by Guy Arnold
Harry Oppenheimer succeeded his father as head of the global ‘empire’ that comprised the Anglo-American Corporation and De Beers Consolidated Mines in 1957. His empire ‘controlled forty per cent of South Africa’s gold, eighty per cent of the world’s diamonds, a sixth of the world’s copper and it was the country’s largest producer of coal’. He subsidized the Progressive Party, launched in 1959, recommended the incorporation of educated Africans into the political system, yet he had no respect for African culture and though admitting the migrant labour system was bad in principle, saw it as essential to the gold-mining industry.15 Oppenheimer was South Africa’s leading industrialist and commanded great economic power; he was, in fact, essential to the regime although he adopted the stance of a moderate opponent of the NP. His principal object appeared to be the immediate safeguarding and expansion of his economic empire. He was a prominent supporter of the South African Foundation, set up in 1959, to project South Africa’s name abroad, and by so doing he roused the antagonism of non-white leaders. Always careful to cover his position – liberal but never too liberal – he was in fact a paragon of accommodating capitalism. In his chairman’s statement to the shareholders of Rhodesian Anglo-American Ltd, on 17 November 1960, he said: ‘Whether African nationalism is really irresistible in a multi-racial country has… yet to be decided. It is quite wrong to think that the majority group in a mixed state is necessarily the most powerful, still less that it is necessarily irresistible.’ The statement was aimed as much at South Africa, his power base, as at his Rhodesian audience. He was to argue repeatedly that higher African wages, assured urban residence by right, and an end to job restriction would raise productivity and markets while lowering real labour costs. The Anglo-American Group of companies was a principal key to South African economic power. Outside South Africa the Group also operated in South West Africa, Rhodesia, Zambia, the Congo, Angola and Tanzania. At the beginning of the 1970s the Investors’ Chronicle described Anglo-American international diversification as follows: ‘More like a government than a Company. Its shares are proof against all but the most far-reaching economic trends. They are really an investment in the Western capitalist system.’16
Britain maintained especially close ties with South Africa after it left the Commonwealth in 1961. Thousands of white South Africans had been born in Britain and qualified for British passports and hundreds of thousands more had relatives and close friends there while the culture of English-speaking white South Africa was oriented toward Britain, which allowed the ‘kith and kin’ argument great play during the years of South Africa’s isolation. The South African economy, moreover, was more important to Britain of its Western trading and investment partners than to any other country. Britain, whether under Conservative or Labour governments, showed great reluctance to take measures against South Africa and when it left the Commonwealth in 1961 passed the South Africa Act which maintained the new republic’s privileged access to British markets that had depended upon Commonwealth preferences. In his first speech as Prime Minister on 12 November 1963, Sir Alec Douglas-Home said: ‘I believe that the greatest danger ahead of us in the world today is that the world might be divided on racial lines. I see no other danger, not even the nuclear bomb, which could be as catastrophic as that.’ Unfortunately, subsequent Conservative and Labour policies in relation to the White South did not appear to bear out this concern. When the Labour Party came to power under Harold Wilson in 1964 he announced that the government would adhere to the UN arms embargo though current contracts (for Buccanneer aircraft) would be met. In fact his government showed itself half-hearted at best in applying the UN arms embargo to South Africa although in 1966 it did withdraw Britain’s only warship, a destroyer, from the Simonstown base at the Cape. In 1968 the President of the British Board of Trade, Anthony Crosland, told the UK South Africa Trade Association (UKSATA): ‘It has always been my government’s view that political differences should not be allowed to interfere with the growth of trade.’ That year Britain sent 14 trade missions to South Africa; in 1969, 20. In spite of South Africa’s role in breaking sanctions against Rhodesia, Crosland said: ‘We have made it clear that we cannot contemplate any economic confrontation.’ Sir Alec Douglas-Home, in opposition, visited South Africa in 1968 and said there that if the Conservatives were returned to power, they would resume the sale of arms to the Republic. In March 1970, the chairman of the Conservative Party, Anthony Barber, visited South Africa to say: ‘As far as the supply of arms for the external defence of the Southern Atlantic is concerned, P. W. Botha (then South Africa’s Defence Minister) and I are at one.’ These and other British politicians made it clear where their sympathies lay.
