Most people who were there still remember former British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan’s  revolutionary ‘Winds of change sweeping across Africa’ speech that he delivered in the South African parliament in Cape Town 53 years ago.
Although most of us were still young at the time Macmillan made his speech in 1960, we were politically aware of events taking place in various parts of Africa and elsewhere in the world because black nationalist leaders like Harry Nkumbula and Kenneth Kaunda had been addressing public rallies, agitating for an end to colonialism and demanding independence for copper-rich Northern Rhodesia.
Growing up as street-kids in poverty-stricken African mine townships, and a time when African workers were poorly paid, overseas travel for the disadvantaged black people was, in nine cases out of ten, a remote possibility.
As a result, it never occurred to me that I would one day have an opportunity to fly to the United Kingdom (UK) and see in flesh, this extraordinary British statesman credited with ‘redrawing the map of the world’ by decolonising Sub-Saharan Africa.
As Habakkuk 2:3 says every revelation awaits its appointed time; it may tarry but it shall certainly come to pass. For me that revelation came to pass 20 years later when I found myself in Britain in a group of 10 senior journalists from 10 Commonwealth countries awarded the 1980 Harry Brittan Memorial Fellowship by the London-based Commonwealth Press Union (CPU).
The group comprised Geoff Kitney (Australia), Ian Robertson (Canada), Francis Cantos (Gibraltar), Seth Mintah (Ghana), Vijay Kumar (India), George Ruddock (Jamaica), Koh Su-Nchu (Malaysia), Calvin Ellis (New Zealand), Alfred Mulenga (Zambia) and Hugh Ely (Zimbabwe).
After attending intensive journalism courses organised for the CPU Fellows at the City University (Fins bury Hall), London, we moved to  Oxford University for workshops and seminars on various Commonwealth issues, including the sticky and unresolved land problem in the former Southern Rhodesia, which had attained its genuine independence from Britain as Zimbabwe in April the same year.
As a climax to our studies and seminars at Oxford (Queen Elizabeth House), we found ourselves among invited guests at the graduation ceremony during which former Archbishop of Canterbury, Robert Runcie was conferred with honorary doctoral law degree by Macmillan who was Chancellor of Oxford University at the time.
I was excited to see this man who chose to take the battle against the hated apartheid system to its  door-step in Cape Town and delivered that speech that shook apartheid off its hinges and set South Africa firmly on its path to independence and reshaped – once for all – Southern African’s political landscape.
At the end of the ceremonies I looked in awe as the former British Prime Minister walked slowly down the aisle next to where I and other guests sat in the packed hall.
Bent due to old age, Macmillan walked with a slight limp as he was wounded thrice during the First World War but had not lost his aura as one of the greatest statesmen in history.
As it happened my mind raced back to his famous speech he made in front of apartheid kingpins in Cape Town, which sent an unambiguous warning that the ‘winds of change’ sweeping across the African continent and else were so unstoppable that not even the fortified walls of their apartheid would escape the tidal wave.
From the time of Macmillan’s prophetic proclamation one African country after the other, including the former Belgian Congo (now Congo-DR 1960) became independent.
The former Gold Coast (Ghana) had led the way in 1957. Kenya, Uganda, Nigeria, Tanganyika (Tanzania), Northern Rhodesia (Zambia), Nyasaland (Malawi), Basutoland (Lesotho), Swaziland, Bechuanaland Protectorate (Botswana 1966) all became independent sovereign states within the Commonwealth.
Many Francophone countries in West Africa similarly won their independence and became members of the Organization for African Unity (OAU) headquartered in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
The Portuguese tried to cling onto Angola and Mozambique but in vain as the two countries won their freedom after bloody liberation wars.
Mozambique became independent in 1975 and Angola in 1995. Island nations like Cape Verde (Portuguese), Madagascar (Malagasy) and Mauritius (both French) similarly became independent sovereign states.
After the end of the Second World War in 1945 and after India had gained its independence from Britain two years later, the visionary Macmillan could see that despite the coming to power of the Nationalists in Pretoria in 1948, nothing, absolutely nothing would stand in the way of black South Africans gaining majority rule under a leader of their choice.
So when ANC leader Nelson Mandela finally emerged from 27 wasted-years of imprisonment on Robben Island off Cape Town in February, 1990, followed by the watershed April 27, 1994 elections that ushered in a democratic South Africa with Mandela as the first black president, I could picture Macmillan (wherever he is now) flashing his fists in the air, jubilating at the fulfillment of his ‘winds of change’ prophesy.
I could also visualise my man-of-the-moment comforting disgruntled former presidents Pieter W Botha and his cabinet colleagues like defence minister Magnus Malan: “Didn’t you see the writing on the wall? It was obvious to everyone. But fear not, for I ‘bring you good tidings of great joy which shall be to all people’; Nelson won’t drive you into the sea.” Amen.
