745A.00/3–253
The Ambassador in the Union of South Africa (Gallman) to the Department of State
No. 410
Subject:
- South Africa As Seen After Sixteen Months
A little over a year has passed since my arrival in South Africa. While that period has been broken by a two months’ stay in Washington, I have nevertheless observed and thought over developments in South Africa uninterruptedly for some sixteen months. I have during that period been in residence both in the administrative capital, Pretoria, and in the legislative capital, Cape Town. I have made rather frequent visits to Johannesburg, two visits to Durban, and one to Port Elizabeth. I spent a week in South West Africa and several days in Swaziland. There have been a number of somewhat extensive and dispersed trips by automobile through the countryside. I feel that an evaluation of the South African scene as I see it after these experiences of the past sixteen months may serve some purpose.
Most of the events and conversations reviewed and evaluated in this report have, of course, been covered in detail by me in separate, previous despatches.
Europeans
[Here follow comments concerning the “friendliness and hospitality” of the European residents of the Union of South Africa, characteristics of various cities in the country, and personality differences between the English and Afrikaner element of the European population.]
Official’s
In thirty years in the Foreign Service, I have never served in a country where close, informal working relations with officials were more quickly established. For something comparable to my experience in South Africa, I must turn to the relations I enjoyed in wartime London.
What I have said about relations in South Africa applies to officials of all ranks from the Prime Minister down through men of Cabinet rank into civil service circles.
Members of Dr. Malan’s Cabinet struck me as having certain qualifications in common aside from the ready, friendly, and frank way they received me. They whole-heartedly support their Government’s policies all along the line, in the international as well as the domestic field. There are no shades of opinion evident in their talk. There is unanimity [Page 987] of views. This may not be wise or intelligent, but it does, when encountered, give the impression of political strength. Views are expressed promptly, to the point, and without equivocation. Whether one agrees or not, one is bound to feel, I think, as I did when I first met these men, and still do, that here is a unified, driving, unswerving political force that will get a large measure of support from the not too discriminating masses and will be hard to beat at any time. These men know what they want, and they are going to work unceasingly to get it. And yet, underneath this show of hardness and apparently blind devotion to a cause, there is present too, and in large measure, love and also understanding of country. These men will not thoughtlessly or deliberately wreck their country. That, too, I felt from the start and still do in talking with them.
Dr. Malan, from some things that I had read and heard about him before meeting him in South Africa, I had pictured as dour, totally without a lighter side, provincial in outlook, and withal blind to what is taking place in the world. To a certain extent I thought of his associates in the same way. I soon found that I was mistaken. This applied with especial force to Prime Minister Malan.
Malan, brought up in the Huguenot tradition and the uncompromising atmosphere of Dutch Reformed orthodoxy, quite naturally has an essentially serious outlook on life. There is, though, a lighter side to his nature. That is apparent above all in his home life. He is relaxed and most sociable in the presence of his wife, and his relations with his children, particularly with his eight year old adopted daughter, are the free, easy, companionable ones generally associated with someone half his age. Then, too, he has a delightful, quiet sense of humor.
At the time last year when it became necessary for me to appeal directly to him for assistance in stepping up manganese exports to the States, the steel strike was on at home. President Truman’s move a few days earlier to take over the steel industry had just been declared unconstitutional. This court action at home practically coincided with the action in South Africa of the Court of Appeals in declaring the Separate Voters’ Act unconstitutional. The American court action and the South African court action were, as I was to learn during this talk with Malan, fresh in his mind. I based my appeal for increased manganese shipments on the needs of our steel industry to meet the requirements of Western rearmament. When I finished, Malan smiled broadly and said, “But it seems that your court is of no more help to your President than our court is to me.”
I should add that he followed this up with the assurance that he would try to arrange for us to get bigger shipments of manganese, and, incidentally, increased shipments have been taking place since that talk with him.
One further example of Malan’s sense of humor may bear telling. [Page 988] When I made my farewell call on him before leaving for Washington last October to serve on one of the Selection Boards, I told him at the very outset of our talk that I was going home to work on promotions for Foreign Service officers. He gave no indication that my opening remark had made any impression on him. We immediately launched into a half hour’s talk on South Africa’s relations with the United Nations, her relations with Britain, her position in the Commonwealth, her responsibilities in the defense of the African continent, and her potential role in the Middle East. When the time came for me to leave, Dr. Malan, quite to my surprise, turned to my opening remarks and said that he hoped that while I was in the States occupied with promoting Foreign Service officers, I would also find the time to do a little “promoting” for South Africa. “We need it badly,” he said, with an expression part jocular, part serious.
