South-West Africa

Press, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 25091, 24 January 1947, Page 6

South-West Africa

The future of the South-west African mandate, at present held by th? Union of South Africa, still represents an awkward problem for the United Nations. Had Cape Town’s hopes been realised, the territory would by now have become the fifth province of the Union. The Utaited Nations Assembly, however, last month rejected the Union’s request for the termination of the mandate, and called on it to take steps to bring the territory within the trusteeship system. If there was ever any doubt what the Union Government’s reaction would be, it has been removed by General Smuts’s statement, reported yesterday, that the draft agreement the United Nations Assembly called for will not be submitted. South Africa’s obduracy is explained, in part, by the fact that its interest in South-west Africa is by no means of recent origin. Except for two landings by Portuguese voyagers in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries and periodic visits by whalers, the whole coast of Southwest Africa remained untenanted until Walvis Bay was annexed by the Cape Colony in 1878; and the 318,000 square miles of its hinterland was unknown until it was penetrated, explored, and opened to Europeans by South Africans. Until early in the 1880’s the territory could, without challenge, have been added to the Cape Colony. Indeed, Bismarck himself expressly acknow-

ledged it as properly belonging to Britain and even urged it upon the British Government. Yet it was allowed to fall to the Germans, who had never set foot there; and when finally the country was wrested from Germany it was done by Union arms. There is accordingly a strong sense of disappointment that a region to which South Africans consider they are entitled by every natural right and normal usage should remain outside the Union's sovereignty. More closely relevant to the conflict between the Union and the United Nations, however, is South .Africa’s insistence that though the United Nations may be entitled to block annexation it is, for two reasons, not entitled to impose the obligations of trusteeship. First, the decision disregards the will of the majority of the native inhabitants. According to the Union Government, 298,000 natives favour the incorporation of the territory within the Union, 33,000 oppose it, and 56,000 have not been consulted. Second, the Charter itself leaves it open to a mandatory Power to choose whether to enter the trusteeship system—an interpretation supported by, among others, the remaining mandatory Powers and by the United States. It is hardly surprising that General Smuts should have hinted that the United Nations is powerless to enforce its demand; for until that interpretation can be shown invalid by a much more dispassionate body than the United Nations Assembly, the prospect of concerted and effective sanctions would seem distant.