Why did South Africa become a republic in 1961?

Question 1

What percentage of white votes did the nationalists receive in the 1958 election?

Answer 1

55%

Question 2

VERWOERD’S AIMS

Give two of Verwoerd’s aims for the referendum

Answer 2

VERWOERD’S AIMS
To rally support beyond the constituency that usually backed the National Party.
To “stamp his authority” as a “hardline transvaler” within the party

Question 3

Who was Dr. P.J. Meyer and what two positions did Verwoerd give him?

Answer 3

A former member of the Ossewabrandwag

Head of Broederbond, Head of South African Broadcasting Corporation

Question 4

What year did South Africa get television and why?

Answer 4

1976, the NP did not feel that they could adequately control the output.

Question 5

MACMILLAN’S “WIND OF CHANGE” SPEECH

Who was the first prime minister to tour Africa and what month/year did he visit South Africa?

Answer 5

MACMILLAN’S “WIND OF CHANGE” SPEECH
Harold Macmillan
February 1960

Question 6

What was the first African country Macmillan visited?

What were the two main reasons for his visit?

Answer 6

Ghana
To confirm Britain’s decision to decolonise more broadly, strengthen commonwealth ties/celebrate independence.
To keep African countries from falling to communism

Question 7

Leaders from which countries criticised Macmillan’s visit to South Africa?
What two reasons meant that Macmillan was careful with the content of his speech?

Answer 7

India and Africa

50 years since the union of South Africa, Verwoerd had announced the South African referendum on republican status.

Question 8

What did Macmillan focus much of his speech on?
What fraction of external investment was from Britain in 1956?
What fraction of SA trade was with Britain?
What did Macmillan say about the SA and British economies?
What did Macmillan praise and what did he say SA had the capacity to do?

Answer 8

Praising South Africa’s achievements/its beauty
nearly two thirds
one third
“largely interdependent”
South Africa’s contribution to the war and commonwealth, to offer technical assistance to Africa

Question 9

What was the only country to achieve independence under Atlee’s Labour government?
What was guiding the French and British governments to pursue decolonisation?
What was Macmillan’s memorable phrase, referring to the above answer?

Answer 9

India
Conservative realism
“The wind of change blowing through Africa”

Question 10

What recent event (give year) showed the problems of an aggressive defence of the British Empire?
In which two places did Britain face major wars against insurgents?
What two other factors put pressure on Britain to decolonise?
What did Macmillan hope rapid decolonisation would achieve?

Answer 10

The Suez Crisis (1956)
Malaysia and Kenya
The rising cost of the empire, American pressures
Strong links between Britain and its former colonies which would remain important markets and sites for investment

Question 11

What did Macmillan indicate that white South Africans needed to accept?
What did Macmillan explicitly query and what did he warn South Africa about?
What did Verwoerd emphasise in his response/later speeches?
What did Macmillan’s speech help to cement in the mind of Verwoerd?

Answer 11

African Nationalism “yours will be recorded as the first of African Nationalists”
“some aspects of your policies”, SA trying to “go it alone”
the white determination to stay in power
The idea of internal decolonisation of South Africa through the Bantustan or homeland policy.

Question 12

ESTABLISHING THE REPUBLIC, 1960-61
What month was the 1960 republic vote and what percentage voted for a republic?
Where in South Africa did a large number of people reject the republic and why?
Why did black opposition parties reject the move?

Answer 12

ESTABLISHING THE REPUBLIC, 1960-61
October, 52%
Natal, a sizeable population of British South Africans
Mainly because it was done without the consultation of the majority of South Africa’s population

Question 13

What date did South Africa become a republic?
What replaced the Queen as the ceremonial head of state?
What was the new currency?

Answer 13

31st of May
The office of the state president
The rand

Question 14

LEAVING THE COMMONWEALTH
What month and year was the commonwealth conference?
What heads of state were against South Africa (with the apartheid policy) remaining as a republic within the commonwealth?
Which five countries supported South Africa?

Answer 14

LEAVING THE COMMONWEALTH
March 1961
Asian and African
Britain, Australia, New Zealand, The Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland

Question 15

What year did Zambia and Malawi break away from the Federation and become independent countries within the commonwealth?
What percentage of whites controlled Southern Rhodesia in 1960 and how were they able to avoid majority rule?

Answer 15

1964

6%, trading via South Africa

Question 16

Why could Australian and British advisors not allow South Africa into the commonwealth?

Answer 16

Verwoerd would not allow diplomatic representation for newly independent African states “he could not have the capital crowded with so many embassies”

Question 17

Why did Botswana, Lesotho, and Swaziland become significant as independent states within the commonwealth?
Between which years did they gain their independence?
What is AAM, where was it founded and when, why was it significant?

Answer 17

They became “occasional havens” for South African political dissidents and routes for escape.
1966-68
the British Anti Apartheid Movement
London, 1960
Global focus for opposition, the major destination for those fleeing SA

Question 18

What was the Conservative Party Monday Club, what did they believe about Macmillan and; his “wind of change” speech?

Answer 18

A group established to debate decolonisation

Saw Macmillan as undermining the Party’s commitment to the empire

Question 19

Which cold war event (and what year) affirmed the Western sense that the benefits of White minority rule outweighed the costs? (ANC = communist links)

Answer 19

The Cuban Missile Crisis, 1962

Question 20

Which two events triggered a brief withdrawal of investment in South African companies?
Which country still remained the largest investors in South Africa throughout the 1960s?
Who was Ruth First, what did she believe?
What two metals did South Africa produce which were vital for the global economy and nuclear technology?

Answer 20

Sharpeville, Cape Town
Britain
The wife of Joe Slovo, she believed that Britains caution in taking any action against apartheid was due to economic interests.
Gold and Uranium

Question 21

What year did the ANC first call for actions against South Africa?
What year did the UN pass a resolution to ban imports and exports to and from South Africa?
What made these sanctions “irrelevant”?
What was the next resolution that the UN passed, what year was it passed?
Which British Labour PM imposed it, what year?

Answer 21

1959
1962
They were voluntary so Western powers with interest in the SA economy did not take them up
Arms embargo so that the state could not suppress its people (1963)
Harold Wilson, 1964