towards south africa - isistatic.org · but not normal.” the two countries fought together in two...

The Evolution of United States Policy

towards South Africa J

J O H N H .

MR. TRUDEAU once likened Canada’s relationship with the United States to sleeping with an elephant: “NO matter how friendly and even-tempered is the beast,” he said; “one is affected by every twitch and grunt.” The image is an attractive one, and yet, if one were to choose an animal which per- sonified-if that is the word-US. foreign policy in its relation to South Africa, one would be inclined to choose the rhinoceros. That animal is, no doubt, a complex mix- ture of qualities and emotions, but it is gen- erally recognized as being large, formidable, of uncertain temper, and rather short- sighted.

In order to enable the reader to appreci- ate the analogy, it may be useful for a South African who has watched from a rea- sonably close vantage point the formation of US. foreign policy to make a few com- ments on his impressions. It is worth noting that criticism of US. foreign policy is not intended as criticism of the United States itself, nor of its people. For one thing, the American and South African peoples have

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far too much in common. Criticism of both countries too often obscures that similarity. For most South Africans, as for most Americans, the end of social action is justice. Much of the political debate in South Africa revolves around the question of how to satisfy the legitimate social, economic and political aspirations of its non-white peoples without destroying the fabric of parliamentary democracy, free speech, a free press and an independent judiciary built up over the past century or more. The lack of such institutions almost throughout black Africa has simply made the question a more difficult, vital and poignant one. And South Africans, like Americans, being fallible people, have not always seen the path of their duty clearly, or followed it un- equivocally.

Every foreign policy is the product not only of local and international pressures, but also of history. Thus a short account of relations between the two countries may be useful. These relations have been, for more than fifty years, friendly, although at

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present they are characterized as “correct but not normal.” The two countries fought together in two world wars and in Korea. In deference to President Wilson’s views, South Africa did not insist on annexing the territory of South West Africa after the First World War, despite the fact that it had been conquered by South African troops alone. Instead, it agreed to a “C” class mandate: a decision which was to cause difficulties in the future. In the Sec- ond World War, South Africa declared war on the fascist aggressor in 1939 by a free vote of her Parliament, and even went to the extravagant lengths to do so of throw- ing out a prime minister who wished, like the United States at that time, to remain neutral. After the war, South Africa’s Prime Minister, General Smuts, was so confident of the soundness of his purposes that he drafted a Preamble to the United Nations Charter which introduced the con- cept of universal human rights. His signa- ture on the Charter was scarcely dry before South Africa suffered its first attack at the United Nations. The assault concerned his request to incorporate South West Africa, and his government’s treatment of South Africans of Indian origin. Over the years, the attack was broadened to draw attention to almost every facet of the policies of the South African government, and the attack became particularly intense after the vic- tory of the Nationalist Party in 1948.

The arrival of the Kennedy Administra- tion in the early 1960’s marked a new phase in the US. relationship with South Africa. It coincided, on the international scene, with the emergence of dozens of new black African nations, and on the domestic front with a stronger push towards civil rights than there had been during the pre- vious century. By the mid-1960’~~ the Afri- can states accounted for one-third of the membership of the United Nations. This, in itself, was sufficient to transform their con-

cerns from minor grievances to matters of high policy. Moreover, the easy transition to independence of black states in Africa, with the usual accompaniment of fine speeches, a golden handshake, and a two- party system, obscured the harsher realities of Africa. As Professor C. W. de Kie- wiet, one of the outstanding US. scholars of South Africa, has written:

It was exhilarating to feel that empires had miraculously ended without crash- ing in violence and hatred. The constitu- tional settlements were a mirror in which men faced the smiling reflections of their idealism and optimism.2

By comparison, the South African system seemed an anachronism. American scholarship on Africa-which before the 1960’s was sparse, of uneven quality, and not the indicated path for academic prefer- ment-failed to provide a corrective. In- deed, it exacerbated the problem. Many American academics argued, with relentless determinism, that a cataclysm in South Africa was around the corner. No Marxist arguing the inevitability of class conflict could have exceeded their passionate conviction in the imminent demise of the South African “regime.” Their lack of realism and academic objectivity can be shown by the advice given to Ambassador Satterth- waite prior to his leaving for South Africa as President Kennedy’s first am- bassadorial appointee. At a meeting at the State Department of some dozen academic experts” on South Africa, Ambassador

Satterthwaite was advised that the main problem which would confront him during his tenure of office was the transition from white to black rule. Some of the “experts” considered that the transition would take place within eighteen months; almost all expected it within five years.

