Ruth Williams
“A United Kingdom” which is a famous movie of Hollywood, tells an epic true story of the sweeping interracial love between the late President Seretse Khama and Ruth Williams, an English woman who would become Khama’s wife and eventually Botswana’s first lady, the director said during a press release in Gaborone, the capital city of Botswana.
“A United Kingdom” will be starred by Britain’s David Oyelowo and Rosamund Pike.
The film will be released from October 10 in Botswana for 4 weeks where 60 percent of the filming will be done.
The film will also be released in U.K for three weeks. It is set to be released in 2016 before Botswana’s 50th independence anniversary.
The director Asante describe that after addressing to press, even though there are so many interracial films made, this one is different because the story is about black and white people loving each other not hating each other, telling a couple’s love which overcame all kinds of obstacles, politics, cold war.
They harnessed their love with courage and left behind the legacy.
Seretse Khama, an heir to the chieftainship of the Bamangwato tribe in Botswana, met Ruth Williams in 1947 in London at the time he was studying there.
Ever since the marriage took off in 1948, Seretse Khama had hit headlines as a black man who married a white English woman during the time when the social and political climate was not supportive of interracial marriages, especially in the context of apartheid practice in South Africa.
Interracial marriages were banned under the apartheid system and South Africa was not happy with an interracial couple.
Britain acceded to South Africa’s call to dethrone Khama from chieftainship, and explained him an exilee to England from Bechuanaland in 1951.
After announced his chieftainship, Khama returned to Botswana as a private citizen together with his wife in 1956.
Khama founded the Bechuanaland Democratic Party (BDP) in 1962 whose main goal was to call for the reform leading to a non-racial independent republic and this won BDP overwhelming support.
BDP won the first elections and Khama became the first prime minister and made Botswana an independent state in 1966. After independence when Bechuanaland was re-named Botswana he became the first president of Botswana.
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