Summary This article is centred on Wilf Mbanga and Trish Mbanga's Seretse and Ruth (2005), a Zimbabwean-authored, fictionalised biography of the first President of Botswana, Seretse Khama and his British wife, Ruth Williams. In the article, analysis of Seretse and Ruth is placed within the context of a resurgence of international interest both in Botswana as a society and in the marriage of the Khamas. The aims and methodology of Mbanga and Mbanga are compared to those of Michael Dutfield, the author of their main secondary source A Marriage of Inconvenience (1990). The ambiguity in the "play" on cultural and racial difference in Seretse and Ruth is discussed in an analysis of the biography's representation of Ruth and Seretse's courtship and the antagonism between Ruth and Seretse's uncle, Tshekedi.
