238: A United Kingdom with Jens Heycke

00:02:10:18 – 00:02:19:13
Dan LeFebvre
Before we get into some of the details of the movie, if you were to give a United Kingdom a letter grade for historical accuracy, what would it get?

00:02:20:15 – 00:02:47:08
Jens Heycke
It would get a B+, you know, on the whole it’s very accurate. There are there are some kind of annoying anachronisms at all and a number of details they got wrong. But I defer to the family itself and the whole family when it came out. They were actually very pleased with the movie. The only real criticism they had, they said, you know, you was much more serious in real life.

00:02:47:08 – 00:02:56:09
Jens Heycke
He wasn’t nearly that emotional is a much more stoic character, which is kind of curious because he seemed pretty stoic and aloof and actually.

00:02:57:13 – 00:03:18:08
Dan LeFebvre
Yeah, yeah, that’s fair. I mean, I guess the movie does focus a lot more on the the romantic side kind of that that aspect of it and the the stoic royalty side of it definitely plays a part. But maybe perhaps they played up the the drama side a little bit more for the movie, which again is normal. It’s a movie.

00:03:19:04 – 00:03:46:11
Jens Heycke
Yeah. And, you know, there were a couple of little things that jumped out at me. For example, Seretse and Ruth, when ruthless down the road in Botswana where fish oil land, and he was up in the United Kingdom, They were talking on the phone and, you know, there was no phone cable between England and Southern Africa until 1968, 18 years after that was supposed to take place.

00:03:46:24 – 00:03:54:18
Jens Heycke
Oh. But, you know, it was mostly smaller details like that on on the whole that really, you know, true to reality.

00:03:54:25 – 00:04:16:16
Dan LeFebvre
Well, if we go to the movie and the way the movie starts, it starts in 1947 with cirrhotic Khama, and he’s about to return to his homeland of Beichuan, Thailand, as you mentioned. He’d been studying in law in London while his uncle Shakti was the regent in Beichuan, Thailand, until society was ready to rule. And now, according to the movie, that time has come.

00:04:16:22 – 00:04:36:22
Dan LeFebvre
We also learned early in the movie that when threats his grandfather was king, he asked for Queen Victoria’s protection from the racialist South Africa. So now, the way the movie kind of establishes everything, it sets up the timeline of the movie. In the beginning, the timeline is a protectorate of Britain and threats is coming home. How old is the movie?

00:04:36:22 – 00:04:40:18
Dan LeFebvre
Do setting up the situation in 1947 for Thailand?

00:04:41:23 – 00:05:08:00
Jens Heycke
Well, it got a little bit of that wrong because of to too, to make Botswana land a protectorate. And the movie threats he attributed not to racial of South Africa, although that was an anachronism because the union of South Africa didn’t exist until 1910 and Botswana land protector protectorates down the summit meeting 85. So long time before South Africa per se existed.

00:05:08:23 – 00:05:36:23
Jens Heycke
What did happen is there were Boer trekkers, all Afrikaners, who were coming up from the Nepal strongholds down, basically infiltrate infiltrating Botswana land and taking over taking over the land. So. So that was really the initial challenge of life protectorate status. But what really wasn’t motivated about Anzacs by Canada? Third, who was Rex? His grandfather. What motivated up those?

00:05:36:25 – 00:06:02:20
Jens Heycke
It was that on Cecil Rhodes, whites in the Onyx books weren’t allowed down there. They had to make case against doing that. So Kamala Theron, along with several other tribal leaders, went took a long trip to England. They spent several months there, visited Queen Victoria, and persuaded her and British government, you know, to stop protectorate status and stop Cecil Rhodes.

00:06:03:06 – 00:06:12:08
Jens Heycke
So, you know, the short answer is it wasn’t a South African racialism, actually, it was Rhodesian racialism not going to happen.

00:06:12:18 – 00:06:23:14
Dan LeFebvre
So then would that be why? I think there was a mention in the movie that certainly it was studying law there in London. Would that be why he was studying law as as a way of trying to help his his country in that?

00:06:24:11 – 00:06:45:17
Jens Heycke
Exactly. So his uncle determined I think he literally said if if we’re going to protect ourselves against the white man, we need we need to know his laws and spirits. He was an assiduous do very, you know, clearly a very, very sharp guy and did quite well out of it.

00:06:46:08 – 00:07:07:14
Dan LeFebvre
If we go back into the movies timeline before starts, he returns to Mitch Wineland. He does meet Ruth Williams. It’s at a missionary society dance that we see there. They catch each other’s attention right away, kind of seeing each other from across the room. And then the movie doesn’t really explain how much time is passing, but we see a montage of dancing, chatting, playing pool, spending time with each other.

00:07:07:14 – 00:07:25:19
Dan LeFebvre
This romance is obviously growing. And then we see there’s a scene where Seretse, he tells Ruth that it’s time he has to go back home, but he can’t leave his heart in London. So he gets down on one knee and proposes to her and she says Yes. How well does the movie do showing House or Betsy and Ruth met and fell in love.

00:07:26:19 – 00:07:51:00
Jens Heycke
You know, I feel like it now, Cregan showed there. The timeline felt a little compressed their courtship from the time they met to the very last a full year. The actual proposal, they they got a little off though they showed it occurring on the on the South bank of Thames River and in fact they occurred at his residence hall, which is sort of like Marble Arch, the place.

00:07:51:00 – 00:07:56:00
Jens Heycke
I’ve actually walked by several times and I can tell you it’s not as romantic, glamorous, and.