US involvement in South Africa, both as investor and trader, grew substantially through the 1960s; in particular the US was interested in the country’s wide range of minerals. Between 1960 and 1970 the average world rate of return on overseas investment was 11 per cent but in South Africa US capital earned 18.6 per cent. In the post-Sharpeville years a consortium of US banks arranged a revolving loan of US$40 million for the South African government. By the end of 1966 US investment had risen to US$601 million, equivalent to 13 per cent of total foreign investments in the Republic. US earnings from investments in 1960 came to US$50 million; by 1966 they had risen to US$124 million. The rates of return on US South African investments during the 1960s were phenomenally high, roughly double those elsewhere: in 1963 – 20 per cent, 1964 – 18.9 per cent, 1965 – 19.1 per cent, 1966 – 20.6 per cent, 1967 – 19.2 per cent, 1968 – 17.2 per cent.17 Like British companies in South Africa, US companies paid their Africans abysmally low wages. ‘Investment in manufacturing accounted for 50 per cent of US direct investment in South Africa in 1969. It earned a return of over 13 per cent, against a worldwide average of 10.8 per cent. Yet the average African wage in manufacturing enterprises (foreign and local) for the same year was R49.8 – R30 below Assocom’s (Associated Chamber of Commerce) Poverty Datum Line for a family of five.’18
West German involvement in South Africa also grew steadily over these years. In 1962, again a demonstration of Western sympathy if not solidarity with the beleaguered white regime, the Deutsche Bank led a consortium of banks guaranteeing a £4 million loan to the South African government. Through the 1960s collaboration between West Germany and South Africa increased in trade, investment and the supply of arms, though the latter was secret and indirect. Three hundred West German companies established subsidiaries in South Africa and an average of 3,000 Germans a year emigrated to the Republic. France also became heavily involved in South Africa during the 1960s, breaking its earlier ‘acceptance’ that the Republic was in Britain’s sphere of influence. Through the decade its investments and trade increased substantially and it was the only major power openly to break the arms embargo. In addition, France acted as a clearing-house for South African trade contacts with French-speaking Africa. By 1969 France had become the leading supplier of arms to the Republic: these included submarines, helicopters and Mirage jets. In reverse, by 1970 South Africa had become France’s leading arms customer. Responding at the end of the decade to France’s assistance with arms, Prime Minister Vorster said: ‘We shall never forget that France was and still is prepared to accept our word that we have no aggressive intentions… France, having accepted our word as a self-respecting country, sold us arms of a high standard, such as aircraft and submarines.’ Japan of the major trading nations also played a significant role in sustaining the South African economy. For trade reasons, the Japanese had been elevated to the anomalous status of ‘honorary whites’ by South Africa, for Japan was a major customer for its minerals. Between 1965 and 1969 the South African share of Japan’s total imports rose from 23 per cent to 36.8 per cent; of chrome from 12 per cent to 30 per cent; of manganese ore and concentrate from 6 per cent to 29 per cent. By 1969 Japanese monthly exports to South Africa ran at US$23.2 million, its imports at US$24.9 million, and South Africa was Japan’s main African trading partner.
These major powers might ritualistically condemn apartheid; this did not deter them from providing the South African regime, by trade and investment, with the economic support that was essential to its survival.
