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Written by: Tyler Shipley

The TV series The Crown has introduced a new generation to the callous cruelty of Margaret Thatcher, who opposed sanctions against South Africa’s Apartheid government. Her position is framed as being at odds with the rest of the Commonwealth, including Canada, and the monarch.

Setting aside the silliness about the Queen, let’s address Canada’s opposition to Apartheid which was, in fact, a very brief interruption of its long history of material/ideological support for Apartheid. Canada both inspired and helped build Apartheid, collaborated with it for decades, and allowed its own companies to break the sanctions it briefly supported.

So, lest The Crown should leave one feeling sanguine about the important cause Canada contributed to, let’s reflect on Canada’s role in building, sustaining, and supporting Apartheid South Africa. More detail in Canada in the World. Other recommended sources include books by Carman Miller, Linda Freeman, Bryan Tennyson, and John Saul.

Parallel Stories

South Africa’s history bears marked similarities to Canada’s; both were European settler colonies which conquered land and claimed dominion over the people who lived there, against their wishes, for the sake of profit, and with an assumption of inherent superiority.

The Dutch settlers who squatted in what is now called South Africa (who called themselves Boers) found ‘their’ land increasingly under threat from the expanding British Empire in the late 1800s - as the European powers carved up Africa for themselves - eventually leading to the Boer War between the two groups of imperialists.

Canada joined the British in a bloody war against the Boers, with the Canadian elite understanding its own fate and wealth to be tied to that of the Empire. But immediately following British victory, the goal was to re-establish the Boers as the local ruling class while a share of the profits flowed to London.

Often overlooked is that black people were always the majority who lived there and made up a large number of those who fought. “Black” here encompasses many nations which had different responses to the conflict. Just as Indigenous nations in North America navigated the rivalries between British, French, and US colonizers, so too did nations like the Zulu, which had resisted both Boer and British colonialism but now had to hedge with one or the other.

Canada’s Imperial Adventure

As the war drew on (1899-1902) British and Canadian troops burned crops, looted homes, and committed sexual violence, en route to British victory. For the British it meant greater access to land and resources and a stronger African foothold against German capitalist expansion. 7000 Canadian soldiers furthered this ‘noble’ cause.

British-Canadian John Buchan created a network of concentration camps which were, per Carman Miller, “places of death and malnutrition.” 1 in 3 prisoners were black, whom Buchan described as “strange, sullen, childish.” Another Canadian, Sam Steele, called them “untrustworthy and incapable of gratitude.”

It quickly became clear that the Boers were being trained to rule over the blacks on behalf of the British. Sam Steele was a NWMP original, a foot soldier of Canadian colonialism in the west, and now he would create a Constabulary police force for South Africa. Boers were recruited; blacks were not.

Canadian investment in South Africa boomed, as Steele’s police force supervised the forced labour of black people, especially in mining, and Canadian teachers and missionaries came to the country to help “civilize” it. The colonial parallels were evident.

The “Special Relationship”

From there, Canada developed a “special relationship” with the South African settlers, who quickly moved toward independence as Canada had done. In 1942, as the ideas for the Apartheid system were taking root, PM King noted that Canada’s “greatest problems have South African parallels” and took lessons from how it “coped with the difficulties it faced.”

No doubt “subjugating native peoples” was the primary point here but it’s worth noting that when newly-independent India criticized South Africa’s treatment of its Indian minority, PM King was quiet, lest attention turn to Canada’s treatment of South Asians, who were only given voting rights in BC in 1947.

In 1944, at the height of the war against Nazism, Charles Jost Burchell (a Canadian diplomat in Pretoria) described blacks as “a very low type” who were “perfectly dumb and appear to have little brain capacity” but needed to be controlled lest they “create more trouble in this country than the Negroes do in the United States.”

Burchell was ultimately rewarded with a seat on the Privy Council, in case you wondered how his views had landed in Ottawa. No surprise there: Canadian PM King adored South African PM Jan Smuts and, together, they had pushed a 1945 resolution to “preserve their identity as white groups and the high standard of living they enjoyed.”

There is scholarly debate over the extent to which Apartheid itself was consciously modelled after Canada’s reserve and residential school systems; Linda Freeman reports that South African officials were given tours of both, though others have suggested that there is scant evidence of direct collaboration. Either way, it is certainly the case that the two systems shared a similar white supremacist logic and ideology.

Building Apartheid

As Apartheid was built in the 1940s, Canada would quietly support its ally in its creation of an official system of racial segregation under a ruling party that had supported Nazi Germany. Canada would only criticize South Africa when it felt it had no other political option.

For instance, in 1957 when Martin Luther King Jr challenged PM Diefenbaker to take a stronger line against Apartheid, Diefenbaker refused, claiming that Canada disapproved of all racism and felt no need to single out South Africa in particular.

However, after the Sharpeville massacre in 1960, Diefenbaker did call for South Africa’s removal from the Commonwealth. By his own admission, Diefenbaker only agreed to this after India and Tanzania threatened to leave the organization; this would have been a blow to Canada, which found the Commonwealth a useful mechanism for managing postcolonial countries. Hence, Diefenbaker’s reluctant rebuke of South Africa.

