Place Name
According to the Tooting Black History Cycle Trail it is named after Khama III (thought to be around 1837 – 1923) was chief of the Bamangwato people of Bechuanaland, modern day Botswana. In his early twenties, he, and five of his younger brothers, were baptised into the Lutheran church via the London Missionary Society. This action brought him into conflict with his father resulting in two short wars, in which Khama was eventually victorious. He allied himself with British colonisers and supported them in the Boer War. In 1895, threatened with having his country carved up by Cecil Rhodes he travelled to London, with two other kings, Bathoen I and Sebele, and supported by the London Missionary Society and the Temperance Movement, to make a direct appeal to Queen Victoria. On this occasion Rhodes’s ambitions were thwarted by the Three Kings.
