Apartheid South Africa Withdrawn from the British Commonwealth
On 15 March 1961, at the Commonwealth Prime Ministers’ Conference, apartheid South Africa announced that it was to withdraw from the Commonwealth when the South African Constitution of 1961 came into effect. The 1961 Commonwealth Prime Ministers’ Conference was the eleventh Meeting of the Heads of Government of the Commonwealth of Nations. It was held in the United Kingdom in March 1961, and was hosted by that country’s Prime Minister, Harold Macmillan.
While Commonwealth conferences were normally held biennially, this conference was held after an interval of only a year, as the May 1960 conference ended in disagreement over South Africa and whether the country should be removed from the Commonwealth. The Commonwealth by 1960 included new Asian and African members, whose rulers saw the apartheid state’s membership as an affront to the organisation’s new democratic principles.
This was due to its policy of racial segregation, with Malaya’s Prime Minister, Tanku Abdul Rahman, demanding South Africa’s expulsion. Mwalimu Julius Nyerere, who was then the Prime Minister of Tanganyika, indicated that his country, which was due to gain independence in 1961, would not join the Commonwealth were apartheid South Africa to remain a member. The whole point of excluding South Africa was to save the Commonwealth from almost certain disruption; and to bind it more closely on the basis of the assertion of a