The fundamental error in this prediction lay in its misjudgment of the will of a

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people settled in South Africa for more than three hundred years, and knowing no other home; and in underestimating the means available to them to make their will prevail. The will of white South Africans was apparently equated with that of a colonial power like Britain, France or Bel- gium, whose governments intended ulti- mately to withdraw from their colonies, and which were subject to electorates disin- clined to make sacrifices for the sake of re- mote colonies. The error was, in fact, to equate the will of people whose survival de- pended on their actions with the will of people with a minor economic or sentimental interest. The magnitude of the error be- comes even clearer when compared with the similar errors made at the time about Portugal, and later about Rhodesia. In neither country was the issue nearly as ob- vious as it was in South Africa. And yet neither country was broken by much more formidable pressures than those applied to South Africa. Portugal, an authoritarian colonial power, refused to bow to guerrilla warfare in three of its territories; and the white Rhodesians, a people much less numerous and less historically implanted than the South Africans, successfully resisted international economic sanctions.

Even allowing for all the advantages of hindsight, it is hard to repress one’s in- credulity at such errors-until one realizes that U.S. foreign policy under the Kennedy and Johnson Administrations was shot through with such misjudgments. For the exhilaration which characterized policy towards Africa was only a part of the over- whelming self-confidence with which the problems of the world were approached. The Kennedy Administration, it was argued, would end forever the “malaise” of the Eisenhower years. Here was a new generation at the helm, young, idealistic but pragmatic, highly educated, brilliant. It would indeed “get America moving

again.” It would push aside the “paper- shufflers” in the State Department, and find bold, innovative, new policies.

Their rhetoric matched their confidence. As President Kennedy put it in his Inaugural :

Let the word go forth from this time and place, to friend and foe alike, that the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans-born in this century, tempered by war, disciplined by a hard and bitter peace, proud of our ancient heritage.

As a description it was more, self-serving than is usual, even in the inflated coinage of inaugural addresses. And then came the oft-quoted challenge, which looks even more threadbare in the light of after-knowl- edge :

Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty?

It was, of course, a profoundly unhistori- cal statement. It has never been true of any people at any time. But in the glow of the moment it was thought to be true. And even though some of the illusions were lost at the Bay of Pigs, this mood was to remain characteristic of both Democratic administrations until Vietnam at last singed that il- lusory self-confidence.

The actions of the Kennedy Adminis- tration provide us with something of a case study in relations between the two countries over the past decade. From Arthur Schlesinger’s account in A Thousand Days, we derive a unique perspective. By 1961, he notes, African states in the U.N. were no longer content with the “ritualistic ex- ercise of passing resolutions of exhortation and condemnation,” and demanded politi-

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cal and economic sanctions. But even Asian nations condemned this as “an extreme use of U.N. power”; and when the issue was raised again the next year, at Kennedy’s suggestion Ambassador Plimp- ton pointed out that emotional resolutions

into question “the whole efficacy of the sanction power^."^

The Organization of African Unity called for further measures in 1963, and “friendly African leaders . . . warned us that in the case of South Africa we could no longer rest on purely verbal condemnations of apartheid,” although they don’t appear to have warned the United States of the measures they would take if the friendly warn- ings were disregarded. This pressure seems to have been sufficient to persuade Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs G. Mennen Williams of the necessity for a full embargo on US. arms to South Africa.

