Review: South Africa: The Ambiguous Champion
| Date | 01 December 1998 |
| Author | Marq De Villiers |
| Published date | 01 December 1998 |
| DOI | 10.1177/002070209805300413 |
| Subject Matter | Review |
REVIEWS
SOUTH
AFRICA
THE
AMBIGUOUS
CHAMPION
Canada
and South
Africa
in
the Trudeau
and Mulroney
years
Linda
Freeman
Toronto:
University
of
Toronto
Press,
1997,
xiii,
466
pp,
$24.95
paper
t
is hard
to
remember
now,
so
faded
is the memory
of
John
George
Diefenbaker
(so
clownish
his
place
in
the
media-driven
political
consciousness),
how
large
he
loomed
to those
who
toiled
in
political
opposition
in
South
Africa
in
the
lamentable
'sixties.
But
when
the
National
party's
tame
press
demonized
him
at
the
beginning
of
the
decade
as
a
renegade
and
a
turncoat,
we
knew
that
meant
he
must
have
done
something
very
right.
What that
'something'
was,
Linda
Freeman
has
now
called
into
question.
What
did
we
think
he'd
done?
As
we
saw
it
then, Canada, in
the
personification
of
Diefenbaker,
was
the
first
of
the
Old Common-
wealth
(aka
white
Commonwealth)
countries
to
side
with
the
institu-
tion's
new
non-white
majority
on
the crucial
issue
of
apartheid.
In
South
Africa,
Sharpeville
had
come
and
gone,
and
the South
African
leaders
were
bent
on pushing through
parliament
the
series
of
corner-
stone
measures
that
underpinned
apartheid
and
were
ramming
through
a
referendum
aimed
at declaring
the
country
a
republic.
It
was
this
last
that
gave
the
Commonwealth
majority
its excuse
to
engineer
South
Africa's
expulsion,
and,
in
the
key
vote,
Diefenbaker
went along
with
them.
For this, he
faced
astonishment
and
occasional
fury
from
his
own
civil service, his
own
caucus,
and
his
own
party, and intense
irritation
from
the
British,
who
regarded
him,
as
they
did
his
country,
as
a
pipsqueak who
had forgotten
his
proper
loyalties.
It
was,
as
Linda
Freeman
says,
a
'remarkable'
event.
We
remember
him
fondly
for
it.
The
mere
act
of
breaking
racial
sol-
idarity
on
the
crucial
matter
of
South
Africa
gave
comfort
to
all
dissi-
dents,
black
and
white
alike,
within
the
apartheid
laager.
If
Canada
could
do
it,
we
reasoned,
so
could others. And
in
the
contending
visions
of
oppositionist
South
Africa
-
the
racial
inclusiveness
of
the
African
National
Congress
and
the
Black
Power
militancy
of
the
Pan-
INTERNATIONAL
JOURNAL
Autumn
1998
783
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