Printed for the Cabinet. April 1951
Page 276
SECRET
C.P. (51) 109
16th April, 1951
CABINET
Copy No.
31
.
VISIT BY THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR COMMONWEALTH RELATIONS TO THE UNION OF SOUTH AFRICA, SOUTHERN RHODESIA AND THE THREE HIGH COMMISSION TERRITORIES OF BASUTOLAND, THE BECHUANALAND PROTECTORATE AND
SWAZILAND
·
MEMORANDUM BY THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR COMMONWEALTH RELATIONS
I am circulating this report for the information of my colleagues. I am afraid it is long, but I visited three different and difficult areas. I have sub-divided the report as follows:-
(i) Southern Rhodesia (paragraphs 3 to 11).
(ii) High Commission Territories (paragraphs 12 to 21).
(iii) Union of South Africa (paragraphs 22 to 34).
(iv) Problems of Policy (paragraphs 35 to 55).
Some of my colleagues may prefer to read only the conclusions I have formed. These are in section (iv).
2. I spent six weeks in January and February this year travelling in the Union of South Africa and Southern Rhodesia as the guest of the two Governments and in the Bechuanaland Protectorate, Basutoland and Swaziland. In that time I travelled by air, road and rail some 17,000 miles.
(i) Southern Rhodesia
3. Southern Rhodesia is still in many ways like an enlarged County Council. Its white population is 129,000. The general level of Ministers and Civil Servants and business men is not high: but there are a few outstanding exceptions in all these classes. Trade Union and Labour leaders are not impressive. The Labour Party is small and split. The Trade Unions are extremely colour-conscious and enforce a rigid colour bar in the fields they control (particularly housing). They seek to exclude Africans from all skilled and semi-skilled building labour (and indeed from what we would here classify as unskilled labour) in the towns. Through training schools, African builders are becoming quite good though they cannot yet, in any numbers, work as well as the whites and they lack persistence. Nevertheless, I saw some excellent African-built houses, schools and hospitals. Their cost is about half as much as similar buildings put up by European labour. With the exception of the small Labour element the whole of Southern Rhodesia seems to be pro-Churchill and conservative in British politics, in which they are very interested. Even many of the Labour people think the British Labour Party has innocent and utopian ideas about race-relations. In their own internal affairs they are, however, quite radical and readily create State industries in fields such as iron and steel and railways in which they think we are stupid to have done so.
4. In general Southern Rhodesia is a happy and prosperous country. It has very considerable resources (doubtless much more than have yet been discovered). The population is pretty vigorous and virile. The country is suffering now from th87
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