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Seretse admired Ruth's spirit. He also believed, reported Lawrenson, the District Commissioner, that ‘it might be an advantage as far as the women of the tribe are concerned for him to have an enlightened wife'.
²⁹
Bangwato society was strongly patriarchal and women were excluded from the kgotla; they also did most of the hard work necessary to keep their families alive, such as carrying water and ploughing the land. For the large number of women whose husbands were away working in South Africa, life was especially tough and many women felt they had suffered additional burdens under Tshekedi's regime. Women in the village of Mahalapye were especially angry at Tshekedi because he opposed prostitution and beer-brewing, which were some of the few ways in which they had been able to make a living.
³⁰

But many more women than men in Bechuanaland had received some kind of education. Boys spent much of their childhood at the family's cattle-post, which meant that they were unable to attend their village school – so that the number of girls at school far exceeded the number of boys. At one school in this period, there were sixty-six girls and only one boy.
³¹
Moreover, the Bangwato Royal Family often sent their daughters to South Africa to be educated, as well as their sons. Seretse's younger sister Naledi, who was his half-sister by his mother Tebogo and to whom he was devoted, was sent to Lovedale and then went on to train as a nurse in Durban.

There had been a long line of powerful women in the Royal Family. Three of Khama III's daughters – Baboni, Mmakgama and Milly – had challenged their brother Tshekedi's authority in the 1920s,
arguing that he was authoritarian and cruel. In a letter of complaint to the High Commissioner, they objected that he had revived ‘ridiculous native laws and customs, which as you know Khama had abolished'.
³²
Seretse's other half-sister, Oratile, the eldest daughter of the late Kgosi Sekgoma, joined in this protest. Twenty years older than Seretse and a widow, she lived in Francistown, her husband Simon Ratshosa having been banished there by Tshekedi many years earlier. She wrote a further letter to the Resident Magistrate in 1929, in which she argued that Tshekedi had none of the qualities which had distinguished Khama – and that the Government ought ‘to teach him to learn to think in the new ways of new things, to perform his duties as Kgosi'.
³³

Sekgoma II had shown an enlightened attitude towards his daughter Oratile: when he died, he had left cattle, small stock and money not only to Seretse, but to Oratile as well. She and her aunts argued in a letter to the high commissioner that ‘Khama's law was equal to both sexes, women had the same right as men. Estates were always proportionally divided to the deceased family, sons and daughters.'
³⁴
But when Oratile claimed her inheritance, Tshekedi withheld it from her – just as he had done in the case of her aunts. She wrote a letter of protest to the administration:

Tshekedi has confiscated every one of my cattle without saying a word to me. I am shocked that he has burnt down my houses when I have done him no wrong, and that he has gone further and confiscated my cattle that my father gave me.
³⁵

As Ruth waited for permission to travel to Africa in 1949, she was looking forward to meeting her sisters-in-law, Oratile and Naledi, for the first time. When the British High Commissioner, Sir Evelyn Baring, gave instructions that she might travel to Bechuanaland after 23 July 1949, she quickly bought a ticket for the BOAC flying-boat.
³⁶
This would take her to the Victoria Falls on the Zambezi River, between Southern and Northern Rhodesia. From there she would fly to Bechuanaland in a two-seater plane. John Keith had gently warned her not to fly to Johannesburg, where her notoriety as the white wife of Seretse Khama might lead to some unpleasant incidents. This was
good advice. John Redfern, a reporter working for the
Daily Express
, who stopped in Johannesburg on his way to Serowe, was astonished by the invective triggered by even a mention of Seretse's name:

I had flown into Palmiefontein, Johannesburg's main airport, from London, and had unwittingly raised a crop of scowls by asking how I could get on to Seretse Khama's country. ‘God, man!' whispered an airport official. ‘Don't mention that name here!'… Seretse was a menace. At the mention of his name jaws jutted, eyes glared, and hatred joined the company.
³⁷

But even going to the Victoria Falls was problematic, because the flying-boat usually landed on the Southern Rhodesian side. Sir Godfrey Huggins, the Prime Minister of Southern Rhodesia, knew that if Ruth were to disembark there, it would provoke an outcry from the whites of his country. He had been sent a letter from a particularly hostile man, insisting that she be forbidden from landing in Southern Rhodesia:

