When Presidents and Prime Ministers met in Singapore in 1971 the Commonwealth was in serious disarray. There were deep divisions over Southern Africa in addition to speculations about the association’s imminent demise. But the efforts of Kenneth Kaunda and Pierre Trudeau ensured that the Commonwealth not only survived but emerged with a clear mandate for the future, writes Derek Ingram
This was the year the Commonwealth summit began to move around the world. Hitherto the leaders had met only once outside London – in Lagos for an emergency meeting on Rhodesia in 1966. Now that several leaders at these summits were presidents, what had been called, since 1946, the Commonwealth Prime Ministers’ Meeting became the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting, creating the (somewhat ugly) acronym CHOGM that is still with us today.
Barely 20 years had passed since the Commonwealth as we know it had come into being with the extremely brief London Declaration of 1949. Ten years after that the Commonwealth still had only 11 member countries, but by 1971, as decolonization gathered pace, it had increased to 31. The years between had been stormy with the birth of many new states, and Southern Africa rapidly becoming the area where black and white had come into confrontation. The issue of Rhodesia’s Unilateral Declaration of Independence in 1965 had tested the Commonwealth’s very existence with members threatening to walk out. Once again Southern Africa – in particular the British government’s decision to supply South Africa with arms – was placing strains on the Commonwealth, threatening to break it up.
For some time it had been felt that the Commonwealth needed to set down some guidelines for its future conduct. Until 1971 the Commonwealth had never formalised any statement of principles. Communiqués of summits had merely dealt with specific topical issues as they had come along. There was little general guidance on the Commonwealth’s road ahead. Because of the disarray that had developed before Singapore, especially on Southern Africa, several leaders felt there should be a formal general statement of Commonwealth policy.
Since its independence in 1964, President Kenneth Kaunda’s Zambia had found itself in a sea of turmoil, with Rhodesia and South Africa to the south, war-torn Mozambique and Angola on the east and west, and the Congo and breakaway Katanga province to the north. Several months before the summit, Kaunda had taken the lead in trying to frame a declaration. He was a strong but critical supporter of the Commonwealth and now also much in need of its help. Before the leaders arrived in Singapore, Kaunda’s team had drawn up the first draft of what was initially known as the Zambian Declaration. Discussions on the document at Singapore would prove to be difficult.
Kaunda’s preoccupation was the dangerous situation in Rhodesia and South Africa and his central purpose was to help set the Commonwealth on a path that was firmly against racial discrimination. The paragraph condemning racism proved to be the most difficult on which to find consensus. After six amendments by Australia, Pakistan, Guyana, Nigeria and Britain, the particularly troublesome clause was amended to read: “We shall not afford to regimes which practise racial discrimination any assistance which contributes to the pursuit or consolidation of this evil policy.” Britain’s Edward Heath maintained that this was still not acceptable as he felt it was aimed at his government’s declared “intention” to sell arms to South Africa (see box on Simonstown).
Officials given the task to sort out the problem sat for eight hours but broke up in disagreement. An African delegate said: “The British and Australians are trying to take the teeth out of the declaration. We won’t stand for it.” The UK government, it is true, had reservations about signing any declaration because it was not their idea of how the Commonwealth should operate. It was Canada’s Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau who saved the day by suggesting the inclusion in the disputed paragraph of the four words “in its own judgment” so that the clause finally read: “No country will afford to regimes which practise racial discrimination assistance which in its own judgment directly contributes to the pursuit or consolidation of this evil policy.”
Prime Minister John Gorton of Australia praised the Declaration, but said he would have liked it to contain the words “the Commonwealth condemns any armed attack made by any nation upon any other nation”. Kaunda was not entirely happy either about the final version and said, as he flew off, that he had agreed “to go along” with it “because this is just the beginning of a long fight. We hope to be able to improve on it in future. It was not a sell-out”. True to his word, when Kaunda hosted CHOGM in 1979, which laid the foundations for the independence of Zimbabwe, the leaders reinforced the Singapore statement by issuing the Lusaka Declaration on Racism and Racial Prejudice.
In Singapore, even though no one went home entirely happy, the Commonwealth had survived. More than that, in issuing the Singapore Declaration, the summit had created, as Trudeau said, “the kind of thing that could put more spirit into the Commonwealth”.
If we look back at the Singapore Declaration, which was made 40 years ago at a time when the world was deep into the Cold War, we find a strikingly concise and comprehensive document that calls for equal rights for all citizens, free and democratic political processes, and uses two memorable phrases – that racial prejudice is a “dangerous sickness” and discrimination “an unmitigated evil of society”.
It says that “wide disparities in wealth now existing between different sections of mankind are too great to be tolerated”. The Commonwealth is seen as “one of the most fruitful associations” to remove the causes of war, promote tolerance, combat injustice and secure development.
When, 20 years later, Heads came to make their declaration on Commonwealth principles in Harare, Zimbabwe, the world looked very different. The Berlin Wall had come down, the Cold War was over and in South Africa apartheid was on its way out. The war in the former Southern Rhodesia had ended and a newborn Zimbabwe was thriving.
It is easy to dismiss the Singapore Declaration as just words to which member countries paid no attention, but that would be wrong. The reality is that no country ever carries out all it signs up to in international statements. Singapore did set standards for a Commonwealth that was still in the middle of decolonisation and helped to put it on the way to the large measure of international respectability which it now enjoys.
The all-important Harare Declaration is less sharp than the Singapore Declaration, but it stands as the other most important statement of Commonwealth intentions and ambitions. It talked of “respect for human rights” – not mentioned in Singapore – and called for members to be helped “in entrenching the practices of democratic, accountable administration and the rule of law”.
Important as the Harare Declaration is and remains, what followed did not help its image because Robert Mugabe’s government, having hosted the CHOGM at which it was devised, never adhered to its terms. The country was suspended in 2002 and withdrew as a member in December 2003, leaving this key Declaration with a most unfortunate label.
Neither Singapore nor Harare provided any mechanism for enforcement. That was to come later with the Millbrook Commonwealth Action Programme on the Harare Declaration launched at the Auckland CHOGM in 1995. Under Millbrook, the Commonwealth Ministerial Action Group (CMAG) of foreign ministers was set up, which can suspend and even expel member countries for non-democratic behaviour.
Thus Singapore led to Harare and in turn to Millbrook, and now CMAG is to be given stronger powers by a decision of last year’s Trinidad CHOGM. It is work in progress.