“Upper levels” of the State Department resisted this recommendation. They pointed out that African leaders would be satisfied with nothing less than a full economic embargo, and that, if the United States were to embark on a policy of sanctions against nations whose internal arrangements it dis- approved, it must logically end by severing relations with perhaps half of the existing community of states. The United States was not, said a high official, “self-elected gendarmes for the political and social problems of other c~untries.”~

What is particularly interesting in Schlesinger’s account is the distinction Kennedy drew between the policy towards Portugal and policy towards South Africa. With the nuclear test ban treaty about to be dealt with by the Senate, Kennedy could not afford the accusation that he was ne- glecting vital national interests by imperilling US. use of the Azores base. Therefore he decided to do nothing either for or against the Portuguese.

I which could not be implemented would call

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Since South Africa had the misfortune to be without a strategic base like the Azores, its moral turpitude was clearly much worse. Schlesinger records Kennedy’s decision in a paragraph the inconsequence of which deserves some memorial:

Still the prospect of a total U.N. embargo troubled the President and the Secretary of State as setting a precedent for collective sanctions which might lead the U.N. down a road imperilling its very existence. Instead the Depart- ment favored a call upon U.N. states to refrain from supplying arms which could be used to suppress the African population. Then Kennedy, in a brilliant stroke, went further and proposed a unilateral declaration that as a matter of national policy the United States would sell no further arms to South Africa after the first of the year, so long as South Africa practiced apartheid. . . . This action could not long satisfy the insatiable African demand for stronger measures against apartheid; but it preserved the new African faith in American policy:

I t would be hard for a single paragraph to contain a more cogent refutation of itself. If the imposition of sanctions “might lead the U.N. down a road imperilling its very existence,” and if the arms sanctions against South Africa “could not long satisfy the insatiable African demand for stronger measures,” how long would it be before there was a further demand for sanctions? What reasons could the United States urge against the adoption of more extreme measures, having already voted for arms sanctions in order to force South Africa to change her policies? And if the United States failed to take mme extreme measures, how long would the “new Afri- can faith in American policy” last?

This sort of diplomacy has been de- scribed as “diplomacy by brilliant strokes.”

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It epitomizes the short term, ad hoc nature of policy making which, while it may be characteristic of many other countries as well, is one of the major sources of weakness in U.S. foreign policy. It is diplomacy by image, rather than by carefully defined interest. It would be hard to underestimate the short-sightedness of the United States in allowing itself to be browbeaten into overlooking the specific provisions of Ar- ticle 2(7) of the United Rations Charter, which forbids interference in the domestic affairs of member nations. The United States denied itself the protection of this fundamental provision, and by doing so, became embroiled in an escalating involvement. It should be no surprise that the African states, conscious that they had been able to drive the United States to active steps against South Africa, took advantage of this weakness.

One sees in the process Schlesinger describes the same reliance on short-term measures, the same incapacity to calculate the response of the other party, that one discerns in policy towards Vietnam. Where any thought was given to the response of the other side, there was, in both cases, the apparent assumption that after appropriate punishment, the errant country would see the error of its ways, and return to the paths of righteousness. It reminds one a little of something Aldous Huxley once wrote:

The surest way to work up a crusade in favor of some good cause is to promise people that they will have a chance of maltreating someone. To be able to destroy with good conscience, to be able to behave badly and call your bad behavior “righteous indignation,” this is the height of psychological lux- ury, the most delicious of moral treats.

Another aspect of this kind of symbolical policy making is that it is almost invariably without practical effect, or is even counter-

productive. The actual effect of the U.S. measures was to force South Africa to develop a domestic arms industry-which is now formidable-and to cause her to look for other, and more reliable, sources of supply-and she found one in France.

As the 1960’s developed, so did the policy of harassment. The State Depart- ment, which had opposed the Kennedy policy, was entitled to assume that the need to prove its abhorrence of the policies of the South African government was the overriding consideration in policy towards Africa. The arms embargo was extended to vehicles made in Canada and jets made, with American engines, in France. The South African sugar quota was halved, and South Africa was subjected to curbs on capital exports that applied only to the richest nations of Europe. The U.S. used its power in the IMF to deny South Africa its right to sell its gold to that body. The United States voted at the United Nations that South Africa was “threatening to international peace” and agreed to a study of sanctions by a committee of experts of the Se- curity Council.

