Seretse Khama

A deputation of six Bamangwato travelled to London to see the exiled Khama and Lord Salisbury, in an echo of the 1895 deputation of three Batswana kgosis to Queen Victoria, but met with no success.

However, when ordered by the British High Commission to find a suitable candidate to replace Khama, the Bamangwato rebuffed the order.

Sir Seretse Goitsebeng Maphiri Setlhare, GCB, KBE (1 July 1921 – 13 July 1980) was a Motswana politician who served as the first President of Botswana, a post he held from 1966 to his death in 1980.

Born into an influential royal family of what was then the British protectorate of Bechuanaland, he was educated abroad in the neighbouring country of South Africa and then in the United Kingdom.

While in Britain, he married an Englishwoman named Ruth Williams, a decision opposed by the white-minority government of South Africa and which led to a controversy resulting in the British government making him stay in England in exile so as to not sour U.K.-South African relations.

After the end of his exile, Khama led his country's independence movement and transition from British rule into an independent nation.

Seretse Setlhare was born in 1921 in Serowe, in what was then the Bechuanaland Protectorate.

He was the son of Queen Tebogo and Sekgoma Setlhare II, the paramount chief of the Bamangwato clan of the Tswana, and the grandson of Khama III, their king.

The name Seretse means "the clay that binds".

He was named this to celebrate the recent reconciliation of his father and grandfather; this reconciliation assured Seretse's own ascension to the throne with his aged father's death in 1925.

At the age of 4, Seretse became kgosi (king), with his uncle Tshekedi Setlhare as his regent and guardian.

After being educated in his youth at the Tiger Kloof Educational Institute in South Africa, Setlhare attended Fort Hare University College there, graduating with a general B.A. in 1944.

He travelled to the United Kingdom and studied for a year at Balliol College, Oxford.

He next joined the Inner Temple in London in 1946, to study to become a barrister.

In June 1947, Setlhare met Ruth Williams, an English clerk at Lloyd's of London.

After a year of courtship, they married.

The interracial marriage sparked a furore, alarming both the Union of South Africa, which had established legal apartheid (racial segregation), and the tribal elders of the Bamangwato, who were angered he had not chosen one of their women.

On being informed of the marriage, Setlhare 's uncle Tshekedi Setlhare demanded his return to Bechuanaland and the annulment of the marriage.

Setlhare did return to Serowe.

After a series of kgotlas (public meetings), he was reaffirmed by the elders in his role as the kgosi in 1949.

Ruth Williams Setlhare, travelling with her new husband, proved similarly popular.

Admitting defeat, Tshekedi Khama left the Bamangwato reserve for voluntary exile in the Bakwena reserve while Khama returned to London to complete his studies.

However, the international ramifications of his marriage were not so easily resolved.

Having banned interracial marriage in 1949 under the apartheid system, South Africa's government opposed having an interracial couple ruling just across their northern border.

The couple was banned from entering South Africa, including Mafeking, which then operated as the administrative capital of Bechuanaland.

Since Bechuanaland was then a British protectorate (not a colony), the South African government immediately tried to exert pressure on the UK to have Khama removed from his chieftainship.

The Attlee ministry, Britain's Labour-led government, then heavily in debt from World War II, could not afford to lose cheap South African gold and uranium supplies.

They also feared that South Africa might take more direct action against Bechuanaland, either economic sanctions or a military incursion.

London based Black civil rights leader Billy Strachan, who served as the Joint Secretary of the Seretse Khama Fighting Committee, wrote a letter defending Khama which was then published in the Manchester Guardian.

On 28 March 1950, Fenner Brockway, a British Labour MP, forced a debate in the House of Commons on the decision by the Labour government to banish Seretse Khama from his homeland, while withholding recognition of him as the Chief of the Bamangwato people, because he had married Ruth Williams.

The British government conducted a judicial enquiry into Khama's fitness for the chieftainship.

The investigation did not disapprove of interracial marriage as such and reported that he was eminently fit to rule the Bamangwato, "but for his unfortunate marriage", which prevented good relations with neighbouring apartheid regimes.

The government ordered that the report be suppressed (it would remain so for thirty years) and exiled Khama and his wife from Bechuanaland in 1951.

The British government's decision concerning Khama immediately proved controversial, both in Britain and Bechuanaland.

Several British newspapers made calls for the resignation of Lord Salisbury, the minister responsible for the decision

He founded the Botswana Democratic Party in 1962 and became Prime Minister in 1965.

In 1966, Botswana gained independence and Khama was elected as its first president.

During his presidency, the country underwent rapid economic and social progress.

Khama served as President until his death in 1980, and was succeeded in office by Quett Masire.

His son, Ian Khama, served as Botswana's fourth president from 2008 to 2018.