“You are Among Friends”: Conservative Sympathy and Support for White Minority Rule in Southern Africa, 1975–1990

Abstract

ABSTRACT In the 1970s, a network of politicians, media, businesspeople, clergy, expatriates, and activists coalesced on Canada’s political right wing to provide tangible support to white minority regimes in southern Africa. But what did white minority rule represent to these individuals and groups, and why were they willing to endure reputational costs and other penalties on behalf of Pretoria and Salisbury? Drawing on newly declassified material from Canadian, British, and South African archives, this article argues that white South Africans and Rhodesians were designated as part of the Canadian political right’s in-group, or “moral circle of concern,” seen to be combating the same existential threat posed by the advance of “liberalism” in other political theaters. Mapping this network of support for white minority rule not only offers insight into the history of conservatism in Canada but reveals much about the spread of norms of racial equality in the late 20th century.