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make the feet into wastepaper baskets.
The problems of southern Africa rather than Asia were to occupy most of Elizabeth’s
attention as head of the Commonwealth over the next three decades. In October 1959
Macmillan had told a colleague that Africa was the biggest problem looming on their
horizon and in January 1960 he had flown out to investigate the situation for himself, to
Accra, Salisbury and finally to Cape Town, where he made his famous ‘Wind of Change’
speech warning the white South Africans of the strength of African national
consciousness which they must now accept as ‘a political fact’. On 21 March, less than
two months after he left, sixty-nine black demonstrators were killed and another 180
wounded at Sharpeville. Macmillan told Elizabeth:
The rigidity, and even fanaticism, with which the Nationalist Government in South Africa have pursued the
apartheid policy have brought about – as I feared when I was there – a dangerous, even ominous situation in
that country… I must warn Your Majesty that I see a very difficult period facing the Commonwealth… my
supreme task is to try to avoid anything in the nature of disintegration. 2
In October 1960 white South Africa voted to become a republic; Prime Minister
Verwoerd’s application for renewed membership of the Commonwealth in March 1961
foundered on his refusal to abandon apartheid and the stage was set for the
controversies of the next thirty years.
The royal visit to Ghana which had been postponed due to Elizabeth’s pregnancy with
Prince Andrew finally took place in November 1961, by which time Ghana had become
a republic and there were fears that Nkrumah might also leave the Commonwealth. Dr
Nkrumah had become increasingly dictatorial and, it appeared, anti-Western. He had
returned from a visit to Moscow in October in a hostile mood, sacked most of his
Western advisers and thrown a number of his opponents into jail. The internal situation
in Ghana was volatile and there were fears for Elizabeth’s life in case she might be the
victim of an assassination attempt on Nkrumah while she was in his company. Beyond
that, liberal British public opinion was against the tour as seeming to endorse an
undemocratic regime. ‘It is really dreadful that the Queen should be going there, after
the way that Nkrumah has behaved and is behaving,’ Lord Salisbury wrote to Lord
Swinton on 28 March 1961. 3 No previous royal tour had been accompanied by what
government advisers described as such a ‘hullabaloo’ in the press and argument in
Parliament. The situation became even more critical when, five days before Elizabeth
was due to leave, there were two bomb explosions in the capital, Accra, one of which
blew the legs off Nkrumah’s statue in front of the Parliament building; as a result, the
British Government considered cancelling the visit. The head of Special Branch had
already been sent out there and the Commonwealth Secretary, Duncan Sandys, made a
second visit to test the atmosphere for himself. Their conclusion was that, on balance,
the Queen should go ahead. Macmillan was willing to take the risk. Both he and the new
US President, John F. Kennedy, were playing for high stakes in Africa, and keeping
Ghana out of the Soviet sphere of influence was their objective. To this end Kennedy
was considering providing the finance for the Upper Volta dam; Elizabeth’s visit was