Foreign Relations of the United States, 1952–1954, Africa and South Asia, Volume XI, Part 1

UNP files, lot 60 D 268, “Indians in South Africa”

Department of State Position Paper¹

confidential
SD/A/C.1/425

[Washington,] September 4, 1953.

Treatment of Indians in Union of South Africa

The Problem

The Seventh General Assembly established a Good Offices Commission (Cuba, Syria, Yugoslavia) to arrange and assist in negotiations between South Africa and India and Pakistan on the question of treatment of people of Indian origin in South Africa.² The Commission will presumably report failure to bring the parties together. This item was automatically included in the provisional agenda of the Eighth Session by the Assembly’s action last year.

United States Position

1. Any solution to this problem lies in the resumption of direct negotiations between the Government of the Union of South Africa and the Governments of India and Pakistan.

2. The United States should support a resolution which recommends direct negotiations and which follows generally the lines of the resolutions previously adopted by the General Assembly.

3. In the light of the negotiating situation, the Delegation should consider whether it would be advisable to seek to persuade Pakistan and India to avoid the inclusion in their proposals of certain features of past General Assembly resolutions which, it may be argued, have presented an obstacle to the resumption of direct negotiations. These provisions are:

a. references to the Group Areas Act and to the fact that South Africa has proceeded with implementation of this legislation despite Assembly recommendations that implementation be suspended;

b. characterization of the policy of apartheid as being based on doctrines of racial discrimination, which has implied a criticism or condemnation of South Africa.

c. the establishment of United Nations commissions or agencies to play a role in the negotiations.

4. The United States should vote against any provision calling for automatically placing the item on the agenda of the Ninth Session, but the inclusion of such a provision should not of itself change the United States vote on the resolution as a whole. In voting on other individual paragraphs of the proposed resolution, the United States Delegation should bear in mind the voting pattern it followed on similar provisions at previous sessions. In the past, the United States has abstained or voted against references to the Group Areas Act and has voted for characterization of the apartheid policy as being based on doctrines of racial discrimination and for the establishment of United Nations agencies to assist in bringing the parties into direct negotiations.

Comment

Last year’s resolution, in addition to establishing a Good Offices Commission also called upon the Union Government to suspend implementation of the Group Areas Act. This spring, India protested to the United Nations regarding new discriminatory measures initiated by South Africa.³ Subsequently, South Africa informed the United Nations that the Indian question fell within its domestic jurisdiction and that it consequently did not recognize the Commission.

In view of its position denying the competence of the United Nations on the ground that the matter is essentially within its domestic jurisdiction, South Africa is unlikely to respond affirmatively to any United Nations resolutions. At the same time, for reasons of domestic opinion and national prestige India cannot afford to cease pressing its case in the Assembly. There may be some prospect for bringing the parties together outside the United Nations; it is conceivable that if this year the Assembly adopted a resolution merely calling upon the parties to negotiate, bilateral discussions might be resumed. However, India will probably insist on including provisions such as those in past resolutions regarding the Group Areas Act and establishing United Nations machinery to assist in the negotiations.

1. This paper was prepared for the use of the U.S. Delegation to the Eighth Session of the UN General Assembly. A memorandum by Assistant Secretary Murphy to Secretary Dulles referred to this paper, among others, as a draft and indicated that it had “cleared with all of the interested Bureaus, except as follows: EUR believes that we should abstain or vote against the type of provisions outlined in recommendation 3, rather than follow our past voting pattern.” (Sept. 4, 1953; Hickerson–Murphy–Key files, lot 58 D 33, “Notes/South Africa”)
2. UN General Assembly resolution 615 (VII).
3. On Mar. 9, 1953, the Permanent Representative of India addressed to the Secretary-General a communication which focused attention on the intended early proclamation, by the Union Government, of further implementation of the Group Areas Act, in deliberate disregard of previous GA resolutions. A text of the document is annexed to the report of the Good Offices Commission. (Sept. 14, 1953, UN document A/2473)