00:07:56:07 – 00:07:58:03
Dan LeFebvre
It doesn’t make for a good movie scene, apparently.

00:07:59:20 – 00:08:25:03
Jens Heycke
So, you know, on the whole, it was accurate or I wish they had shown, which would have been fun. It was a stretch. He was tremendous athlete. They kind of they they can be they played rugby an orchestra. He was a boxer. He was, however, a terrible ice skater and were. Whereas Ruth was quite a good one. And then they had a couple of dates where they did ice skating, and after that they did the three more.

00:08:26:17 – 00:08:55:09
Dan LeFebvre
Where they could added some humor into the movie, showing that in that contrast, there. Well, according to the movie, there were a lot of different reactions from people about this upcoming marriage between Sweaty and Ruth. And at least in the movie, none of them really seem to be very approving of it. Ruth’s father practically disowns her for marrying a black man while Seretse, his uncle, refuses to allow him to become king in Botswana land as long as he’s married to a white woman.

00:08:55:21 – 00:09:18:26
Dan LeFebvre
And then there’s Sir Alistair Canning, who’s the British government’s representative in South Africa. According to the movie. And he immediately tells them, being the couple threatening Ruth, that the neighboring countries in Africa have demanded that the marriage not take place. Despite this, according to the movie, the two end up getting married in what looks like a pretty small ceremony, maybe a dozen people there or so.

00:09:19:01 – 00:09:26:29
Dan LeFebvre
Not a lot of people in the ceremony in the movie. Was the movie correct to show kind of these initial reactions to the marriage between starting Ruth?

00:09:28:00 – 00:09:54:03
Jens Heycke
Yeah, it was dead on. In fact, there were there were a few things they didn’t show. It is absolutely correct that Ruth’s father said that if they got married, she would no longer be welcome in their house. And he followed through with that. Yes, he actually did that. What they didn’t show is that who was at Lloyd’s, who was actually a good friend of hers, was so close to marriage that they’re basically fire.

00:09:54:15 – 00:10:20:21
Jens Heycke
He told her she could transfer to New York and lose her job, which was equivalent to firing her at the time. So on the whole, that that portrayal was absolutely dead on the the British eye. I should qualify one thing, but Ellis electric piano character, by the way, didn’t exist. Oh, okay. Let’s talk about your character. The closest, of course, finding real life.

00:10:20:21 – 00:10:49:13
Jens Heycke
Alison was a figure by the name of Yuval and Barry, if you think of pairings by the same family. So he was very aristocratic and he was actually based in South Africa. He was a high commissioner in South Africa, and he was very much opposed to the overall British public was they found the whole thing really pretty a pretty controversial and outrageous person to deal with it at the time.

00:10:49:26 – 00:11:25:24
Jens Heycke
Why? Well, you have to remember, in England, I can say that at that point in time, they constitute less than know, four or 500, somewhat of a percent of the population. So very, very few black people in the country and the country, I would guess, on the whole was was very much opposed to interracial marriage. We don’t have polls for the UK, but I know this in the United States, 1989, 94% of the American public both start saying well to interracial marriage.

00:11:26:16 – 00:11:54:06
Jens Heycke
To give you an idea of what a novelty it was in England took a time while this controversy was raging. And this was the most controversial marriage of this century really ever, even beyond the Duke and Duchess of Windsor. Like were the papers actually ran. Article by biologist discussing whether or not it’s possible for a mixed race couple to have children.

00:11:55:04 – 00:12:03:01
Jens Heycke
If you can imagine that. So apparently, you know, British public, this was such an unusual occurrence that they had to be educated on it.

00:12:03:23 – 00:12:18:12
Dan LeFebvre
They had to have known that there was going to be some some controversy around it just being in that time period. Was it? Were they kind of blindsided by just how controversial it was and all these things that came out about it?

00:12:18:13 – 00:12:40:25
Jens Heycke
I mean, they were they definitely understood that when you’re from birth, knew from from the beginning that the father would have a problem. And she actually sort of had the relationship wrong. Know, her mother figured it out. Her mother had lunch with her and Susie prior to her job, like the father. So they knew upfront that that would be a problem.

00:12:41:09 – 00:13:06:09
Jens Heycke
They they were caught off guard by the proposition of London missionaries society and how involved the British government got and so on. You mentioned they had a small ceremony. What they didn’t showing movie of some couples actually going to have a wedding, you know, a local church in an Anglican church. But the missionary society basically plotted against that.

00:13:06:09 – 00:13:29:26
Jens Heycke
They they positioned these goons at the back of the church to to protest when that moment in the ceremony came up. As it turned out, they actually persuaded them that or not to perform ceremony and beyond that. But then they persuaded the Bishop of London not to allow any of those people before she, which is why they ended up killing married them in a civil procedure issue.

00:13:30:11 – 00:13:38:11
Dan LeFebvre
Wow. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. They don’t I mean, they show some controversy, of course, but it sounds like it was even even more than that. We see in the.

00:13:38:16 – 00:14:04:23
Jens Heycke
Movie on the African art of security, who was really, you know, a pretty good character in the end. He was so opposed to interracial relationships that when he was acting as regent a few years earlier, he had a white male fly because that man was consorting with black women in his tribal area. And that became a huge controversy.

00:14:06:09 – 00:14:16:11
Jens Heycke
British government briefly removed him from his position because he had done that. So he was he wasn’t the instigator of a lot of the opposition America with on.