In 1966, the United States, reportedly at the insistence of Arthur Goldberg, subscribed to a General Assembly resolution that South Africa had forfeited all right to South West Africa, a resolution subse- quently upheld by the World Court. The history of that action is one of an abuse of the international legal framework for political reasons. A short account of it is instruc- tive in showing how far the United States was prepared to go in conniving at a travesty of the legal process. For years South Africa’s mandate over South West Africa had been under attack in the United Nations and the World Court, Numerous allegations were made that South Africa was guilty of genocide, oppression and militarization of the territory. South Africa in 1962 invited the Chairman and Vice

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Chairman of the U.N. Committee on Apartheid personally to inspect the territory, and after such an inspection, they is- sued a communique in which they stated that they had seen no evidence of genocide, oppression or militarization. When they were thereupon denounced in the United Nations, the Chairman, the Ambassador of the Philippines, announced that he had had no part in the communique, and the Vice Chairman, the Ambassador of Mexico, who refused to retract his statement, was ex- pelled from the Mexican foreign service. Before the Court’s judgment in 1966, South Africa produced nearly forty witnesses, in- cluding American experts, who testified that there was no evidence of genocide, oppression or militarization. General S. L. A. Marshall, the American military historiau, testified, for example, that there were no military bases, and that the territory was “less militarized and more under-armed than any territory of its size I have seen anywhere in the world.’y7 South Africa invited the World Court to conduct a personal inspection of the territory. To avoid that, counsel for Ethiopia and Liberia withdrew all allegations of genocide, oppression and militarization. Two months later the Gen- eral Assembly passed another resolution ac- cusing South Africa of genocide, oppression and militarization of the territory.

When the World Court decided that Ethiopia and Liberia had no standing to bring the case against South Africa, it was subjected in the United Nations to an un- paralleled torrent of abuse. Measures were then taken so as to pack the Court-with, among others, those who had already expressed themselves vehemently on the subject-that the Court would never again give a judgment against the wishes of the Afro- Asian bloc?

Thereupon the General Assembly, with US. support, voted to cancel the mandate, to abolish South Africa’s authority there,

and to put the place under U.N. control, notwithstanding the fact, as Dean Acheson has written, “that the charter restricts it to nondeterminative deliberations such as discussing, considering, recommending, and calling at tent i~n.”~ The General Assembly showed itself conscious of the illegality of this unprecedented proceeding by then ask- ing the World Court not whether the As- sembly’s resolution was legal or not, but what were the consequences to states” of

that resolution. In his dissenting opinion the British

judge, Sir Gerald Fitzmaurice, denounced the Assembly’s action as “arbitrary and high-handed, inasmuch as it acted as judge in its own cause relative to charges in re- spect of which it was itself the complainant, and without affording the ‘defendant’ any of the facilities or safeguards that are a normal part of the judicial process.’’1o It was a travesty, and one of the most unhap- py aspects of it is not only that the United States supported that travesty, but that it showed itself seemingly unconscious of the deep implications of its action. For by SO

doing it not only committed itself to an escalating involvement in the South West Africa situation, but in any situation- Israel is a good example-where a majority of the General Assembly is politically antagonistic to some state and uses the pow- ers recognized by the World Court to attack it.

There were, of course, Americans with considerable experience in foreign affairs who thought this policy disastrous, not only in South African terms, but in the light of US. interests. Dean Acheson, George Ball and George Kennan all expressed themselves, sometimes pungently, about the folly of such a policy. George Ball, in his book The Discipline of Power, published in 1968, called instead for a policy of contact, communication and cooperation to lessen South Africa’s isolation:

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Above all, we must make an honest attempt to understand the South African dilemma and try seriously to develop a United States policy that takes account of the realities.