SOUTH AFRICA AND THE UNITED NATIONS
Article 19 of the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights adopted by the General Assembly of the UN on 10 December 1948 reads: ‘Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive, and import information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.’ South Africa did not sign the Declaration and subsequently felt under no obligation to honour it. Following the Sharpeville massacre of 21 March 1960 the UN Security Council met and called upon South Africa to abandon apartheid. In November 1962 the UN General Assembly called upon member states by 67 votes to 16 with 23 abstentions to break diplomatic relations with South Africa, boycott its goods and refrain from exports to South Africa, including arms. The West ignored the call. The Special Committee against Apartheid was established. Above all the considerations of the South Africa question, and the West’s response to calls for action to end apartheid, lurked the belief in Africa and elsewhere that had the colours of the oppressor and the oppressed been reversed the West would have been in the forefront demanding action. In 1963 the Security Council instituted a voluntary total arms embargo against South Africa. In response, the British government immediately announced that in future it would only sell arms that South Africa required for its external defence. Commenting on this issue, Fenner Brockway, by then the doyen of the British Labour Party’s left wing, said: ‘… United Nations action could undoubtedly be decisive in ending the fundamental human wrong of racial oppression. We must accept the probability, however, that the United Nations will not act. Power is with the industrial countries which are identified with the economy of South Africa and, notwithstanding all their disavowals of apartheid, it is this that will be the determining factor. We confess we have little hope for the near future as we look at Southern Africa.’19 He was correct. The UN paid a good deal of attention to South Africa during 1963. On 11 October the General Assembly, by 106 to one (South Africa), called for the immediate and unconditional release of political prisoners, and an immediate end to all political trials, including those under the Sabotage Act, and on this occasion even Britain voted for the motion. Twice during the year the Security Council resolved that the policies of South Africa constituted a grave disturbance of international peace; however, the Security Council did not use the word ‘threat’, substituting ‘disturb’ for it at the insistence of Britain and the United States, since the employment of the word ‘threat’ implied, under the UN Charter, the need to employ enforcement measures. Although sanctions were frequently discussed, apart from the arms embargo they were at best half-heartedly applied or more often ignored entirely.
The use of sanctions against Rhodesia from 1965 onwards, after the Unilateral Declaration of Independence (UDI), was resolutely bypassed by South Africa for had sanctions brought about the downfall of the Smith regime in Salisbury there would have followed far more vociferous demands for their use against apartheid South Africa.
In 1965 the General Assembly established a UN Trust Fund for South Africa. In 1966 it proclaimed 21 March (Sharpeville Day) as International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (to be observed annually). In 1967 a UN Educational and Training Programme for Southern Africa was established: it would provide scholarships for students from Namibia, South Africa, Rhodesia and the Portuguese territories of Angola and Mozambique. In 1970 the UN strengthened the arms embargo and urged member states to terminate diplomatic and other official relations with South Africa. Critics of the United Nations often took it to task or derided it for passing resolutions that had little hope of being implemented and in the case of the major Western powers were generally entirely ignored, yet the steady passing of such resolutions ensured that the injustices of the South African system were constantly brought to the attention of the international community.
Even as the United Nations increased pressures upon it, South Africa increased its hold over South West Africa in defiance of the world body. German South West Africa had been invaded and occupied by South African forces in 1915 and in 1920 the territory had been entrusted to South Africa to administer as a Mandate on behalf of the League of Nations. In 1946 the newly formed United Nations invited its members to place their mandated territories under its Trusteeship system and all except South Africa complied with the request. South Africa organized a referendum among chiefs in South West Africa and on the strength of this demanded that the territory should be integrated into the Union. Only Britain supported the move. Thereafter, South Africa had refused to recognize UN jurisdiction over South West Africa and had entered into a long-lasting dispute with the world body that would only finally be resolved with the independence of Namibia in 1990. In 1955 the International Court of Justice (ICJ) confirmed the right of the General Assembly to adopt resolutions on South West Africa. Meanwhile, African opposition to South Africa’s control of the territory was growing: in 1959 the first liberation movement, the South West African National Union (SWANU) was formed; in 1960 this was followed by the South West African People’s Organization (SWAPO). In 1964 the South African-appointed Odendaal Commission reported and recommended the creation of Bantustans in South West Africa and proposed a five-year economic and social plan. In 1966 the United Nations General Assembly adopted Resolution 2145 which revoked the Mandate and changed the country’s name to Namibia. SWAPO, which had sent its first group of guerrillas into the country the previous year, had its first clash with the South African Defence Force (SADF) and the armed struggle was under way. In 1967 the United Nations set up a Council for Namibia to administer the territory and in 1969 the Security Council recognized the right of the General Assembly to revoke the Mandate. Despite these UN pressures to prise Namibia from its control, in 1969 the South African parliament approved a South West Africa Affairs Bill to adjust the administration of South West Africa and, in effect, turn it into a fifth province of the Republic. In 1971 the ICJ gave an advisory opinion that South Africa was illegally in South West Africa. The confrontation between South Africa and the United Nations over Namibia had another 20 years to run.
