Word: bechuanaland
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Born. To Chief Seretse Khama, 28, tribal ruler of the Bamangwato in the British protectorate of Bechuanaland, Africa, ordered by the British into a five-year exile for marrying a white woman in 1948, and his Queen, Ruth Khama, 26, former London stenographer: their first child, a girl; in Serowe, Bechuanaland. Name: Jacqueline. Weight...
...chance of prevailing. When handsome, black, Oxford-bred Seretse Khama, hereditary chief of the Bamangwato, decided to make blonde Ruth Williams, a London typist, his queen (TIME, July 11), he touched off a problem that reached far beyond the hearths of his 100,000 subjects in Britain's Bechuanaland Protectorate. Few Bamangwato objected to Ruth. After a brief tribal squabble between the pro-Seretse forces and those of his domineering uncle, Regent Tshekedi, the tribe, their enthusiasm spurred by an unprecedented rainfall which accompanied Ruth's arrival, had declared overwhelmingly for Seretse. Final approval, however, had to come...
Doublecrossed. Last autumn Britain's Commonwealth Office sent a commission to Bechuanaland to investigate. Last month it invited Seretse to talk things over. He left his pregnant wife in their brand-new stucco bungalow in Serowe and came to London. What would he think, Commonwealth Relations Minister Philip Noel-Baker asked the young chief, of abdicating and coming to live in England on a comfortable allowance? Seretse declined the offer. Then for three weeks, while Britain's politicians got through an election at home, he was left to cool his heels in London. Last week Seretse was called...
With South Africa's rabid racist Prime Minister Daniel Malan ready to seize on any excuse to step into Bechuanaland, which borders his country on the north, Britain's ministers seemed far more willing to heed his wishes than those of the Bamangwato. This week in Serowe, 35 Bamangwato elders refused to go to a special Kgotla meeting called by Britain's High Commissioner Sir Evelyn Baring to inform the Bamangwato of the government's decision. "We cannot," they said, "attend any tribal meeting in the absence of our true chief Seretse...
Chief-designate Seretse Khama, who had married Miss Williams against strenuous opposition from his family and the British authorities (TIME, July 11), cheerfully conducted his wife to her home, just being finished at Serowe, the mud-hut capital of Bechuanaland (pronounced Betcher Wanna Land). The home would be a three-room bungalow with a tin corrugated roof. Ruth's arrival caused considerable commotion among the tribe (local traders were doing a brisk business in gaily colored prints, since the tribeswomen wished to live and dress up to the occasion). Actually, it may be months before Seretse...