5. Liberator or Defender of Colonialism?
“With respect to the issue of decolonization [in Africa], Canada has followed a policy of ‘disinterested detachment.’ Only when it became a safe as well as compelling thing to do, did Canada move in the direction of support for the anti-colonial point of view.”
– Robert Matthews, “Africa in Canadian Affairs”
Contrary to mythology, official Canada was a latecomer to supporting African political independence. Ottawa opposed or abstained on many anticolonial resolutions at the UN and repeatedly called for liberation movements to be patient. Canadian officials regularly condemned liberation movements for engaging in armed struggle and despite delivering (free of charge) weaponry to the colonial powers, Ottawa never sold, let alone gave, arms to anticolonial movements.
While Africans had always resisted foreign domination, anticolonial struggles swelled after World War II. In the British colonies, Ghanaians spearheaded the independence struggle in the late 1940s, and were joined by groups in Nigeria, Tanzania and Uganda who increasingly demanded freedom from British rule. Ghana won its independence in 1957.
Throughout its reign on the continent British forces suppressed nationalist protests. In Kenya, with about 30,000 white settlers, the British were responsible for horrific massacres in a near genocidal campaign against the Kikuyu people.1
At the end of the 1940s, the French brutally suppressed anticolonial protests in Madagascar.2 In Cameroon tens of thousands were killed. As others gained their independence, anticolonial agitation strengthened. To pre-empt nascent nationalist sentiment, Paris offered each of its West African colonies a referendum on staying part of a new “French community”. When Guinea voted for independence in 1958, France withdrew abruptly, broke off political and economic ties, and destroyed vital infrastructure.3
By the start of the 1950s the French colonies in North Africa were aggressively pushing for independence. While the French killed dozens suppressing protests in Tunisia and Morocco, Paris’ bid to maintain control over Algeria stands out at as one of the most brutal episodes of the colonial era. With over one million settlers in the country, French forces killed hundreds of thousands of Algerians.4
In Rwanda, the Hutu majority rose up against the Belgian-backed Tutsi monarchy in 1959 and three years later the country gained its independence under majority rule. Joined with Rwanda until 1961, Burundi won its independence on July 1, 1962. But there, the Tutsi minority, which represented about 15% of the population, continued to dominate military, economic and political affairs.
To the west, the much larger Belgian colony exploded in protest at the start of 1959. That year colonial forces killed hundreds, suppressing protests in Leopoldville (Kinshasa), but the rapid growth of anticolonial sentiment shook Belgian authorities. The Congo won its independence on June 30, 1960.
In a remarkable turn of events between 1957 and 1964 Africans liberated the northern three quarters of the continent from colonial rule. Nonetheless, decolonization moved south much more slowly. It would take three more decades until the southern tip of the continent was nominally free.
With the staunch support of the white supremacist regime in South Africa, the Portuguese ruthlessly suppressed independence movements on both coasts of southern Africa until the mid-1970s. The white minority regime in Rhodesia (Zimbabwe) only relinquished political power in 1980 and it took Namibians another decade to gain their independence from South Africa. The black majority in South Africa only won full political and civil rights in 1994.
All through this period Canadian governments took a consistent position towards African liberation — contrary to revisionist propaganda this country was a strong supporter of the colonial status quo. Arguing against international involvement in colonial affairs, in December 1952 external minister Lester Pearson told Parliament, “the [UN] charter accepts and establishes them [the colonial powers] as the instruments for achieving this [independence]. … But it gives no comfort to the illusion that the immediate and unconditional abandonment of the dependent territories would be a good thing for the international community.”5
With anticolonial sentiment spreading across Africa in 1953, Pearson lauded the United Kingdom’s “big contribution” to “the defence of freedom generally” and in January 1957 he told the House of Commons: “No people in the world have proved themselves more ‘dependable defenders of freedom’ than have the British.”6 In that speech he added: “Those countries which still have direct responsibilities for non self-governing territories [colonies] should not be made to feel at the United Nations or elsewhere that they are oppressors to be deprived arbitrarily of their rights or indeed their reputations.”7
A few years later a new minister took charge at External Affairs but the rhetoric remained largely the same. Questioned in the House regarding British policy toward southern Rhodesia, in 1960 Howard Green said, “the government of the United Kingdom does not need any prompting by Canada or any other nation on the question of promoting democracy in the various parts of the Commonwealth. I am greatly surprised that [the Honourable Member] would suggest that we should try to prevail upon the United Kingdom to do something about speeding up the giving of independence to members of the Commonwealth.”8
To get a sense of the attitude at External Affairs, the head of the department’s European division, Robert Ford, actually criticized Britain in an internal memo for “rushing ahead too fast in the plans to give independence to a number of colonies which have very little in the way of their civilization or training at self-government behind them.”9 Ford argued that the Soviet Union or even India would take advantage of the situation to the detriment of Western interests.
External Affairs’ sympathy for colonialism was also expressed in international votes. In 1957, Canada opposed a UN resolution calling for African independence “at an early date”. It passed 38 to 13 with 11 abstentions.10 In a 1960 article titled “Towards a Canadian Policy on Africa” Douglas Anglin notes, “at the ‘African session’ of the U.N. General Assembly a year ago, she [Canada] found herself in opposition to the African bloc on nearly every African issue, notably Algeria, the Cameroons, South-West Africa and apartheid. The only important exception was the resolution concerning French nuclear tests in the Sahara; and even this was more a case of opposing the French rather than supporting the Africans. (Ottawa was not persuaded that Africans were justified in protesting the use of their continent for this purpose, but it was opposed to all tests on principle.)”11
Years after African decolonization had begun, Canadian officials continued to caution restraint. In August 1962, Prime Minister John Diefenbaker stated he desired “early independence for all dependent people”, but went on to declare that “the orderly achievement of freedom and independence for all people in all lands will not be brought about through hasty and impractical measures, adopted in response to emotional and immoderate demands.”12
Canada’s external affairs minister echoed this sentiment in a decidedly novel spin on the British Empire. At the start of the 1962 UN General Assembly session Howard Green declared it was “very hard to understand the bitter and sometimes unfair attacks” directed at British colonialism and then applauded the UK for “the successful launching” of over fifteen nations into independence.13
More important than its diplomatic defence of colonialism, Canada helped found a military alliance with the powers that ruled Africa. In 1960, leading Canada-Africa scholar Doug Anglin noted, “the fact that Canada is allied in NATO with all the great colonial powers has compelled her to consider the significance of the breakup of their empires in Africa for the strength and unity of purpose of the alliance.”14 In a thesis titled Canada’s relations with Commonwealth West Africa Chukwudi Pettson Onwumere argues that Canada’s “non-involvement attitude in colonial questions” was “partly necessitated by its participation” in NATO.15
Established in 1949, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) strengthened European colonial authority (and brought it under a US-led system). After Europe’s second great war, the colonial powers were economically devastated while anti-colonial movements could increasingly garner support from the Soviet Union and Mao’s China (or Egypt and Cuba, as was the case for Algeria and Angola respectively). The international balance of forces had swung away from the colonial powers. To maintain their colonies, the European powers increasingly depended on North American diplomatic, military and financial assistance.
