, he announced to his friend that he had fallen in love--'I met a girl, and I think you should meet her'. Then he added: 'Somebody I should like to be my wife.'

"Charles was astonished. As he recalled years later, it was not like Seretse to make dramatic remarks for the sake of effect--clearly, this was serious. The young woman Seretse had met was called Ruth Williams. She had been a guest at an event arranged for the students--a reception by the warden, followed by a formal dinner and then a dance.

"She had been brought by her elder sister, Muriel, a Congregationalist associated with the London Missionary Society (LMS), which helped to organise social activities for African students."

According to Susan Williams, Muriel had been looking forward to introducing Ruth to Seretse, because she expected them to have a lot in common: they both had a lively sense of humour and liked listening to jazz.

Interestingly, and as it normally happens when a black man meets a white woman, "Ruth did not take any particular notice of Seretse. 'I saw a tall, well-built, smiling African with wonderful teeth, broad shoulders, and perfect manners,' she said later. 'I must confess that at this first meeting, he seemed as alike to me as half a dozen other African students my sister introduced me to that night'."

But the poor Seretse, on the contrary, was immediately smitten! Ruth was 23 years old. "She was not so much beautiful as attractive and elegant," Susan Williams recalls. "When she walked down the street, heads turned. Slim and fit, she had a slight, almost bony, frame. Her strawberry-blonde hair highlighted her clear complexion, which was pale and freckled.

"Her eyes were unusual: although both eyes looked green at first glance, one of them was half green and half brown. Brought up in London, she worked as a confidential clerk in the City [the financial heartland of London], in the foreign claims department of a big firm of Lloyd's underwriters.

"Although she came from an ordinary middle-class family, she belonged to a new generation of capable young women, who had seen active service during the war and had modern, fresh ideas."

Some days later, Ruth returned to Nutford House with Muriel. Seretse had been longing to see her again and he was delighted when she stopped to chat with him. Then she started to visit on a regular basis.

"There were very strict rules at Nutford House about women visitors, who were only allowed to enter a few of the public rooms, much to the annoyance of some students," Susan Williams writes. "But Seretse and Ruth were perfectly happy sitting together in the lounge or garden, getting to know each other better. It was at least three months, recalled Seretse later, 'before I dared ask Ruth for a date, but even then I did not know how she would react to my suggestion'. He had bought two tickets to a concert in London's West End, to see the Ink Spots, a jazz and blues group of black Americans. But he felt very nervous about asking her out.

"Ruth recalled: One day in August 1947, Seretse phoned me in my office. 'Would you do me a great honour tonight?, he asked. 'Certainly if I can,' I replied gaily--by this time I had really got to like him--'and what is this great honour, sir?' Seretse answered quickly--'I have two tickets for the Ink Spots ... I'll ... I'll get three if you'd like your sister to come along with us'. 'I'd love to come without my sister', I said. 'So we went to the Ink Spots. That was our first outing'."

After this first date, Seretse and Ruth gradually found their friendship blossoming and they became a couple. But trouble was hiding on the next corner. Their growing pleasure in each other was marred by anxiety, because Ruth knew her parents, especially her father, would not approve of her going out with an African.

"Her father took a dim view of black and white people mixing together; when Muriel had started her work with African students, he said he would not object but only so long as she didn't bring any of them home with her," Susan Williams recounts.

"When Ruth did finally tell her parents about Seretse, it was a disaster: her father told her to stop seeing him or get out of the house. The atmosphere of the home became tense and her mother, 'always lively, anxious and affectionate, was uneasy whenever she knew I was going out with Seretse--though she was not as antagonistic as my father'.

"By now, Seretse had no doubts at all that Ruth was the woman he wanted to spend the rest of his life with. One evening, when they were sitting together in the lounge at Nutford House, he turned to her and asked, 'Ruth, do you think you could love me?'--but she didn't answer. 'She didn't have to,' said Seretse later. 'The light in her eyes and the smile on her face told me what I wanted to know'.

"When he asked her to marry him, she said yes. They went out to celebrate in a little Soho restaurant and then Seretse kissed Ruth for the first time. 'We had reached an understanding at last, after nearly a year of secret meetings and outings'."

