1953 South Africa Article

The Government’s Policy and Practice of Racial Discrimination and Oppression in the Union of South Africa

Spotlight on Africa, August 13, 1953

V. International Peace at Stake

The evil consequences of racist policies and program of the Malan Government are not confined to South Africa. India is bitterly resentful of the abuses heaped upon Indians in South Africa. The Bamangwato tribe of Bechuanal can blame Malinism for the exile of their chief, Seretse Khama. The Negro people of the United States note many parallels between Jim Crowism and Malan’s “apartheid” and indignantly protest the South African’s Government’s banning of two American Negroes, Bishops of the African Methodist Church, from entering the Union to carry on their church duties. African leaders in the High Commission Territories of Bechuanaland, Bastuoland and Swaziland are fully aware of Malan’s annexation aims and have vowed that the people will resist being brought under the yoke of South African racism.

Malanism is the enemy of African Liberation movements in every section of the African continent. The Prime Minister has inveighed against the Gold Coast’s advance toward self-governance and has warned Britain that the empire would find it’s “grave” in Africa unless the policy of racial equality is abandoned.

On their side the Gold Coast people say, “The expansionist policy of the union is arousing all Africa to the dangers of racial domination, and we wish to emphasize the importance of United Nations responsibility in deciding the fate of these [inhabitants of Basutoland, Bechuanland, Swaziland, and South West Africa] and other African people.   It  si very much to hoped that the effective steps – by means, if necessary, of sanctions – will be taken at the forthcoming General Assembly of the United Nations.” (Petition to ad hoc Committee of U.N. on South West Africa, 1952, document A/2261, 21 Nov. 1952, page 19, signed by Kwame Nkrumah, Life Chairman, Convention People’s party of Gold Coast, and of other officers of C.P.P.)

Nigeria has also repeatedly cried out against Malanism. An editorial in the West African Pilot (Lagos, Nigeria), Feb 8, 1949, declared “Whatever be the handicap of the United Nations, we refuse to believe that the big nations in that body are ignorant of how best to bring world pressure to bear on South Africa in and out of the U.N. If South Africa musty brow-beat the U.N. and remain at large to pursue its heinous policy, then the Negro race will have to rely upon themselves and make ready for the liquidation of 2,000,000 South African Europeans the life and death struggle that is to come. It is unavailing to appeal to God who seems to have no hands in our affairs. It must be freedom and equality for the African race or we all – all the races – should march to mass destruction.”

Finally, we may quote a statement made by General Smuts himself in 1950, after he had yielded power to Malan: “If the policy now promulgated in the Union goes through (and there is no reason to suppose it will not go through), a Mason-Dixon line will be established in Africa along the Limpopo, between the Transvaal and Rhod-isias, and more from the Union, Bechuananaland, and Angola. There will be incompatible policies on the colour question to the north and south of that line. We know what happened in America; it will happen in Africa  as surely as it happened her in America; it will happen in Africa as surely as it happened there if we do not face the problems now”

(Address to the South African Institute of Race Relations, quoted in East Africa and Rhodesia, No 9, 1950.)

NEXT: Conclusion

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