NATO largely accepted European colonial authority and in the years just after its founding, Canadian officials repeatedly connected the North Atlantic alliance to the defence of the imperial status quo. (See my Lester Pearson’s Peacekeeping for details.) In 1956 NATO established a Committee for Africa and in June 1959 NATO’s North Atlantic Council, the organization’s main political decision-making body, warned that the communists would take advantage of African independence to the detriment of Western political and economic interests.16 The Nigerian Labour Party’s 1964 pamphlet The NATO Conspiracy in Africa documents that organization’s military involvement on the continent from bases to naval agreements.
Through NATO Canada was militarily engaged on the continent. A Royal Canadian Air Force squadron operated from US bases in Morocco until just after its 1956 independence.17 Additionally, Canadian soldiers participated in NATO exchanges with militaries engaged in Africa.
More significantly, Canada delivered a huge amount of weaponry to the colonial powers through NATO’s Mutual Aid Program. Between 1950 and 1958, Ottawa donated $1,526,956,000 ($8 billion today) in “aid” to NATO countries.18 The deliveries included anti-aircraft guns, military transport vehicles, ammunition, minesweepers, communications and electronic equipment, armaments, engines and fighter jets.19 Three quarters of all Canadian Mutual Aid was military equipment and supplies (the rest was mainly training).20 The Canadian Way of War explains: “During the early 1950s, Canada outfitted several Dutch, Belgian, and Italian divisions with old British pattern equipment. Ottawa also initiated a smaller Mutual Aid program for others in Europe. This eventually included newly manufactured munitions. And there were many NATO military personnel trained in Canada.”21
Through the NATO Air Training Plan, the Royal Canadian Air Force trained 5,500 pilots and navigators from ten NATO countries.22 It was primarily British and French pilots who received instruction over Canada’s vast terrain but there were also trainees from Belgium, Denmark, Germany, Italy, The Netherlands, Norway, Turkey and Portugal.23 This program was a successor to the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan. During World War II, tens of thousands of British, Belgian and French pilots trained in Canada.24
Canadian-trained airmen armed with Canadian weaponry likely participated in the murderous suppression of Algerian, Cameroon, Congolese and Kenyan independence movements. In the years following, Portugal’s use of NATO weaponry to maintain its African colonies generated significant controversy amongst Canadian supporters of African liberation.
In 1952, the Kikuyu people, Kenya’s largest ethnic group, launched an anti-colonial struggle and over the next eight years the British would employ horrific violence in a bid to suppress what became known as the “Mau Mau Uprising”. The British detained most of the 1.5 million Kikuyu in camps and fortified villages.25 Thousands of prisoners were tortured to death or died from malnutrition and disease and in some camps most children perished. Tens of thousands of Kenyans were killed by British forces.26
Compared to the vast African loss of life, only 32 European civilians among the 30,000 white settlers were killed by the Mau Mau.27 More settlers died in car accidents during this period.28 The British and Canadian press, however, focused their coverage on lurid stories detailing purported Mau Mau violence. On a number of occasions the uprising in Kenya was brought up in the House of Commons but External Affairs Minister Pearson said little.29
As they unleashed terrible violence in Kenya, Ottawa strengthened the British military. In 1953, Canada provided the Royal Air Force with 370 “top-of-the-line” F-86 Sabre fighter jets built at Canadair’s plant in Montréal.30 The planes cost $71 million ($600 million today) with the US footing 30% of the bill.31
Some 55,000 British troops fought in Kenya, along with many battalions of the King’s African Rifles from other parts of East Africa.32 They employed a great deal of weaponry, some of which originated in Canada. Several squadrons of Royal Air Force bombers dropped 50,000 pounds of bombs on Mau Mau forest hideouts.33 It’s almost certain that some of the British pilots were trained in Canada as part of the NATO Air Training Plan or British Commonwealth Air Training Plan.34
Canada also had men on the ground involved in the colonial violence in Kenya. Former RCMP officer John Timmerman served as assistant commissioner of police in Kenya during the Mau Mau insurgency. Between 1951 and 1955, Timmerman helped reorganize the police force and oversaw Nairobi’s Criminal Investigation Department (CID).35 In October 1952, Timmerman oversaw the arrest of Jomo Kenyatta, who would later become Kenya’s independence leader.36 To justify imposing a state of emergency, which began with the arrest of Kenyatta and other Kikuyu political figures, Governor Evelyn Baring explained to London: “Kenyatta has succeeded in building up right under the nose of authority a powerful organization affecting all sides of life among the Kikuyu.”37
A July 1954 Ottawa Citizen article headlined “Terror Shadows Kenya Beat” reported “a Canadian just back from three years’ police work among the Mau Mau of Kenya says the terrorists are the most savage and bestial killers in the world.”38 Timmerman’s claim may represent what a Freudian psychologist would call a “projection”. Kenyan historian Bethwell Allan Ogot puts forth a different — and considering what’s been abundantly documented — more plausible account of the RCMP officer’s actions. “Beating of suspects to obtain evidence was rampant especially in Nairobi where Mr. John Timmerman, the notorious C.I.D. Chief (the Himmler of Kenya as he was called) and his henchman G. Heine presided over the torture chambers.”39 In Imperial Reckoning Caroline Elkins also compares the CID to the secret police in Nazi Germany and German-occupied Europe. “The Criminal Investigation Department… were effectively the colony’s Gestapo, according to one member of the force.”40
At CID-operated centres, a favoured interrogation method was to hold a man upside down with his head in a bucket of water and ram sand into his rectum. In a bid to spread fear, men were raped with knives, snakes and scorpions while women were gang-raped or had their breasts mutilated with pliers.41
A former settler who was a member of the Kenya Regiment explained: “We would go and pick up a few of the filthy pigs and bring them to one of the interrogation centers set up by the CID. These were the hard-core scum, the ones who wouldn’t listen to anyone and [were] causing trouble. So we would give them a good thrashing. It would be a bloody awful mess by the time we were done. … never knew that a Kuke [Kikuyu] had so many brains until we cracked open a few heads.”42
While Timmerman carried out British policies, his post-Kenya rise through the ranks suggests his actions found support in Ottawa. A Canadian Intelligence Corps officer in Europe prior to Kenya, afterwards Timmerman led the security and intelligence liaison at External Affairs, which included the politically sensitive task of making sure External Affairs officials were not spying or acting on behalf of foreign states.43 Then Timmerman became the first RCMP officer ever appointed head of a Canadian mission, serving as consul general in Chicago in the 1970s.44
Ottawa was also broadly offside with Congolese decolonization. An internal 1957 debate between External Affairs officials offers a window into their perspective. The high commissioner in India, Escott Reid, argued for self-government within 20 years but was countered by Canada’s ambassador to Belgium who called for nearly indefinite colonial rule. Charles Hébert wrote: “the Congo … is inhabited by very backward peoples few of whom can have any conception of government … In the circumstances it is inconceivable that, 20 years from now, these people should be asked to assume direction of their own affairs through a grant of self-government. … If, in spite of the existing situation, Belgium is forced to yield to UN pressures and grant to the Congolese self-determination in 20 years time, the consequences are not difficult to imagine. … The resultant regime would be far from stable economically or politically and would soon be in the hands of semi-trained Congolese who would either exploit their fellows for their own benefit or for the benefit of some other foreign power, possibly the USSR.”45
