BRITAIN HAS NEVER PROTECTED NON-BRITISH INTERESTS
DR MOTSOKO PHEKO
History reveals that Britain (United Kingdom) has never protected indigenous
or non-British interests whether in Africa, Australia, India or New
Zealand and so on. The British have always opposed and suppressed the
interests of other nations, if their interests were in conflict with those
of the British Empire.
The 18 September 2014 Scotland Referendum was no exception. When the Yes
campaign vote in Scotland for national independence gathered momentum, all
the three main political parties in Britain began their own massive campaign
of intimidation against the people of Scotland, especially a few days just
before the referendum.
Labour Party leader Ed Miliband told the BBC that the the pro-independence
campaign had an ugly side. Prime Minister David Cameron painted a bleak
picture such as the use of the British pound by Scots people if they voted
Yes. Queen Elizabeth II though claimed to be neutral said she hoped that
the Scottish voters would think carefully.
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) poked its nose into the affairs of the
Scottish people. Its Deputy Spokesman W. Murray said, A Yes vote would
raise a number of important and complicated issues that would have to be
negotiated.
But what is clear is that the Yes vote by the Scottish people would have
been a double edge sword if the United Kingdom tried to punish Scotland for
its independence after their Yes vote. Here are the reasons for my view:
1. The United Kingdom nuclear missiles are based in Scotland.
2. UK would lose its royal regiment of Scotland.
3. The U.K. would be a new country with less power and prestige
internationally if Scotland voted Yes in the referendum.
4. Wales and Northern Ireland might re-think their status within the
powerless territorially reduced United Kingdom.
5. The pro-republic sentiment in Australia and Canada to break ties
with the English monarch would have fermented.
6. The British Commonwealth would sooner than later collapse.
7. The United Kingdom U.N. Security Council would be insecure.
8. The Irish people did not suffer any currency problem when they
dropped the British pound.
The United Kingdom encouraged the No vote in the Scotland Referendum to
protect its own interests, not those of the people of Scotland.
How Britain Protected Its Colonial Interests In Africa
The September 2014 Scotland Referendum brings to mind how the United Kingdom
then called Great Britain protected its national interests in Africa at
the expense of the African people, especially in South Africa.
The United Kingdom protected its colonial interests by military power in
Africa, using the most barbaric methods and intrigues. For instance, in
Kenya the agents of the British government castrated the anti-colonial
Kenyan fighters opposing colonialism. They called them Mau Mau and
murdered hundreds of them and seized large parts of their fertile land.
They practised colonial brutality in Rhodesia (Zimbabwe) sentencing to death
the spiritual female leader of the Zimbabweans, Ambuye Nehanda and the Rev.
John Chilebwe in Nyasaland (Malawi) for leading the anti colonial struggles
in their own countries. They exterminated the indigenous people of
Australia, New Zealand and Canada to protect British colonial interests.
The British Stole South Africa For Their Colonial Settlers
After many wars of national resistance against British colonialism led by
African kings such as Hintsa, Cetshwayo, Moshoeshoe, Sekukuni and Makado;
Britain through its guns over the spears of the African people seized the
African country and handed it over to its colonial settlers.
Through the Union of South Africa Act 1909, a British Statute of the United
Kingdom, on 20th September of that year, Britain gave legislative powers to
its colonial settlers. Section 44 of that imperial law, among other things
reads, That the qualifications of a Member of the House of Assembly shall
be a British subject of European descent.
Within three years of this racist draconian law the colonial parliament with
the connivance of the British government passed the colonial law allocating
five million indigenous African people 7% of their own land called Native
Reserves.
This 7% of the African concentration camps became a reservoir of cheap
native labour for the farms and mineral mines which were now owned by the
colonial settlers and their mother country the United Kingdom. The 93%
of the African country and land and its riches was handed to the 349837
settlers. This is the peculiar concept of British justice that is still
boasted of with much British national pride today.
A Colonised African Country Turned Into A Dominion
Sooner than later, South Africa became a British colony to go by the title
of Dominion, because it was not the custom of the English to rule white
people as a colony. This was argued in imperial circles. It was advocated
by people who are today self-appointed teachers of human rights and
democracy in Africa.
