The Prodigal Chief

To the white-supremacy neighbors just over the border in South Africa, he was "just another Kaffir returning to his kraal." To British officialdom, according to solemn agreement, he was a private citizen of Bechuanaland, with all the rights thereof, permitted to return at last to his homeland. But to a hundred thousand Ba-mangwato tribesmen whose kraals spread over 40,000 sq. mi. of Bechuanaland, Seretse Khama, 34, was still the chief. Last week, as a charter aircraft flew Seretse back from six years' exile in Britain, the Bamangwato, with their wives and children, crowded the airport at Francistown by the thousands. Many had trekked for days through the parched African bush to be there in time for his arrival. "Our chief is home again!" they screamed as the aircraft touched down and the returning exile emerged to greet his Uncle Tshekedi, whose complaints about Seretse's marriage to a white woman (still in London but soon to join her husband) had sparked all the trouble eight years ago.

Observing to the letter his pledge to Britain to behave as a private citizen, Oxford-educated Seretse did nothing to encourage the welcoming demonstration. But he had no need to. Women swarmed to kiss the hood of his car. Men flung themselves in the dusty road before it or clambered on its fenders to cheer their chief. All along the hot, dusty, 140-mile drive to Serowe, the roads were lined with cheering, weeping Bamangwato, and the capital itself was thronged with tribesmen who had waited since dawn without food or water to shout their welcome. Even Seretse's own attempts to halt the cheering and speak a word of thanks were futile. "Seretse! Seretse! Seretse!" cried his former subjects, and the ex-chief could only smile back helplessly.

In dusty Bechuanaland the greatest blessing of all is rain, and for months of drought the tribesmen had prophesied, "Seretse will bring rain." Suddenly, amid the cries of welcome last week, torrents of sweet rain fell on the parched thirstland of the returning chief and his thousands of bareheaded cheering subjects.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.