But hard times awaited them. A mixed race couple, they quickly discovered, was faced with enormous obstacles. "One of these was looking for a flat to live in once they were married. In war-damaged London, it was hard for any couple to find accommodation to rent. But if one of them was black, it was almost impossible," Susan Williams recounts.

"We were plagued by landlords and landladies who, though they had flats to let, slammed the door in our faces when we asked to see them. We'd write down a list of flats advertised vacant in the morning, jump into a taxi, and do the rounds. In every case, the places had 'just been let' a few minutes before we came along'.

"But if they telephoned the landlord immediately afterwards, pretending to be somebody else, they were told that the accommodation was still available. They had been turned down simply because of Seretse's colour."

Eventually, they found a small flat in Notting Hill Gate with an alcove kitchen at 10 Campden Hill Gardens, on the top floor of a tall grey Victorian building. Seretse moved in straightaway.

Just a few minutes' walk away was the Anglican Church of St George's, Campden Hill. Ever the obstinate young man from Bechuanaland, Seretse went to see the elderly vicar, the Rev Leonard Patterson and asked him to marry them. He agreed, and they set the wedding day for Saturday 2 October 1947. But when Ruth told her parents the news, they were appalled! Her father hit the roof, and said he wanted nothing more to do with her.

Her mother, in great distress, implored her daughter to rethink, but Ruth was as obstinate as the man she was going to marry. At work, too, news of her imminent marriage was met with hostility. The head of her department even contrived to transfer her to the firm's New York office. If she refused the transfer, she would be sacked, the man warned.

Ruth refused the transfer, and told the man that she would leave her job at the end of the week. "It began to look as though we wouldn't have a friend in the world on our wedding day," Ruth said many years later.

As Ruth was dealing with the prejudice in London, Seretse had his own cross to bear. He had to tell his uncle, the Regent Tshekedi, back home in Bechuanaland, about his plan to marry a white woman against the traditions of his people.

He was well aware that Bangwato law and custom required that the wife of the Kgosi should be selected by his people; usually, the wife would be from a royal family. Seretse was afraid, too, that his uncle would not particularly like the idea of him marrying a white woman.

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Tshekedi, then 43 years old, had been regent of the Bangwato for 23 years and was a formidable man. Seretse wrote him a long letter, announcing the news. Addressing him "Father", he told Tshekedi about his plan to marry Ruth on 2 October and asked him to accept her as his wife:

"I assure you, father," Seretse wrote, "that there has been nothing improper between the girl and myself. I have known her now for a year and two months. She knows very well what she is doing and we are aware of the difficulties that await us. Those difficulties have already begun. I am not marrying her out of pity. I love her, moreover she is a suitable person, father. You will agree that this is so when you meet her."

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But when the letter arrived, it provoked a crisis not only in Bechuanaland but beyond. It was "so unexpected", observed a friend of Tshekedi, "that it had the effect of going off like a bomb ... The news of the marriage almost made Tshekedi mad."

The British resident commissioner described the regent's reaction in his memoirs: "Tshekedi came to me with a face like a fiddle," he recorded. "That Seretse should marry at all without going through the usual forms of consultation was bad enough. That he should marry a European was the end."

Tshekedi, used to having his own way for 23 years as a regent, resolved to stop the marriage. He sent a cable to his lawyer in Cape Town, Douglas Buchanan: "Have just received most disturbing letter from Seretse. He is engaged to English girl, banns published, marry second October. Please take immediate possible steps, possibly assisted by your brother Jack, Professor Coupland and others to stop this marriage by arranging immediate air transport for Seretse return South Africa. Please contact Sir Evelyn Baring immediately and ask for his immediate support to get London office [to] arrange departure of Seretse."

Sir Evelyn Baring was the British high commissioner of Bechuanaland. "He was horrified by the news," writes Susan Williams. "He immediately cabled the permanent secretary at the Commonwealth Relations Office in London. 'Most grateful,' he urged, 'for any help you can give since marriage would be disastrous for Bamangwato Tribe and Seretse personally.'