We do not have such a policy today largerly because our position towards South Africa has been shaped by the tangenital rather than the fundamental. It has reflected in our sense of guilt at home, our desire not to affront civil rights sentiment, and our interest in se- curing the approbation of the nations of black Africa, particularly by the attitudes we strike in the United Nations (since we need their votes for our China policy, among other things) ?l

Nor was there any apparent thought as to how these actions were supposed to im- prove the situation in South Africa. As Professor Roger Fisher of Harvard has put it:

There is almost no thinking about how “economic” pressure is supposed to cause South Africa to change its racial policies. No one has identified a decision which they would like the South African government to make, which they might realistically be per- suaded to make, and which would be worth the effort.12

The revulsion against the Vietnam War, the consciousness that America’s strength had been over-extended and that her domestic priorities were urgent, and the arrival of the Nixon Administration, all con- trived to produce a change in US. policy. The Nixon-Kissinger “revolution” in foreign policy procedures was of particular significance. Through a formidable Nation- al Security Council staff, they forced the foreign policy-making apparatus to return to first principles, to look at situations sys- tematically, to examine the trends in South Africa, and to ask what would be the best solution there, what US. options were and

what its foreign policy could hope to achieve. This procedure was fruitful in the development of policy towards South Africa because, unlike US. policy in many other areas of the world, there had been, up to that time, little attempt to subject U.S. as- sumptions in Southern Africa to close analysis. I t led, against bitter opposition in the State Department, now converted to the Kennedy view, to a policy of LLcommunica- tion.”

These methods of analysis gave a sophis- tication and an intellectual cohesion to US. policy which had previously been lacking. By contrast, there has been almost no sophisticated analysis of that policy in the US. press. This is a pity, because it had some important facets:

1. By communication, the Administration meant contact of all kinds and at all levels. That policy rested on a recognition that the isolation to which South Africa was increasingly being subjected served only to exacerbate the situation. It was recognized that the situation in South Africa was not static, but dynamic and evolu- tionary. As President Nixon put it in his report to the Congress in February 1972, “Southern Africa contains within itself the seeds of change.”13 It was realized that contact was likely to subject South Africa to pressures far more formidable than isolation, and yet those pressures could be peaceful and constructive.

2. The Administration recognized that its capacity to change the situation in South Africa was limited, and the Administration sought to preserve that influence by re- fraining from rhetoric which, in the domestic US. context, is easy to express, and yet which merely hardens attitudes in South Africa. Similarly, it avoided tak- ing symbolic actions which were liable to irritate the South African Government

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without making any contribution to the im- provement of the situation. The Adminis- tration attempted to preserve its influence by what has been called “the theory of irreducible differences.” Thus, in relations with the Soviet Union, ideological differences about class warfare and the law of property are not discussed because they are “irreducible.” Attention is rather concen- trated on areas of potential agreement, however small they may be.

3. The Administration rejected the assumption that the United States had to demonstrate its disapproval of South Afri- ca’s policies by “choosing sides” in Africa, or that there was an inevitable confrontation between black and white in Africa. On the contrary, it believed that black and white would have to coexist peacefully. It tried to strengthen the moderates in Africa, and it sought to use its influence to create a climate in which dialogue could take place. 4. While U.S. interests in Africa as a

whole and in South Africa were not of criti- cal importance, the Administration recognized that those interests in South Africa were of some significance. The United States had an investment the book value of which was nearly one billion dollars and the replacement value of which was nearly twice that, and the US. exported more than half a billion dollars worth of goods to South Africa every year. South Africa was the most powerful nation in Africa, was a rich store of strategic minerals in a strategic situation in the world, and was a strongly anticommunist country which was prepared to grant the United States a space tracking station, and defense facilities and overflight rights both in war and peace.

