When the Commonwealth Prime Ministers meet here some time in the first half of July they will do so in an atmosphere of crisis of confidence that has been building up steadily over the years. This crisis of confidence is not the result of the unsolved problem of Southern Rhodesia though this emotion laden issue will command a top priority on the agenda of the conference. The trouble is much more deeply rooted.
Southern Rhodesia remains an intractable problem but it is no longer as explosive an issue as was South Africa at the Prime Ministers’ Conference in 1960. On South Africa the British Government’s position was equivocal. In fact it remains so even today three years after her expulsion from the Commonwealth. South Africa continues to enjoy all the preferences in the British Market she was entitled to as a member of the Commonwealth. Britain continues to be her principal supplier of arms and ammunition. One reason for this softness undoubtedly is that Britain has an investment of over a billion pounds in South Africa. The Labour party is as unwilling as the ruling Conservative party to support economic sanctions against South Africa.
No Support
On the contrary no British interests of any magnitude are involved in Southern Rhodesia. For the British Government the basic decision was the dissolution of the Central African Federation. Once it was compelled by the march of events to take and implement that decision last year it did not make any sense for it to be a party to an attempt to perpetuate the domination of the white settlers in Southern Rhodesia. Consequently the Southern Rhodesian Prime Minister, Mr. Winston Field, has not found any support for his demand for independence in Whitehall and even his right-wing Conservative supporters have visibly lost hope of forcing a change of policy on the part of the Government.
The conditions on which the British Government is prepared to concede independence to Southern Rhodesia have not been made public officially, but it is not a matter of speculation that they include widening of franchise to provide for an African majority in the legislature in the next five years and entrenched safeguards in the Constitution against the violation of the rights of the Africans in the meantime. As such the British Government has no insuperable difficulty in assuring the African Prime Ministers that it will not concede independence to Southern Rhodesia under the present Constitution.
Reports here have persistently suggested that the African Commonwealth countries are concerned over the possibility that the Southern Rhodesian extremists might force the Government there to make a unilateral declaration of independence. There undoubtedly are hotheads among the supporters of Mr. Field who have been urging such a course of defiance on him. But theirs is a counsel of despair and not a demonstration of strength.
The Problems
First, no country other than Portugal and South Africa is likely to recognise a white-dominated Southern Rhodesia. Even recognition by South Africa is by no means assured. Secondly, the possibility of internal disturbances supported by African neighbours being followed by international intervention cannot be lightly dismissed. Thirdly, the economy of Southern Rhodesia is wholly dependent on the market of Northern Rhodesia. Already the capital is tending to shift from Southern to Northern Rhodesia. Fourthly, the settlers are by no means united behind a policy of defiance. The Government cannot count on the wholehearted support of civil servants and army personnel who have pledged allegiance to the Queen.
At one stage it was feared that Southern Rhodesia would merge with South Africa. It soon became clear that Dr. Verwoerd was not too anxious to take in another 250,000 English-speaking people and disturb the internal balance of power within South Africa between the English community and the Afrikaaners. This was of course just one reason for caution on the part of Dr. Verwoerd. He knew that as it was he had enough problems segregating 12 million Africans in South Africa and it might break his back to take on another three million Africans in Southern Rhodesia. Also he could not afford to defy international opinion on Southern Rhodesia.
The lack of support from South Africa left the Southern Rhodesian Government out on a limb and it has been improvising ever since. The latest move of pushing through Parliament a resolution requesting the British Queen in Parliament to give up the right to intervene in the internal affairs of Southern Rhodesia without a request from her Government shows the straits to which it is reduced. There is not a ghost of a chance that the British Government will accede to this resolution and the Southern Rhodesian Government knew it in advance.
The continued talk of the Commonwealth splitting on the question of Southern Rhodesia seems to me to be a case of conditioned reflex. There is no division on this issue since the old members, particularly Canada, are as much opposed to a settler dominated Southern Rhodesia as, say, India. The British Government itself scuttled the policy of white Southern Africa last year after the collapse of the western effort to bolster up an independent Katanga. Since then no effort has been spared by Whitehall to win over black Africa. It is unlikely that this policy can be reversed.
Several other causes have been cited for the present crisis of confidence in the ability of the Commonwealth to survive. It has been said that with the independence of former African colonies the Commonwealth has become unwieldy. Sir Roy Welensky’s proposal to have a two tier membership, the first category to include Pakistan but to exclude India, has, for instance, found an echo in The Sunday Times which last week argued in favour of organising the Prime Ministers’ Conference on a regional basis. These are new versions of the old theme that the Commonwealth lacks coherence since its members, not only do not coordinate their defence and foreign policies, but also sometimes follow mutually hostile polities as in the case of India and Pakistan. In popular parlance here, the Commonwealth is frequently described as a club. The club spirit has clearly weakened and it is admitted in Whitehall that the same degree of intimacy and trust do not obtain in the British Government’s dealings with all the members. This is an indirect way of saying that the interests of some of the members diverge violently from that of Britain. The first major expression of this divergence was India’s stand on the Suez question in 1956. Currently Ghana under President Nkrumah follows policies disruptive of British influence and interests in Africa.
Weak Links
It is easy and perhaps even natural to argue that such a divergence of interests is not incompatible with the spirit of the Commonwealth. In theory it may be so. In practice it weakens Britain’s interest in the Commonwealth. Since Britain’s decision to join the Common Market represented the biggest threat to the Commonwealth, one would have thought that President de Gaulle’s veto early last year gave the Commonwealth a fresh lease of lift. On a superficial view it was so. Only this brutal exclusion from the Common Market did not resolve the conflict which the British were seeking to resolve through a merger with Europe.
During the two years I have reported from here the discussion on the Commonwealth has revolved round trade figures. When in 1962 the exports to Europe rose faster than to the Commonwealth, the pro-Europe intellectuals gleefully drew the conclusion that Britain’s future lay with Europe. Now the trend is partially reversed. As far as I am aware no other country has discussed the value of the Commonwealth links in such unemotional terms. Asian and African members for instance, get far more aid from America and Europe than from within the family but they have not ridiculed the Commonwealth ties on that account.
The Times of India, 28 March 1964