Sanctions Against South Africa: A Critique

SANCTIONS AGAINST SOUTH AFRICA:
A CRITIQUE

By P. Kodanda Rao, M.A.

[Mr. Kodanda Rao was with the late Rt. Hon. V. S. Srinivasa Sastri as his Private Secretary during Mr. Sastri’s three missions to South Africa as a member of the two Round Table Conferences between India and South Africa and as the Agent-General of India in South Africa. He is the author of “The South African Indian Pegging Act,” and a member of the conference called by the Government of India in July 1943, to consider sanctions against South Africa.]

THE status of Indians in South Africa has been steadily growing worse, and at an accelerated pace since Dr. D. F. Malan became the Prime Minister. The tension between India and South Africa, which has been steadily mounting, is now nearing the climax. It is reported that India would make an all-out effort at the forthcoming session of the United Nations to clinch the matter finally. It may be worthwhile to take stock of the situation and assess the policy of sanctions against South Africa.

It is hardly necessary to repeat here the many and humiliating disabilities of Indians in South Africa and the justice of their plea. Even in the worst days of British imperialism in India there was no difference of opinion between the Government of India and the most ardent Indian nationalists on this question. Mahatma Gandhi and Lord Linlithgow were on the same side.

The General Assembly of the United Nations adopted on the 8th December 1946 a resolution which affirmed that the treatment of Indians in the Union should be in conformity with the international obligations under the agreements concluded between the two Governments and the relevant provisions of the Charter.

Since then the position of Indians in South Africa has worsened. The Asiatic Land Tenure and Representation Act, which was enacted by the Government of General Smuts in 1946, gave communal political franchise to Indians to elect five Europeans as their representatives to the South African Parliament. This provision has been repealed by the Government of Dr. Malan. Racial segregation has recently been extended in the Cape Province, and it is proposed to investigate Indian ‘penetration’ in the Province in order to stop it. Residential and other segregations in other provinces are being enforced more rigorously and ruthlessly. Family pensions, pensions for the old, disabled and destitute, and maternity grants and children’s allowances to Indians have been stopped. Indians are being thrown out of employment and boycotted. Greater inducements are being offered to encourage Indians to leave South Africa, with a view to reducing the Indian population in the Union, though over ninety per cent of them were born in the country, and the whole Indian community is a small, almost microscopic, minority in the country.

In righteous indignation against the humiliations and disabilities, and in despair of amicable and honourable settlement by direct negotiation, India and the Indians in South Africa launched on a policy of sanctions. The Indians in South Africa adopted two sanctions against the South African Government. They embarked on Satyagraha or non-violent direct action, and they made common cause with the Africans and formed a non-European Front. They have not, however, succeeded in their primary objective which was to improve the lot of Indians. Instead, they have hardened the South African Government against Indians.

India resorted to two sanctions against South Africa. She adopted the policy of reciprocity in disabilities and retaliated against South Africa and applied trade sanctions against her and withdrew the Indian High Commissioner from South Africa. Then, she took up the dispute to the forum of the United Nations and put South Africa in the dock, as it were.

When, in 1943, the South African Government of Gen. Smuts enacted the Trading and Occupation (Transvaal and Natal) Restrictions Act, extending the duration of certain restrictions against Indians in the Transvaal and also introducing them for the first time in Natal, there was a great agitation among Indians in South Africa which was echoed in India. Indignation rose to white heat, and feelings ran high. Insistent demands were made that India should pay South Africa in her own coin, apply economic sanctions and withdraw the Indian High Commissioner from South Africa. So great and persistent was the demand that the Government of India under Lord Wavell was persuaded by Dr. N. B. Khare, then in charge of the Commonwealth Relations Department, to enact the Reciprocity Act of 1943, notwithstanding that the World War II was still on and India and South Africa were members of the British Commonwealth and companions-in-arms against Germany and Japan. The Act imposed on South African nationals of non-Indian origin disabilities reciprocal to those imposed on Indians in South Africa in respect to franchise rights and entry, and acquisition and occupation of fixed property in India. Subsequently, in 1946, trade between India and South Africa was banned, and the Indian High Commissioner was recalled. Of direct sanctions against South Africa, India shot her last bolt!

