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The report of the Harragin Inquiry was ready in the first week of December. It gave the ‘right' answer – that Seretse should not be recognized as Chief. But it gave the ‘wrong' reason – the hostility of South Africa and Southern Rhodesia. The Commission had found overwhelmingly that Seretse was ‘a fit and proper person to be Chief' and accepted that the Kgotla of June 1949 had adequately expressed the views of the tribe:

Though a typical African in build and features, he has assimilated, to a great extent, the manners and thoughts of an Oxford undergraduate. He speaks English well and is obviously quick to appreciate, even if he may not agree with, the European point of view. Thus he was an easy witness to examine, he immediately understood the questions and answered them without hesitation, clearly and fairly.

‘We have no hesitation,' the report went on, in finding that

his prospects of success as a Chief are as bright as those of any native in Africa… He is admittedly the lawful and legitimate heir and, save for his unfortunate marriage, would be in our opinion, a fit and proper person to assume the chieftainship.

Seretse had won the battle for himself and his wife ‘not by force of arms, but by force of votes'.
¹

Baring was pleased with the result. He wrote to Huggins, telling him in confidence of Harragin's recommendation. If it was accepted by the Commonwealth Secretary, he said, then he would try to induce Seretse and Ruth ‘to go and take their medicine in England'. If they
cooperated, an announcement could be made in Serowe in early January. It would be necessary to make an announcement to the tribe and there might be some trouble – ‘They are a pretty feeble lot of natives but on this particular occasion it would, I think, be wiser to take no chances.' He therefore asked his old friend to lend sixty native ranks of the British South Africa Police, the police force of Southern Rhodesia.
²
Huggins was happy to help but said he would prefer ‘to send unarmed guards under six or seven good Europeans'.
³

Additional reinforcements were brought in from Basutoland and Swaziland.
⁴
Baring thought the police should have riot equipment. This was not available in the Protectorate, so Sillery arranged to borrow 100 steel helmets and three wireless sets from the Union Defence Force in South Africa. But there was a difficulty, reported a brigadier from the British army, because the UDF would not tolerate the idea of whites wearing hats that had been worn by black police:

Unfortunately as they no longer have any native soldiers in the UDF they are not prepared to hire tin hats for native police, and then issue them later to European troops. The tin hats, therefore, will have to be purchased outright at a cost of 9/10d each. I asked Clark whether we could purchase them if necessary and he agreed. As I understand that the native head is usually smaller than the European, I have asked for 45 small, 45 medium and 10 large.
⁵

It was announced in the Serowe Kgotla that the District Commissioner had been appointed Native Authority, to fill the vacuum created by the lack of a Kgosi. This was heard with angry resentment by the Bangwato and Fraenkel sent a letter of complaint to Nettelton:

We are instructed to protest very strongly against the step taken by the Government of appointing a DC as Native Authority without first consulting the people… Our clients resent the appointment of a Native Authority other than the rightful heir, Seretse Khama, and feel that they cannot cooperate with the DC in the administration of the Tribe.

He was further instructed, he went on, to point out

that the Tribe made its decision in June 1949. The Government's Representative at that Kgotla meeting accepted the decision and had Tshekedi not
applied for the appointment of the Commission, the Government would have immediately installed Seretse as chief.

The Inquiry was a farce, he added darkly, ‘unless use was being made by the Government of this Commission to placate Dr Malan or the Rhodesian Government'.
⁶

For Baring, the Harragin Report had been a good result, because he was only concerned about its conclusion. But when it arrived at the CRO, it was read with dismay. The mandarins in London, too, were gratified with the conclusion. But they were conscious that ‘public opinion, if the Report is published, will surely find the reasons for the finding rather inadequate':

The first is that, being prohibited from entry into the Union, he cannot visit the Resident Commissioner's headquarters at Mafikeng and therefore cannot discharge adequately the functions of a chief; secondly we should forfeit the ‘beaux yeux' of the Union and S. Rhodesia if we let him succeed; and thirdly, approval of his succession would cause disruption in the tribe.

