Ruth Williams Khama

Ruth Williams Khama, Lady Khama (née Williams; 9 December 1923 – 22 May 2002) was the wife of Botswana's first president Sir Seretse Khama, the Paramount Chief of its Bamangwato tribe.

In June 1947, at a dance at Nutford House organised by the London Missionary Society, her sister introduced her to Prince Seretse Khama.

He was the son of the Kgosi (a Bamangwato title equivalent to "king", though the British government prefers "paramount chief"), Sekgoma II, of the Bamangwato people and was studying law at Inner Temple in London after a year at Balliol College, Oxford.

The couple were both fans of jazz music, particularly The Ink Spots, and quickly fell in love.

Seretse Khama was the first black man she had ever spoken to.

The couple married at Kensington Register Office on 29 September 1948.

In the 1948 South African elections, the Afrikaner nationalist National Party that had strong republican and anti-British tendencies was victorious, and the fear that Prime Minister Malan might declare South Africa a republic led successive British governments to seek to appease Malan, who made it very clear that he disapproved of the Khamas' marriage.

Malan banned both Khamas from South Africa.

A Cape Town newspaper called Ruth "a foolish ignorant girl."

The presence of the "White Queen" as South African newspapers called Ruth was seen as a threat to apartheid and several South African newspapers advocated invading Bechuanaland if the "White Queen" was permitted to stay.

Ruth's arrival in Bechuanaland in August 1949 coincided with the best rainy season in decades, which was taken as a good omen by the Bamangwato, who dubbed her the "Rain Queen".

Ruth took part in a Bamangwato ceremony where a large group of women circled around her, singing songs while carrying buckets of water or corn before kneeling down to offer her the water and corn while proclaiming "You are the mother of us all!"

Due to the adverse publicity, Ruth Khama disliked speaking to journalists, whom she shunned.

Many of the newspaper stories portrayed her and her husband in an unflattering light, which greatly hurt her; a particular bugbear of hers was to pick out the inaccuracies in newspaper stories such as the claim that her husband's grades at the Inner Temple declined after he started dating her.

In addition, she was upset about stories in the British and American press written by journalists who had never been to Bechuanaland that portrayed it as either a wet place covered by jungles as typical of central Africa or as a savanna typical of East Africa (Bechuanaland had a hot, dry climate and much of the protectorate was covered by the Kalahari desert).

One of the few journalists whom she did speak to was the American journalist Margaret Bourke-White, who was able to gain her trust and did a photo-essay on her for Life.

Bourke-White became a close friend of hers and did much to keep up her spirits.

Knowing that Ruth Khama was a great ailurophile, Bourke-White gave her the gift of two kittens, whom Seretse named Pride and Prejudice after his wife's favourite novel.

After receiving popular support in Bechuanaland, Seretse was called to London in March 1950 for discussions with British officials.

A 1952 report described Ruth as a "woman of strong character".

Their plans to marry caused controversy with elders in Bechuanaland and the government of South Africa, which had recently instituted the system of racial segregation known as apartheid.

Britain was developing an atomic bomb which was felt necessary to maintain Britain's claim to be a great power and it was felt crucial that the supplies of uranium come from within the Commonwealth; South Africa happened to be endowed with much uranium which could be mined cheaply via open pit mining out on the veld by black South African miners who were paid wages considerably lower than the white miners.

Uranium could also be obtained elsewhere in the Commonwealth such as from Canada, but the Canadian uranium was mined via deep shaft mining in the far north by well paid miners, making the Canadian uranium far more expensive than the South African uranium.

Thus for reasons of cost, the British government much preferred to buy South African uranium for its atomic bomb program.

The South African government made it very clear that its willingness to supply uranium for the British nuclear program was contingent upon stopping the marriage.

The British government intervened to stop the marriage.

Both Ruth and Seretse were Anglicans who wanted to be married within the Church of England, but neither could find a priest willing to marry them.

The Bishop of London, William Wand, said he would permit a church wedding only if the government agreed.

The marriage attracted much media attention as the Canadian journalist MacKenzie Porter wrote in 1952: "The Press treated their marriage as front-page news. Here, flouting all the dangers he knew to be implicit in [inter-racial marriage], was the scion of the ancient and illustrious House of Khama...And here, seeking to be an African queen, was an English working girl who had been reared to expect nothing more exotic than a semi-detached house in one of London’s great dormitories and a husband who every morning would don his bowler hat, seize his umbrella and catch a red double-decker bus to the city."

Daniel Malan, then the Prime Minister of South Africa, described their marriage as "nauseating".

Julius Nyerere, then a student teacher and later President of Tanzania, said it was "one of the great love stories of the world".

The couple returned to Bechuanaland, a British protectorate, where Seretse's uncle Tshekedi Khama was regent.

For the Bamangwato people, the wife of the king was regarded as the mother of the entire Bamangwato people, and for Prince Tshekedi it was simply inconceivable that a white woman could play this role.

Prince Tshekedi lobbied the British Colonial Office to either force Seretse to renounce his wife or renounce his claim to the throne.

She served as the inaugural First Lady of Botswana from 1966 to 1980.

Khama was born in Meadowcourt Road, Blackheath in South London, the daughter of George and Dorothy Williams.

Her father had served as a captain in the British Army in India, and later worked in the tea trade.

She had a sister, Muriel Williams-Sanderson, with whom she remained close.

She was educated at Eltham Hill Grammar School and then served as a WAAF ambulance driver at various airfields in the south of England during the Second World War.

After the war, she worked as a clerk for Cuthbert Heath, a firm of underwriters at Lloyd's of London.