Word: bechuanaland
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Strapping Gordon Batho, Her Majesty's district commissioner for the Bamangwato tribe of Bechuanaland Protectorate, had some bad news for his black-skinned charges. To a crowded Kgotla (native parliament) squatting in the tribe's mud-hut capital of Serowe, he announced that the Great White Queen would never allow Seretse Khama, their Oxford-educated chief, to return to his people (TIME, April 7). According to the Queen's ministers, Seretse, by marrying blonde London Typist Ruth Williams, had been derelict in his public duty as chief: his marriage, like Edward VIII's, had compromised...
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...
...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...
...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...
...nomad pygmies of South-West Africa, who are fleet as deer, roam unchecked over the vast deserts bordering on Bechuanaland. They are not above hunting down domesticated cattle and playing tag with avenging white policemen. Game Warden Dr. P. J. Schoeman has long thought the energetic Bushmen ought to have their own private reserve. But first he needed to win his wards some popular support...