While Canadian officials debated whether the Congolese deserved independence in two decades or two generations, the people pressed the issue. Protests erupted in Leopoldville (Kinshasa) in January 1959 and a series of anti-colonial demonstrations rocked the country throughout the year. The Belgians killed hundreds suppressing this wave of protest.46 In response to the uprising Canadian Trade Commissioner K. Nyenhuis reported to External Affairs “savagery is still very near the surface in most of the natives.”47 An example of the attitude in ruling circles in Canada was a Toronto Star editorial responding to the January 1959 protests that claimed “forces are loose in Africa that even the enlightened Belgians could not control.” It added that the Congo “was to be an example to all other colonial powers on how to civilize a backward, savage people and make them industrious, prosperous, and contented.”48
While Canada’s commercial representative in Kinshasa and the media regurgitated colonialist talking points, the protests rattled Belgian authorities. Brussels moved to grant independence, but the haste of the move exposed the depravity of its rule. Much worse than British and French colonial policy, Belgium’s rule ensured that the Congolese were almost entirely excluded from higher education. Fewer than 20 out of 12 million Congolese were university educated at the time of independence.49 No Africans were part of the “trained professional cadre” that administered the colony and Belgians held all officer positions in the police and army.50 Whites also dominated the economy. Though comprising less than 1% of the population, foreigners controlled 95% of the Congo’s assets, 88% of savings, 47% of cattle stock and 37% of agricultural output.51
The near complete exclusion of Congolese from positions of authority didn’t dissuade Canadian officials from praising an allegedly enlightened colonial power. In February 1960 External Affairs Minister Howard Green declared he had “the greatest respect and admiration” for the way Belgium helped Congo “prepare for the eventual responsible exercise of sovereignty.”52
In addition to modest diplomatic and economic support, Ottawa backed Brussels militarily. Hundreds of Belgian pilots were trained in Canada during and after World War II and through the 1950s Belgium received tens of millions of dollars in Canadian Mutual Aid.53 This included fifty-three “Canuck” (long-range CF 100) fighter jets. These Canadian-designed planes “formed the backbone of the Royal Belgian air forces” writes military historian Sean Maloney in Canada and UN Peacekeeping.54 At least a few “Canucks” were employed in the Congo. In response to growing nationalist protests, four CF 100s were dispatched from Belgium in July 1959 as part of Operation Simba. They flew at low altitude above a number of cities in the mineral rich Katanga region where anticolonial protests had erupted.55 Belgian Lieutenant Colonel Sam Verheire praised Operation Simba as “an impressive manoeuvre of the Belgian government to show the Air Forces possibilities in case of insurgent turmoil.”56
Canadian Mutual Aid weaponry was likely employed by Belgian troops in the Congo as well. Amidst an initial outburst of protests in January 1959 Belgian’s elite 2nd Commando Battalion was deployed in the middle of the night and thousands more soldiers were dispatched over the following 18 months.57 Even after independence, Belgian troops were sent to disarm Congolese forces, occupy Kinshasa’s airport and bolster secessionist forces in the east of the country. (See Chapter 7.)
Meanwhile in North Africa the French delayed granting Tunisia and Morocco independence. To avoid antagonizing Paris, Ottawa backed the French position. In Towards a Francophone Community Robin Gendron explains: “In autumn 1952 ... the Canadian delegation voted against all the resolutions introduced by African and Asian states that urged France to recognize the independence of Tunisia and Morocco and sought to create a committee of good offices to assist in negotiations between France and the North African nationalists. Instead, the delegates expressed Canada’s faith in France’s intentions towards Tunisia and Morocco and stressed that it should be allowed to fulfill them without interference from the United Nations.”58
Canada waited until June 1956 to offer formal Canadian recognition to Morocco and Tunisia and External Affairs opposed the Department of Citizenship and Immigration’s bid to facilitate French immigration from Morocco and Tunisia, which could have lessened anti-colonial tension.59 External minister Lester Pearson opposed French immigration, notes Gendron, because he “believed that Canada’s overriding interest in the area was to maintain its friendship for the West and its close ties with France.”60
More significantly, Ottawa sided with France against Algeria’s independence movement. In November 1954, the Front de Libération Nationale officially began its struggle against the colonial authority. The French had ruled Algeria since 1830 and over a million French settlers lived there, many for generations. In their campaign to suppress the resistance, French forces killed hundreds of thousands while displacing many more. Prominent historian Pierre Vidal-Naquet believes the French military were responsible for “possibly hundreds of thousands of instances of torture” in Algeria.61
Ottawa supported the French diplomatically, even conceding when Paris demanded that Algeria be included in NATO despite being a colony and outside the North Atlantic region.62 In a March 1949 House of Commons speech on NATO, Pearson implied that Algeria was part of France. A minute after saying Article 6 of the organization included the “Algerian departments of France”, the external minister said NATO “does not include colonial possessions.”63
In 1955, when African and Asian states tried to have the Algerian conflict debated at the UN, Canada opposed the move.64 Four years later Canada’s UN delegation was still instructed to vote with France on Algeria.65 Ottawa’s support for French colonialism in Algeria included pressuring the media. When Paris complained in 1959 about the CBC’s coverage of Algeria (they interviewed a Front de Libération Nationale representative in New York and two Algerian students in Montréal) External Affairs offered to consult the network concerning events in France and Algeria.66
Towards a Francophone Community explains: “Increasingly concerned for France’s political stability, in January 1957 [External Affairs Undersecretary] Jules Leger again tried to persuade [minister] Lester Pearson that the time had come to get the French government to accept the eventual independence of Algeria as the basis for a negotiated end to the war. Pearson was not convinced, arguing that no country could exert enough pressure to change France’s Algerian policy and that any attempt to do so would run afoul of the strength of French national feeling ... Pearson did not want to jeopardize France’s enthusiasm for NATO by an ill-advised attempt at peace brokering in Algeria.”67
Between 1950 and 1960, the Canadian government provided $127 million in military equipment to France under NATO’s Mutual Aid Program.68 Robin Gendron reports: “Even with 400,000 troops in Algeria, in autumn 1956, Canada continued to provide the French military with extensive gifts of armament. … From 1955 to 1958, Canada gave France mutual aid that included 300,000 rounds of 20mm ammunition, 1 million rounds of .303 ammunition, trucks, dynamite, sub-machine guns, 90mm shells, pistols, and Harvard training aircraft ... Given that a majority of the French army was stationed in Algeria all these years, the St. Laurent government could not ignore the embarrassing probability that most of this equipment was probably being used against the nationalist movement in Algeria.”69
To avoid embarrassment and allow France to use Canadian equipment in Algeria, the federal government modified the Defence Appropriation Act, which required Canadian Mutual Aid supplies to be used to defend Western Europe.70
