Customer Reviews

The Colour Bar: The Triumph of Seretse Kama and His Nation

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Susan Williams' The Colour Bar tells both a love story and a political history. When Seretse Khama, the hereditary "kgosi" or king of one of the Tswana tribes of the British Protectorate of Bechuanaland, married Ruth Williams, a British woman he met while in school in England, it set off a scramble among the leaders of apartheid South Africa and of Rhodesia as well as Britain, to exile and depose him. It would be untenable to have a mixed race couple living among and influencing the people between these very racially segregated and oppressive societies. The lengths to which the British government went to exile Seretse Khama and to hide its reasons for so doing, as well as the responses of the Khamas and of the people of what would become the Republic of Botswana, makes spell-binding reading. I intended to use this for my bus commute read, but once I started it, I couldn't put it down and devoted a weekend to finishing it up. Highly recommended for history buffs or people interested in getting a very different view of an African republic. This one is at least a partial cure for U.S. tunnel vision.

"The Colour Bar" is a good book to understand the prejudices and injustices of the British and white rule in Africa. This is also a story about love, perseverance, forgiveness and not let the evil triumph over the good. The marriage of Seretse and Ruth becomes a threat to the supremacist world of white people in these territories. However, Ruth and Seretse never gave up and their love and resistance led to the success of a nation, now called Botswana. The book is extraordinarily well documented, but this characteristic turns the story boring at times. I expected more about Ruth and Seretse and less about Politics. The final chapters left me hungry for more information about the couple's life in independent Botswana.

This is a good book, a quick and easy read, and an insightful story of African politics in the name of colonialism. This books should give anyone who reads it a real sense of hope and confidence about the people of Botswana.

With so many stories of Africa focusing on violence, sickness, poverty, this is a sweeping and epic love story about love of country that illustrates all that can be good about human nature: forgiveness, perseverance and freedom. Pula! Pula! Pula!

I would highly recommend this book. I would go so far as to say it should be required reading in schools. Children need to know how things were to appreciate the world today. Today's world is not perfect but at least things are better.

I was appalled at the attitude of the British government and its treatment of Seretse and Ruth Kharma.

Susan Williams did a splendid job of writing and a thanks must go to all the people who helped in the research. It was considerable.

I found the book so interesting I could hardly put it down. Only when the attitude of others was so poor did I take a break.

I would have liked more detail about the private lives of the Kharmas, more about the children etc though I realize the subject was the colour bar and more their public lives.

Today there is not a colour bar as such. Racism is more subtle. If only people could remember we are all God's children.

I would like to close with a quote from his, "I have a dream" speech by Martin Luther King Jr., "I have a dream that my four children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the colour of their skin but by the content of their character."

To all Amazon's readers. Look in to your hearts.