Banished Forever

A ray of sunshine reached down through Britain's gloomy House of Commons last week and glanced brightly off a pale gold wedding ring on the hand of a young Negro in the visitors' gallery. It was a fortuitous spotlighting of a matter then before the House: under sharp debate on the floor was the political consequence of the gleaming wedding ring.

Back in 1948 Oxford-educated Seretse Khama, chief-designate of Bechuanaland's Bamangwato tribe, married a blonde English clerk named Ruth Williams. At first the tribal elders were outraged, but later, after tribal council, they accepted Seretse and his white wife. But not Uncle Tshekedi, who had acted as tribal regent during Seretse's minority. He asked the British High Commissioner for a judicial inquiry into Seretse's fitness to rule. The British found that Seretse, by marrying without consulting his tribe had, like Britain's own Edward VIII, failed in his public duty. They banished both Seretse and Uncle Tshekedi from Bechuanaland, offered Seretse a pension of $3,080 a year. In five years, they might be allowed back if things cooled off.

"Disreputable Transaction." This displeased everybody: Winston Churchill, then Opposition leader, called it "a disreputable transaction," and most Englishmen seemed to agree. Tribesmen began a campaign of passive resistance, refused to pay taxes. Seretse and Tshekedi patched up their quarrel. Britain's Labor government, which had allowed Seretse to return to his wife in Bechuanaland for the birth of their baby, abruptly ordered them out of Africa.

Last week it was the Tories' turn to propose a disreputable transaction. Receiving a demand from Bamangwato elders for the return of Seretse and his queen, the Churchill government abruptly announced that Seretse henceforth is forever barred from the chieftainship. As a sop to Seretse, they offered him a government job in Jamaica, but said it would not be kept open long (he refused it).

Fear of Malan. What was behind the British government's strange conduct? Mainly it was the menacing face of South Africa's anti-black and anti-British Prime Minister Daniel Malan. John Foster, Tory Under Secretary for Commonwealth Relations, stoutly insisted that Dr. Malan had nothing to do with the government's decision. But Malan hopes to incorporate into South Africa the borderland protectorates of Bechuanaland, Swaziland and Basutoland, and may use the disintegrating tribal system as a pretext to annex the territories forcibly. Said Laborite Wedgwood Benn: "The fact is that in Seretse and Ruth is the focus of the whole problem of Africa."

As the Conservatives carried the debate, which would permanently keep him from ruling his native tribe, Seretse Khama quietly left the visitors' gallery, went home to his wife & child through London's chilly streets.

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