Botswana and a very forbidden romance
"A king, an English typist, and an empire losing its mind."
Seretse Khama and Ruth Williams, and how a love story rearranged southern Africa.
Drink pairing · A gin and tonic, extremely stiff, London measure.
Full show player. This exact episode drops on Spotify Mon 30 June.
Boy meets girl at a missionary dance
Seretse Khama is the kgosi-in-waiting of the Bangwato, in what is then the Bechuanaland Protectorate. He is reading law in London. Ruth Williams is a clerk at Lloyd's, jazz obsessive, quietly stubborn. They meet at a London Missionary Society dance in 1947. Everyone who matters tells them not to.
Two governments try to unmake a marriage
They marry anyway in 1948. Within weeks apartheid South Africa is on the phone to London. Attlee's government, terrified of losing South African gold and uranium, decides the simplest fix is to remove Seretse from his own throne, then from his own country. They exile him for six years and call it a report.
The comeback
Seretse and Ruth refuse to disappear. He renounces the chieftaincy, comes home as a private citizen, founds the Bechuanaland Democratic Party, and in 1966 becomes the first president of an independent Botswana — a country that will go on to be one of the most stable democracies on the continent.
Seretse Khama
Kgosi-in-waiting of the Bangwato, first President of Botswana (1966)
Chose love and country. Kept both.
Ruth Williams
Lloyd's of London clerk, First Lady of Botswana
Six years of exile could not move her.
Tshekedi Khama
Seretse's uncle and regent
Publicly opposed the marriage, privately never abandoned him.
Clement Attlee
British Prime Minister, 1945–1951
Chose South African gold over a marriage. Classified the paperwork for 30 years.
Daniel François Malan
Prime Minister of South Africa, 1948–1954
Put apartheid into law and picked up the phone to London.
Full biographies in the reading list below ↓
"The British government did not object to the marriage. They just built an entire policy around pretending it hadn't happened."
— Line
"I love my country. I love my wife. I choose both."
— Seretse Khama
- 00:00A dance in Nutford House
- 08:30Why South Africa cared so much
- 19:15The Harragin Report and the exile
- 33:00Six years of writing letters
- 42:10Coming home, building a country
- §01Susan Williams, Colour Bar (2006)
- §02Neil Parsons, Seretse Khama 1921–1980 (1995)
- §03UK National Archives, DO 35 series
We read the books so you can pretend you did at dinner.
Read the full transcript▾
LINE: Right. We are drinking gin and tonics tonight. London measure, which is to say, mostly gin.
SARAH: Because we are going to London. Autumn 1947. There is a dance at Nutford House, which is a hostel for African students, run by the London Missionary Society. And two people are about to meet who will, without exaggeration, redraw the political map of southern Africa.
LINE: One of them is a young law student from Bechuanaland. His name is Seretse Khama. He is also, by the way, the kgosi-in-waiting of the Bangwato. Which is to say, he is going home to be king.
SARAH: And the other is Ruth Williams. She is a clerk at Lloyd's of London. She loves jazz. She is quiet. She is very, very stubborn. Which is going to matter a great deal.
LINE: They dance. They talk. They start seeing each other. And every adult in both of their lives says: absolutely not.
SARAH: Because in 1947 a Black African prince and a white English clerk falling in love is not treated as a private matter. It is treated as a diplomatic incident.
LINE: And here is the thing that people in Britain always want to skip past. This is not just old-fashioned racism doing its thing in a vacuum. This is a very specific political problem. Because next door to Bechuanaland is South Africa. And in 1948, South Africa has just elected the National Party. Apartheid is not a rumour. It is now law.
SARAH: And the South African government is watching this romance and losing its mind.
LINE: Because if the future ruler of Bechuanaland — which South Africa still hopes to eventually swallow — is publicly married to a white woman, that is a bomb going off in the middle of apartheid ideology. So Pretoria picks up the phone. And in London, Clement Attlee's Labour government — the same government that gave us the NHS, let us keep that in mind — decides that the cheapest solution is to unmake the marriage.
SARAH: They can't unmake it. They're already married. September 1948. Kensington registry office. Two witnesses.
LINE: Correct. So plan B is to unmake Seretse. Take him off the throne. Get him out of the country. Then commission a report explaining why this was all very reasonable and had nothing to do with race.
SARAH: This is the Harragin Report. Which concluded, in beautiful civil-service English, that Seretse was 'not a fit and proper person' to rule his own people. And which the British government then classified for thirty years. Because they knew exactly what it looked like.
LINE: It looked like exactly what it was. A white government, in the middle of a decolonisation moment, quietly doing a favour for an apartheid regime.
SARAH: And then Seretse and Ruth do the one thing nobody planned for. They refuse to disappear.
[Full transcript continues in the episode. Pour another one.]
Transcripts are lightly edited for readability. If you spot a typo, tell us kindly.
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