Eric Louw


Eric Hendrik Louw 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 and died in Cape Town on 24 June 1968. 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. 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. As Minister of Foreign Affairs he assisted Dr HF Verwoerd at the historic Commonwealth conference in London in 1961 when South Africa withdrew her membership. On 31 December 1963 he relinquished his post as Minister of Foreign Affairs.
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. Louw refused as said Canada does not even allow their Native population the right to vote. 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 1960. 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.

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.

Death

Louw died on June 24, 1968 in Cape Town.