Eric Louw

Eric Hendrik Louw
Minister of Foreign Affairs
In office 1955–1963
Prime Minister	J. G. Strijdom H.F. Verwoerd
Preceded by	J. G. Strijdom
Succeeded by	Hilgard Muller
Minister of Finance
In office 1954–1956
Prime Minister	J. G. Strijdom
Personal details
Born	(1890-11-21)21 November 1890 Jacobsdal, Orange Free State
Died	24 June 1968(1968-06-24) (aged 77) Cape Town, South Africa
Political party	National Party
Alma mater	Rhodes University
Occupation	Lawyer

Eric Hendrik Louw (1890–1968) was a South African diplomat and politician. He served as the Minister of Finance from 1954 to 1956, and as the Minister of Foreign Affairs from 1955 to 1963.

Early life[]

He was born in Jacobsdal in the Orange Free State on 21 November 1890 to a Boer family. He obtained a Bachelor of Arts degree at the then Victoria College, Stellenbosch. He went on to qualify as an advocate at Rhodes University College; Grahamstown, where he also practised. In 1915, when his father died at Beaufort West, he took over the business interests.

Politician and diplomat[]

In 1924 he was elected to the House of Assembly as MP for Beaufort West, and the following year became South Africa's first Trade Commissioner in the USA and Canada. In 1929 he became High Commissioner in London and a year later South Africa's first envoy to the United States. Louw, a republican Afrikaner nationalist had stormy relations with the British during his time as high commissioner, accounting for his short term as he was appointed high commissioner in March 1929 and had resigned by November 1929, stating it was simply impossible for him to work with British officials.^[1] Louw's resignation was a great relief not only to himself, but also to the British officials who were glad to see him gone.^[1]

After he had represented his country in Italy, France and Portugal and had been South Africa's first representative to the League of Nations, he returned to South Africa for political reasons. In 1938 he was again elected Member of Parliament for Beaufort West. During the Second World War he was, like most of his party, pro-Nazi. When the National Party won the general election in 1948, he was an obvious choice for the cabinet, firstly as Minister of Economic Affairs, then, from 1955, as Minister of Finance and from 1957 as Minister of Foreign Affairs. He was best known as South Africa's representative at UNO, Commonwealth and other overseas conferences. Between 1948 and 1962 he represented South Africa at UNO on eight occasions.

At the 1957 Commonwealth conference, Louw met Prime Minister Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana, the first of the British colonies in Africa to become independent.^[2] Through Nkrumah was an icon of Pan-African nationalism and of Black pride, he agreed with Louw that the Commonwealth conference was an "inappropriate" venue for discussing apartheid.^[2] Despite expectations, Louw and Nkrumah got along well as the two men were both nationalists who struggled against Britain in various ways and both agreed on the "danger of Communism".^[2] In 1958, Nkrumah tried to establish diplomatic relations between Accra and Pretoria, only to be rebuffed by Louw who did not want a black high commissioner in Pretoria who would be formally his equal at diplomatic functions.^[2] Hendrik Frensch Verwoerd who became the South African prime minister in 1958 felt that South Africa already made concessions by establishing diplomatic relations with Egypt and the Republic of China (Taiwan) and was willing to allow diplomatic relations with India and Pakistan if those nations were willing to establish diplomatic ties, but was adamantly against having diplomatic relations with any black African nation.^[3] South Africa's relations with the Republic of China were stained in the 1950s-1960s owning to the blatantly discriminatory policies pursued against the Chinese South African minority who like the Indo-South Africans were classified as belonging to the Asian legal category under apartheid while relations with Egypt were broken off in 1961.^[4]

He had a major impact on Canadian relations when he met with the Prime Minister of Canada John Diefenbaker at the 1957 and 1958 Commonwealth conferences. Diefenbaker had asked Louw to give some voting privileges to coloured people (under apartheid, "colored people" were a legal category consisting of people of mixed race descent-the term "coloured people" did not refer to black people). Louw refused as he maintained that Canada did not even allow their Native population the right to vote. Louw was only partially correct; since 1876, non-status Canadian Indians who lived off the reservations had been allowed to vote and hold office, but status Indians who lived on the reservations were disfranchised. In the 1958 federal Canadian election this was an election issue and Diefenbaker passed the Canadian Bill of Right and modified the Citizenship and Indian Act to give full citizenship to status Indians in Canada. These laws were changed in 1959. These changes made it harder for Canada to say no to the forcing the expulsion/withdrawal of South Africa from the Commonwealth.

Louw was at the 1960 Commonwealth Prime Ministers' Conference on behalf of the then Prime Minister of South Africa, H.F. Verwoerd. As Minister of Foreign Affairs he assisted the Prime Minister, Dr HF Verwoerd, at the historic Commonwealth conference in London in 1961 when South Africa withdrew her membership. At the 1961 session of the United Nations, Louw represented South Africa when he became involved in stormy debates with the Indian delegation who objected to the treatment of the Indo-South African population under apartheid.^[5] Louw had a reputation as a "hard man", and in his speeches at the UN were noted for their virulent tone as he aggressively defended apartheid.^[6] Louw's speeches before the UN General Assembly claiming that the United Nations did not have the right to discuss apartheid ended in defeat with the 45 nations voting for the Indian motion to discuss apartheid; 8 nations abstained from the vote; and only Australia, Belgium, France, Portugal, and Luxembourg voted with South Africa in maintaining that apartheid was an internal South African matter.^[7] At the UN Security Council, an Indian motion calling apartheid a danger to the peace of Africa was passed 9 votes to zero with both Britain and France abstaining from the vote.^[6] On 31 December 1963 he relinquished his post as Minister of Foreign Affairs.

Honours and awards[]

He was awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Pretoria in 1962. He was similarly honoured by the University of the Orange Free State in 1963. In 1965 a bronze bust of him by Hennie Potgieter was unveiled at Beaufort West in a school which bore his name until it was amalgamated with Niko Brummer Primary School in 1994. A high school in the town of Musina in Limpopo also bears his name.^[8]

Death[]

Louw died on June 24, 1968 in Cape Town.^[9]

Books and articles[]

• Wheeler, Tom (2005). History of the South African Department of Foreign Affairs 1927-1993. Johannesburg: South African Institute of International Affairs.
• Grundy, Kenneth (2020). Confrontation and Accommodation in Southern Africa. Los Angeles: University of California Press. ISBN 0520370570.
• Muller, C.F. (1986). Five Hundred Years: A History of South Africa. Washington, D.C: Academica. ISBN 0868742716.
• Osada, Masako (2002). Sanctions and Honorary Whites: Diplomatic Policies and Economic Realities in Relations Between Japan and South Africa. Westport: Greenwood Publishing Group. ISBN 0313318778.

References[]