When British prime minister Harold Macmillan addressed the South African parliament on 3 February 1960, near the end of a lengthy tour of Africa, he stunned his audience by declaring that a ‘wind of change is blowing throughout the Continent’ and that the rising tide of African national consciousness had to be accepted. South Africa was a country which had been independent of Britain since 1910, but the all-white parliament there maintained apartheid — a system which kept the races separate and aimed to perpetuate white control. Though Macmillan was politely received, the message he brought did not go down well. So what lay behind Macmillan’s decision to accelerate the dismantling of Britain’s empire in Africa?
Harold Macmillan speaking to the South African parliament, 3 February 1960:
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