In 1931 British colonial lawyers Gilbert Dold and C.P. Joubert argued that
the Westminster Statute of 1931 had conferred independence and
sovereignty on South Africa. These lawyers wrote, The Statute of
Westminster 1931 under the skilled statesmanship of General Hertzog, Prime
Minister of the Union of South Africa
made rapid progress from its
subordinate position to that of a free, independent and sovereign state
within the British Commonwealth. (I .I. Lukashuk, HRC Vol.135 1972 page
237)
Section 2 and 3 of The Colonial Laws Validity Act 1865 by the British
Parliament contained a repugnance clause. Is it not puzzling that despite
this clause, both the Union of South Africa Act 1909 and the Native Land Act
1913 and the whole concept of Dominion were racist? This was long before
Daniel F. Malan coined the word apartheid in South Africa in 1948.
In October 1930, Piet Grobler a settler colonial Minister of Lands had
already stated, The supremacy of the white mans rule in South Africa was
essential if he was to retain his birthright or his civilisation. How could
a colonial settler utter such words without being rebuked by the United
Kingdom Government?
Things were getting worse for Africans under the United Kingdom colonial
government in South Africa. A.S. Harris in his article: A Plea For
Even-Handed Justice had to write:
In none of the [British] colonies are there laws punishing white men for
sexual intercourse with coloured women while the Statute Book is full of
enactments punishing black men for intercourse with white women even with
their consent.
Harris continued, A case recorded recently of a Boer farmer being acquitted
in the face of the strongest evidence of guilt of outraging a native girl,
while a native boy
for mere solicitation of a white girl is shot dead and
the act is applauded by the white community. (MHUDI: Sol T. Plaatje page 6,
Heinemann Educational Books Ltd London 1982)
United Kingdom Speaking With Two Tongues On African Interests
The British Government spoke with two tongues when it came to protecting
African human rights in its South African Colony. Were its representatives
displaying mere duplicity and hypocrisy stemming from racism?
On 29th February 1906, Winston Churchill speaking in the British Parliament
said, We are provided with a most sure foothold for intervention on behalf
of natives. A self-governing colony is not entitled to say one day Hands
Off, no dictation in our internal affairs.
Colonel Seely, Under Secretary of State for Colonies declared, No scheme of
unity in South Africa to be satisfactory which does not provide some
safeguard for the great native population. It would be immoral and wrong for
this country to wash her hands of the whole native problem.
She has a responsibility to the natives; they are under our direct control:
they are under that shadowy vision of the ultimate imperial authority, the
kingship, and more real vision of his Majesty the King to protect them in
their ancient rights and privileges, and we must not fail them. I am happy
to say that those who are meeting together in South Africa realise our
obligation
.
The number of South Africans taking a reactionary view in the native
question is rapidly diminishing, and they realise that we cannot stand by
with our folded arms while a scheme is devised which may militate against
the rights of and privileges and safety of the native races that dwell under
the kings sway. (Anti-Slavery Reporter February 1906)
Yet after the Pan Africanist Congress of Azania (PAC) had led the
Sharpeville Uprisings which resulted in the massacre of 84 Africans and 365
wounded throughout South Africa; the British government resisted the United
Nations comprehensive economic sanctions on the South African apartheid
colonial regime.
In the 1976 Soweto Uprising of 16 June 176 people were killed and an
estimated 700 wounded. They were mainly young people. The United Kingdom
stood by its protection of its economic interests with its colonial settlers
and opposed economic sanctions against apartheid South Africa. Yet as we
speak, the United Kingdom has been crushing a developing country like
Zimbabwe with economic sanctions and not long time invaded Saddam Hussein
Iraq on false pretence that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction.
The United Kingdom has never protected non-British interests unless British
interests were threatened. It has been worse in Africa.
Britain Betrayed Its Protectorate Of Lesotho/Basutoland
In todays Lesotho in Southern Africa, Britain signed a treaty to protect
the Basotho people against rampaging Boer colonial settlers called
Afrikaners. They came largely from Holland and France. This British treaty
is known as Sir George Napier Treaty of 1843. It was meant to protect the
Basotho from rapacious colonial land grabbers.