Malan, I have found, is far from insular. He is thoroughly alert to the threat to the free world emanating from Moscow. The participation of the South African air squadron in Korea has had his personal support. He takes close personal interest in the planning for the defense of the African continent. The development of the Middle East Defense Organization he follows intently. He feels that Africa, if Africa is to be saved for the West, must have represented in Africa a strong Britain, and the sympathetic bearing and ready response he gave me to our pleas for more manganese show clearly that he appreciates the role we are playing in building up the armed resources of the free world.
Natives
The one big question facing the country is clearly how the relatively small group of Europeans is over the years to adjust its relations with the far larger and growing Native group, which is slowly becoming more conscious and sensitive about what it regards as a position of inferiority on its homelands.
Frequently South Africans have turned to me and said: “You can understand our race problem. You have the same problem in the States.” The situations are of course vastly different, as I try to explain. Our Colored population comes from a stock seized in its homeland and forcibly transplanted to what became a predominantly white continent. In South Africa we have a handful of Whites who penetrated a Black continent and succeeded in getting a toe-hold. Something comparable in race relations with us would have developed had the original colonists in Jamestown, for example, succeeded over the centuries in spreading no more than thinly some way into the interior into country occupied by Indians, that is, live Indians.
From my observation of the Natives and my experience with them in the cities, in the countryside and in my home, I would say that they [Page 989] have many admirable qualities. My wife and I have found them for the most part to be kindly, gentle, responsive to understanding treatment, willing and even anxious to learn, and with a capacity to learn. My wife and I have found them invariably respectful. They have a keenly developed sense of justice. Very importantly, they are not lacking in a sense of humor. It is a rich and potentially rich human element. Some can combine shrewdness with humor of a sly kind in a way that can be most entertaining.
[Here follows an anecdote relating to Gallman’s domestic staff and a discussion of the definition of the word “apartheid”.]
What runs through the different variations of apartheid, it will be seen, is separateness. The big problem, it seems to me, in trying to work out any kind of separate development arises mainly from the already large infiltration in the cities of Natives and Asiatics. How these people at this stage are to be drawn apart, away from their present homes, and to a certain extent their present jobs as well, and resettled under conditions designed to afford an existence quite apart from the country’s activities, is beyond me. But I may have a misconception of what is really meant by “apartheid” and what is planned under that designation. My difficulty arises from my failure to find a clearly and comprehensively worked out program in this field. I have heard and seen the term widely used. I have not seen a detailed plan showing just what is meant by it and what really can be done in its name. Meanwhile, the Native and Asiatic population is growing in numbers and in consciousness and sensitivity about living under conditions of inferiority. Articulate leaders are coming to the front among them. Work in organizing them in disciplined groups, responsive to responsible leadership, goes on. In this connection, it is well to stop to consider how much work in the field, in the home, in the mines, in the factories, in building, in road construction and maintenance, in short, in the whole field of activity that makes life possible in South Africa is in the final analysis done by the Native. The time could come, if racial relations are not worked out with understanding, where a mere word or a nod could lead to the almost complete economic paralysis of the country.
I could not detect, during the early months of my residence in South Africa, evidence of close-knit organization among the Natives. I found no basis for feeling that, were forceful leadership to emerge now, there would be any effective degree of disciplined response. It appeared to me on that first, necessarily superficial, appraisal that the day was far distant when a sufficient number of Natives would have reached the stage of organization where, with a signal from the top, they could seriously threaten the country’s economy or even public peace. Fixing any time limit within which such development might take place could be at best only a guess. However, in those first months here, I would say to myself that from twenty-five to fifty years were needed before [Page 990] any impressive measure of organization among the Natives could be achieved. But then, last June the passive resistance campaign against discriminatory laws and conditions got under way. It started as a combined Native and Indian campaign, under combined Native and Indian leadership, a new development. The widespread, disciplined response to this call for action came as a surprise, not just to me, a newcomer, but also to European observers of many years’ residence in South Africa. I have had to revise radically my estimate. I should say now that within five to ten years at the most organization among the Natives can be brought to the pitch where through strikes, for example, even of the sit-down or slow-down type, the economy of the country could be paralyzed in whole or in part, with incalculable monetary losses in mines, factories, and in the field of transport and with no end of inconveniences arising in homes and at a hundred points in the daily life of the average resident in South Africa. And over it all, with such a breakdown, would hang the threat to public health.