00:14:16:16 – 00:14:37:05
Dan LeFebvre
You mentioned the British government and their opposition there. And that leads right into my next question that I had about it, because in the movie after they’re married, we see starting and Ruth get married they travel back to want to land. And when they get there again, the now we know the fictional character of Alistair Canning. And then there’s another man that enters the picture here, Rufus Lancaster.

00:14:37:05 – 00:15:02:25
Dan LeFebvre
He’s the district commander. According to the movie, he says that it is Seretse, his uncle, that’s refusing to accept Ruth as queen. And there’s a line of dialog in there that sounds basically like it’s a threat, that if he doesn’t like when Rufus says, If Seretse, he doesn’t give up his claim to Chieftain ship and Fawcett is forcing his tribe to take sides between himself.

00:15:03:02 – 00:15:27:18
Dan LeFebvre
So that’s the end. His uncle, then that’s going to make the country ungovernable. And then Britain might not be able to prevent South Africa from announcing Batswana land, which is where, as I was listening to that and seeing that in the movie, it was like, Oh, well, this is this is a threat without come out and saying it’s a threat, like, oh, if you’re going to force the country to take sides, then we might not protect you anymore.

00:15:27:18 – 00:15:37:05
Dan LeFebvre
And as a protectorate, well, you’re not going to get our protection. Was there really that sort of imposition and pressure from the British government on the marriage?

00:15:37:27 – 00:16:00:22
Jens Heycke
Right. Yeah, there absolutely There was that pressure, but they got the timeline a little bit mixed up. So what really happened is, Seretse, he went back to school, allowed by himself. You didn’t bring Ruth with, you know, at the time because he thought it would be too inflammatory. So he went well, he himself participated in that court. Well, which they which they showed.

00:16:01:09 – 00:16:24:25
Jens Heycke
And to persuade the tribe that it was okay for, you know, for them to accept his wife and for them to accept a mixed race as a whole was to rule the country. So that happened first. And the British, British officials or initially didn’t have a problem with that. They’d kind of shrug her shoulders and said, oh, the whole lot said it was okay, Oh, it’s okay.

00:16:25:01 – 00:16:48:01
Jens Heycke
And then they started to think about the implications of of relation with South Africa. And then they started going out, as it turns out, that that character, Rufus Lancaster, who also didn’t exist, the guy on the ground there was a guy by the name of sorry, and he was actually pretty bad, actually. Qazi He was a local. The character, though, show no movie at all.

00:16:49:04 – 00:17:11:27
Dan LeFebvre
When we do see the Newlyweds arrive in Botswana and right away we see some racial segregation. There’s a whites only sign at the hotel when as soon as they arrive there. And we also see again, I’m assuming, Alister Canning’s wife, that in the movie Lily is also fictional since he was fictional, but she offers as she asks Ruth if she wants something to drink.

00:17:11:27 – 00:17:25:23
Dan LeFebvre
And Ruth says something like a love of gin and lime. And then she goes to threaten and says, Well, I’ll give you lemonade because you know, there’s a prohibition of alcohol for blacks again in the trial land. Can you fill in some more of the historical context around the racial segregation?

00:17:26:14 – 00:17:55:12
Jens Heycke
Yeah, sir, you know, that was a very accurate portrayal. There was what they call a colored bar there and also in other Irish protectorates. In fact, the books that this movie was based on is called The Color or so. It was the case that the blacks were banned altogether. Some of the white establishments, other ones, they were allowed, but they could only enter through the back door or they could get things, but they had to take them out.

00:17:55:13 – 00:18:24:00
Jens Heycke
They had to either consume them outside would go elsewhere so that or it was very accurate. The book about the alcohol needs some qualification that was not imposed by the British government or in the white establishments that came from trauma. The third, you know, threats, his grandfather, who was absolutely opposed to alcohol and so spirits his uncle security followed up on that.

00:18:24:09 – 00:18:36:24
Jens Heycke
He maintained top down with alcohol. He just thought it was a bad things about local people. So that was the one thing that actually didn’t come from the British, that came from the tribal administration itself.

00:18:37:09 – 00:18:54:14
Dan LeFebvre
Okay. Okay. What about there was a when we see that, I think threats, threat, remember the exact line of dialog. But he mentioned something about how well as the king he has some exceptions so he could go in to the the whites only area in the in the hotel there. Was there some exception there for him.

00:18:55:08 – 00:19:23:05
Jens Heycke
Yeah. So that was exactly correct. They didn’t really explain the reasons for it. Security as regent and its should have the power to remove those traitors and the owners of those establishments from one World War Two territory. So those people have to be deferential to to the security threats because they’re, you know, they hold power and they can they could.

00:19:23:05 – 00:19:30:20
Jens Heycke
And I think in one or two cases, they didn’t kick people out. So they wanted you know, they wanted to keep their stores there. So they have to be nice. Yeah.

00:19:31:17 – 00:19:48:26
Dan LeFebvre
Okay. Okay. Well, that puts another perspective on something else that we see in the movie, too, with when Ruth first arrives, there’s a scene where she goes into a shop, she goes shopping for the first time. The store owner, I’m assuming the store owner, the lady behind the desk, she’s a white woman and she does not take kindly to Ruth being there.

00:19:49:11 – 00:20:11:03
Dan LeFebvre
It’s not until Seretse, his sister Naledi, comes in and kind of tides things over over between them. But it sounds I mean, that puts a different perspective on it because I would think, well, if the store owner knows that, okay, this is his wife and he has power, I might want to I might want to treat her a little nicer than we see happening in the movie.

