HOW I BECAME THE OFFICIAL RABBIT KEEPER FOR THE WIFE OF THE PRESIDENT OF BOTSWANA

HOW I BECAME THE OFFICIAL RABBIT KEEPER

FOR THE WIFE OF THE PRESIDENT OF BOTSWANA

(updated Nov 2013 – 1446 words)

In 1976 I left Zambia after 9 years to become a  Lecturer at the newly created University of Botswana. The country had only become Independent 10 years earlier and its President was Sir Seretse Khama, the Paramount Chief of the Bamangwato.

I was a Geographer but switched to teaching Development Studies because it was more relevant in this new country trying to develop its people and its economy as rapidly as possible.

As part of my teaching I created a flourishing production unit in my large garden producing vegetables and fruit, eggs, rabbit meat and jam, mainly for our own use but also selling the surplus. I was able to use what I learned, in what was basically a small business, in my lectures. It helped me to emphasise my belief that a country could not truly develop until it was able to feed itself. If I, who had no training in horticulture or animal husbandry could do it, so could my students and other people!

In our spare time, my wife and I were members of a flourishing music society and also an amateur theatrical group called Capital Players. Our drama club building was a small hall which belonged to a wartime service organisation called the Memorable Order of Tin Hats. So the hall was called the MOTH Hall and was leased to Capital Players at a nominal rent. Our Committee organised monthly events such as play readings, short dramas, Christmas pantomimes, musicals and occasionally longer plays. We had a small bar in the club and many evenings were spent in rehearsals or making and painting scenery. My wife and I had never been involved in dramatics before, but there was no TV in the country, and so expatriates had to make their own entertainment.

The President of Botswana and his wife were Patrons of Capital Players. Whilst he had been a student at London University, Seretse Khama, the son of the Paramount Chief of the Bamangwato, the largest tribal group in Bechuanaland, had met and eventually married an English girl called Ruth Williams. Initially there was opposition from the elders of the Bamangwato and from the British Government even to the extent that the Bishop of London was pressured not to let them marry in any Anglican church. So they married  in a registry office instead. Seretse and his wife went to live in Bechuanaland but with opposition from his own people and from the Apartheid Government in South Africa, in 1950, the couple were sent into exile in London. Ten years later they were allowed to return to Bechuanaland and Seretse became chief of the Bamangwato and leader of the Bechuanaland Democratic Party. In 1966 he was elected the first President of independent Botswana and received a British Knighthood and Ruth became Lady Khama. They had four children, a daughter, a son and then twin sons and Ruth settled down to life in Botswana. She had driven an ambulance during the war and so was instrumental in setting up the  Botswana branch of the Red Cross in 1968 and as its President, she was involved in the day to day running of this for the rest of her life.

Whenever Capital Players put on a serious event Lady Kama and her husband were invited to the performance as Patrons. They were very amateurish productions  more full of enthusiasm and less of skill but probably they reminded Ruth of some of the Missionary Society events that they attended in London when Seretse was a student.  There was very little other entertainment so I think Ruth liked these evenings out in a relaxed European atmosphere. Certainly everyone admired what she had endured in her early married life and the role she played in the orderly governing of Botswana. Their attendance was all very low key and they arrived with one security guard and a lady companion and occupied the middle four seats in the back row of the raised tier of seats. At the end of the performance the audience stood respectfully as the chairman and producer had a few words with them as they departed to their waiting land rover.

After one performance, Lady Khama had a word with the chairman and he beckoned me over and introduced me to her. She said, “Mr May, I gather you are an expert  on rabbits”. I was rather surprised but said “Well Ma'am, I do keep rabbits but I am not really an expert, I have just learned a little from experience”. “Well I have a rabbit given to me as a gift by the President of xxx, and I think it is sick. None of the vets at the Ministry of Agriculture seems to know anything about Rabbits, could you possible have a look at it for me?” “Certainly Ma'am, When and where could I see the rabbit?”

I had started keeping rabbits as a means of using up the garden waste and producing manure and rabbit meat, which was delicious. I was the only person doing this on a commercial scale with 10 does, two bucks and up to 50 young fattening stock of various ages up to 12 weeks. So, yes, I knew a little about rabbits.

So I went out to their ranch at Mochudi to check “Flopsy” out. I took with me a small medical kit which I had found useful and reported to the soldier at the gate who showed me where the rabbit was kept. Lady Khama had said that the rabbit was not eating and it had lost weight and was lethargic and sat hunched up. My suspicions were confirmed once I looked into its mouth. A problem which domestic rabbits have is that if they have no access to wood or branches on which to wear down their teeth they grow and grow and curve round into their jaws. This means that they cannot eat, so they die of starvation. This rabbit was starving to death. The treatment is simple. I had a large pair of clippers which I used to clip the two top and two bottom teeth, a small file to file them smooth and the job was done in two minutes. At the same time I clipped its toe nails and sprayed inside  its ears to protect from mite infestation, and then looked around for a chunk of wood to place in the run.  The whole visit took about 20 minutes and I went back to Gaborone.

Back in my office, I rang Lady Khama at State House and explained that I had treated the rabbit and thought it would now be OK and that I would check in a month to see how it was getting on. A week later Lady Khama rang me to say that she had been out to the ranch and the rabbit was much improved, putting on weight, bright eyed and bushy tailed and wanting to play, it was a miracle! I did not tell her how easy it  had been to save it from the grave, but I said I would go and check it once a month or when passing which I did for the next two years till I returned to the UK in 1982.

So that's how I became the rabbit keeper to the President's wife. There was no payment or reward but I was glad to be of help and you never knew when it might be advantageous to be owed a favour by a powerful person! Occasionally, Lady Khama would cause some mystery when, upon leaving the MOTH Hall, she would beckon me over and say, “Flopsy is keeping very well, thank you Mr May!” and no one ever knew the real meaning behind that curious phrase. However, one of our members was something to do with “intelligence” at the British High Commission Security Section and I had visions of a file on me somewhere recording mysterious secret messages passing between me and a highly placed person in the Botswana Government!

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Sir Seretse Khama died in 1980, his eldest son succeeded to the Chieftainship of the Bamangwato and also became Commander in Chief of the Army. Recently he was elected Botswana's fourth President.

Lady Khama continued in her adopted country as President of the Botswana Red Cross, no doubt continuing to influence the affairs of the country quietly in the background. She died in 2002 and was buried beside her husband in the family graveyard overlooking his ancestral village of Serowe.

David G May