Further south, as anticolonial sentiment simmered, the French minister of overseas territories invited the Canadian ambassador in Paris to visit its West African colonies. Jean Desy visited Senegal, Mali, Ivory Coast, Guinea, Upper Volta (Burkina Faso) and Mauritania at the start of 1956.71 That same year, Canadian Chargé d’Affaires in Paris, G. G. Crean, argued “most objective observers would agree that a further period of tutelage and of large-scale economic assistance is desirable if chaos is to be avoided in the area [French West Africa].”72
As a way to punish the people for choosing independence, France severed all relations with Guinea. “What could not be burned,” noted Robert Legvold, “was dumped into the ocean.”73 When independence leader Sékou Touré visited the UN in 1959 his government requested an invitation to Ottawa. Despite pressure from Alcan, which was courting Touré, the Diefenbaker government did not grant Touré’s request until Paris showed its support.74
Offering support to another NATO ally, Ottawa backed Portuguese colonialism in Africa. As independence swept the continent in the late 1950s, “Canada quite openly adopted an explicitly pro-Portuguese, pro-colonial stance, supporting Portugal’s contention that it alone was competent to determine the status of its dependent territories,” explains Words and Deeds: Canada, Portugal, and Africa.75 From 1960 to 1973 over 50,000 people were killed and tens of thousands more displaced. Working closely with apartheid South Africa, Portugal steadily increased its troop presence in Angola, Mozambique and Guinea-Bissau. By 1970 some 60,000 personnel were deployed to its African colonies.76
Rather than work to undermine Portuguese colonialism, Canada expanded its economic ties to the colonies.77 Canadian trade officials promoted the incentives Portugal offered in its “overseas provinces.”78 The collectively penned Words and Deeds notes: “Canada’s rapidly growing trade with Portugal’s African colonies supported the exploitation and oppression of African workers in the plantations and settler farms which produce coffee, tea, and sisal, and it supported the low-price policy which Portugal used with respect to payments to African growers of coffee, cashews, and cotton. Canada’s purchases of Angolan oil contributed to the expanding system of theft of non-renewable natural resources from African peoples who could ill afford to waste their birthright for the benefit of foreign oppressors.”79
Ottawa opposed UN resolutions calling on members to stop trading with Portugal and investing in its colonies. In 1966 the General Assembly, for instance, voted 75 to 12 (with 16 abstentions) to condemn financial interests active in the Portuguese territories. The Canadian government voted no.80 Later that year Canada also voted against a UN resolution calling for self-determination in the Portuguese territories. The Liberal government argued its objection on the grounds that the resolution called for mandatory action.81 In supporting Portugal, Ottawa ignored both international and domestic opinion. An internal June 1968 External Affairs file noted “a vocal segment of the Canadian public has recently been critical of the government’s continuing reluctance to adopt a clearer policy towards Portuguese colonialism.”82
During the wars of liberation in Angola, Mozambique, and Guinea Bissau, Canada greatly expanded its economic ties to the colonies.83 Canada’s most controversial economic dalliance in the colonies was Alcan’s sale of aluminum rods to the Portuguese for the Cabora Bassa Dam, a project devised to create a barrier to further penetration by the liberation movement FRELIMO and to deepen relations with white-led Rhodesia.84 Alcan won contracts to provide rods, along with Toronto-based Reynolds. This happened, however, “only after several other potential suppliers backed out because their governments were unwilling to face the pressures of being known as a breaker of the economic sanctions against Rhodesia.”85 A UN General Assembly resolution condemned the Cabora Bassa scheme as “contrary to [the] vital interests of the people of Mozambique” and described it as a “plot designed to perpetuate the domination, exploitation and oppression of the peoples of this part of Africa and southern Rhodesia, and which would lead to international tensions.” The resolution passed 85-11 with Canada voting against.86
As Portugal continued to wage brutal wars against the liberation movements in its African colonies, Ottawa continued to oppose UN resolutions calling upon members to stop trading with Portugal and investing in its colonies.87 Words and Deeds explains: “Canada opposed anything that smacked of action against Portugal and aggressively harped upon the advisability of ‘non-violence’ in a situation which had never known anything else but violence and where all peaceful routes had been tried by the Africans and rejected by the Portuguese.”88
Ottawa was still diplomatically aligned against the liberation movements into the 1970s. On September 24, 1973, the African Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde (PAIGC) declared Guinea Bissau an independent state. Ottawa refused to recognize the new state, implicitly favouring Portuguese sovereignty over the region. Ninety governments granted recognition to Guinea Bissau before the fall of Salazar Caetano in Portugal in 1974, when junior officers ousted the dictatorship. But Canada only conceded recognition once it was clear that the new Portuguese government was about to do so.89
In the winter of 1973, Canada opposed a “resolution which directly challenged Portugal’s claim to represent Mozambique, Angola and Guinea Bissau at the United Nations. Four of Portugal’s twenty-two-member delegation were listed as citizens of Portugal’s ‘African territories’, a totally unacceptable formula to most delegations. This provoked member states to press the issue in the plenary session of the General Assembly and introduce a motion to exclude these members from the Portuguese contingent. They reaffirmed the obvious and crucial point that neither the Portuguese-dominated colonies of Angola and Mozambique, nor independent Guinea-Bissau, could be considered a part of Portugal.”90 The vote passed 94 to 14 with 21 abstentions. Canada voted against, triggering criticism in FRELIMO’s official English-language publication.91
Canada’s complicity in Portuguese colonialism ran deeper than diplomatic and economic support. Throughout the 1950s the relatively weak Portuguese military dictatorship received Canadian Mutual Aid weaponry.92 Words and Deeds reflects on the impacts of this assistance, noting “arms given or sold to Portugal by the Western powers, ostensibly for such NATO purposes as the defense of the North Atlantic, were regularly deployed against African peoples struggling for the right to rule themselves.”93
Ottawa had no qualms about placing NATO weapons in Portugal’s hands. On the contrary, Canadian officials refused to back Dutch and Scandinavian efforts within NATO to end arms deliveries.94 While Ottawa officially ended its NATO Mutual Aid shipments to Portugal in 1961, military sales continued. In 1967 the minister of trade and commerce told his cabinet colleagues that it was “unrealistic to refuse orders when they would quickly be taken up by the United States or the United Kingdom. Portugal has bought many piston-engine aircraft from us and expected to get them serviced at the large United Aircraft Company factory established in Longueil for the purpose.”95
The liberation movements, bordering states and Organization of African Unity repeatedly publicized the origins of weaponry captured in Angola, Mozambique, and Guinea Bissau.96 On a number of occasions, Canadian technologies were found in Portuguese armaments, including parts made by Computing Devices of Canada and Aviation Ltd. in the wreckage of a Fiat G-91 fighter, shot down by PAIGC.97 Words and Deeds concludes: “Through uncritical acceptance of the NATO connection, which married the arsenal of the west to Portuguese colonial purposes, Canada made itself, willy-nilly, a partner of the Portuguese.”98
Not long after Angola won its independence from Portugal, apartheid South Africa invaded. In an important display of international solidarity Cuba came to Angola’s defence. Thousands of Cuban troops, most of them black, voluntarily enlisted to fight the racist South African regime. Contrary to Western claims, Cuba decided to intervene in Angola without Soviet input (Washington knew this at the time).99 Cuba’s intervention helped halt South Africa’s invasion.