00:20:12:02 – 00:20:41:28
Jens Heycke
Is the fact that she was treated Savoy by a by probably the majority of the white traders and store owners in the area for whatever reason. I guess somehow they they were that worried that she would tell her husband that he would there would be record collections for them because they, on the whole, did treat her appreciably like they really only had a handful of white friends one night when they first got there.

00:20:42:10 – 00:21:02:11
Jens Heycke
And in fact, on silhouettes, he made some wry comments at one point about how how much more cosmopolitan and sophisticated is tribal people of South Africa or Rashwan allowed or serves of. They simply use white people or so on.

00:21:02:11 – 00:21:26:03
Dan LeFebvre
Except that if we go back to the movie after we see Seretse refusing to give up his claim to the Chieftain ship and then his uncle leaves and he’s going off to start a new settlement somewhere else. And Seretse, he then is told, I think it was Canning that mentioned to him that he needs to go to London so they can talk to him about the matter of his teeth and ship face to face.

00:21:26:03 – 00:21:44:27
Dan LeFebvre
They say it’ll happen faster if we, you know, we talk about this face to face. And I thought it was interesting. This is a little side note. It was canning that mentioned that. But then when he gets to London, it’s also canning that he’s talking to you like it’s like just like I have to go to London to talk to the same person that was Dominic at Island.

00:21:46:01 – 00:22:05:20
Jens Heycke
Well, you know, that really underscores the fact that the Canning was positive to different people. So he was a composer that Barry, who was located in Pretoria, based in southern Africa and Commonwealth secretary, who was who was located on one.

00:22:05:20 – 00:22:09:08
Dan LeFebvre
But okay. So it wasn’t the same person traveling back and forth.

00:22:09:29 – 00:22:15:06
Jens Heycke
Yeah. So, so it actually was two different areas. So he went up to meet the colony was very.

00:22:16:02 – 00:22:37:18
Dan LeFebvre
I thought there had to be something there because I was like, Wait, why? I mean, you just talk to him down here, like instead of in his office in London. It doesn’t make much sense when he gets there. When he gets there, he thinks that he has Ruth stay behind because he thinks if he goes to London, then Ruth is they’re not going to let Ruth go back to Africa with him after she’s in London.

00:22:37:24 – 00:22:50:08
Dan LeFebvre
So he goes by himself. Ruth stays behind in between to land, but then when he gets there, so he’s kind of thrown off guard. When he’s told that he can’t return home, they’re exiling him from one island for five years. Did that happen?

00:22:50:28 – 00:23:15:27
Jens Heycke
Yeah. So that one was completely accurate, accurately portrayed or right down to the fact the societal rules and the longer war. Two people perceive that I think oh, pretty sure the British government was up to some trickery. And that is in fact why Ruth stayed. I think where they calculated as they could probably Zaretsky would be allowed to return and I think they made a mistake there.

00:23:16:15 – 00:23:48:26
Jens Heycke
No, the person that was coming, the first Commonwealth secretary, and they dealt with a fine was was really kind of disconsolate over the fact that he had to perform this, you know, this subterfuge, this, this trickery. And you know, he wrote some comments at the time that he really hated his role on one. It did happen. Shirazi held a press conference, which, by the way, you can actually see on YouTube.

00:23:48:26 – 00:24:26:21
Jens Heycke
It’s kind of interesting one where he talked about how Trek and it was there was a lot of outrage in the public and I’m not sure how. So this because it just ended with this the sense of fair play the British people had. And a few days later, Winston Churchill, who was opposition leader, famously muttered and all about, you said all version of a disreputable or, you know, he was really he was ticked off out and along with the Portugal legal because they just felt it violated the sense of, you know, British fair play violated sense of irony that they held.

00:24:27:18 – 00:24:47:10
Dan LeFebvre
Out your love, your Churchill voice there. That was great. You’re I did want to ask about Churchill, though, because he is mentioned in the movie. And there’s some a point where we hear some radio reports. We don’t hear Churchill himself, but we hear some radio reports saying that Churchill is talking about seriously being able to go home to his wife.

00:24:47:13 – 00:24:59:12
Dan LeFebvre
But then there’s an election. And after the election, Churchill wins, and then he turns around and says, no, sir, you’re not banned for five years. You’re banned for life. Did he really change his mind like that?

00:25:00:04 – 00:25:33:27
Jens Heycke
Yeah. So whether or not he changed his mind, we do know that the administration, you know, took a different policy and what Churchill was talking about prior to that so that that’s absolutely correct. They cannot change directions. And we didn’t really get the back story for that. We can actually only speculate about it. But what we do know is that there were only a handful of ministers and allied governments who were aware of negotiations between between Britain and South Africa over the radio.

00:25:34:00 – 00:26:12:10
Jens Heycke
Britain really wanted this radio. And so there were there’s all kinds of stuff going back and forth, but it was all a hill for ministers who knew about this and the strategic importance of not ticking off South Africa. So it’s quite likely that Churchill and his ministers weren’t aware of any of that until they actually took the role in government and then they became aware and and principals kind of went out the window and they said, you know, we have to we have to follow principles, real realpolitik, and then come to appease South Africa.

00:26:12:10 – 00:26:32:03
Dan LeFebvre
Of course, throwing the name Churchill out there, being a well known name. But it also gave me the impression between that and kind of things we talked about up until now with just the the the British public and stuff. Was that even after they were in Botswana land, it was still a big deal to the British government and kind of a maybe even a big deal to the to the British public as well.

