Double Standard

Africa's new nations last week gave an alarming display of emotionalism and political immaturity.

It happened over a U.N. speech by South Africa's Foreign Minister Eric Louw, who offered a provocative whitewash of his country's apartheid policy, previously condemned by the U.N. While he was clearly practicing doublethink in his contention that South Africa's rigidly repressed blacks are actually enjoying blissful freedom and enlightened education, Louw also uttered some truths and half-truths that hit the mark. Example: he stressed the Africans' high vulnerability to blandishments by the Soviet bloc, "which conveniently ignores conditions existing in Hungary and in the Soviet Union's occupied or colonial territories." Added Louw: "The ruler of Ghana is flirting with Moscow and Peking. Guinea, soon after being given its independence, promptly became a disciple of Moscow. Mali appears to be going the same way." He also pointed out--accurately--that living conditions in the continent's two oldest black states, Ethiopia and Liberia, are "appalling," and added a needling reminder to other Africans that their contributions to the U.N. budget constitute a mere 2 1/4% of the total--most of which they have not yet paid.

The African delegates were incensed and Liberia's Ambassador Henry Ford Cooper demanded that the speech be stricken from the record. It was an unprecedented challenge to the one institution that makes the U.N. General Assembly important--free speech. Only later did the more reflective among the Africans suggest retreat to the less harsh course of a vote of censure. The grounds: Louw's speech had been "offensive, fictitious and erroneous." Precipitately, a ballot was taken and the motion carried by 67 votes to South Africa's 1, with 20 delegates abstaining and 9 (including the U.S.) "not participating" in the vote at all. Adlai Stevenson, who was absent, later lamely explained the U.S. position: while disagreeing with South Africa's apartheid policy, the U.S. upholds every speaker's right to be heard.

None of the Africans seemed to consider that innumerable "offensive, fictitious and erroneous" tirades had been loosed on the U.N. by the Communists (including Khrushchev's shoe-pounding and other Reds' denunciation of Dag Hammarskjold as "Lumumba's murderer") without the West's calling for censure. Some Africans went even farther.

Ghana, for one, lobbied to have South Africa expelled from the U.N. That scheme raised some fascinating questions. By Ghana's rule that South Africa is not fit to be a member because it defies U.N. principles, could Red China, which actually waged war against the U.N. in Korea, ever attain U.N. membership? Could Russia and the regime of Janos Kadar, which defied the U.N. on the Hungarian question, retain their U.N. seats? On such matters, the African states seemed resolutely dedicated to a double standard.

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