5. The Administration believed that the overriding need of Africa was for economic development, and it believed that South Africa, which is responsible for nearly fifty’ percent of the industrial production of the African continent, had the man-

agerial talent, the entrepreneurial experience, and the capital to make a major contribution to that development. I

6. The fact that the United States disap- proved of “apartheid” and that South Africa’s policies had been opposed both in the United Nations and in the United States was important and could not be overlooked. But it was also important that those policies should be changed without a conflagration which would serve the interests of nobody.

The strongest indication of the new policy was the veto cast by the United States in the Security Council against a resolution calling for the application of force in Rhodesia. The strength of this ges- ture was reinforced by the fact that it was the first time that the United States had ever cast a veto, and that the veto was un- necessary, since Britain was prepared to veto the proposal. This action showed the more extreme African nations clearly that the United States was not prepared to use force in South Africa. The United States refrained for a long time from closing its consulate in Salisbury in the hope that it could contribute towards a peaceful solution of the dispute. It showed its constructive intentions in other smaller ways-the release of chrome paid for by Union Car- bide before the Unilateral Declaration of Independence in Rhodesia but forbidden under the sanctions, the permission granted to deliver executive jets to South Africa, and the grant of larger Import-Export Bank guarantees on trade with South Africa. Where State Department Africanists were wont to speak scornfully of President Banda of Malawi as an “Uncle Tom,” or even as a “Quisling,” because he favored peaceful relations with South Africa, the State Department ’ now recommended “more, not less, communication with the people I of South Africa, both by Africans and by Amer ican~.”~~

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There was, in short, a statesmanlike quality in the Southern Africa policy of the Nixon Administration. It did something rare: instead of formulating its foreign policy largely in terms of its own domestic pressures, it asked itself, in effect, how it could make a contribution towards improv- ing the situation. It has shown itself aware, above all, that it is desirable to seek a peaceiul destiny for the African Continent; that the encouragement of guerrilla ware- fare and confrontation has seldom been the best way to promote peace; that what Africa needs more than anything else, is investment and economic development, to re- duce the scourge of poverty, and that the investment is seldom forthcoming except under conditions of peace.

This policy, unfolded with extreme cau- tion, has coincided with an increasing realism on the part of the black nations of Africa, no less than fifteen of whom have subscribed, in some measure, to the pro- posals for dialogue made by the President of the Ivory Coast. Both for this and other reasons-South Africans share with Ameri- cans a weakness for being liked, and have developed an almost masochistic resigna- tion to being told of their crimes and follies -the Nixon policy has been, in fact, extra- ordinarily successful in creating a climate in which precisely the kind of peaceful change it wants to see has become possi- ble.

During the last year or so, the pace of constructive change in South Africa has quickened markedly; the South African government has accepted that its policies can be on the agenda in its discussions with black Africa; there has been increasing consultation with black leaders in South Africa and significant multi-racial meet- ings have been held; there was the triumphant visit of Dr. Banda, and even the New York Times felt bound to comment on the warmth and courtesy of his reception;

there were changes in the pass laws, which sought to interpret them in an effort to as- sist blacks rather than simply to penalize them for non-compliance; there have been multi-racial (or multi-national) sports matches; a very generous customs agreement was concluded with Lesotho, Bots- wana and Swaziland in 1969, and aid has been given to other African states; there has been a much more relaxed attitude to visa applications, visas even being given to hostile Congressional and church investi- gative teams, among others. Finally, great stress has been laid on the necessity to con- solidate the African homelands, and to pres pare them for independence when they themselves desire such independence.

These developments both within South Africa and in its foreign relations have had an encouraging reception. Voices have been raised to provide some counterpoint to the strident declarations of those who have hitherto dominated the influential media in the United States, and of those who saw no grounds for hope in Southern Africa and sought the overthrow of the governments in that part of the world.