This successful military victory by black forces also helped bring down apartheid in South Africa. The famous township rebellion in Soweto took place three months after South Africa’s initial defeat in Angola.100 Nelson Mandela’s ANC noted “their [the South African army’s] racist arrogance shrank when our MPLA [Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola] comrades thrashed them in Angola.”101 For its part, Johannesburg’s Rand Daily Mail warned that the legacy of Angola resulted in “blows to South African pride.” The paper viewed the defeat as, “the boost to African nationalism which has seen South Africa forced to retreat.”102 In a similar vein another South African analyst observed “whether the bulk of the offensive was by Cubans or Angolans is immaterial in the colour-conscious context of this war’s battlefield, for the reality is that they won, are winning, and are not white: and that psychological edge, that advantage the white man has enjoyed and exploited over 300 years of colonialism and empire, is slipping away. White elitism has suffered an irreversible blow in Angola and Whites who have been there know it.”103
Ottawa freaked out, diplomatically speaking. Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau stated: “Canada disapproves with horror [of] participation of Cuban troops in Africa” and in May 1978 Trudeau announced that CIDA would terminate its small aid program in Cuba as a result.104
Conversely, Ottawa funnelled aid to Zambia during this period partly to support its “moderate” position in southern Africa’s racial conflict. In Canadian Development Assistance to Zambia Sinkala Sontwa explains: “The liberation wars by the blacks, and the accompanying competition for influence by the West and East in the region resulted in Soviet and Cuban involvement in the Angolan civil war and in the establishment of socialist governments in both Angola and Mozambique. With these developments, Western policy towards the region changed drastically. To counter this growing Eastern bloc influence, Canada and other Western countries lent support to what they considered as Zambia’s moderate stand among the Front Line States on Southern African politics.”105
A few years earlier Ottawa expressed apprehension about providing indirect backing to Ghanaian and Tanzanian proponents of what it dubbed a “war of liberation” in southern Africa. At the end of the 1960s, Ottawa failed to renew its military training in Tanzania partly because the government provided limited support to the liberation movement on its southern border in Mozambique. In “The Canadian Armed Forces Advisory and Training Team Tanzania 1965-1970”, Andrew Godefroy writes: “Given the very likely possibility that Tanzania was going to continue its active though indirect support of liberation forces, CAFATTT’s [Canadian Armed Forces Advisory Training Team to Tanzania] role as advisor to the TPDF [Tanzanian People’s Defense Force] may have created possible future political difficulties for Ottawa and maybe even serious embarrassment. Canada was, after all, a member of both NATO and the Commonwealth.”106
Canadian officials expressed similar concerns on the other side of the continent. A July 1963 memo to Cabinet noted: “The Canadian Government might consider it inadvisable to sell military equipment to Ghana” since it “might be used with those of other African states in a war of ‘liberation’ against Portugal, South Africa and, conceivably, Southern Rhodesia.”107
Zimbabweans won their political freedom after most of the continent had gained independence. As decolonization spread, the white settlers who largely governed this British colony since the 1920s worried that Britain might grant independence under majority rule. One twentieth of the population, whites in southern Rhodesia owned 70% of the best farmland.108 They also benefited from a plethora of discriminatory laws, everything from the line-up at the post office to public employment. While the franchise was not explicitly racist, it was based on financial and educational qualifications that resulted in whites comprising over 90% of registered voters.109
Canada played a minor role in propping up the white minority regime. From 1935 to 1953 the Southern Rhodesian leadership was invited to Imperial Conferences and most Commonwealth prime minister’s meetings, including the assembly that took place in Canada.110 Ottawa opened a Trade Commission in Rhodesia in 1955 and possessed a preferential tariff agreement with the territory until the 1960s.111 Rhodesia also received a small amount of Canadian aid through the Commonwealth Technical Assistance Program and Special Commonwealth Africa Assistance Plan.112
In the early 1960s, there were growing international calls for Britain, which had control over the Rhodesian Constitution, to protect the rights of the African majority.113 As pressure mounted on Britain to intervene in Southern Rhodesia, notes The Centre Cannot Hold: Canada, Colonialism and the ‘Afro-Asian Bloc’, “Ottawa decided [in 1962] to ‘give every possible support’ to the United Kingdom by opposing any ‘extreme’ moves in the General Assembly [on Rhodesia].”114 That year, alongside NATO allies, Canada abstained on two UN resolutions (1747 and 1760) asking London to rescind Southern Rhodesia’s constitution and call a constitutional conference to establish a government run by the black majority.115
London refused to intervene and over the next three years negotiated with the Rhodesian whites. As the situation came to a head, Canada opposed a November 1965, General Assembly resolution that was adopted 82 to 9 (with 18 abstentions and Britain staying away).116 It stated: “Considering that the administering Power has not implemented the above resolutions and that no constitutional progress has been made, Noting that the increasing co-operation between the authorities of Southern Rhodesia, South Africa and Portugal is designed to perpetuate racist minority rule in southern Africa and constitutes a threat to freedom, peace and security in Africa, Noting with grave concern the manifest intention of the present authorities in Southern Rhodesia to proclaim independence unilaterally, which would continue the denial to the African majority of their fundamental rights to freedom and independence. … Reaffirms the right of the people of Southern Rhodesia to freedom and independence and recognizes the legitimacy of their struggle for the enjoyment of their rights as set forth in the Charter of the United Nations.”117
The ambivalence displayed by Britain and other Western powers, emboldened Rhodesia. A week after the resolution passed, the white minority in Rhodesia unilaterally declared independence from Britain on explicitly racist terms. In a near unanimous vote, the General Assembly immediately condemned the move and called on Britain to end “the rebellion by the unlawful authorities in Salisbury.”118
