Seretse Khama
The 1965 constitution led to the first general elections and to independence in September 1966. General elections serve to elect members of parliament, and the presidential candidate from the party that wins the most seats in the general election becomes the president. Seretse Khama, a leader in the independence movement and the legitimate claimant to traditional rule of the Bamangwato, became the country’s first president, and was re-elected twice. Sir Seretse Khama was the uncrowned sovereign of one of Botswana's traditional Kingdoms, that of the Bangwato.
He was chief in waiting of the Bamangwato tribe in the British protectorate of what was then Bechuanalandand, sent to London by his uncle Tshekedi Khama to study law. He was to return home and marry a woman from his tribe. Seretse was the Oxford-educated student prince from who in 1948, at 27, married Ruth Williams – a 24-year-old clerk with a Lloyd’s underwriter. Their union was fiercely opposed by her father and Seretse’s family. The proclamation of a black chief with a white wife, in a territory strategically placed between South Africa and the Rhodesias, caused outcry among white settler politicians. South Africa had come under the control of white Afrikaner nationalists in 1948. The South African prime minister denounced the union as ‘nauseating’. The British were told that there was no chance of the pro-British opposition party winning the next all-white election in South Africa, if Seretse Khama was allowed to be chief of the Bangwato.
The Labour government in Britain desperately needed South African gold and uranium. It agreed to bar Seretse Khama from chieftainship. For his defiance of racism, he had been barred from assuming his throne. There were three tribal meetings to discuss the crisis over a period of seven months.This injustice was symbolically rectified in 1979 when, bowing to popular pressure, his eldest son agreed to be formally installed as the Kgosi eKgolo (traditional ruler) of Bangwato. At the final meeting there were 9,000 present and only 40 objected to Seretse becoming king and his wife queen. At the time of the coronation it was understood that Seretse Khama Ian Khama would, for an indefinite period, remain engaged in national service, leaving the tribal affairs of the Bangwato in the capable hands of others.
Seretse gave up all rights to the throne. Instead, he held the country’s first democratic elections and was voted president of what became Botswana. The first task was to lay the groundwork for an export-oriented economy, based on beef processing and copper and diamond mining. President Khama then turned his personal attention to foreign policy, seeking out allies such as President Kaunda of Zambia to break Botswana free from its image of being a docile 'hostage' state. He also used his unique authority to develop local democracy and quash the powers of traditional chiefs, to develop citizen administrative capacity without over-bureaucratization, and to promote the rule of law in the operations of the state. Though Botswana came to be described as a 'paternalist democracy' under the dominance of one political party, it succeded in establishing itself as both prosperous and peaceful.
He went through cycles of ill-health and depression, exacerbated by diabetes. He underwent intensive medical treatment in 1968-69 and in 1976-77, when he was fitted with a heart pacemaker, but bounced back energetically in both cases with an innovative period lasting for years. His wife, Ruth Khama, remained the guardian of his health and homelife, but had relatively little influence on his politics. Seretse died in his wife’s arms aged 59 in 1980. Ruth died aged 78 in 2002.
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