The Commonwealth and South Africa: From Smuts to Mandela
View / Open Files
Authors
Dubow, Saul
Publication Date
2017-03-04Journal Title
The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History
ISSN
0308-6534
Publisher
Informa UK Limited
Volume
45
Issue
2
Pages
284-314
Language
en
Type
Article
Metadata
Show full item recordCitation
Dubow, S. (2017). The Commonwealth and South Africa: From Smuts to Mandela. The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 45 (2), 284-314. https://doi.org/10.1080/03086534.2017.1294790
Abstract
The creation of modern South Africa as an independent unitary state within the British Empire (c. 1910) gave birth to the Commonwealth idea. Jan Smuts’s views on Commonwealth were formative and they continued to inform the evolution of the organisation until the end of the Second World War. Also significant was the role played by Afrikaner nationalist leader J. B. M. Hertzog, who exerted a critical influence on the 1926 Balfour Declaration and Statute of Westminster. At the point of South Africa’s departure from the Commonwealth in 1961, the Commonwealth divided between new entrants, who cast South Africa as a pariah, and older member states who lamented the exit of a troubled family member. Even after South Africa’s departure from the Commonwealth in 1961, apartheid’s significance as the global exemplar of institutionalised racism and colonial rule helped to bind the Commonwealth as a multi-racial organisation with strongly defined ethical values. South Africa’s reintegration in 1994, with Nelson Mandela to the fore, was welcomed as a triumph for the Commonwealth. Paradoxically, however, this proved a pyrrhic victory and may actually have contributed to the Commonwealth’s state of indirection.
Identifiers
External DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/03086534.2017.1294790
This record's URL: https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/279817
Rights
Licence:
http://www.rioxx.net/licenses/all-rights-reserved
Statistics
Total file downloads (since January 2020). For more information on metrics see the
IRUS guide.