These reasons seemed in fact to contradict the conclusion of the report – ‘it seems from the report that greater disruption will follow if he is
not
allowed to succeed… In fact, the Enquiry does find Seretse to be a very fit and proper person to be Chief if it were not for his wife…'
⁷

Baring was recalled to London for urgent consultations and as soon as he arrived on 16 December, he hurried to the CRO for a meeting with Noel-Baker, Liesching, the colonial secretary, and other senior officials. Creech Jones opened the discussion by complaining that the Harragin Commission ‘seemed to have arrived at the right conclusions by the use of wrong arguments'. Noel-Baker agreed. He objected, as well, to the finding that Seretse's prospects of success as a chief were ‘bright', since Seretse was breaking tribal custom by drinking alcohol. The idea that Seretse could not adequately perform his duties as Chief, because he was a prohibited immigrant in South Africa and could not go to Mafikeng, struck Creech Jones as absurd. Noel-Baker thought they should consider at once transferring the capital to somewhere inside the territory of the Protectorate. But Sir Evelyn quickly intervened. He had discussed this idea with General Smuts, he said, who strongly opposed it. He argued that repercussions in South Africa
would be highly unfavourable – it would be understood as a move to draw Bechuanaland and the High Commission Territories further away from the Union.
⁸

No solution to the dilemma of the Harragin Report could be found. Then, after much discussion, the meeting agreed on a strategy to be presented to Cabinet – that Seretse and Ruth should be summoned to London. This had been advocated by Noel-Baker at the very start of the crisis, but had been rejected in favour of the Judicial Inquiry. Now it was seen to have some advantage: for it would introduce some further delay and would also avoid the need for any kind of announcement while the Khamas were still in Serowe. It was agreed that a paper setting out this strategy should be presented to the Cabinet, for discussion.

It fell to Noel-Baker, as Commonwealth Secretary, to tell the Prime Minister about the report of the Judicial Inquiry. Harragin had come down against recognition, he wrote in a minute for Attlee, and this was probably the right conclusion. But the reasons given – although admittedly the real ones – were the very reasons which the British government were trying to conceal. The report would not, he thought, be an easy document to defend. He had recalled Baring to London and had been discussing the matter with him for some days. They had sent for the full evidence and in the meantime he did not think there was any need to trouble the Prime Minister or the Cabinet with the report. He warned that it was

an inflammable document and I am afraid that, if any hint of its contents got out before we are ready to publish it and announce our considered decision, a position which is already difficult enough would be made even more difficult.
⁹

Along with this minute for the Prime Minister, Noel-Baker sent a detailed assessment of the report, which emphasized the risk of giving any impression that the British Government's policy had been dictated by the Union of South Africa.
¹⁰

Attlee responded immediately. ‘I do not think we should be precipitate in this matter,' he ruled, saying that he would look at the report before deciding what to do about circulation.
¹¹
This was a most inopportune time to be presented with such a difficult crisis. Not only
was it just days before Christmas, but also – and far more importantly – a general election had been set for 23 February 1950, just two months away.

The details set out in Noel-Baker's memorandum to Attlee had been drawn from information provided by Baring, which he had gathered before leaving Africa. He had gone to the office of the Bantu Press in Johannesburg, where he had spoken to B. G. Paver, the general manager, to Selope Thema, the editor of the
Bantu World
, and to Dr Alfred Xuma, the president of the ANC (who would shortly be defeated in his efforts to be re-elected, because of his opposition to the mass campaign of passive resistance to apartheid that had been advocated by Walter Sisulu, Oliver Tambo, and Nelson Mandela).
¹²
Thema had repeated the views that he had offered at the Judicial Inquiry and Dr Xuma had agreed with them.
¹³
Baring had also gone to Swaziland to consult Sobhuza, the Paramount Chief. Sobhuza had said he was keenly alive to the great dangers from South Africa of recognizing Seretse – dangers which would affect Swaziland as well as Bechuanaland, because they were both High Commission Territories. But, added Sobhuza, he ‘disliked the idea of Government overriding the decision of a customary meeting in a matter usually decided by custom'.
¹⁴