One of the most encouraging aspects of the courageous initiative by the President of the Ivory Coast was to make these moderate views heard once again. The Washington Post considered the initiative as significant as recent developments in U.S. relations with China, and applauded President Houphouet-Boigny for “his cour- age in undertaking a difficult political ex- periment .,’I5

The Washington Evening Star thought that the spring of 1971 might go down in history books as a season of refreshing sani- ty in many parts of the world-a reference to the hopes of settlement in the Middle East and an easing of relations with China, as well as to the Ivory Coast initiative. President Houphouet-Boigny’s “new note of reason” served, it said, “as a rebuke to the

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hotheads of black Africa-notably Presi- dents Kenneth D. Kaunda of Zambia and Julius K. Nyerere of Tanzania, whose pre- scription for reforming the South Africans consists of a combination of economic and diplomatic boycott and guerrilla warfare.”la

There are, of course, still disquieting features of US. relations with South Africa. The arms embargo, for example, is still being maintained at a time that the Russian fleet has acquired an ominous predominance in the Indian Ocean. More- over, the Administration still connives at its own embarrassment in South West Africa, seemingly unaware, as the late Dean Acheson warned early in 1971, that forces active in world affairs are trying

to hustle up a conflict there and, along with some assistance in the United States, aim to inveigle this government into hostili- ties,” or that “some day, unless it mends its ways, the government will get to the crux of put up or shut up.’y17

The policy of the Nixon Administration towards Southern Africa did not, of course, go unchallenged. In the United States few political policies do. To an extent perhaps unsurpassed in any other country, the politics of the United States is the politics of recognized, active and multifarious pressure groups. This is as true of its foreign as of its domestic policy. In fact, the conduct of the foreign policy of the United States can be likened to a sort of perpetual, but nonlethal, guerrilla warfare. It is con- ducted amid great noise and confusion, many of the partisans work in the shadows, no one is quite sure of the identity of either side, and there is seldom a decisive result.

The State Department fought against the adoption of the policy at the time, and it would be fair to assume that disaffected ele- ments still linger in its somewhat demoral- ized ranks. There are members of Congress who, either from conviction, partisan en- thusiasm or electoral calculation, continue

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to press for the adoption of a “hawkish” policy towards South Africa, however “dovish” they may be on other issues. There is still an academic Africanist community which, like many US. academic organizations today, is politi- cized, and whose activities (in the case of the African Studies Association and of its Committee on Current Issues) are com- promised by a small group of radical mili- tants who seek the overthrow of the governments of Southern Africa. There are still members of the US. foreign policy estab- lishment who continue to provide heart- warming evidence that, despite all their dis- appointments over the past few years, they have not lost faith in the practicability of imposing American solutions on the problems of other countries.

But the rhetoric of these groups is increasingly out of date, and is belied by the course of events in the subcontinent. For this reason there is a certain irony in the fact that this rhetoric lingers on in the pronouncements of many leading political figures. Senator Edward Kennedy at one time last year appeared to be demanding not only the complete withdrawal of U.S. corporations from South Africa, but also the cessation of trade. At the same time, black leaders in South Africa were urging, if anything, greater investment in South Africa by US. business, and greater contact in every sphere. Senator Muskie has said that harsher measures may be required against the Portuguese and has called for a reconsideration of policy towards South Africa. Most of the Presidential aspirants have demanded a cessation of the South African sugar quota (one of the few ways in which South Africa can redress a balance of trade which is worth more than one million dollars a day in favor of the United States), despite a plea by the Zulu leader, Chief Gatsha Buthelezi, which was read on the floor of the Senate, calling for

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a continuation of the South African quota on the grounds that a great many of his people would suffer by its termination.

In the effort to revert to these less hope- ful policies, all the old, worn arguments, threadbare even in the days of the Kennedy Administration, have been taken out of the closet and given as good a dusting as their quality will stand. Representative Diggs, the Chairman of the African Subcommittee of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, in a recent fifty-five point “Action Manifesto” stated that U S . business “uses the apartheid system as an excuse for slave 1a- bor practices,” an assertation the force of which is somewhat impaired by the fact that there are more than a million blaJcs from outside South Africa voluntarily working in that country to take advantage of those conditions. Another old argument dusted off is that the apocalypse is ap- proaching in South Africa, an argument which has been made regularly since about 1922. Another frequent assertion seeks to portray the stable and unaggressive government of South Africa, which is trying to divest itself of some of its problems by giv- ing its black population complete independence in autonomous homelands, as seeking conquest in Africa, and as a “threat to world peace.” Another popular argument is that “world opinion” demands action, which takes little heed of the fact that “world opinion” is, as Dean Acheson put it, a fantasy, and that “world opinion” as represented in the U.N. has also demanded action against Isreal.

