2. The Union I T is not only to Central Africa
that the British Government must begin rethinking its atti- tude. The result of the South African referendum (a report from Kenneth Mackenzie appears on another page) was never seriously in doubt, if only because if it had been, a Government as disreputable as that of South Africa would scarcely have scrupled from tampering with the ballot-boxes. What the Nationalists do now is fairly clear: they, go on with increased speed towards total and bloody disaster. But what do we in this country do?
To begin with, the choice is not ours alone, or even mainly. At the end of the Commonwealth Prime Ministers' Conference, it was agreed that South Africa should 're-apply' for continued membership of the Commonwealth if the Repub- licans should win in the referendum. And although this was not specifically laid down, it must be clear that this involves South Africa's gaining the consent of each and every one of the member nations to remain within it. South Africa, in fact, is not in the position of a candidate for election to a position decided by majority vote : she is seeking membership of a club any member of which can cast the one black ball which suffices to exclude her.
There seems little doubt about the outcome. Malaya has already made it clear that it is most unlikely to agree to South Africa's continued membership of a Commonweakh she has dis- graced, and Ghana, India and now Nigeria will almost certainly vote the same way. Nevertheless, it is at any rate possible that Britain, if she so desired, could influence these nations in their decision. The question is: should she?
There is, grimly, only one criterion that can any longer be applied to this question. It is whether South Africa's expulsion from the Com- monwealth will make it easier or more, difficult for the madmen in control of her Government to be deflected from their present course before there is an explosion of violence that will make Sharpeville a pleasant memory of happy times gone by. On balance—and it is only a balance, which events may tip without warning—it seems as if the greater chance of sanity prevailing may come with South Africa's exclusion. It is no longer possible to maintain that the moral pres- sure on South Africa will be less if she is outside the Commonwealth: her Government has long since made it clear that no moral arguments have the slightest effect on it. Nor is there much strength in the argument that expulsion from the Commonwealth will increase South Africa's sense of isolation and make her draw ever more tightly into the shell of apartheid and its con- comitant beastliness, for it is not at present easy to see how much worse conditions in that country could become. And it has long ceased to be true that the non-white majority of the country looks to Britain for help that it would be more difficult to give if South Africa were outside the Com- monwealth : the blunt truth is that there is not much help we can give them, whatever South Africa's status. (Conversely, there is no reason to suppose that our belated recognitions of Britain's duty to do something about South-West Africa would be adversely affected by South Africa's expulsion.) Then what good would South Africa's expul- sion from the Commonwealth do? It would bring to bear on the Nationalist Government the one kind of pressure that might conceivably have some effect—economic pressure. The world reaction to the Sharpeville massacre, in so far as it involved expressions of horror and con- demnation, worried Dr. Verwoerd and his associates not at all; but there is some evidence that when the world began to express its feelings by depreciating the value of South African securities and slackening the flow of investment in South Africa, they began to take note. It is in the slim hope that the economic disadvantages resulting from South Africa's expulsion might bring to their senses not the Government—for it is obviously prepared to ruin the country and all her inhabitants rather than abate one jot of its evil faith—but sufficient of its sup- porters to bring it down, that the suggestion of so drastic and grim a step is made.
There remains one further point. Natal voted overwhelmingly against the Republic—the only province to do so. Already voices are being raised calling for Natal's secession from the Union. Secession would almost certainly mean civil war: and even if it did not, it is hardly possible that Natal could survive on her own, inside the Commonwealth but outside South Africa. Mr. Douglas Mitchell, the anti-Republican leader of Natal, is now fighting a rearguard action against the secessionist opinions of many of his own supporters. He or Sir de Villiers Graaff (the in' creasingly ineffective leader of the increasinglY ineffective United Party), or both, will soon be in London to ask for help in keeping South Africa in the Commonwealth. It can and will be argued that by denying such help we are betray- ing the white minority that is opposed to the madness of Dr. Verwoerd. But there is singularlY little evidence that most of the United Party is opposed to the madness. They are opposed to the formation of a Republic, they are opposed to the worst excesses of apartheid. But that they are opposed in fundamental principle to the immeasurable wickedness of what is being done in Smith Africa is difficult to maintain. Their spokesmen should be told that Britain has at last come to recognise that the voteless, rightlese, hopeless, vast majority must be considered, and that it is in their interest—though ultimately, ID the interest of both halves of the white minority, who are otherwise doomed to a struggle of incalculable bloodiness—that Britain is unable to exert herself on behalf of maintaining the Cora: monwealth connection. The balance is a fine one, and the chances of anything but total disaster resulting whatever we do are exceedingly remote' But this, too, is the least we can do.
'Sorry. Sir Roy, they're fun.'
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