Much was expected of the policy of sanction, particularly of trade and economic sanctions, to redress the grievances of Indians in South Africa. Such competent authorities as Swami Bhavani Dayal Sanyasi, Mr. Mahomed Ahmed Jadwat and Dr. Lanka Sundaram had issued a memorandum in 1944, in which they expressed their confidence that the enforcment of economic sanctions would be effective and remedy Indian grievances in South Africa. They urged that India, which had a growing favourable balance of trade with South Africa, should not hesitate to sacrifice it. Only a small fraction of the trade between the two countries was in the hands of Indians and they would cheerfully forego it. South African Indians would not mind the stoppage of the import of rice from India for their consumption. Nor would India suffer from the stoppage of the import of wattle products from South Africa. Swami Bhavani Dayal and friends had no doubts regarding the desirability, the feasibility and the effectiveness of economic sanctions against South Africa. They recalled the success of the Indian boycott of the clove trade in Zanzibar, and asserted that “trade and economic sanctions are the best and surest measure which India can adopt to bring South Africa to her knees.”

In the February 1949 issue of the Prabasi of which he is himself the editor, Swami Bhavani Dayal said:

“The trade sanctions of which we were a staunch supporter and issued a pamphlet to justify its effectiveness, have failed to achieve the purpose...We must confess with shame that Indian traders in South Africa, who asked the sanctions to the imposed, have been guilty of violating those sanctions...The sanctions now seem purposeless and detrimental to the interest of our own people...We strongly urge the Government of India to reconsider their policy of trade sanctions and remove the difficulties of our people to some extent.”

On the 23rd March 1949, in reply to an interpellation of Mr. L. N. Sahu in the Indian Parliament, the Government of India said that they did not propose to reconsider the policy of trade sanctions! To vindicate the self-respect of India, sanctions were invoked, and now no self-respecting Indian can be happy with the outcome. The Government of India is not in a position to emulate the Swamiji–admit defeat and reconsider. Meanwhile Indians in South Africa suffer not only because of South Africa but because of India too!

One of the sanctions of India against South Africa is the Reciprocity Act of 1943 which imposed on South African nationals of non-Indian origin disabilities reciprocal to those imposed on Indians in South Africa, with respect to franchise, entry, and acquisition and occupation of fixed property, etc. It would be interesting to know how for this Act has been effective, how many South African whites have been denied the franchise, and how many were permitted to acquire and occupy fixed property in segregated areas in India. As regards the right of entry, the Government of India stated on the 23rd March 1949, in reply to Mr. L. N. Sahu’s interpellation in the Indian Parliament, that 119 applications had been received and 103 were allowed and 11 rejected. Admissions seem to be the rule and rejection the exception! Retaliation has not been a conspicuous success either.

In passing, it may be mentioned that the Rev. Satchell, a South African national of non-Indian origin, recently arrived in Bombay from South Africa to work in the Christa Seva Sangh, Poona. The Bishop of Bombay, who was to receive him on landing, arrived a little too late. In the meantime, the Bombay Police, as in duty bound under the Reciprocity Act, had marched Mr. Satchell to the Police Station! They released him when the Bishop arrived and completed the due formalities. It was discovered later that the Rev. Satchell had been a life-long friend of the Indians in South Africa, had joined the Indian Satyagraha against the Government of South Africa and had actually gone to jail in defence of the self-respect of Indians in South Africa!

As another exhibition of her righteous displeasure against South Africa, India recalled her High Commissioner in South Africa in 1946. It was a great diplomatic triumph for India that so far as 1926, when she was still a subject country, South Africa should herself, as part of the Cape Town Agreement, request India to send an Indian representative to South Africa, when even the Crown Colonies, not to speak of the other Dominions, turned down the request of India to send her representatives to them. Of the great usefulness of the Indian representative, there were no two opinions. The recall of the Indian High Commissioner was most deplorable. Diplomatic representatives are generally recalled only on the declaration of war, and not when there is only a diplomatic war of words. For some years now there has been no love lost between the U.S.A. and the U.S.S.R. Though they are fighting a diplomatic war of words at the level of their Foreign Ministers and also in the form of the United Nations, they have not yet recalled their ambassadors. India could have carried on her campaign against South Africa at the United Nations, and yet retained her High Commissioner in South Africa.

