Countries of the World/COUNTRYS.BIN/dp/0321/03217.txt

Text File | 1991-06-25 | 21KB | 339 lines

$Unique_ID{COW03217}
$Pretitle{293}
$Title{South Africa
Chapter 4G.   Relations with Specific Nations}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Jean R. Tartter}
$Affiliation{HQ, Department of the Army}
$Subject{south
africa
states
african
united
black
southern
countries
africa's
political}
$Date{1980}
$Log{}
Country:     South Africa
Book:        South Africa, A Country Study
Author:      Jean R. Tartter
Affiliation: HQ, Department of the Army
Date:        1980

Chapter 4G.   Relations with Specific Nations

Relations with Other African States

     Led by Nigeria, the most powerful new state of sub-Saharan Africa, and
orchestrated through the OAU, the nations of Black Africa have been implacable
in their efforts to stigmatize the South African regime for its racism and to
isolate it from the international community. The OAU has tried to enforce a
trade embargo against South Africa and to prohibit overflights or landings in
member countries by its aircraft. South Africa has been forced out of
international organizations and sports competition. Nevertheless a number of
other African countries have bowed to economic realities and have traded more
or less openly with the continent's leading industrial power and food
exporter.

     Notwithstanding the inauspicious political climate, the government in
Pretoria stands to reap major advantages if it can expand practical contacts
with Black African states and moderate their hostility. Not only would this
ease the security problems at the national frontiers and enable South Africa
to capitalize economically on its location, but it might also induce a more
understanding Western attitude. The Nationalist regime regards the Western
nations, whose support may be crucial to South Africa's survival, as strongly
conditioned by the antagonism of the independent Black African states.

     Preoccupied with domestic matters in the early 1960s, Prime Minister
Verwoerd relied on Southern Rhodesia and the Portuguese colonies of Angola and
Mozambique to insulate his republic from the political turmoil to the north as
former colonies gained their independence. When Vorster became prime minister
in 1966, he introduced a cautious, outward-looking policy of discussion, which
achieved some initial success among moderate African leaders. The Lusaka
Manifesto, announced by fourteen east and central African states in April 1969
and reflecting the influence of President Kenneth Kaunda of Zambia and
President Julius Nyerere of Tanzania, acknowledged the rights of White
southern Africans and the legitimacy of the South African republic. The
declaration urged negotiations to bring about a change in racial policies but
threatened boycott and isolation if change failed to materialize. Under no
strong international pressure at the time and facing a breakaway of his
party's right wing at home, Vorster rejected the idea that apartheid could be
the subject of negotiation.

     The collapse of the Portuguese colonial empire in 1974, followed by
intensified guerrilla warfare in Southern Rhodesia brought a shift in
Vorster's approach from one of dialogue to detente. Concerned over being drawn
into a futile struggle for White supremacy in Southern Rhodesia-Pretoria was
already helping the Ian Smith regime with arms, a contingent of border police,
and helicopters-Vorster pressed Smith to move toward majority rule by
negotiation with the Black nationalist leaders. The high point of the detente
effort was a strategy meeting over Southern Rhodesia in September 1975 between
Vorster and Kaunda in a railway coach on the Victoria Falls bridge straddling
the Zambia-Southern Rhodesian border.

     A fatal miscalculation in pursuit of detente was Vorster's intervention
in Angola in late 1975 and early 1976 at the request of one of the competing
Angolan factions led by Jonas Savimbi. According to the South Africans the
SADF military thrust had backing from some Black African leaders who were
concerned over Cuban-Soviet influence in Angola, and it received covert
encouragement from the United States as well. In spite of an initially
ambiguous response from the OAU, the Nationalist government found that it
had seriously misjudged attitudes in Africa and the United States. The Black
states were not ready to accept South Africa as the defender of a
neighboring African country against international communism, and American
public opinion and congressional opposition precluded Washington's
involvement.

     After meetings with United States Secretary of State Henry Kissinger in
1976, Vorster made one further effort at detente by bringing Ian Smith and
Southern Rhodesia's Black nationalist leaders to the conference table in
Geneva. After the failure of this initiative, Pretoria gave its wholehearted
support to the short-lived Southern Rhodesian internal settlement with the
Black leaders Abel Muzorewa and Ndabaningi Sithole.

     When P. W. Botha took office as prime minister in 1978, he declared that
his country would turn to a more neutral posture on East-West issues and that
his government would emphasize regional interests with the objective of a
"constellation" of southern African states. Such a regional grouping would
help preserve a cushion of friendly states on South Africa's borders, would
bring about an alliance with countries enjoying Western support, and would
lead to greater economic interdependence, thus serving to deflect the
sanctions threat against the republic. While the countries that were being
courted by Pretoria were not identified, it was believed that, in addition
to the independent homelands, Botha had in mind the former British
protectorates of Botswana, Lesotho, and Swaziland plus Zimbabwe, Namibia, and
possibly Malawi, Zambia, and Zaire.

     While it cannot be denied that economic links bind most countries of the
region to South Africa, it became clear that the Nationalists' racial policies
would remain a fundamental obstacle to more open collaboration, just as
Vorster's dialogue and detente policies had foundered in the early 1970s. At a
well-publicized meeting on the constellation plan in July 1980, the only Black
territories represented were the homeland governments of Transkei,
Bophuthatswana, and Venda. Far from giving serious attention to Pretoria's
initiative, the Black-ruled countries of the region were meeting to examine
whether the recent independence of Zimbabwe had improved their prospects for
loosening economic ties with South Africa.

     In spite of the OAU strictures against economic relations, other
neighboring countries acknowledge with varying degrees of candor the extent of
their economic ties with the republic. The customs union with Botswana,
Lesotho, and Swaziland has been renewed from the earlier period when these
countries were British protectorates. Customs revenues remitted to them under
a generous formula by Pretoria have been a major source of government
revenues. Swaziland and Lesotho have remained within a monetary union with
South Africa, but Botswana has had its own central bank and monetary system.
All three countries have imported a wide range of consumer goods from the
southern industrial republic, and much of their investment-notably the
valuable diamond mines in Botswana-has originated in South Africa. The
provision of migrant labor to South Africa's mines has been important to their
economies in terms of both jobs and balance of payments.

     Pretoria's pragmatism in handling relations with neighboring states has
been most evident in the case of Mozambique. Profitable trade links were
disrupted when Mozambique became a Marxist state in 1975, but the two
countries' railway and harbor administrators have cooperated to keep South
African trade moving through the port of Maputo, and in 1979 plans were
announced to expand the tonnage moving through the port to levels far beyond
those of the Portuguese colonial period. Although in 1978 Pretoria terminated
the highly favorable rates at which it had been transferring gold to
Mozambique for mine wages, considerable