00:26:32:03 – 00:26:50:00
Dan LeFebvre
You know, that they’re having all these radio reports. And throughout the movie, there are times where we see like, you know, newspaper headlines talking about threats and Ruth and, you know, the situation going on there. Did they stay in the news like that? Was it a a bigger thing even after they left London and went back?

00:26:50:00 – 00:27:14:04
Jens Heycke
Yes, it absolutely was down. That began as a big deal. In fact, when Ruth as to Ruth came down to this one alone or all down, she actually went under a secret identity. She wrote she was Mrs. Jones because she would be trying to hide from the press and they had the mistaken notion that somehow they would escape the press when they were down there.

00:27:14:04 – 00:27:45:28
Jens Heycke
In fact, when they got there, they were chased all over the place. You know, the Herald’s full of journalists everywhere from Australia to United States. One journalist, UVA, wrote a book claimed to for them. Oh, wow. You know, it was just a circus. There was one crazy incident where they were staying at a friend’s house in Lockerbie and they used journalists with her photographers, desperately wanted to get a photo of the black male and the white woman in bed together.

00:27:45:28 – 00:28:00:11
Jens Heycke
So they were joking around the windows and they, unfortunately for them, got the wrong window. And the key is to face with a shotgun held by by the son of the couple that was hosting night.

00:28:00:24 – 00:28:08:24
Dan LeFebvre
I guess there’s no record for trying to invade on privacy there. I mean, old school paparazzi, it sounds like.

00:28:08:27 – 00:28:09:07
Jens Heycke
Yeah.

00:28:09:27 – 00:28:33:00
Dan LeFebvre
You touched on something there with the uranium and we do see that mentioned in the movie. There’s a report that actually mentioned throughout the movie that the chief justice of the High Commission territory is the title of Sir Walter Harrigan, according to the movie and the Harrigan report is something that early on in the movie, the character of Canning uses as an excuse.

00:28:33:00 – 00:28:50:04
Dan LeFebvre
It says that was threats. He is not fit to rule, and that’s why the British government exiles him, according to the movie and then the beginning of the movie. And then as the movie kind of nears its end, Serenity actually manages to get his hands on a copy of the report and he finds out that that’s not what the report says at all.

00:28:50:10 – 00:29:16:15
Dan LeFebvre
Harrigan actually said that threat threats, he is fit to rule. But he and Ruth are not acceptable to South Africa. And then it starts to bring in South Africa, provides uranium, gold, some protection from Stalin’s advance in Africa. All these things seem to imply that the British government is justifying Prime Minister Mullins Apartheid in South Africa, even allowing it to affect the Red Sea.

00:29:16:15 – 00:29:35:21
Dan LeFebvre
And Ruth, because I think there was a line in the movie from one of the Parliament members like without the gold reserves from South Africa, how is the British currency going to be sustained? How well did the movie do showing this power? Was it really, really that much power that South Africa was holding over Britain’s influence?

00:29:35:21 – 00:30:10:28
Jens Heycke
Yeah, you know, it was it was pretty much dead on there. There were multiple things. The previous governments of South Africa, the previous Prime Minster, John Smuts, had left 90 million ounces of gold to go to Britain and Britain just, you know, it was in shambles after World War Two. I didn’t have the wherewithal to bail out onto that uranium, which was a huge issue for South Africa or I’m sure for Great Britain, because they desperately wanted to have a nuclear program.

00:30:11:08 – 00:30:33:01
Jens Heycke
And the United States kind of was helping a cop who they weren’t. One thing very helpful and the sort of leverage that Great Britain had, all the leverage they had was their walk on the South African rail. So so they really desperately felt like they needed that. And then to to talk all of that off the horse of their shoe.

00:30:33:01 – 00:30:59:03
Jens Heycke
But the British government put their into water on marriage improvements at sea. It would sowing rage. The South African white South African public and the far right extremists in South Africa that they would just move out and invade Victoire Land and al-Aksa and the British government really couldn’t do anything about it. Again, it’s it’s right about the report.

00:30:59:03 – 00:31:09:24
Jens Heycke
See, the ministers who who commissioned the report made the mistake. Then they basically enlisted an honest guy to do it.

00:31:11:02 – 00:31:17:22
Dan LeFebvre
They made the mistake of enlisting. And I love that.

00:31:17:22 – 00:31:41:27
Jens Heycke
Yeah. So it’s like I talked earlier about, sorry, the guy on the ground, they actually passed him over to the commission to choose someone else because sorry was too sympathetic and they knew that. They just didn’t know that the paragon was going to be honest. And you gave them the answer they wanted the Seretse You shouldn’t be king, but he gave them the honest reasons for it, which they really didn’t want.

00:31:41:28 – 00:31:59:10
Jens Heycke
These were reasons they wanted to hide. And why did they want to hide them? Well, they didn’t want to admit South Africa out of barrel and they didn’t want to messed up. It was appeasing this racist government. What a terrible city. So they had to hide the whole thing.

00:32:00:09 – 00:32:13:07
Dan LeFebvre
Was South Africa aware of of their whole how much hold they had over Britain, or was that I mean, that I’m assuming from your answer, that was part of the reason why Britain wanted to hide it was they didn’t want South Africa to know just how much power they had.

00:32:14:02 – 00:32:41:29
Jens Heycke
Yeah, I think they were aware to to a degree. I think they probably don’t like what hole they go down. It is interesting that that when strategy was banned the British officials will carefully monitoring the South African newspapers and the moderate newspapers down in the Cape were they were sort of relieved and an allied, you know, were happy.