The problem of race relations in South Africa is a very complex one. Who can give a definitive solution? I doubt whether anyone can. It probably will have to be worked out on a day-to-day basis over the years, with a willingness to learn from experience and with the application of endless patience and understanding. And I think that it has to be left largely to those on the spot. It is they who have had the experience gained at first hand. The magnitude of the problem, moreover, as I see it, calls for the united effort of the two main white groups in the country. They can ill afford the luxury of political rough and tumble to a degree paralyzing constructive effort.
Internal Situation
There is no doubt that with the emphasis given apartheid, with stricter application of discriminatory laws and regulations, and with attempts through legislation further to reduce rights of Natives, Coloreds and Indians, relations between Europeans and non-Europeans have during the last few years been steadily becoming more strained. With racial issues playing a part in the current election campaign, more than ordinary attention is being called to discriminations, and already tense feelings have been exacerbated. This situation has during recent months precipitated a number of riots. While the trouble has mainly started among non-Europeans, before it has run its course Europeans too have become involved. The question actually arises of how imminent trouble is on a scale seriously affecting public security and the country’s economy. Are the elements present that any day disorders of such proportions might break out, and is the ground already prepared for Communism widely to take root?
I think the worst can happen within a matter of years if the present trend is not arrested and the non-Europeans are not given the hope and means to improve their present lot. I do not think, however, from [Page 991] my observations on the spot that the country is now threatened with disorders on a scale that would lead to a breakdown of the country’s economy or internal security. The current peaceful resistance campaign is effective to the extent of causing the Government concern. It is at best, though, local and spasmodic in its effects. Non-Europeans are still not so widely or largely organized that they can threaten the country with disaster. As for the Communist threat, while Communist agents could, even now, step into the situation and give direction that might momentarily cause suffering and loss among European communities, the masses of non-Europeans are still today too largely illiterate and indifferent to respond in threatening degree to Communist propaganda and leadership. As I weigh what I have seen and heard over the past sixteen months, I would say that, fortunately, South Africa still has the time to avoid disaster, but it must act with the utmost intelligence, tact, and detachment now.
Commonwealth and International Relations
Turning to the field of international relations, the most immediate problem in the case of South Africa is her position within the Commonwealth. Much publicity, particularly abroad, is given to the supposed determination of the present Government to establish a republic, to be followed eventually with complete withdrawal from the Commonwealth. No Government official has ever even intimated to me that the present Government wants a republic now outside the Commonwealth, and I have had many talks over the past year or so with Prime Minister Malan and members of his Cabinet. Let me review what Dr. Malan himself has said to me.
In substance, he has said that he would like to see South Africa enjoy the same degree of freedom of action that India does, with the same relationship with the British crown. He has made a special point in his talks with me that in the Commonwealth Conference in London in 1949, it was unanimously held that India could enjoy all this freedom of action and still remain in the Commonwealth. For hard, practical trade and currency reasons, Dr. Malan and his associates have made it plain to me that they want to see South Africa in the Commonwealth. In any event, even an extremist like the present Minister of Lands, Strydom, has publicly matched Malan’s public words that not even the status of republic within the Commonwealth would be sought without first trying to ascertain public opinion.
As for the present Governmental attitude on relations with Great Britain, I can also cite the Prime Minister as spokesman. In a talk I had with him not so long ago, he referred to the British Government’s tendency to turn more and more power over to the Natives in her African colonies. This tendency he deplored, not just because he thought the actions premature but because Britain, by so doing, was eliminating herself step by step from Africa. “And Africa,” [Page 992] Malan said with feeling and emphasis, “to be saved for the West must have present in Africa a strong Britain.” I believe that sets the tone very well of the present Government’s attitude toward the United Kingdom.
In the paragraphs which preceded, devoted to my impressions of Europeans generally and specifically to Government officials, I called attention to the instinctive friendliness that exists in South Africa for Americans. There is a most encouraging reservoir of good will in the country on all levels and in all sections of society for the United States. That obviously facilitates the work of the Embassy and our Consulates. I recognize that whatever I have personally accomplished is in no small measure due to this ready, widespread good will.
It seems appropriate here to review some of the problems I have dealt with myself. The results of my efforts will be cited as an indication of the kind of relations existing between the United States and South Africa.