While Ottawa backed this resolution condemning the Unilateral Declaration of Independence, in February 1966 the external affairs minister warned the House of Commons about “over interference” with London on this issue.119 Seven months later, Ottawa opposed an African proposal for blanket UN sanctions on Rhodesia and South Africa.120 Prime Minister Pearson said these conditions “would tie that country to South Africa, and would link a satisfactory solution of the Rhodesian problem with a long and difficult economic siege of South Africa.”121
Black nationalists in Rhodesia and elsewhere demanded Britain remove the white minority government through force (it was thought that simply massing troops in Zambia would convince the white minority to relinquish political power). To get London off the hook, Ottawa worked to convince African and Asian countries to give sanctions a chance. At the January 1966 Commonwealth Conference in Lagos, Pearson echoed Britain’s claim that economic sanctions would end the white rebellion “within a matter of weeks rather than months.”122 Sinkala Sontwa describes Pearson’s intervention at the conference: “The Canadian Prime Minister succeeded in persuading the Afro-Asian-Caribbean camp (which was sceptical about the effectiveness of sanctions without the use of military force) to put sanctions to test before they could evaluate them. Here, Canada supported British initiatives in the Rhodesian UDI crisis and managed to secure African compliance with sanctions as the most appropriate way to secure an end to the crisis. This meant, therefore, that the use of force, which most Afro-Asian-Caribbean countries were advocating, was abandoned and resulted in the intensification of the liberation war.”123
African governments were far from enthused with Canada’s position on Rhodesia. African history scholar Linda Freeman explains Ottawa’s response: “To shift attention from the unpalatable aspects of this stance [against British intervention], Pearson pledged Canadian support for a program of assistance in the form of scholarships for Rhodesian Africans and capital assistance for Rhodesian railways and irrigation.”124 Additionally, Ottawa channelled funds to a number of African countries in the hopes of easing tension between them and the leader of the Commonwealth, Britain, which empowered the white minority in Rhodesia.125
After pushing sanctions as an alternative to armed intervention, Ottawa refused to enforce them. South Africa and Portugal flagrantly undermined the sanctions but Ottawa and the Western powers did little.126 Furthermore, a number of major Canadian companies sustained their business in Rhodesia into the 1970s.127 Some of these companies continued to operate in Rhodesia even after Canadian law prohibited it. Yet the federal government still did nothing.128 Falconbridge’s annual report, for example, discussed in detail the operations of its Blanket Mine in Rhodesia.129 Still, the parliamentary secretary to the minister of industry, trade and commerce claimed, “our records reveal no evidence that there are direct corporate ties between Falconbridge Nickel Co. Ltd and Blanket mines.”130
Montréal Gazette journalist Hugh Nangle visited Falconbridge’s main Rhodesian property in 1973 and later told an interviewer: “The Blanket Mine is a disgusting example of a Canadian company exploiting black workers. It is not unfair to charge that Falconbridge is operating a slave labour mine. Living conditions for blacks are appalling while the white workers luxuriate over the hill in attractive homes with beautiful gardens and at least one automobile to a house. The ‘houses’ for blacks consist of two-room, asbestos-corrugated sheeting. They are crowded together, one upon the other, in an area of the country where there is plenty of space. Shanties in many cases double as cooking areas and sleeping quarters.”131
Also in the southern part of the continent, South Africa occupied Namibia during World War I. Soon after, poorer white South Africans proceeded to gobble up Namibian land and Pretoria imposed its laws, including its apartheid policy. In 1948, Ottawa joined four other countries in abstaining on a UN vote that passed 43 to 1 (only South Africa voted no) criticizing South Africa’s refusal to negotiate a trusteeship agreement for Southwest Africa (Namibia).132 Three years later Canada once again abstained on a resolution concerning Namibians’ rights. That vote to hear the grievances of petitioners from Southwest Africa passed 37 to 7 with 7 abstentions.133
After decolonization swept the northern two-thirds of the continent, African and Asian countries pushed for the UN to assume direct responsibility over Namibia. Canada abstained on a 1967 vote to establish the UN Council for Namibia to administer the territory until independence.134 Passed by a strong majority, Ottawa then refused to recognize the legal authority of the Council for Namibia. The Secretary-General of the South West Africa People’s Organization (SWAPO), Toivo ja Toivo, decried this position: “The UN Council for Namibia is at the center of the UN plan to wrestle authority from the racist Pretoria regime. The South Africans are plundering Namibia, and Canada refuses to support the only body that would have protected the resources of the people of Namibia. Canada cannot have it both ways — refuse to recognize the legal authority of South Africa and the legal authority of the UN Council.”135
Six years after the Council vote, Canada took an even more hostile position towards Namibian independence. In 1973 Canada voted against a resolution giving UN observer status to SWAPO, the main Namibian liberation movement.136
In 1971 the International Court of Justice found the occupation of Namibia illegal. The court ruled “that States Members of the United Nations are under obligation to recognize the illegality of South Africa’s presence in Namibia and the invalidity of its acts on behalf of or concerning Namibia, and to refrain from any acts and in particular any dealings with the government of South Africa implying recognition of the legality of, or lending support or assistance to, such presence and administration.”137
At odds with the International Court of Justice ruling and despite a Canadian-backed UN resolution that declared South Africa’s presence unlawful, Ottawa accepted South Africa’s jurisdiction over Namibia. The Canada-South Africa trade agreement applied to the “Mandated territory of Southwest Africa” and the Department of Industry, Trade and Commerce spent public money promoting economic relations with Namibia.138 In a 1985 article, Linda Freeman describes how “government officials assured the Hudson’s Bay Company that its major involvement in the production and export of karakul pelts in Namibia was not illegal.”139
During the mid-1970s at least nine Canadian companies had investments in Namibia.140 In 1971 Falconbridge partnered with the South African government in a Namibian silver-copper mining company, Oamites.141 Falconbridge paid taxes to Pretoria and received credits from Ottawa for these payments to the apartheid regime. The issue of taxes was highly political since not taxing Canadian firms operating in Namibia implied recognition of South Africa’s mandate over that country.142
