Winds of change

In the Brown vs. the Board of Education decision in 1954, the United States Supreme Court ruled that distinctions based on race or colour violated the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment to the United States Constitution. The decision provided the legal framework for the United States civil rights movement of the 1960s. That same year, the fall of Dien Bien Phu brought an end to French Indochina, and signalled the beginning of the end of French and British colonial empires. Around the developing world, the defeat of a colonial power by a small Asian nation augured the collapse of colonialism and was a source of great pride.

Increasingly, what racists in South Africa saw as the natural order was becoming out of step with the rest of Africa and the world. In October 1958, the United States government shifted its policy of abstaining from resolutions critical of apartheid, voting for a mild declaration expressing ‘regret and concern’ over South Africa's racial policy. Shortly afterwards, the All-African People's Conference in Accra, Ghana, pushed Africans in South Africa – particularly those who were Africanists – to identify more closely with movements for independence elsewhere on the continent.

‘Self-government has become the cry of the peoples throughout the length and breadth of the continent,’ noted the ANC report in December 1959. ‘That cry can no longer be resisted by the imperialists who are making a last desperate bid to withhold the legitimate rights of the African people.’ Nigeria, Cameroon and Congo were among those colonies on the cusp of independence, sparking a renewed sense of hopefulness that South Africa would overcome white domination. Africanists in South Africa pointed to the growing spirit of independence to claim their movement was in concert with the rest of the continent.

In Britain, Prime Minister Harold Macmillan took note of the burgeoning nationalist movements and, on a trip to Cape Town, declared before the South African parliament that ‘winds of change’ were blowing throughout the African continent.