In Whitehall, Mr Macmillan though a Conservative to the core, was seen as a socialist because he introduced far-reaching reforms, including the Clean Air Act (1956), Housing Act (1957), Offices Act (1960), Noise Abatement Act (1960), Factory Act, Pension Act, Orphaned Child Allowance Act (all 1961).
Maurice Harold Macmillan, the First Earl of Stockton (10 February 1894 – 29 December 1986) was a Tory politician and statesman who served as British Prime Minister from 10 January 1957 to 18 October 1963 – three years after he delivered his famous speech before a hushed South African Parliament in Cape Town.
Nicknamed “Supermac” and known for his pragmatism, wit and unflappability, Macmillan achieved note before the Second World War as a Tory radical and critic of appeasement.
As a child, teenager and later young man, he was an admirer of the policies and leadership of a succession of Liberal prime ministers, starting with Henry Campbell-Bannerman, who came to power near the end of 1905 when Macmillan was only 11 years old, and then Herbert Henry Asquith, whom he later described as having “intellectual sincerity and moral nobility”, and particularly of Asquith’s successor, David Lloyd George, whom he regarded as a “man of action”, likely to accomplish his goals.
Macmillan served in the Grenadier Guards during World War One.
He was wounded three times, most severely in September 1916 during the Battle of the Somme.
He spent the rest of the war in a military hospital and suffered pain and partial immobility for the rest of his life.
After recovering sufficiently from his war wounds to be able to walk again, Macmillan joined his family business; then entered the House of Commons (parliament) in the 1924 General Election, for the northern industrial constituency of Stockton-on-Tees. After losing his seat in the 1929 balloting, he regained it two years later.
He remained on the backbenches, as he was regarded as a “maverick” by the party whips, as he was frequently unwilling to follow his party’s political line.
He was even described by his political hero, and now parliamentary colleague, the war-time Prime Minister David Lloyd-George, as a “born rebel”.
Rising to high office as a protégé of wartime Prime Minister Winston Churchill, Macmillan then served as Foreign Secretary and Chancellor of the Exchequer (Finance Minister) under Churchill’s successor, Anthony Eden.
When Eden quit as a result of the Suez Canal Crisis in 1957, Macmillan succeeded him as Prime Minister.
He believed in the post-war settlement and the necessity of a mixed economy and in his premiership pursued corporatist policies to develop the domestic market as the engine of economic growth.
During his time at No 10 Downing Street (the official residence of British prime ministers), average living standards in the UK steadily rose while numerous social reforms were carried out such as the 1956 Clean Air Act, the 1957 Housing Act, the 1960 Offices Act, the 1960 Noise Abatement Act, the Factories Act 1961, the introduction of a graduated pension scheme to provide an additional income to retirees, the establishment of a Child’s Special Allowance for the orphaned children of divorced parents, and a reduction in the standard work week from 48 to 42 hours.
As far as I can remember most newly independent African states, including Zambia, adopted some of Macmillan’s reforms in their concerted effort to upgrade people’s living standards.
As a ‘One-Nation’ Tory of the Disraelian tradition, haunted by memories of the Great Depression of the1930s, Macmillan is credited for championing a Keynesian strategy of public investment to maintain demand, which enabled him to win a second term in 1959 with an increased majority on an electioneering budget. Benefiting from favourable international conditions, he presided over an age of affluence, marked by low unemployment and high if uneven growth. In his Bedford speech in July 1957 he told the nation they had ‘never had it so good’, but warned of the dangers of inflation, summing up the fragile prosperity of the 1950s.
In international affairs, Macmillan rebuilt the special relationship with the United States from the wreckage of the Suez Crisis (Nasser had nationalized the international waterway), of which he had been one of the architects, and redrew the map of the world by spearheading the decolonisation of sub-Saharan Africa, as alluded to earlier.
Reconfiguring the nation’s defences to meet the realities of the nuclear age, Macmillan ended National Service (remember Zambia had introduced its own national service for school leavers) ,strengthened the nuclear forces by acquiring Polaris, and pioneered the Nuclear Test Ban with the United States and the Soviet Union.
Belatedly recognising the dangers of strategic dependence, he sought a new role for Britain in Europe, but his unwillingness to disclose United States nuclear secrets to France contributed to a French veto of the UK’s entry into the European Economic Community (EEC).
Near the end of his premiership, his government was rocked by the Vassal and Profumo sexual scandals, which seemed to symbolise for the rebellious youth of the 1960s the moral decay of the British establishment. Resigning prematurely after a medical misdiagnosis, Macmillan lived out a long retirement as an elder statesman of global repute.
He was as trenchant a critic of his successors in his old age as he had been of his predecessors in his youth.
Macmillan was the last British prime minister born in the reign off Queen Victoria, and the last to have served in the First World War. (SPA)
*Additional reporting: Wikipedia
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