A crown corporation, El Dorado Nuclear Ltd., processed uranium from mines in Namibia, which contravened a 1970 UN resolution against trade with Namibia.143 Eldorado obscured the origins of its Namibian uranium by falsely labeling it South African, which made it difficult for countries such as Japan to observe the UN Security Council decree opposing the exploitation of Namibian natural resources.144 The 1983 article “Canada and Namibian Uranium” cited an External Affairs statement that “there are no impediments in Canada to the importation and processing of Namibian uranium. Canadian crown corporations, like Eldorado Nuclear, are also entirely free to handle Namibian origin uranium, as long as their activities do not stand in contravention of the government’s policy not to recognize South African jurisdiction over and occupation of the territory of Namibia.”145
For a time Ottawa was more lenient than Washington toward South Africa’s occupation of Namibia. When the US passed regulations to deter corporate involvement in Namibia, some US companies opened holding companies in Toronto to take advantage of Canadian policy.146 President of SWAPO S. Nuyoma explained: “The people of Namibia strongly condemn the policies of the Canadian companies working with the cooperation of American and British companies who are mercilessly exploiting Namibian natural resources. Especially, we strongly condemn the Canadian companies like Falconbridge and Etosha Petroleum … [that] employ African slave labour. The Canadian-American companies are not only helping the South African government to perpetuate white supremacy, economic exploitation and the permanent enslavement of the African people of Namibia, but also support South Africa through providing capital, goods and industrial aid. We therefore appeal to the people and government of Canada, who believe in freedom and human equality, to demand an immediate withdrawal of all Canadian companies now operating in and exploiting Namibia.”147
Along with Britain, France, Germany and the US, in 1977 Canada joined the five-nation Contact Group on Namibia. Ostensibly designed to bring about a peaceful and just independence, it abetted South Africa’s efforts to stall for time and set up a controlled “independent” administration. Six years into the negotiations, SWAPO criticized the Contact Group’s efforts “to protect racist South Africa through endless and fruitless negotiations.”148 The Taskforce on the Churches and Corporate Responsibility noted: “Unwilling to back armed resistance, and in an effort to avoid a Security Council sanctions resolution, the Contact Group asked for time to seek South Africa’s cooperation in a settlement for Namibia. The five years of inconclusive negotiations have given South Africa time to consolidate its administrative and military hold over Namibia, and the West a tactical excuse to ignore United Nations resolutions concerning Namibia.”149
Canadian officials claimed that ongoing Contact Group negotiations meant they had to abandon punitive measures towards South Africa and adopt a state of impartiality.150 Canada’s principal representative to the Contact Group, William Barton, later suggested all five Western countries used it “as a stalking horse to conceal their unwillingness to act against South Africa under any circumstances.”151
Part of Pretoria’s goal was to drag out negotiations concerning its occupation of Namibia to avoid even greater scrutiny of its internal apartheid policies.
In “Contact Africa: Canadian Foreign Policy, the Contact Group, and Southern Africa”, Grant Dawson describes “[South African Prime Minister B.J.] Vorster’s intention to retain as much power in Namibia as possible and not free Namibia until absolutely politically necessary. He recognized that once Namibia gained independence, international attention would turn to the apartheid system within South Africa itself.”152
Beyond gaining political autonomy, the liberation movement wanted to reverse the inequality in land ownership. A tiny minority, 0.2% of the country, 4,000 white commercial farmers owned 74% of Southwest Africa’s arable land.153 With the end of South African rule, the Contact Group countries pushed for a clause whereby the state could only acquire land if the owner wanted to let it go.154 According to a 2013 New African article, “this condition, it is widely accepted, came about as a result of the efforts of the ‘Contact Group’… as a means of ensuring SWAPO could not deliver on its key liberation grievance of large-scale land redistribution.”155
Between 1990 and 2002 only 1% of commercial land changed hands from whites to blacks.156 In 2013, whites, 6% of Namibia’s population, still controlled 90% of land in the country.157
That same year the death of Nelson Mandela led to an outpouring of commentary about Canada’s supposed role in defeating South African apartheid. “Canada helped lead international fight against Apartheid”, read a Toronto Star headline while a National Post piece declared: “Canada’s stance against apartheid helped bring freedom to South Africa.”158
Notwithstanding this self-congratulatory revisionism, Ottawa was heavily complicit in South Africa’s system of racial discrimination. After decades of white supremacist policy, in 1948 the National Party solidified the discriminatory legal framework classifying South Africans by race and “barring people from living, operating businesses or owning land anywhere else but in the areas designated for each race.”159 These laws strengthened the white minority’s grip over most of the country’s land and created a large pool of easily exploitable black labourers. South Africans who protested were met with repression.
Official relations with South Africa date to before that country’s creation. A Canadian Trade Commissioner was dispatched to Pretoria in 1902 and it was the first African country in which Ottawa established full diplomatic relations at the start of World War II.160 According to Commerce over Conscience, “the first Canadian trade mission to South Africa occurred in 1947 and its success led to a large number of subsequent missions. By the 1970s such missions became virtually yearly events.”161
Ottawa maintained an explicitly pro-South Africa diplomatic position until the late 1950s.162 But as decolonization took root, Ottawa echoed growing international condemnation of its white supremacist policies. For the next quarter century Canada expressed opposition to apartheid all the while continuing to engage in significant business with this former British Dominion.
Proponents of the notion that Ottawa wholeheartedly opposed apartheid point out that in 1961 John Diefenbaker’s Conservative government called for South Africa to be expelled from the British Commonwealth. But this position was not a moral rebuke of apartheid. “Nothing has been more constant in Diefenbaker’s approach than his search for a tolerable way of averting South Africa’s withdrawal,” commented an External Affairs official at the 1961 Commonwealth meeting where South Africa left the organization.163 Diefenbaker pushed for South Africa’s exclusion in an attempt to save the Commonwealth. The former British colonies — notably in Africa and South Asia — threatened to leave the organization if South Africa’s status was renewed. This would have been the death of the British Commonwealth.
