The Press THURSDAY, JULY 21,1966. Victory For Apartheid ?

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31117, 21 July 1966, Page 14

The Press THURSDAY, JULY 21,1966. Victory For Apartheid ?

The cabled summary of the World Court judgment on the status of South-west Africa suggests, at first sight, an escape from reality. The Court appears to have relied, without pretence of concealment, on a technicality to evade responsibility for a decision whether the South African Government was in fact administering the territory according to the spirit of its mandate. The judgment does not touch at all on the merits of the complaint lodged by Ethiopia and Liberia: it merely rejects, on legal grounds, their right to make it. In brief, after six years of argument on questions of fact and mandatory obligation, the complainants have found themselves nonsuited. Thus the President of the Court, Sir Percy Spender: “This is a court of law and can take “ account of moral principles only so far as they are “ given sufficient expression in legal form The Court took the view that it could not exceed its function—that the rights of complaint assumed by Ethiopia and Liberia “could not be presumed to “ exist because they might be considered desirable “ to exist ”,

The basic questions raised in the case against South Africa thus remain unanswered—to the understandable relief of Dr. Verwoerd. It was, of course, obvious from the outset that the complaint had a political aim: the taking of action against the South African Government to force it to abandon either apartheid or the territory. The “ C-type ” mandate granted to South Africa by the Treaty of Versailles required that South-west Africa should be administered “under the laws of the Mandatory as “an integral portion of its territory ”, subject to safeguards “in the interests of the indigenous population ”. The complainant States sought to show that the practice of racial discrimination in the territory was incompatible with the terms of the mandate. The South African rebuttal relied on the contention—rejected at an earlier stage by the Court—that the mandate died with the old League of Nations and that the territory, far from being the concern of the United Nations, was to be regarded as part of South Africa. Dr. Verwoerd could perhaps produce persuasive support for that view. As long ago as 1922, when there was no question of South Africa’s place within the Commonwealth structure, General Smuts described the mandate as being “in effect not far removed from “ annexation ”, Again, in 1946, he declared: “We “ have never found it necessary to annex because “ our authority was so very wide. ” Today, Dr. Verwoerd assumes for the territory a status clearly based on integration without formal annexation. The argument will doubtless go on from there, with the certainty that South Africa will resist, by force if necessary, any attempt to challenge its right to pursue its own policies in South-west Africa on the basis of existing authority.

South Africa is, in fact, pouring capital into the South-west—a “ colonial ” region almost as large as the Republic itself. From its Atlantic fringe to Angola in the north and Bechuanaland in the east, it covers 318,000 square miles, but contains, for all that vastness, not many more than half a million people. Of these the whites number only about 75,000, mostly Afrikaners, but with a strong German element. There are German-language schools still, and the Bonn Government maintains a full consulate-general in the capital, Windhoek. The whites have dominated industry—fishing and mining chiefly—and farming: but reallocation of land is to take place under the Government’s massive Odendaal Report, whereby the African share may be increased to about 40 per cent. The whites largely regard themselves as already citizens of the Republic: and they accept the permit system which governs entry into the so-called native areas. The Administration has also been buying in farms for the eventual establishment of Bantustan or “ native “homelands ”, as envisaged by the Odendaal Commission. The basis of the charges brought before the World Court thus becomes apparent. As yet, it is said, there is no organised native opposition to the Government’s planning. But the wider African reaction to the Court’s judgment—based, as has been said, virtually on a refusal of jurisdiction—has yet to appear. It will certainly not encourage Dr. Verwoerd’s hopes for any modification of the campaign against apartheid.