On 3 October 1994, South African President Nelson Mandela delivered his inaugural address to the General Assembly of the United Nations. ‘It surely must be one of the great ironies of our age,’ he remarked, ‘that this august Assembly is addressed, for the first time in its forty-nine years, by a South African head of state drawn from among the African majority of what is an African country.’

And indeed, ironic it was, and no doubt the guests and delegates packing the General Assembly understood exactly what they thought Nelson Mandela meant. The irony, however, ran very deep, deeper, indeed, than most in the audience could ever have suspected. Yes indeed, South Africa was at last in from the cold, and yes, a black man could finally claim a home in his own society, but there was more to it than just that. Nelson Mandela was speaking as much to his own people as he was to the world at large, and in South Africa, the deeper meaning of those words were very well understood. Forty-nine years earlier, during the plenary sessions of the United Nations, the same General Assembly rang with applause for another great and celebrated South African head of state, a white South African head of state, a man by the name of Jan Christiaan Smuts.