I submit that this is one of those occasions in which those who understand Africa should protect the Continent against silly women and politicians, who, in their ignorance, have a tendency to lower the prestige of the European races. I am confident that pucka Rhodesians will be glad to hear that our Government will prevent ‘Ruth' from using our soil to fulfil her desire.
³⁸

Huggins took this seriously. He decided to get in touch with Baring, who was a good friend – Baring had been the Governor of Southern Rhodesia from 1942 to 1944, when they had struck up a rapport. He asked Baring to make sure that Ruth would land on the other side of the Falls, in Northern Rhodesia, at a town called Livingstone. From there, he added, she should fly to Bechuanaland, to avoid having to drive through Southern Rhodesia. ‘It would help me (in the event of the lady coming by air)', he wrote to Baring, ‘if she stayed at Livingstone and flew direct from there to her palace in Bechuanaland. I think you know the background here well enough to make it unnecessary for me to elaborate.'
³⁹

‘The lady will arrive at the Falls by British Overseas Air Corporation flying boat on the 19th August,' wrote Sillery to the Provincial Commissioner in Livingstone, ‘and in order to save further publicity, and possible embarrassment, it has been decided to fly her from
Livingstone to Francistown, where Seretse will meet her. May I once more invoke your good offices?'
⁴⁰
The pilot was given instructions to fly along the edge of the Kalahari Desert, in order to keep as far away as possible from Southern Rhodesia.
⁴¹

Ruth left London on 15 August 1949. The press were still hanging around her flat, at all hours, but she managed to give them the slip. She and Muriel borrowed their father's car and went late at night to Adolphus Road. Here they parked the car at the end of the road and then collected Ruth's suitcases – in darkness, because they didn't dare to use a torch – and put them in the car, which they drove back to Lewisham. Next morning, Ruth went to Waterloo to catch a train for Southampton; she took an ordinary train, not a fast boat train, in case this attracted attention.
⁴²

With a reservation under the name of Mrs S. Jones, Ruth finally embarked on the BOAC flying-boat for Africa.
⁴³
All the crew knew who she was but kept her secret; not one of her forty fellow passengers discovered her identity. It was a far more leisurely way of travelling to Africa than an aeroplane. The flying-boat took four days to reach its final destination of Johannesburg and offered luxury travel: four-course meals and Pullman-style upholstery, with ample space to walk about and chat and enjoy refreshments. Ruth had expected the journey to be boring and tedious. But she loved it – ‘I could go on and on just taking off and landing on water, as one's vision becomes completely screened by the water,' she wrote to Betty. The first night stop was at Augusta in Sicily, the second at Luxor in Egypt, ‘where we looked over an old temple. It took 45 minutes, and was not worth missing, because the work was beautiful.' The next night stop was Kampala, in Uganda, from where they flew to the Victoria Falls. This took her breath away. The original name for the Victoria Falls was
Mosioathunya
– ‘the smoke that thunders'. The spray, flung so far into the air as the Zambezi plunges into the gorge, looks like smoke – and as the sheer mass of water pours over the top, it makes a deafening roar. The falls ‘are indescribable', Ruth told Betty in delight, ‘they are such a picture'.
⁴⁴

When Ruth landed at the Falls on 19 August, she was taken to Livingstone. Here she was met by a portly British official, in khaki
shorts and long socks. She looked slim and smart, in a dark coat and light scarf, with low heels. She was radiant with the anticipation of seeing her husband the following day.
⁴⁵

Three days after the June Kgotla in Serowe, the British High Commission in South Africa cabled London to confirm the decision of the Bangwato.
¹
All that remained was to install Seretse as Kgosi. But the next day, there was an intervention from an unexpected quarter – from Dr Daniel Malan, the South African Prime Minister, a stout Afrikaner with a bald head, whose eyes peered out through thick glasses. He was a Doctor of Divinity and a Minister in the Dutch Reformed Church, the dominant religion of Afrikaners and the Nationalist Party, which believed in the superiority of whites over blacks. Now, in response to Seretse Khama's marriage, Dr Malan told his Secretary for External Affairs, Douglas Forsyth, to send a top-secret telegram to Leif Egeland, the South African High Commissioner in London. Egeland was instructed to speak to the British Government and advise them to withhold recognition of Seretse's Chieftainship.
²
This issue – a local matter that should have been of no concern to anybody but the Bangwato – was now starting to assume international proportions.

