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Australia's relationship with South Africa was founded on their being two groups of colonies, and later dominions, in the British Empire. As remote settler societies there were certain affinities, anxiously promoted by South Africa and usually resisted by Australia. Australian prime ministers played a major role in helping to bring about majority rule, but since 1994 the relationship has stiffened. For South Africa, partly for geopolitical reasons, the Commonwealth remains a functional concept; for Australia, it has lost much of its efficacy. Australia and South Africa have also exchanged two significant migrations: of Australian miners and artisans to the Rand around the turn of last century, and of South African emigrants to Australia in our own time. Trade between the two countries is increasing, and a new range and diversity in contact has occurred, with the resumption of full relations since the apartheid years. Given South Africa's disjunction from its immediate past, it is difficult at present to indicate what forms the relationship might take in future. The paper therefore sketches the whole history of interaction between the two countries, drawing attention to its phases and reconfigurations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This is an extended version of Philip Murphy's inaugural lecture as director of the Institute of Commonwealth Studies, delivered on 23 February 2011. It traces the relationship of the UK with the wider Commonwealth over 40 years, paying particular attention to the rhetoric of governments and opposition parties from Wilson and Heath to Cameron. It examines the reasons for the Commonwealth being relegated to a peripheral role in British foreign policy, especially European preoccupations and the issues of Rhodesia and South Africa. It argues that the Commonwealth remains of considerable practical and enormous symbolic importance to the UK. The British government should engage with the Commonwealth more than it has done in the recent past and the Commonwealth should be both open to and critical of its imperial past. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]