00:32:41:29 – 00:33:08:15
Jens Heycke
The good that had done, however, grew up in the Truants ball, were the real extremists of sorts. People, people like, oh, no, no, not malign, but some of the radicals. And in this party they, they were kind of annoyed. They sounded annoyed. And and the reason they were annoyed is because their pretext for invading Switzerland had gone away.

00:33:09:14 – 00:33:28:22
Dan LeFebvre
You said that there weren’t that many people that knew about the uranium. Was it almost this this was their parts elements of the British government that was almost trying to keep it from other elements of the British government too, because there were some mentions of kind of that as well in the movie that I the impression that I got walking out.

00:33:28:22 – 00:33:34:25
Dan LeFebvre
When we see some of the scenes in parliament, you know, talking about the Labor Party and the Tories and all that.

00:33:34:25 – 00:33:59:01
Jens Heycke
Yeah, there absolutely was. And there was there was a lot of negotiating talk behind the scenes there. And back there the Labor government persuaded the Conservatives to protest too much about, oh, about the banning of sprouts. So that’s one thing that happened behind the scenes problem for the Labor leaders as they were focused on kind of squelching conservative dissent.

00:33:59:01 – 00:34:21:07
Jens Heycke
What happened is they got they really got the soup from their own backbenchers, people like Tony Brown and Senator Brockway, who are nicely depicted in the movie. Oh, Tony Benn was a huge order of the of the Congress. In fact, they named one of their sons out now in front of Rockwell’s youth.

00:34:21:07 – 00:34:46:15
Dan LeFebvre
What you touched on a little bit ago, Britain after World War Two being been a shambles there. And there is a very brief mention when we see Bruce giving an address to Churchill. She mentioned something. I remember the numbers. It’s is it like 10,000? She mentions a number of of I’m assuming the movie implies soldiers from Botswana and that helped in World War Two.

00:34:47:11 – 00:35:05:21
Dan LeFebvre
Were there actually soldiers that had helped? And then, I mean, again, this is kind of my assumption coming out of the movie is that with this newsreel that we see Ruth film in the movie feeling just betrayed by Churchill, like, Oh, we helped you and now you’re not helping us.

00:35:06:17 – 00:35:34:10
Jens Heycke
Yeah, absolutely was gave Sam and a lot of people from factories Southern Africa did help in World War Two because of the whole race of thing. They were mostly relegated to things like that trench Arabs and and kind of doing support work. They mostly weren’t, you know, front line type soldiers, but they contributed badly. Yeah. And yeah, so that was a source of a lot of South south.

00:35:34:15 – 00:35:37:01
Jens Heycke
She they felt like they had been double cross.

00:35:37:23 – 00:36:01:02
Dan LeFebvre
As the movie comes to an end, as the Red Sea shows the evidence, Britain using the land for its own purposes to his uncle. That Paragon report that we talked about and then his uncle Chickadee agrees to let their argument end and threats. He then uses his influence to get Parliament to agree that his people will have mineral rights to anything and they want to land.

00:36:01:02 – 00:36:28:13
Dan LeFebvre
He did that because he knew about some drilling and reports of finding a few diamonds. Then he uses this. That information mixed with the twisting of the Harrigan report to pressure the British government into allowing them to transition from a monarchy. The monarchy of Botswana land into the Republic of Botswana. Was that really how that transition happened from Botswana land into Botswana?

00:36:29:18 – 00:37:00:01
Jens Heycke
Oh, so a lot of facts were mixed up here. They got a few things right, all of them. Brockway was a friend of the of the Commons, a number of parliament did get the government to to concede that any minerals in the country was belonged to people. So so that car was accurate after the discovery of diamonds. However, it really didn’t happen until after Botswana got independence and the mineral.

00:37:00:02 – 00:37:27:02
Jens Heycke
Nobody was really aware of the mineral wealth at the time, and that was reflected in reports by British officials all the way up until the 19 the 1960s, where they talked about how they were happy to get rid of Botswana because it was it was all, you know, worthless does all it was trading or cash. But what really motivated the British government to grant the country independence or.

00:37:27:04 – 00:37:55:06
Jens Heycke
Well, first of all, to allow Seretse back was was lots of peaceful protest in Botswana land itself and passive resistance. But the movie accurately showed a fault line where where nobody showed up. And that happened multiple times. That went on for five years. And likewise all around the British Commonwealth. And, you know, it was it was an international outrage for a lot of the Commonwealth countries.

00:37:55:17 – 00:38:25:06
Jens Heycke
And in England itself there there was a lot of organization that was devoted to getting. Seretse You call him a back country, and that included all kinds of luminaries, people like Bertrand Russell, obviously Tony Benn, Federal Brockway, but a lot of other prominent figures. And it was finally when when he for the home and Waco people sent a cable to Queen Elizabeth saying, great quietly, you were sad.

00:38:25:06 – 00:38:38:07
Jens Heycke
Please send us back or. Right kin. And it was at that point that the British government relented and sent. So the Harrigan report and that stuff, it wasn’t involved.

00:38:38:27 – 00:38:59:14
Dan LeFebvre
Was we do see in the movie, we see the Red Sea doing some some radio broadcasts and kind of petitioning himself like, you know, to the British public. Did he actually do that and start to sway? Because earlier in the movie or earlier in our discussion, rather, we were talking about how the British public was was outraged at first.