India had a chance in 1947 to rectify her rash blunder with grace when Gen. Smuts repeatedly requested that the High Commissioner should resume his interrupted office in South Africa. In his letter to Pandit Nehru, dated April 28, 1947, Gen. Smuts first suggested that the Indian High Commissioner should return to South Africa to act as the “natural and obvious medium of exchange” of views between the two countries. Again, in his letter of June 18, 1947, Gen. Smuts said:

“We (the Union Government) accordingly urge once more that the Indian High Commissioner should be sent , in spite of objections to such a course stated in your letter under reply. It may be pointed out that this is the proper course under international practice and under the circumstances connected with the departure of Mr. Deshmukh. It was not a rupture of relations between Governments but simply a recall of the High Commissioner to report to his Government, while his office and staff remained to function as before... Technically we are on the footing of friendly Governments, and the Union Government are anxious to treat the Indian Government on that footing.”

The seasoned diplomat that he is, Gen. Smuts refused to take seriously India’s umbrage, did not consider it infra dig to request the return of the High Commissioner, and patted her as a friendly country” in spite of India’s hostile provocations. India would have done better if she had accepted the invitation and sent an Indian High Commissioner. Instead, India insisted that unless and until South Africa accepted the implied censure of the United Nations, she would not resume direct diplomatic relations with South Africa. And now that Dr. Malan has succeeded Gen. Smuts, there is less prospect of South Africa repeating the request. India cannot now take the first step without loss of dignity. Even if she did, it is very likely that she will be rebuffed by Dr. Malan, ifonly for the reason that the UNO is seized of the situation.

The second sanction that India applied to South Africa was to bring up the question at the United Nations. On the 8th December 1946, the General Assembly stated that because of the treatment of Indians in South Africa, the friendly relations between two member-States, namely, India and South Africa, had been impaired and were likely to be further impaired unless a satisfactory settlement was reached. It expressed the opinion that the treatment of Indians in South Africa should be in conformity with the international obligations under the agreements between the two countries and the relevant provisions of the U. N. Charter. It, therefore, requested the two Governments to report at the next session of the Assembly the measures taken to that effect. The Resolution was passed by a majority of 32 votes to 15, which was more than the two-thirds majority needed to make it valid.

South Africa ignored the UN Resolution. After waiting for about six months Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru took the first step and wrote to Gen. Smuts on the 24th April 1947 inviting discussions between the two Governments on the basis of the UN Resolution. Gen. Smuts declined. By September 1947 the deadlock was complete. India reported the matter to the UN in 1947. The Political Committee of the UN, which first considered the matter, passed, by 29 votes to 16, with 5 abstentions, India’s Resolution confirming the UN Resolution of 1946, and requesting the two Governments to have a Round Table Conference and report progress.

But when the Resolution was referred to the General Assembly, it failed to secure the necessary two-thirds majority, voting being 31 for and 19 against, with 6 abstentions and 1 absentee!

The matter was brought up again before the UN in September 1948 at Paris. The General Assembly decided to retain on its agenda the question of Indians in South Africa!

It will be seen that India’s case against South Africa suffered increasingly after the first success, and had led to no improvement of the status of Indians in South Africa which has been the primary objective. Indeed, as India herself admitted at the UN, it has deteriorated further, and threatens to be become worse still. Sanctions through the United Nations have also failed.

At the United Nations, India accused South Africa of having violated both the Cape Town Agreement and the UN Charter. In trying to make her cause doubly sure, India lost more than she gained. For, if she won her case with reference to the Cape Town Agreement, Indians in South Africa would have been as well off as under the UN Charter. The UN Charter of equal rights irrespective of race, etc., is of general application. South Africa was not alone in violating it, nor did he violate it with respect to Indians only. In accusing South Africa of violating the Charter, India put in the dock, as it were, not only South Africa, but also the United Kingdom and the United States of America and the British Dominions! South Africa was not slow to seek security in the multiplicity of the accused. She was also able to urge, though unsuccessfully, the plea that the question of Indians in South Africa was a ‘domestic’ issue outside the competence of the United Nations.

