A Wind of Change? White Redoubt and the Postcolonial Moment, 1960-1963*

Abstract

In July 1963, U.S. Secretary of State Dean Rusk held a private meeting with Dr. Willem Naude, the ambassador from South Africa. “A rough time [is] ahead,” Rusk explained as the representative sat down in his office. “We are under enormous pressure but do not intend to give in.” Several members of the so-called African bloc at the United Nations had successfully protested the practice of apartheid—South Africa's system of institutionalized racial discrimination—in the Security Council that year, and pressure was rapidly mounting in the General Assembly for mandatory economic sanctions against South Africa. The ambassador looked across Rusk's desk and noted that it was “ironical” that ten years earlier they had been allies in the Cold War, and now his country was being isolated in its struggle against a “common enemy.” He went on to assert, “The United States [is] to a large degree responsible for releasing these revolutionary forces in the world. The goal of a great power should be to play down tensions and try to get people to talk together, but the United States without even opening its mouth [has] released dangerous forces in the world.” Rusk paused for a moment before responding, “[I wonder] if these forces [are] not deeply rooted in the nature of man. [I wonder] if this discourse has not been going on for 2,000 years. Did not man, like most animals, not like to be pushed around too much?”1