00:38:59:21 – 00:39:04:26
Dan LeFebvre
What was he able to sway them into, kind of helping get him back home?

00:39:05:21 – 00:39:38:12
Jens Heycke
Absolutely. I you know, by the end of people around him play the neutral. But but he was a it’s a very charismatic and powerful speaker. And no ANC a people you know, an interesting side note is that is that all these British officials, when you read their notes and their correspondence of some and many of them were outright racist, but almost to a one, they had this sort of grudging respect throughout C November, you know as they they were screwing him over.

00:39:38:21 – 00:40:03:15
Jens Heycke
You can tell me or perceive that he was far more of a gentle man than any of them. Well, he you know, he basically out British men out class them. But and and he could, you know, his tone. He was always very cool and just argued with logic and was really had such poise that he he really impressed these officials even though they treated them jealously.

00:40:03:26 – 00:40:38:02
Dan LeFebvre
I definitely got that from the movie. Even in the performance, he seemed to always be in control of himself, like even when there were things that were said when it became he came to light that the British government was screwing them over or doing various things. You know, when even when when his when there was the obviously the marriage and that terror with his uncle had to have just torn them apart inside to I mean, we met I didn’t mention this earlier, but at the beginning of the he talks about how his uncle raised him.

00:40:38:02 – 00:40:54:23
Dan LeFebvre
He tells Ruth this, you know, I uncle raised him, was basically a father to him. So it had to have been so much more difficult than even is is voiced in the movie or just to have that sort of friction with with his uncle.

00:40:55:22 – 00:41:22:06
Jens Heycke
Yeah. And he handled it with such incredible poise and grace. And you know, the amazing thing to think is that, you know, he’s 27 at this point. And in several instances here, it’s it’s just him. And in one case, it was a worthless lawyer. He never spoke with with an array of like four or five senior ministers on the other side.

00:41:22:06 – 00:41:29:15
Jens Heycke
And here’s a swing. Somebody low guy just holding its own. It just used tremendously remarkable person.

00:41:31:06 – 00:41:36:14
Dan LeFebvre
What’s something from the true story that didn’t make its way into the movie that you wish had been included.

00:41:37:28 – 00:42:07:21
Jens Heycke
So there’s this one little directo that I think so just wonderfully illustrates the tenacity and the grit and the sure want for her husband their lives. How they did, in fact, will rebel. So there was this time when Ruth was and Shirley by herself, she was pregnant. And what the movie doesn’t show is that Charette was actually allowed to come back to the Warner Land, just wasn’t allowed to go to where she was.

00:42:08:09 – 00:42:30:11
Jens Heycke
He had to settle this lawsuit with his uncle. So he was he was confined to Motsi, which is way down in the south, of course, it’s 400 miles from Troy. Now. Ruth determined she she wanted to get them back no matter what. So what she what she did there, she deprived herself of sleep the three whole days, she set an alarm clock.

00:42:30:23 – 00:42:52:25
Jens Heycke
How to go off every single hour for three days straight. So at the end of three days. And remember, she’s pregnant, right? So I think it’s three days. She is a basket case. She goes to her doctor who takes one crusher and everything and said, oh, my goodness, this this woman is in dire straits. She tells the British government and they’re in a panic because she loses a pregnancy.

00:42:52:25 – 00:43:12:07
Jens Heycke
That’s it’s international scandal. Terrible. Let’s see. So they actually the lads and they say, okay, sir, UPS can come up and be with with the weeks and this woman just tell True Grit. Seretse was an amazing man. She was also an amazing woman. Oh, just really a remarkable girl.

00:43:12:28 – 00:43:28:21
Dan LeFebvre
Knowing that he that seriously was allowed but just wasn’t allowed to see her, that had to have been that much more painful. Like, I mean, you’re you’re close but not actually be able to see each other.

00:43:29:17 – 00:43:47:26
Jens Heycke
Exactly. And, you know, as it turns out, at the same time that she came up with the strict he was actually conspiring himself to drive in the middle of the night where she was a drive back know, or having miles on a dirt road. So this would be it. These two were you know, they were truly on young.

00:43:48:08 – 00:43:52:24
Jens Heycke
And again, you know, he forced just tremendous character and grit.

00:43:53:11 – 00:44:17:29
Dan LeFebvre
At the very end of the movie, there is some text that mentions that Botswana became the world’s biggest diamond producer and that just transformed the economy threats. He was then democratically elected as the country’s first president, according to the movie. And then Ruth became a prominent humanitarian. Did Seretse and Ruth’s story end as happily ever after as the movie seems to imply?

00:44:18:23 – 00:44:42:12
Jens Heycke
Let it begin because know, I also took a little bit of umbrage at the connection of Botswana’s success with the Diamonds. They absolutely did contribute. But, you know, when we look around Africa and frankly, the rest of the world, there are so many countries outside what was a euro trying and gold and America. Nigeria has boundless oil wealth.

00:44:42:13 – 00:45:11:22
Jens Heycke
Venezuela, all these countries that have wealth or to what Botswana and none of them have an evil or attempted success. As we can talk about, I think there was something special about Botswana that allowed it to turn about mineral wealth into a successful society. But to get to your other question about living happily ever after, yes, they did to some degree.

00:45:12:02 – 00:45:36:22
Jens Heycke
Sally Sara, let’s see what else? Three died before 60. He was president from 19 6 to 1980. When he died, Ruth worked until 2002 and to this day is still regarded as a sort of the mother of the country. She devoted herself to all kinds of charitable causes and still very highly regarded there.

