Report

General Smuts and South African diplomacy

This paper discusses “The three aspects of General Smuts policy, but to emphasise in each its particular relevance to
South Africa. They have the advantage of constituting a rough chronological
sequence, they are inevitably inter-related, and they are the three of which I
had personal knowledge. The first is the relationship of South Africa to the
British Commonwealth of Nations, the second the part played by Smuts in the
drafting of the Covenant of the League and the Charter of the United Nations,
and the third the role of South Africa within Southern Africa. All three have
shaped the present as much as they dominated the past.”