South Africa and the Suez Crisis

Abstract

with other countries, South Africa's reactions to the Suez crisis were conditioned by a motley assembly of interests and emotions. Underlying, and accentuating, these were the divisions deriving from her bi-national tradition which with apartheid had become principal motive elements in her history and politics. Internally the steady deterioration into authoritarianism, externally the inevitable retreat into isolationism, had come to equip white South Africa with a national psychology that was at once highly sensitive and highly discreet. The absence of any direct proprietorial or navigational interests in the Suez Canal was in contrast with a deep concern with peace in the Middle East, since the region's geography as the gateway to southern Africa, and its politics as the scene of a widespread nationalist revolution, bore vitally on South Africa politically and strategically. The Union Government's studied neutrality on the merits of the Egyptian, and later of the Anglo-French, action was accompanied therefore by a vocal, and apparently sincere, fear of war in the Middle East. It did not, however, fail to avail itself of those aspects of the crisis that in its view impinged on South Africa's interests and position. Reactions to the crisis well reflected the national and racial divisions in South Africa. Concern of the Nationalists with the likely anti-Western repercussions and implications of the Egyptian action was paralleled, and almost concelled, by their anxiety not to get embroiled with Britain's wars. In its response to the nationalization of the Suez Canal Company, therefore, the Nationalist Government was forced to a narrow jurisdictional argument amounting more or less to a defence of the Egyptian action. In its response to the Anglo-French intervention, again,