Seretse Khama

First President of Botswana (1921–1980)

Sir Seretse Goitsebeng Maphiri Khama, GCB, KBE (1 July 1921 – 13 July 1980) was a Motswana politician who served as the first President of Botswana, a post he held from 1966 to his death in 1980. Born into an influential royal family of what was then the British protectorate of Bechuanaland, he was educated abroad in the neighbouring country of South Africa and then in the United Kingdom. While in Britain, he married an Englishwoman named Ruth Williams, a decision opposed by the white-minority government of South Africa and which led to a controversy resulting in the British government making him stay in England in exile so as to not sour U.K.–South African relations.

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