00:45:37:24 – 00:46:05:26
Dan LeFebvre
I want to ask you, because you did mention some of the difference with Botswana and your new book right here comes out of the melting pot into the fire, Multiculturalism and the World’s past and America’s Future and the story of Batswana land. Botswana is really just one example that you give. What do you think separates Botswana’s story from some of the other civilizations that you cover in your book?

00:46:05:26 – 00:46:39:18
Jens Heycke
Yeah. So there is an element in our own society that goes back at least 200 years. It’s quite that there have long been very accepting of outsiders and refugees and and kind of breed people into their fold. And in a way that, you know, I think is pretty unusual. So if we go all the way back to the beginning of the 19th century, we have got Shaka Zulu, who was rampaging across southern Africa.

00:46:39:18 – 00:47:00:13
Jens Heycke
It was like the, you know, sort of the Genghis Khan of Southern Africa. And people are fleeing from him and a lot of the people were fleeing to them from him, came to to the point of people and they were brought down and allowed to become all about society. Very welcome. And 100 years later, the same thing happens.

00:47:00:13 – 00:47:51:24
Jens Heycke
The Germans in Southwest Africa are persecuting a group of people called the Herero. That was a genocide of the 20th century. And the Herero, who didn’t survive, fled to Seretse, whose grandfather, Khama the third, once again welcomed the man. And certainly that’s often shown in the movie Milwaukee, has a significant population of descended from the lands. Ferrero put on there an interval part of the society of the very successful and that continued on talks or the correct and the fact that they would they they allowed roots yeah so pretty readily I do a allow a white well it could become part of their society that was oh you know that all that was carrying on

00:47:51:24 – 00:48:32:20
Jens Heycke
a tradition that goes back at least to our years so that was already in the culture and in the society. It was sort of in their society, its DNA. But beyond that, there was a political decision on part of society and part of the vulnerable to people that I think is nicely captured in that one wonderful speech he gives in the hallway where he said, you know, we look at South Africa and look at the racism among the British and how they they divide people and and treat them differently because of what race they are or what group they’re born into.

00:48:32:20 – 00:48:56:18
Jens Heycke
And and he says, we’re not going to do any of that. We’re going to go the other way. And that one speech. So we don’t know for sure those were the exact words he said. But that feeling was captured in the founding of the country and in the countries called stitution. The one got to be one one unified society.

00:48:56:18 – 00:49:22:24
Jens Heycke
It doesn’t matter what the color is, you know, it doesn’t matter what tribe you are. We’re going to we’re going to function as a unified community. And it’s it’s actually symbolized in the Botswana flag. It’s got it’s got black and white stripes, which which symbolize black and white people together. They’re national animal. It’s the zebra animal that has no tribal associations.

00:49:22:24 – 00:49:58:24
Jens Heycke
So again, the stripes sort of symbolize black and white together. So to me, that’s one of the reasons that our country has been so wildly successful and built on independence. It was it was the eighth poorest country in the world. Now it’s a no, it’s an upper income country. And any statistic you look at corruption, public health in many of these measures, it’s how some countries in Europe particularly ranked corruption as the least crow country, African ahead of Greece, Spain, Norway, a number of other European countries.

00:49:59:03 – 00:50:12:00
Dan LeFebvre
You talk about a lot of that in your book. So first, thank you very much for coming on to talk about a United Kingdom. But for the listeners, you want to get an overview of your book. Can you share a little bit about it and where they can get a copy?

00:50:12:23 – 00:50:53:20
Jens Heycke
Absolutely. So I’ll answer the second question first. I can get a copy at Amazon. Barnes Noble, any of the online sellers as well as you can order from Bookshop.org, which will get it through your local bookstore on August, going to local bookstore and order it all. Yeah. To give a brief kind of overview of the book. What it does is it addresses what I think is the most pivotal question facing our current generation, and that is as we’ve had this massive influx of immigration over the last couple of decades, how are we going to bring those people into our country?

00:50:54:03 – 00:51:27:24
Jens Heycke
And to give you an idea of the scope of that, you know that 85 million people today looking at immigrant households, I’m not saying that’s a good or a bad thing. It’s a reality. And we have to we have to think about what’s the best way to make the people of American society. Now, traditionally, we’ve had this sort of melting pot paradigm where everybody comes in and kind of shares and we origin of unifying shared identity and the alternative, which has been pushed more and more in the last couple of decades as more of a multiculturalism.

00:51:28:06 – 00:51:53:13
Jens Heycke
So and more like the paradigm where where we maintain group distinctions and treat people differently based on what group orientation. And what my book does is it says, you know, these are not this isn’t a new dilemma. This is not a new question. This is something that’s inside there throughout history. So let’s go back let’s look at some of those examples.

00:51:53:17 – 00:52:18:04
Jens Heycke
So let’s see how how dividing people by group or out in Yugoslavia, for example, or how distinguishing Hutus and Tutsis in Rwanda and identity cards, sort of Belgian colonialist and, you know, other things like that work out versus you know, how does it work out one program and or under one or more of a Sure.

00:52:19:09 – 00:52:23:22
Dan LeFebvre
Learning from history. I mean, that’s so we try not to repeat the same mistakes again.

00:52:24:08 – 00:52:24:29
Jens Heycke
Absolutely.

00:52:25:11 – 00:52:27:01
Dan LeFebvre
Thank you again so much for your time.

00:52:27:04 – 00:52:34:09
Jens Heycke
It’s been a real pleasure. Thank you.