To discover the views of white liberals, Baring had consulted Quintin Whyte, the Director of the South African Institute of Race Relations. Although the Institute opposed the South African Mixed Marriages Act on principle, said Whyte, the executive did not approve of mixed marriages; support among liberals, he added, would go to Tshekedi. But he also made the point – which did not appear in Baring's notes for the Commonwealth Secretary – that it was a mistake to assume that a concession to South Africa on the issue of Seretse would help to avoid the consolidation of the Nationalists. On the contrary, he said, the Union Government ‘will go on as it intends to go on, its nationalism growing on what it feeds on. In this case a concession from UK.'
¹⁵

On instructions from Baring in London, following the meeting of 16 December 1949, the British High Commission in South Africa started to make plans for getting Seretse and Ruth out of Bechuanaland.
Clark wrote to Sir Godfrey Huggins in Salisbury to warn him that the Khamas might need to drive through Southern Rhodesia on their way to catch the flying-boat in Livingstone. This made Huggins uneasy. ‘I am rather perturbed about Seretse and Ruth travelling by car,' he replied, ‘in case of an unpleasant incident should one of our lunatics hear of the journey.' But the train, he realized, would be even worse. If they
had
to go by car, then the ‘only thing would be for them to have a European male in the car to camouflage things. As you will gather, I do not like the idea.' As far as he was concerned, flying would be the safest option, although even that was risky – ‘What I fear is one of our Afrikaners hearing of the journey – they must refuel somewhere.'
¹⁶
Clark came up with a solution. ‘If our tiresome couple are summoned to London,' he said, ‘we will arrange for them to fly from Francistown to Livingstone direct. They will then have to traverse only a tiny bit of Southern Rhodesia to get to the flying boat landing stage on the south bank of the river.'
¹⁷

Attlee had still not seen the Harragin Report: the affair had been put on hold when Noel-Baker went to Ceylon for a conference of Commonwealth Foreign Ministers. But Gordon Walker, his Parliamentary Secretary, decided it was time for action. He had been having lengthy discussions with Sir Evelyn Baring, who was still in London, but who would be leaving for Africa in a week's time. On 21 January 1950, Gordon Walker sent a top-secret memorandum to the prime minister, with a copy of the Harragin Report. He explained that he had taken this initiative, even though the Commonwealth Secretary was abroad, because the Seretse problem had become pressing. Dr Malan, he said, was about to present another demand for the transfer of the High Commission Territories to South Africa, and Ruth's pregnancy was an additional worry:

Seretse's wife is due to give birth to a child in May or thereabouts. Seretse is unlikely to leave Serowe willingly without her; I am most reluctant to leave them both in Serowe for much longer. There may be some risk in inducing his wife to travel to London but I think we must face it, and the risk will be least if she can be brought to make the journey at once. An offer of the best medical attention in London in her confinement may prove a strong inducement.

The whole question must be put before Cabinet at an early date, argued Gordon Walker. This urgency was increased by the imminent general election, which meant that parliament would be dissolved on 3 February 1950.

Attlee agreed. ‘This matter must come to Cabinet,' he scrawled at the bottom of Gordon Walker's memorandum. Then he added a note about the Harragin Report:

The document is most disturbing. In effect we are invited to go contrary to the desires of the great majority of the Bamangwato tribe, solely because of the attitude of the governments of the Union of South Africa and Southern Rhodesia.

‘It is as if,' he observed unhappily, ‘we had been obliged to agree to Edward VIII's abdication so as not to annoy the Irish Free State and the United States of America.'
¹⁸

The matter came to Cabinet very shortly afterwards. Members were circulated beforehand with a copy of the Harragin Report, as well as a draft White Paper. The White Paper was based on the information that had been collected by Baring in Africa and had been given by Noel-Baker to Attlee. It was designed to show that Seretse's character was not, after all – despite the contrary finding in the Harragin Report – suitable for a man in the role of Chief. An earlier draft had been shown to senior officials at the Colonial Office, who read it with derision. They objected to the argument that ‘the weight of opinion among responsible Africans is against recognition', because the only evidence offered for this was a single telegram about West Africans.
¹⁹
It was also ludicrous to accuse Seretse of being a drinker: