White Outposts in Southern Africa

Report Outline
Focus on White Power in Southern Africa
Development of the White-Ruled Societies
Outlook for International Action in Region
Special Focus

Focus on White Power in Southern Africa

Black africa's surge to independence and native rule has been one of the highlights of the postwar international scene. Yet almost all of southern Africa—including two of the continent's most prosperous nations—remains under white rule. With the exception of a pair of impoverished black enclaves recently granted independence by Great Britain, the white man retains the pre-eminent position which he established for himself in southern Africa during the centuries after his arrival at the Cape of Good Hope in 1652.

In recent years the white governments of southern Africa have been under continual attack in the United Nations because of the limitations they impose on the economic progress and political rights of their black populations. South Africa's implementation of its policy of apartheid—separate development of the races—has been repeatedly condemned, as has Portugal's refusal to consider eventual self-rule for its large colonies of Angola and Mozambique. Rhodesia has been the major target since Nov. 11, 1965, when the government at Salisbury declared the self-governing colony's independence from Great Britain rather than agree to London's insistence that the black population be given opportunity to advance more rapidly.

White Governments in Southern Part of Africa

While the governments involved are alike in their determination to maintain white dominance in southern Africa, they differ widely in other respects. South Africa, which withdrew from the British Commonwealth in 1961 after criticism of its racial policies by other members of the Commonwealth, has been essentially an independent nation since the Union of South Africa was formed in 1910 from four self-governing colonies. The richest, most productive country on the continent, South Africa is also the only nation with a relatively large proportion of whites in its population; the rough ratio of whites to nonwhites (including Asians and persons of mixed blood) is 1 to 4.5. The white population, however, is divided into two distinct groups—Afrikaners, who are descendants of the early Dutch settlers, and English-speaking South Africans.