In his letter to Pandit Nehru of the 28th July 1947, Gen. Smuts said that he saw no reason why South Africa should be singled out for condemnation for policies which she was not alone in pursuing. He added:

“If intervention of the UNO should be called for, there should be first an enquiry into such practices among its members and especially such practices as involve racial and economic discriminations. Only thus could a policy of general application be laid down for all.”

Gen. Smuts was sure that the U.K. and the U.S.A. would not tolerate the UNO examining their racial and economic discriminations. In fact, speaking on the UN Resolution of 1946 which forbade South Africa from annexing South West Africa, Gen. Smuts said in the South African Parliament:

“I know that we are not standing alone. On a count of votes, on numbers, it may seem as though we have suffered defeat, but I know–and I know what I am talking about–that we have friends and strong friends, and if it comes to the worst, we shall find that we are not standing alone.”

South Africa had powerful friends in the U.K. and U.S.A. in opposing the Indian case before the UN. Though the friends were not powerful enough to defeat the Indian case in 1946, they were powerful enough in the two succeeding years to defeat and neutralise it. They also enabled South Africa not to take her defeat in 1946 seriously. Dr. Malan’s Government recently defied the UN Resolution against the incorporation of South West Africa in the South African Union more flagrantly and contemptuously.

In accusing South Africa of having violated the UN Charter, India gave South Africa cause to complain that South Africa was not allowed to test before the International Court of Justice her plea that the case of Indians in South Africa was a ‘domestic’ issue outside the competence of the UN. India drove such powerful members as the U.K. and the U.S.A. into the arms of South Africa, and made it possible for South Africa to ignore with contempt the Resolution of 1946. She lost the case in 1947 and in 1948. India could not claim that she was really interested in the elimination of racial discriminations among the members of the UNO, for she did not directly and openly put in the dock South Africa with respect to her treatment of South African Negroes; she did not include in the charge the U.K. and the U.S.A. for their discriminatory treatment of their non-white peoples. India did not take a high moral and general stand against racial and economic discriminations as such. She was interested only in the fate of the small Indian minority in South Africa, over ninety per cent of whom were born in South Africa. She took the line of a lawyer who maximises the number of clauses of the Criminal Code under which the same offence could be charged, in order to maximise the chances of his winning his case!

Tactically speaking, it would have been better if India had rested her case before the UNO only on South Africa’s violation of the Cape Town Agreement. If India obtained due relief on this count, there was no need to invoke the UN Charter at all. South Africa would have been isolated as the sole accused, for the Cape Town Agreement does not concern any other country, nor even the other non-white peoples in South Africa. Even the U.K. and the U.S.A. would not have ed up South Africa on the narrow and limited issue of the Cape Town Agreement, as they did on the wider issue of the violation of the UN Charter. They would be among the jury and not among the accused.

South Africa would have found it difficult to plead that the question of Indians in South Africa was a domestic one, and that India was not concerned with it. For the Cape Town Agreement was between India and South Africa. Even as recently as 28th April 1947, Gen. Smuts, in his first letter to Pandit Nehru, thanked the Government of India for

“the opportunity given to the Union Government to discuss with the Government of India common difficulties between the two Governments in regard to the treatment of Indians in South Africa.”

He asked that the Indian High Commissioner should return to South Africa in order to assist in the negotiations between the two Governments on the question.

It is true that in his final and snapping letter of the 28th July 1947 to Pandit Nehru, Gen. Smuts said that the Cape Town Agreement was not rigid and binding, and it did not take away the right of South Africa to resist interference from outside in its domestic affairs and deal with the Indian question as she thought best. But that does not quite obliterate his earlier admission that it was a question common to both countries and not a purely domestic concern with which India had nothing to do.

It is a lamentable fact that the policy of sanctions against South Africa has failed of its main purpose; indeed, it has done more harm than good to the Indians in South Africa and to India. The reference to the UN has only hardened South Africa the more against Indians in South Africa, instead of giving them relief. Thus, every single sanction has failed of its purpose and left matters worse.

