ecbritz

I enjoyed the series very much but a major case of historical disinformation bothered me. The series highlights the visit to South Africa in 1947 of the future Queen Elizabeth II, with her sister, Princess Margaret, and her parents, King George VI and Queen Elizabeth. The visit lasted three months and involved a train journey through South Africa itself, Southern Rhodesia, Swaziland, Basutoland and the Bechuanaland Protectorate. Racial division between the crowds cheering the royal family on their journey is shown in many scenes. For instance black and white well-wishers are seen to cheer the royal family from two sides of the royal train, possibly because they are standing on segregated platforms. This situation is then ascribed to Afrikaner Nationalism and apartheid. The problem with this explanation is that the National Party, representing Afrikaner Nationalism and apartheid, only came to power in 1948, the year after 1947 when the royal family visited South Africa. In 1947 and in the preceding years South Africa was ruled by general Jan Smuts of the South African Party. He was a great friend of Great Britain who acted as adviser to the British War Cabinet. It was probably partly due to the military support and advisory role of Gen Smuts in the Second World War that South Africa was chosen as the country where the royal family would spend all those sunny months. One can see Gen Smuts in many scenes in the documentary. In other words, the documentary does not show South Africa under the rule of Afrikaner Nationalism or apartheid, but under the rule of Gen Smuts, before the word apartheid became generally known in the world. A second aspect of what seems like disinformation is that exactly the same kind of racial separation and inequality existed in all of the other colonial possessions of Great Britain visited by the royal family, i.e. Southern Rhodesia, Swaziland, Basutoland and the Bechuanaland Protectorate. Britain had colonies all over Africa at the time, including for instance the present-day Ghana and Kenya. In all of these countries you would have seen similar scenes of racial separation in 1947. These scenes were explained by British colonialism, not by racial laws not yet enacted by a government not yet in power in South Africa. There is no excuse for any kind of racial domination, let alone inhumanity shown to any race, and the National Party justly disappeared from history, together with its policies. But we should not be misinformed and certainly not dis-informed by portrayals of history.