When however, the economic interests of the British coincided with those of
the Boers, the British colonial government supplied guns to the Boers while
making sure the Basotho got no arms or very little. Consequently, over 50%
of the Basotho land is today part of economically white controlled South
Africa.
Historians on the British-Boer Stolen Lesotho
The outstanding theme of Lesothos economic history in the last hundred
years is the transition from granary to labour reserve, wrote Dr. Colin
Murray. In the middle period of the 19th century the Basotho vigorously
exported grain to other Africans and to white settlers on the higveld, and
from 1870, to the burgeoning diamond camps.
Dr. Murray concluded, In the 1970s Lesotho is a net importer of grain and
most rural households are primarily dependent for their livelihood on the
earnings of migrant labourers employed in the mining and manufacturing
industries of South Africa. (Time Is Longer Than The Rope by Edward Roux
16)
Writing about Lesotho in 1939, Edwin E. Smith observed, A very large part
of fertile area of Basutoland (Lesotho) as recognised by Sir George Napier
in the [British] treaty of 1843 was now in the hands of white settlers [in
the Orange Free State, parts of Eastern Cape and Gauteng]. (The Mabilles of
Basutoland by Edwin W. Smith, Hodder and Sloughton 1939 pages 96-97
In broad daylight and under the flag of the British Empire, colonial
settlers grabbed the whole of the agricultural part of Lesotho proper,
leaving the mountains to the Basotho. This is how I. Schapera puts it in
The Bantu-Speaking Tribes Of South Africa page 346 Maskew Miller Ltd 1966,
edited by himself.
Of course, King Moshoeshoe of the Basotho Nation was not amused by this kind
of British protection.
Writing to Sir George Grey, a British colonial governor in the Cape colony
in South Africa, King Moshoeshoe declared, I gave whites permission of
living in my country
but they have never obtained any right to property to
the soil from me, had I granted that, such a right should have been contrary
to the law of the Basotho nation which allows no such alienation.
Deeply disappointed with the way the United Kingdom administered its
British justice especially towards Black people, King Moshoeshoe
proclaimed:
The white men seem to be bent on proving that in politics Christianity has
no part
.It may be you, Europeans do not steal cattle, but you still whole
countries; and if you had your wish, you would send us to pasture our cattle
in the clouds
.Europeans are larger thieves
they are stealing black mans
land in the Cape [colony] to here [Orange Free state, land of the Basotho]
and call it theirs. (Moshoeshoe Profile I by Ntsu Mokhehle page 26 Khatiso
Ea Lesotho 1976)
The Consequences of British Colonialism In South Africa
As a consequence of British colonialism in Azania (South Africa), even in
so-called New South Africa or rainbow nation, the 2012 population census
has revealed that an average African - headed household earns R60313 per
year or R5051 a month. A white headed household earns 365,340 a year or R30,
427 per month. Educationally only 2% of the 41 million African population
has university degrees.
Africans were colonised by Britain centuries ago. They are still allocated
13% of their own country. The African population is 79.2%. Their land
dispossession is entrenched in Section 25 (7) of the new rainbow nation
constitution. This law is the new name for the Native Land Act 1913.
Britain has never protected non-British interests. It is no wonder that
after 307 years, a sizeable number of the people of Scotland demanded their
national independence.
It is not surprising that the United Kingdom politicians intimidated the
Scottish voters for a No vote. The Yes vote would have hurt the United
Kingdom more than SCOTLAND if Britain decided to punish the Scots for
winning the referendum for their national
Independence. END
Dr. Motsoko Pheko is author of several books including: APARTHEID: THE STORY
OF A DISPOSSESSED PEOPLE and SOUTH AFRICA: BETRAYAL OF A COLONISED PEOPLE
Issues Of International Human Rights. During the liberation struggle in
South Africa he represented the victims of apartheid and colonialism at the
United Nations in New York and at the UN Commission On Human Rights in
Geneva. He is a former Member of the South African Parliament.
EM
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