"Buchanan sent a cable to his brother John, a London solicitor. 'Chief authorises me,' he wired, 'to urge you to take every possible step to prevent Seretse ... marrying English girl.' He asked him to caution the parson who had called the banns. 'If Congregational, contact L.M.S. If Church [of] England, contact Archbishop."

Once he had done this he should inform Ruth's parents of the 'ostracism and misery awaiting her'. Next day, Buchanan cabled Ronald Orchard, the Africa secretary of LMS and asked him to act immediately to prevent the marriage.

Meanwhile, Tshekedi sought to deal with Seretse directly. First, he stopped his allowance. Then, on Friday 24 September, he cabled a blunt warning from Bechuanaland:

  "Your proposal [is] more serious and difficult than you realise. It is
[the surest way of disrupting [the] Bamangwato Tribe. You seem to have
forgotten your home is [in] South[ern] Africa not England. Have made
immediate arrangements for your immediate return."

But the telegram rather awakened the rebel in Seretse and stiffened his determination into defiance. He and Ruth thus decided to bring the wedding-day forward. When they went to see Dr Patterson, he agreed to change the date to the next day, a Saturday, at 1.30pm.

But an extraordinary thing happened. Susan Williams elaborates:

"At 10 o'clock on the Friday evening, the vicar was astonished to receive a telephone call from Dr Roger Pilkington--a man he had never heard of before--asking if he might come and talk to him about the wedding plans of Mr Seretse Khama.

"Pilkington had been surprised to find in his morning post a note from Seretse, inviting him to his wedding. But surprise turned into horror when he realised that Seretse's future wife was a white woman. He immediately telephoned Seretse, urging him to reconsider.

"Seretse was bitterly hurt. He could hardly believe that the man he had called his friend disapproved of his plan to marry Ruth, clearly on racial grounds.

"Pilkington quickly sought out Ruth, advising her against the marriage, but she politely and firmly refused to discuss the matter with him. Then he went to see Ruth's parents, but her father said they had washed their hands of the whole affair.

"Pilkington was very shortly to become a member of the British Eugenics Society which in the 1930s had articulated a clear opposition to marriage across racial lines. By the mid-1940s, the eugenics movement had been discredited in many people's eyes by Hitler and Nazism, but it continued to exist, presenting its theories in weaker and more neutral terms.

"In 1944, the British Eugenics Society set out its aims in the name of 'racial hygiene'--to 'improve the inborn qualities of mankind through the marriage of 'best endowed couples'."

"Pilkington worked as a marriage guidance counsellor, to help couples make eugenically healthy decisions about whether or not to marry. He went to see Dr Patterson, the vicar, in the late evening and energetically tried to dissuade him from marrying Seretse and Ruth. But the vicar was uncomfortable, as far as he could see, the two young people were perfectly within their rights to marry and he was pleased they wanted a Christian marriage.

"By now, Pilkington had spent the whole day rushing about, trying to stop the marriage, but he still had one last person to speak to--Seretse himself. At half past midnight, he and his wife appeared on Seretse's doorstep. They insisted on coming in and proceeded to argue with him for three and a half hours; they told him he was 'behaving disgracefully'.

"In the meantime, Tshekedi's lawyer, John Buchanan, had contacted John Keith, who was the head of the overseas student department at the Colonial Office. Tall and scholarly, Keith was a bachelor who had 20 years of colonial service in Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia) behind him. He believed that 'race relations in [the UK] should be on a sensible and what one might call a Christian basis', and had robustly resisted moves within the British forces during the war to follow the colour bar of the Americans.

"Keith was well liked by the students at Nutford House and often invited them to his own home, which he shared with his mother; when they ran out of money, he did what he could to help. But this warmth did not extend to the approval of Seretse's plan to marry Ruth. He went to see Charles Njonjo and Harry Nkumbula, asking them to reason with their friend. They said they would, hoping that this would buy time for their friends.

"The real reason for the opposition was a conviction that it simply would not do for Seretse to marry an Englishwoman. But it was not as if Seretse was the first African student to marry a white woman in Britain. In 1942, Jomo Kenyatta had married a white woman called Edna Grace Clarke, who became the second of his four wives.