It is hardly any consolation to know that the failure of the policy of sanctions was anticipated and cautioned against. Among those who were opposed to the policy of sanctions was the late Rt. Hon. V. S. Srinivasa Sastri, and the writer of this article. In the course of the Foreword which he was good enough to contribute to my pamphlet, The South African ‘Pegging’ Act, 1943–Retaliation? (Institute of Current Affairs, Lahore, 1943), Mr. Sastri said:

“To ardent spirits the cautious and apparently negative conclusions of the pamphlet may be disappointing. Calm reflection, however, will show that they arise, not from any timidity or lack of indignation on the part of the writer, but from the inherent weakness of the situation...Nor can we forget that our excessive population and deficient means of subsistence leave us with our hands tied behind our s on the testing field of national competition. When feeling runs high, the man who speaks with the voice of caution, and pleads for the adaptation of measures to capacity on the one hand and probable result on the other, is not likely to be popular. By training and by nature Mr. Kodanda Rao knows that a servant of India must often miss popularity if he is to point the way to greater ends.”

The fact of the matter is that in her relations with South Africa, India belongs to the bride’s party, as it were, while South Africa belongs to the bridegroom’s party, to use a homely Indian analogy. There are over 250,000 Indians in South Africa who are being discriminated against by the South African Government. Like the Indian bride, they have to stay at the mother-in-law’s house, however badly treated, but cannot return to the mother’s house. The Indians in South Africa will not come to India, notwithstanding their bad treatment by South Africa and not withstanding that South Africa wants to send them out, and is willing to pay them to get out. They will not leave South Africa because most of them were born in that country, and also because they are economically better off in South Africa than they would be if they came to India. For good or evil, Indians must and will stay in South Africa. There are no appreciable number of South African whites in India whom India could use as a lever to secure better treatment for Indians in South Africa. All that the bride’s parents can, therefore, do is to persuade the mother-in-law to be gentler to their daughter. All that India can do to help Indians in South Africa is to persuade South Africa to act in conformity with the Cape Town Agreement. If such a plea will not do much good, it will not do much harm. At any rate, India will not have contributed to the worsening of the position of Indians in South Africa.

In the pamphlet already referred to, the writer pleaded that the then proposals for retaliation should be abandoned as impracticable and undesirable and advocated the holding of another Round Table Conference between the two Governments. Gen. Smuts, who was then the Prime Minister, was in a kindlier mood, and was even apologetic about enacting the Pegging Act. On the 14th April 1943, he said in Parliament:

“We have the greatest respect for India and the people of India...We are determined to preserve good feeling and friendliness towards India...Therefore we are not laying down large-scale and long-range policies.”

The Minister of Mines, Col. Stallrd of Natal, was more specific regarding consultation with India. He said:

“In this Pegging measure we have a fixed time limit which will allow full consultation with India.”

Above all, Jan. Hofmeyr, the great Liberal statesman of South Africa, was alive and had advocated a solution of the Indian problem in South Africa by mutual consent and on non-statutory lines, and Gen. Smuts had agreed.

But that opportunity was thrown away in a burst of righteous but impotent indignation. The prospect is worse today.

Even so, the Natal Indian Organisation, which broke off from the South African Indian Congress, has openly suggested a Round Table Conference between South Africa, Pakistan and India, directly, and urged the Prime Ministers of the three countries, who are to meet in London later this month, to talk over the suggestion.

If the position of Indians in South Africa is the principal consideration, it seems desirable that India should abandon the policy of sanctions with the best possible grace, withdraw her case from the UN forum, where she will be opposed by such power nations as the U.K. and the U.S.A., and have only such doubtful friends as the U.S.S.R. Dr. Malan has less respect for the UN than Gen. Smuts. He said recently that with the signing the Atlantic Pact, the UN was practically dead. India will do better to seek a Round Table Conference with South Africa, though the circumstances even for that are less propitious. The Cape Town Agreement may still be the basis of the Conference. But if South Africa objects to it also, there may be no previously agreed common basis. The talks themselves may bring out some basis of agreement. Anyway, failure to arrive at an agreement at a friendly conference is a lesser evil than defeat of sanctions and the resultant revengeful persecution of Indians in South Africa.

Or, India must make up her mind that she has no further concern with Indians in South Africa, even as she had to abandon Congressmen and the Khudai-Khitmatgars in Pakistan. She may, then, continue to use the UN forum to uphold the Charter universally and oppose all and every racial and other discriminations all over the world, and win moral glory.