The anti-South African faction may not have changed its arguments, but it has had to change its methods. Where, in the early 1960’s, it was discussing the merits of

blockade and even of invasion of South Africa (to be paid for, of course, by the United States), it now protests that no such thought has crossed its mind. In the after- math of Vietnam, which has made such ad- ventures unfashionable, it has turned its attention to “disengagement.” “Disengage- ment” is, to put it mildly, a misnomer. As one of the most active of the anti- apartheid campaigners put it to a committee of the U.N.: “Disengagement on a national level was the equivalent of sanctions on an international level. . . . Disengage- ment thus was not a limiting policy, but an attempt to widen re~ponsibilities.”~~ As Dr. de Kiewiet has put it, “disengagement means involvement.”1e

And surely this is, above all, what the United States wants to avoid in Africa. The United States is turning away from involvement in the affairs of areas of the world over which its influence is limited. It wants to do what it can to build up such areas economically so that they may be stronger and more peaceful in themselves, and may be able to resist subversion from without. Confrontation, guerrilla movements and racial hostility must conflict with that aim. White and black are going to have to learn to live harmoniously on the African Con- tinent, and that lesson will not be learnt by violence. At a time when the African nations are themselves turning away from the unreal rhetoric of the early 1960’s, and are perceiving the disastrous consequences of the Nkrumahist view that ideology should predominate over economics, it is surely right and just that the influence of the United States should be thrown in the direction of justice through peaceful ac- commodation and development.

Modem Age 269


'The Mandate authorized South Africa to ad- minister the territory as an integral part of her own and under her own laws.

'C W. de Kiewiet, "The Revolution That Die appeared," The Virginia Quurterly Review, Spring 1970 (Vol. 46, No. 2).

Theodore Sorenson, Kennedy (New York,

'Arthur M. Schlesinger, A Thousand Days

'lbid, p. 507. %id, p. 508. 'Dawid de Villiers, The Case for South Africa

(London, 19701, p. 146. BThe Soviet Judge Morozov, for example, had

led the Soviet delegation to the U.N. until 1969, and had on various occasions condemned South African administration of South West Africa in such unbridled terms as the following: . . . the South African racists have extended to

South West Africa the regime of repression and terror against the indigenous population that prevails in Pretoria. The South West Afri- can patriots who stand up for the liberation of their fatherland are subject to savage persecu- tion, arrest and torture.

1965). pp. 245.6.

(London, 19651, p. 505.

Like other judges who had said similar things, Judge Morozov refused to rescue himself. (Antho- ny Lejeune, The Case for South West Africa London, 19711 p. 21.)

'Washington Post, January 2, 1971. "Anthony Lejeune, op. cit., p. 132. "George W. Ball, The Discipline of Power

(Boston, 1968), pp. 255-6. =Roger Fisher, Internutional Conflict for Be-

ginners (New York, 19691, pp. 13-14. "U.S. Foreign Policy for the 1970s: President

Nixon's Report to the Congress, February, 1972, p. 118.

"Statement of Assistant Secretary of State David D. Newsom and Deputy Assistant Secretary W. Beverly Carter, Jr., before Subcommittee on Africa of the House Committee on Foreign Af- fairs, December 3, 1970.

'Washington Post, May 1, 1971. "Washington Evening Star, May 2, 1971. "Washington Post, January 2, 1971. "George M. Houser before the U.N. Special

Committee on Apartheid, March 17, 1969. "C W. de Kiewiet, "The World and Pretoria,"

Virginia Quarterly Review, Winter 1969 (Vol. 46, No. 1).

270 Summer- 1972


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