Stop Malan!

The defeat of Smuts by Malan was a disaster for the black population of South Africa. Smuts' may have had a wishy-washy paternalistic attitude towards black and white relations but it was infinitely more liberal than what replaced it. Malan literally turned his country into a pariah state in order to maintain racial segregation. South Africa's position confirmed the fact that the Statute of Westminster meant that Britain could no longer control or oversea what its former colonies did. Harold Macmillan attempted to point out the folly of Apartheid with his 'Winds of Change' speech in South Africa but this was statedly ignored by the South African white minority government. South Africa's stance complicated Britain's relationship with its other black African colonies and led ultimately to South Africa leaving the Commonwealth in 1961. It did not rejoin until 1994 after Nelson Mandela had been released and Apartheid ended.