SOUTH AFRICA: Friend in Need

The coronation of Queen Elizabeth and the conference of Commonwealth Prime Ministers evidently made an impression on the crusty old doctor of divinity who attended as South Africa's representative. Back in Cape Town last week, 79-year-old Prime Minister Daniel Malan, D.D., surprised the House of Parliament with this flat statement: "The Commonwealth gives us the greatest freedom we could wish for . . ." He even cited India's example to prove that South Africa could become a republic (as his Boer Nationalists insist) without leaving the Commonwealth.

Never before had Daniel Malan sounded so much like his ancient enemy, the late, great Jan Christian Smuts. But the resemblance was purely temporary. When the opposition United Party sought a pledge of continued Commonwealth "membership," Malan said no. Instead, he would assent only to South African "cooperation" and under these conditions:

¶ That the British stop criticizing South Africa's "domestic affairs," i.e., race segregation.

¶ That there be no "indiscriminate expansion" of Commonwealth membership to non-white countries like the Gold Coast and Nigeria.

¶That India stop "blackening South Africa's good name" in the U.N.

Next day the old Prime Minister at tended a government luncheon honoring his Australian opposite number: Prime Minister Sir Gordon Menzies, homeward bound from London. In a thinly veiled warning to Commonwealth colleagues India and Pakistan, Malan told the world that South Africa "stands for the security of white civilization and Australia stands for a white Australia. The day may come when ... the same powers in the Indian Ocean that suggested that the white man must quit Africa might be knocking on the door of Australia . . . When Australia needs a friend, we shall be there."