THE HIGH COMMISSION TERRITORIES
The three British protectorates of Basutoland, Bechuanaland and Swaziland were collectively known as the High Commission Territories and administered by a British High Commissioner from Mafeking in South Africa. Implicit in the 1909 Act of Union had been the British recognition that the three territories would eventually be incorporated into the Union of South Africa, provided this was acceptable to their peoples – which it never was – and South Africa had long worked upon the assumption that incorporation of the three would eventually take place. They had escaped that fate in part as a result of their own determination, preferring British imperial control as the lesser evil. The three territories were landlocked and heavily dependent upon South Africa. During the six years of Prime Minister Malan’s rule in South Africa (1948–54) Britain had begun the process of moving the three territories towards independence and after South Africa’s withdrawal from the Commonwealth in 1961, its relations with the three had to be reorganized on the basis of them being foreign states. The three territories had long been treated as ‘cinderellas’ by the Colonial Office and by the 1960s the British tended to imply that they were only in the three territories for altruistic reasons although this was belied by its actual conduct. In Basutoland, for example, during the period 1960 to 1966 when it became independent, the British insisted that aid to the colony should pay. This attitude was sharply rebuffed in the New Statesman: ‘It is clear that if Basutoland’s economic advancement is made dependent on the Union (of South Africa’s) Nationalist government, the territory will continue to stagnate. Its politically ambitious and active African leadership, frustrated by economic ba
rriers, may well become embittered. They will blame Britain for not being prepared to spend even £2.12 million in order to provide the prerequisite for economic, and therefore social, advancement.’20 When Basutoland did become independent as Lesotho in 1966 it faced apartheid South Africa with a dilemma. South Africa had always wanted to absorb Lesotho but since Verwoerd was then busily promoting the idea of Bantustans his government was obliged to accept the independence of Lesotho, even though its territory was entirely surrounded by South Africa. Lesotho had no resources; it was a labour reserve and its biggest annual revenue came from the remittances of its workers in the South African mines.
Like Lesotho, Bechuanaland (later Botswana) had been conditioned by Britain to expect that any requests to London for development assistance would be pared to a minimum: ‘Educationally, the Batswana are probably more backward than any other people in Africa which has been under British rule; they are challenged only by the Swazi for this dubious distinction. Certainly in Bechuanaland as a whole the schools are, in the opinion of experts, worse housed and worse equipped than any in British-administered Africa.’21 Indeed, the British pose of being appalled by apartheid was revealed in its stark hypocrisy by its educational record in Bechuanaland. In 1960 £55,152 was spent on the education of 411 white children, or £134.2 per white child per year, while by contrast £268,683 was spent on the education of 36,273 African children, or £7.4 per African child per year. The point here is not only that 18 times as much was being spent on the education of every white child enrolled as on every black child, but that it is hard to think of a worthwhile education which could be given on only £7.4 per head per year.22 When Bechuanaland became independent as Botswana in 1966 it found it had an inescapable role as a route of flight and as a sanctuary for anti-apartheid refugees.