 Though close in terms of geographical proximity, their troubled relations over the preceding quarter century had done much to create an atmosphere of political estrangement.Smuts considered that this estrangement had come about largely as the result of petty jealousies, fostered by politicians interested more in their own parochial concerns than those of South Africa as a whole.And it was to South Africa as a whole that Smuts looked; he did not take the side of one colony or state over the others, but rather treated the region as one single unity.