One of the first tasks given me was to see whether manganese exports to the States, so badly needed in our rearmament program, could not be stepped up. In talks with various Cabinet Ministers and with the Prime Minister himself, the Government’s assistance was happily secured and shipments are now going to the States in quantities sufficient to meet our needs. Both in 1951 and 1952 when it appeared that South Africa might withdraw from the United Nations in protest against resolutions interpreted here as interferences in domestic affairs, I expressed directly to the Prime Minister the hope that South Africa would not take that step. I got the assurance that only under extreme provocation would the step be taken. The Department’s efforts were supplemented by an appeal by me directly to the Prime Minister at the time it appeared that South Africa might withdraw her air squadron from Korea. Our efforts in this respect up to now have been successful. Through talks with South African officials both in Washington and here, I think we have succeeded in no small measure to keep alive South Africa’s interest in the defense of the African continent and to stimulate and keep alive interest in the Middle East Defense Organization. There is, in a word, as I have found, constant readiness among South African officials to listen to and weigh what we have to say on the problems of the day and to meet, wherever possible, our suggestions and requests.
South Africa, in spite of her geographic isolation, is not blind to what is going on beyond her frontiers, as shown, for example, by her readiness, as already pointed out, to do her share in the defense of Africa as a whole and to play a role in the defense of the Middle East. And she has shown that she will not rashly and blindly withdraw from the United Nations. Prime Minister Malan has on a number of occasions said to me, with emphasis, that South Africa [Page 993] wants to work closely with the free nations of the world, in and outside the United Nations, in meeting the ever-present threat of militant Communism and, in general, in building up a stable, free world. From personal observation and experience, I can say that South Africa is not the narrow, isolationist country pictured in some of the sensational stories published abroad.
Future Prospects
The most difficult and pressing problem facing South Africa is, of course, the problem of working out a peaceful, stable way of life between the relatively small white group and the far larger and fast-growing non-white groups. The seriousness of the problem is heightened by the fact that whatever is done in South Africa in this field will have repercussions far beyond the frontiers of the country, certainly throughout the African continent.
As I have indicated before, the present status of race relations gives cause for very serious concern; but there is still time, fortunately, if it is used in timely fashion, to avert disaster, and the one heartening aspect of the situation is that today voices calling for detached, tolerant study of the problem are being heard with increasing frequency from every part of the country and from varying walks of life. Churchmen, even some among the literal-minded Dutch Reformed pastors, are calling more and more for reconciliation of the Christian principles of the dignity and equality of man with the way of life open to non-whites. Race study groups are earnestly searching for ways and means of assuring a harmonious future. In academic circles, ideas are constantly born and tested. The problem is out in the open, and discussion is daily becoming freer. In some circles of the Government and business it is now being said that non-whites should have non-white representation in Parliament, not tomorrow but today. As I see it, if these forces of intelligence, tolerance and vision have their way, then we can view the future calmly. If they are ignored, I am afraid there will be endless suffering and a period of chaos, with the European as we see him today at last physically eliminated from the scene or in any event reduced still more in numbers and shorn of all authority.
It is to the immediate interest of the United States that stability prevail in South Africa, and that quite apart from the all important humanitarian considerations entering the picture. For our program of building up a strong free world to counter Soviet armed power, we need South African strategic supplies and, very importantly, her uranium. In the latter field of development we have taken the lead not only in so far as techniques are concerned but also in supplying the money. It is a big stake on both scores. Peace in the mines, in the homes and on the street is essential. We recognize that. I myself am only too sensitive to all that, and I am constantly watching and waiting [Page 994] for the right moment to put in a friendly word of caution or a friendly suggestion in circles where something good might come of it.
As of today, as I pointed out above when making some observation on the Natives, neither internal security on a country-wide extent nor the economy of the country is threatened through anything that might arise from the present status of race relations. However, in my opinion, the degree of response and responsibility being shown by scattered non-whites during the current passive resistance campaign indicates that between five to ten years, unless material amelioration in race relations takes place, non-white groups will be organized well and widely enough to paralyze the country within a matter of days. This need not be. If intelligence and tolerance are applied, accompanied with a liberal immigration policy bringing much needed skilled labor into the country, this country, with its rich human element and apparently limitless natural resources can look forward to a very full life. But to have that, even if the danger of eruptions from unhealthy race relations is eliminated, the people of South Africa must be on their guard against other rather insidious dangers that are always present. The country has a dangerously delightful climate, and it takes character not to yield to its lures and forsake desk and bench too often for the sunshine and beauties of nature. The country is isolated geographically, without the stimulus of competition of similarly developed and developing countries as neighbors. This, plus the fact that in the last analysis most work, or at least a goodly part of every job, is left to a Native to do, whom all too often no one has taken the trouble properly to train, tends toward lowering of standards of life and, unfortunately, does so quite unperceptibly to most South Africans.
- This despatch arrived in the Department of State on Mar. 12.↩