This would reflect Canada’s pattern in the growing regional conflict that would erupt in southern Africa in the 1970s: Canada would quietly lean on its close relationship with South Africa, it’s chief regional ally, while occasionally publicly criticizing the most appalling elements of Apartheid.

Pierre Trudeau, for instance, occasionally blustered abhorrence at Apartheid but, in 1971, he claimed that sanctions against the country would be “ineffective” and that Canada had no “capacity to influence” the Apartheid state. At that precise moment, Canada was strangling socialist Chile with the very sanctions it claimed were ineffective.

The Beginning of the End

All of southern Africa was divided in the 1970s and 80s; fascist Portugal still controlled Angola and Mozambique, and far-right racial segregation governments ruled in Rhodesia and South Africa. But left wing guerrilla resistance was growing and would soon liberate the former Portuguese colonies and shift the regional balance, even as resistance grew within the Apartheid states (and in South Africa’s satellite state in Namibia.)

Canada had supported Portuguese colonialism (as it had supported European colonizers elsewhere in Africa.) Emblematic of Canada’s position was its participation in the Cahora Bossa Dam project in Mozambique, which brought together capitalists from the white settler states in an effort to generate profit, clear out a guerrilla stronghold, and establish a Portuguese settler enclave. Canadian companies like Alcan aggressively pursued the project and won major contracts for it.

But Portuguese fascism collapsed in 1975, the guerrillas liberated their people, and the regional tide appeared to be turning. Apartheid South Africa quickly tried to invade the newly independent Angola and Mozambique but failed. Notably, the Angolans were able to hold on with armed support from Cuba.

Canada reacted “with horror” at Cuba’s act of solidarity in support of Angola against the invading Apartheid state. But Canada was on the wrong side of history and the Angolan/Cuban victory was the beginning of the end of Apartheid. Cuba claimed no spoils, and remains lauded in the region for its contribution.

Canadian “Superguns”

Those Cuban and Angolan soldiers had to face an Apartheid military armed by NATO and Canada (Canada’s most notable contribution was a “supergun” howitzer sold by the Space Research Corp.) In fact, NATO had close military links with South Africa and shared intelligence and strategy.

Canada, meanwhile, kept doing business with the racial segregation states. For instance, in defiance of UN sanctions, a Canadian Falconbridge mine in Rhodesia was described by the Montreal Gazette as using black workers as “slave labour.” The Canadian government claimed no knowledge of this breach.

Even after the massacre of students in Soweto in 1976, Pierre Trudeau promised that Canada would “not interfere in trade and investment” and sent RCMP officers to liaise and assist the Apartheid police as they cracked down on blacks demanding freedom. He also helped South Africa develop nuclear weapons.

The Brian Mulroney government changed little in Canada’s approach. Canada continues to sell weapons to South Africa and helped it secure a $1 billion IMF loan in 1982. Media mogul Conrad Black wrote that white South Africans “should be commended” for “defending themselves.” Canada had clearly chosen a side.

Mulroney’s Pivot

But by the mid-1980s, the writing was on the wall. Black South Africans were in open revolt, Rhodesia had fallen, Angola and Mozambique were free and Namibian resistance to South African control was growing. World opinion had turned hard against Apartheid, even in the west, where civil society opposition reached a fever pitch.

This was crucial to Canada shifting its position. As Chris Webb details, it was the explosion of anti-Apartheid activism in Canada in the 1980s (and the hurling of a ceremonial mace at the South African ambassador!) that forced the Canadian government to rethink its approach.

In 1986, the Mulroney government made the canny decision to briefly switch sides, winning praise for its moral conviction. Though Canada had long called Nelson Mandela’s ANC a “terrorist” group, it now publicly joined the campaign of sanctions against Apartheid and met with ANC leaders to lecture them about the ills of communism and the importance of free trade.

Even still, Canadian sanctions against the Apartheid state were among the weakest of any country. Across seven years of sanctions, Canadian trade with South Africa still totaled $1.6 billion. All the while, Canada leveraged its new position to lobby the ANC to move away from its socialist roots and become a “safe” capitalist party to inherit post-Apartheid South Africa.

Credit Where It’s Due

Flash forward about a decade, and South African workers voted the Canadian-owned Placer Dome mine the country’s second worst employer (2001). As scholars of South Africa have long noted, the victory against Apartheid - though historic and important - was limited by the conditions placed upon it by the western powers.

And yes, writers of The Crown, Margaret Thatcher was a holdout, even among the jackals like Mulroney and Australian PM Fraser (it is subsequent PM Hawke featured in The Crown, but it was Fraser who convinced Mulroney to oppose Apartheid by fearmongering about an imminent, communist ANC victory that needed to be harnessed and controlled by the capitalist powers.)

So it’s perfectly reasonable to portray Thatcher in the fullness of her moral depravity and cynicism. But it would be foolish to get excited about the strong stand taken by the Commonwealth.

Countries like Canada did all they could to shield the Apartheid regime from being held accountable for running one of the most explicitly racist governments of the 20th century. Canada only briefly blinked in its support for Apartheid and did so only when it had no other choice.

For bravery in this struggle, look not at charlatans like Mulroney, but to the freedom fighters of FRELIMO or SWAPO, the Cubans who risked their own lives in solidarity, the students and musicians of Soweto, the extraordinary people who struggled for generations and those who, like Ashley Kriel, were martyred in the cause of liberation.

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