As soon as Egeland had read this cable, he went to see Philip Noel-Baker, the Secretary of State for Commonwealth Relations, and asked him to refuse to recognize Seretse as Chief. The Union Government was certain, he added, that it was within the power of the United Kingdom to do this. Egeland dressed his request in terms of concern about the Bangwato and the risk of losing Tshekedi – a ‘most serious loss not only to Bechuanaland, but to Africans in general, for Tshekedi was almost the only African leader who had shown real vision and statesmanship'. He elaborated, too, on the problems ahead for Ruth. ‘Coming from an English home,' he argued, ‘she would find it
extremely difficult to settle down to the kind of accommodation and living conditions which Seretse could offer her.'
³
This comment betrayed Egeland's prejudice: for the Bangwato royal family lived in brick houses that were far more spacious and comfortable than the flat in which the Williams family lived in London.

Noel-Baker promised to consider the matter carefully. Then Egeland got up to go.

Egeland was not at all reassured by his talk with Noel-Baker, a man now in his sixties who was well known as an idealist. Though the Commonwealth Secretary was ‘understandably non-committal', he reported in an urgent telegram to Forsyth, ‘I did not, repeat not, get [the] impression that there was much prospect that recognition of Seretse's chieftainship would be withheld.' The best strategy, he believed, would be to concentrate on Sir Evelyn Baring, the British High Commissioner in South Africa. ‘I feel [the] United Kingdom Government will be largely guided by advice which will be received from Baring,' he urged, ‘to whom no doubt strong representations will have been made at your end.'
⁴

As Forsyth had predicted, Noel-Baker immediately got in touch with Baring. ‘You will no doubt,' he said, ‘be sending me shortly your recommendation on the whole question, and in particular as to confirmation of Seretse's succession.'
⁵
But Baring asked for a delay, because he was waiting for a report from Anthony Sillery, the Resident Commissioner. This report arrived on 5 July: Seretse's election by acclamation, said Sillery, was so overwhelming that there was ‘really little more to say', and the Kgotla had been ‘as representative as one could have hoped or as African meetings generally are'. In any case, he added, ‘The Batswana are fanatically attached to the principle of hereditary chieftainship.' He concluded his report with a formal recognition of Seretse as chief:

It only remains for me, in accordance with Section 3 of the Native Administration Proclamation… to recommend that Seretse Khama be recognised by you as Chief of the Bamangwato and that the Secretary of State's confirmation be sought.
⁶

In this first week of July 1949, Baring shared Sillery's assumption that Seretse should – and would – be installed as Kgosi. He had
misgivings about Seretse's marriage and, indeed, had said that he regarded the possibility of Seretse becoming Chief as the ‘worst development [that] might occur'.
⁷
But he did not question the decision of the June Kgotla. He had already met with Seretse in South Africa and told him that he expected his confirmation as Chief to come through in a few weeks. The High Commissioner, noted Sillery,

saw Seretse on Monday 4.7.49. HC is going to press for an early confirmation of Seretse's appointment by S/S [Commonwealth Secretary of State]. And a telegraphic reply. I should say that if all goes well we shall hear by the end of the month… When that decision is made we must proceed to the installation as soon as we decently can.
⁸

But at this point, Sir Percivale Liesching intervened in the affair. Liesching was the Permanent Under-Secretary to Noel-Baker and therefore the official head of the Commonwealth Relations Office. On 8 July, he sent Baring a carefully worded telegram. ‘While outcome of tribal discussion on the Seretse affair appears to be clear,' he argued, ‘the difficulties in our path are obvious.' These difficulties, he said, were the objections of South Africa and Southern Rhodesia. Then Liesching introduced the idea of a new strategy: he asked whether there was any interim measure, in accordance with tribal custom, which could be used to produce a ‘cooling off' period in the Seretse affair.
⁹