Diefenbaker’s lack of principled opposition to apartheid helps explain his refusal to cancel the 1932 Canada-South Africa trade agreement.164 Finally, in 1979 Ottawa ended preferential tariff rates to the apartheid regime, but this was as much an economic decision (the trade balance favoured South Africa) as it was a reprimand for its racist policies.165
Widely viewed as a progressive internationalist, Pierre Trudeau’s government sympathized with the apartheid regime not the black liberation movement or nascent Canadian solidarity groups. In the mid-1970s the Department of Energy, Mines and Resources included South African officials in secret negotiations to establish a uranium cartel and throughout Trudeau’s time in office, Canadian companies were heavily invested in South Africa, enjoying the benefits of cheap black labour. The federal government’s 1970 White Paper recognized that Canadian corporations were in South Africa because of the “better than normal opportunities” for economic returns.166 A Falconbridge official explained to a parliamentary committee “in fact the whites are in the … senior positions and the blacks in junior positions. I am not denying that. That is just the way it is in South Africa … the system automatically segregates the jobs … there is no question of whether you want to or whether you do not want to. It is a law.”167
In the early 1980s Canadian banks participated in international consortia that lent $2 to $3 billion to South African companies and underwrote another $700 million for agencies of the South African government.168 To avoid pressure from unionized black workers and stronger restrictions in the US, some American companies invested in South Africa through their Canadian subsidiaries (notably Ford Motors).169
In October 1982 the Trudeau government delivered 4.91 percent of the votes that enabled Western powers to gain a slim 51.9 percent majority in support of South Africa’s application for a billion-dollar IMF credit. Sixty-eight IMF members opposed the loan, as did 121 countries in a nonbinding vote at the UN General Assembly. Five IMF executive directors said South Africa did not meet the standards of conditionality imposed on other borrowers.170 The Canadian minister of finance justified support for the IMF loan claiming that “the IMF must be careful … not to be accused of meddling in the internal affairs of sovereign states.”171 A few months later, Ottawa opposed IMF funding for Vietnam because it invaded Cambodia to stop the Khmer Rouge’s slaughter and, as we’ll see, Canada backed the IMF’s usurpation of African economic sovereignty.172 (To add further offence, Canada’s vote at the IMF represented itself and a block of largely black nations: Barbados, Bahamas, Dominica, Grenada, St. Lucia, St. Vincent and Jamaica as well as Ireland.)
Officially, the Trudeau government supported the international arms embargo against South Africa, but his government mostly failed to enforce it.173 As late as 1978, Canadian-government financed weapons continued to make their way into South Africa.174 Canadair (at the time a Crown company) sold the apartheid regime amphibious water bombers, which according to the manufacturer were useful “particularly in internal troop-lift operations.”175 (The official buyer was the South African forestry department.)
In the early 1970s, the Montréal Gazette discovered that the RCMP trained South African police in “some sort of liaison or intelligence gathering” instruction.176 As apartheid came to an end, it was discovered that Canada had assisted South Africa in developing its capacity to manufacture nuclear weapons.177 Additionally, Toronto-based Space Research Corporation (SRC) shipped artillery shells and helped South Africa develop a highly advanced artillery system. Part of the military, the Armaments Development Corporation of South Africa bought 20 per cent of SRC and in 1979 South Africans came to Canada to run tests. “By 1982,” notes Linda Freeman, “South Africa was in a position to launch an international campaign to promote South African exports of this new system and was able to test the artillery system in combat in Namibia and southern Angola.”178
Apologists for apartheid would say anything to slow opposition to this cruel system. At a 1977 Commonwealth meeting, Pierre Trudeau dodged press questions on post-Soweto South Africa suggesting that Idi Amin’s brutal regime in Uganda should be discussed along with southern Africa.179
Canadian officials came up with a way to minimize African criticism of their policy toward South Africa. In the 1970s Ottawa increased aid to African states as a way to mitigate their criticism of Canada’s economic and political relations with the apartheid system. According to Canadian Development Assistance to Tanzania, “the government has concluded that Canadian interests would be better served by maintaining its current policy framework on the problems of southern Africa, which balances two policy themes [social justice and economic relations] of importance to Canadians. The government intends, however, to give more expression to the social policy theme. To this end the Canadian government will make available further economic assistance to black African states of the area to assist them to develop their own institutions and resources.”180
After decades of protest by Canadian unions, churches, students and leftist organizations, Brian Mulroney’s Conservative government finally implemented economic sanctions on South Africa in 1986. The Conservatives only moved after numerous other countries had already done so. “The record clearly shows”, explains Freeman, “that the Canadian government followed rather than led the sanctions campaign.”181 Unlike Canada, countries such as Norway, Denmark, New Zealand, Brazil and Argentina also cut off diplomatic ties to South Africa.182 Even US sanctions, due to an activist Congress, were tougher than those implemented by Ottawa.183 From October 1986 to September 1993, the period in which economic sanctions were in effect, Canada’s two-way trade with South Africa totalled $1.6 billion — 44 percent of the comparable period before sanctions (1979-1985).184 Canadian imports from South Africa averaged $122 million a year during the sanctions period.185
Reflecting on the two countries trade relations in a 2010 article, David Hornsby and Oscar van Heerden noted: “Canada, as an export destination for South Africa, was more important in the 1980s than the current situation: an amazing thing to consider in light of Canada’s supposed intolerance for the apartheid regime.”186
Canada did business with the apartheid regime and opposed liberation movements. Ottawa’s relationship with the African National Congress (ANC) was initially one of hostility and then ambivalence. Often describing it as a “terrorist” entity, Canada failed to recognize the ANC until July 1984 and then worked to moderate their direction.187 In an August 1987 letter to the Toronto Star, Foreign Affairs Minister Joe Clark explained the government’s thinking: “Canada has been able to develop a relationship of trust with the … African National Congress that it is hoped has helped to strengthen the hand of black moderates.”188
With apartheid’s end on the horizon, Ottawa wanted to guarantee that an ANC government would follow pro-capitalist policy, contrary to what was outlined in its Freedom Charter and the wishes of many of its supporters. The man in charge of External Affairs’ South African Taskforce said that Ottawa wanted an early IMF planning mission to the country to ensure that the post-apartheid government would “get things right” from the start.189 One author notes: “The Canadian state has entered fully in the drive to open South Africa to global forces and to promote the interests of the private sector.”190
Ottawa set up the South Africa/Canada Program on Governance in 1995. As part of this effort, the “[Canadian government-funded] Development Research Centre played a strategically important role in assisting the ANC-led democratic movement to plan for the post-apartheid era through support for research on such key areas as macroeconomic policy, urban policy, environment policy, and science and technology.”191
Canadian officials also pressed to get the new South African government to sign a Foreign Investment Promotion and Protection Agreement (FIPA) in 1995. (See Chapter 8 for more details.) An initial agreement was drafted, but the ANC-led government ultimately refused to sign an accord that would have undermined its capacity to pursue Black economic empowerment and land reform policies.
Ottawa’s supportive policy towards apartheid South Africa was controversial among Canadians. An active solidarity movement opposed Canadian support for the racist regime but the federal government used its influence to minimize opposition.
Many NGOs receiving government assistance began to self-censor on South Africa.192 “CIDA specified, for example, that CUSO could not use CIDA funds to criticize Canadian foreign policy or to draw parallels between struggles against oppression in developing countries [particularly in Southern Africa] and struggles by powerless groups in Canada.”193
Another way it undermined NGO criticism was by encouraging the creation of new organizations more amenable to its policy. In an important history of the aid agency, Cranford Pratt explains, “CIDA secured creation of the South African Education Trust Fund because it did not think the strong NGOs already active vis-à-vis South Africa sufficiently sensitive to Canadian foreign policy concerns.”194
This overriding concern for Canada’s self-interest (primarily defined as the interests of Canadian corporations or Western capitalism in general) was to grow stronger in the post-colonial era.