The Future of the Gold Coast

...Will South Africa risk losing her economic and strategic protection for the sake of racial ideology...

...similar sentiment existed in South Africa...

...This new approach to the colonial problem was instituted during the Labor party's administration, from 1945 to 1951...

...In 1947, however, India, Pakistan and Ceylon were admitted to the Commonwealth on the basis of equality, thus adding 396 million non-whites and non-Europeans to 74 million European white Commonwealth citizens...

...This is particularly significant because South Africa will have a voice in deciding whether an independent Gold Coast will receive Commonwealth status...

...The colony, for example, does not want to build its own defense force now, nor does it want complete control over its foreign relations...

...For almost a century, its main constitutional interest had centered on the efforts of British colonists in those countries to secure self-government and then independence...

...A new cabinet will be selected from the majority party, and all ministerial positions will be filled by Africans...

...It now seems likely that, within the next few years, the Commonwealth will have to decide whether it will submit to the color prejudice of one member, or will expand its interracial character by accepting the Negro Gold Coast colony and risking South Africa's defection...

...Yet, definition or no definition, it has now become clear that the unifying force is a common belief in peaceful democratic advance, with discussion replacing force and the right to differ replacing threats...

...Although there were many fears and suspicions in the Union when India, Pakistan and Ceylon were granted Commonwealth membership, opposition was not strong, because they were not located in Africa and, besides, South Africa was in the process of changing from the Smuts to the Malan Government...

...Britain will relinquish all her powers, with the exception of those that the Africans themselves want her to retain...

...Moreover, conflicts between member states often penetrated...

...But the prospect of a Negro state following the Indian example has terrified South Africa's white community, particularly since it has fired the imagination of Africans throughout the continent...

...For India, the Crown was a symbol of imperialism...

...Throughout the free world, democracy's progress in the Gold Coast is being hailed with acclaim...

...Before any decision can be made, however, two questions will have to be answered: Are Britain and the other Commonwealth countries prepared to lose South Africa's ports and gold for the sake of holding the Gold Coast in the Western world and keeping faith with Africans on the continent...

...It was evident that the Crown no longer sufficed for this purpose...

...The Commonwealth had become a truly interracial, international organization, with Europeans in the minority...

...In the Commonwealth nation of South Africa, however, it is bitterly resented as a threat to the white man's position of dominance...

...The new relationship did create problems, chiefly because the unifying force of the Commonwealth has never been clearly defined...

...These aims were accomplished with passage of the 1931 Statute of Westminister, which gave each Commonwealth member independent and equal status and thereby split the Empire in two: Countries ruled by white settlers were now sovereign states, but Asian countries were kept as colonies...

...The only threat to this unity of purpose stems from South Africa, since the ideal of racial equality, the new Commonwealth's foundation, directly contradicts the whole basis of her society...

...John Hatch, the author of Dilemma in South Africa, is a lecturer on world affairs at Glasgow University...

...Daniel F. Malan, South African Prime Minister, recently described it as an abdication of the white race to barbarous, illiterate natives...

...Before 1947, the Commonwealth was pretty much a white man's club, with Britain, South Africa, Canada, Australia and New Zealand as its members...

...As a result, the Nationalist Government has demanded that admission to the Commonwealth be passed upon by all members and not regarded as a British responsibility...

...into the field of international politics, as in the Kashmir dispute and in South Africa's quarrel with India over apartheid...

...When they are ready, however, the Africans will be given full control of what will be the first independent Negro state in the British Empire...

...Under the leadership of Colonial Secretary Arthur Creech Jones, steps toward colonial freedom which had been scheduled to take several years were accomplished in months...

...In addition, the release of nationalist leader Kwame Nkrumah when his party was elected, Nkrumah's tolerance, and the British Governor's patience and wisdom transformed an explosive situation into the present hopeful prospect...