"Yet, sometimes, when Seretse and Ruth were out together, people shouted abuse at her, calling her a tart. On one occasion, a friend of the Williams family deliberately crossed the street to avoid greeting Ruth."

In the end, after all the huffing and puffing, Seretse and Ruth got ready for their wedding on the morning of Saturday, 25 September. Ruth's sister, Muriel, was going to be their bridesmaid and John Zimmerman, Seretse's friend, the best man.

But that morning, as Susan Williams recalls, "the leading men of the London Missionary Society met at Mission House. Their first tactic was to send a message to Ruth by taxi--but there was no reply. Then, at 1.00pm, with just half an hour to go before the wedding, Pilkington called the vicar, instructing him to telephone Seretse and tell him that he was not willing to perform the ceremony. Patterson hesitated, then made the call.

"But Seretse and Ruth refused to accept that their wedding was off. They rushed down to the vicarage and entreated with Patterson to marry them. Sympathetic, he tried hard to think of a solution--and decided to consult his bishop. He knew that Dr Wand, the bishop of London, was coming that day to officiate at an ordination service at St Mary Abbots Church, not far away. He suggested that they all make their way there, straightaway, and ask the bishop to sort out the difficulty.

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"The vicar and his wife took Seretse and Ruth to St Mary Abbots, where they sat anxiously together in a pew, waiting for the bishop to complete his service. They assumed that he would be bound to approve of their wish of a Christian marriage, in the house of God.

"In the meantime, Pilkington had set off with Orchard and Rev A J. Haile (the LMS representative in Southern African) for St George's Church. They were absolutely determined to prevent the marriage and had developed a new strategy. If the vicar were to start proceedings, they would simply raise an objection to the marriage and it could not possibly go ahead. But although they waited and waited, no one came to the church.

"Again, they rang the vicarage--and were told about the plan to consult the bishop. In angry frustration, they hurried out to the street and hailed a taxi to St Mary Abbots, where they rushed in and wrote a note for the bishop, with instructions that it should be given to him as soon as the service was over. The note advised him not to consent to the marriage."

No wonder, the verdict of the bishop went against Seretse and Ruth. "He did not even bother to speak to them himself," Susan Williams recounts, "but sent the Archdeacon of Middlesex with a message: 'Get in touch with the Colonial Office,' he advised. 'When they agree to the wedding, I will.'

"Stunned, the little party returned to St George's Church and Ruth broke down in tears. 'Does the Church want to force me to live in sin?' she asked in despair. She had left her parents home that morning expecting to be a married woman by the evening. She could hardly return home, but not--since she was not married--could she now spend the night in the flat with Seretse. In despair, she took a room in a hotel in Bayswater, nearby."

But that was not the end. Four days after the fiasco at St George's Church--on Wednesday 29 September 1948--Seretse and Ruth were married in a civil ceremony at Kensington Registry Office. "Early that morning," Susan Williams writes "Seretse collected Ruth from her little hotel in Bayswater. They walked swiftly to the Registry Office, looking over their shoulders to check whether anybody was following them.

"They were waiting outside the Registry when it opened, with their three witnesses--'my sister Muriel, loyal to the last', John Zimmerman, and one of Ruth's cousins.

"Shortly after nine o'clock, Seretse and Ruth were husband and wife. Despite the combined efforts of the Regent Tshekedi, the British high commissioner in South Africa, the Colonial Office, the Church of England, and the London Missionary Society, as well as lawyers in South Africa and Britain, they had started their lives together.

"They walked from the Registry Office to the hotel where Ruth had stayed the previous few nights, to collect her things and move them into her new home with her husband--the little flat in Campden Hill Gardens."

Seretse sent John Keith a telegram. "Have married Ruth", he told him, adding playfully. "Do you still want to see me?"

"I am sorry," wrote Prof Coupland of Oxford University to the Commonwealth Relations Office in London, when he heard the news. "It will be a miracle," he added, "if the marriage turns out happily in the end for either of them or for their children. It's a real tragedy or so it seems."

(To be continued)

The Colour Bar--The Triumph of Seretse Khama and his Nation, by Susan Williams, is published by Penguin Books. 408 pages including Index. Price [pounds sterling]9.99 paperback. Highly recommended by New African.