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5 - White-Minority Rule in Southern Africa, 1960–1990

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 February 2013

Elizabeth Schmidt
Elizabeth Schmidt
Affiliation:
Loyola University Maryland
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Summary

In the white-ruled territories of Southern Africa, as elsewhere on the continent, Cold War concerns were superimposed on local struggles emanating from colonial conditions. Colonies with significant settler populations generally rejected the notion of independence and majority rule. As in Algeria, Angola, and Mozambique, white-run governments in the Anglophone territories of South Africa and Southern Rhodesia fought to retain political power and economic privilege in European hands, while South Africa's apartheid regime sought to maintain its illegal occupation of Namibia. To mask the fundamental issue, which was the transfer of power from a privileged white minority to the majority of the population, the settler regimes of Southern Africa employed Cold War rhetoric to garner Western support. Pretoria, especially, played on the threat of a communist onslaught that would consume the last bastion of white Western Christian civilization in Southern Africa.

Despite their public criticism of a system that entrenched racial privilege, the United States and other Western powers generally supported the embattled South African government and shared its concerns about the increasingly radical liberation movements both inside the country and on its borders. Nordic countries were among the few Western nations to provide the African liberation movements with even humanitarian aid. Opposing their governments’ policies, grassroots anti-apartheid and Southern African solidarity movements emerged in the United States and Western Europe. The predominantly African American Council on African Affairs, established in 1937, may have been the first American movement in solidarity with anticolonial and anti-apartheid struggles. The victim of a Cold War era witch hunt, the council dissolved in 1955. Beginning in 1953, the American Committee on Africa brought together civil rights and religious organizations, trade unions, and students to mobilize against colonialism and white-minority rule. A host of other national and local solidarity and anti-apartheid organizations emerged in dozens of countries in the 1960s and 1970s.

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Chapter
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Foreign Intervention in Africa
From the Cold War to the War on Terror
 , pp. 102 - 141
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2013

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References

Several important books focus on U.S. policy toward Southern Africa. Noer's, Thomas J.Cold War and Black Liberation: The United States and White Rule in Africa, 1948–1968 (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1985) explores the evolution of American policy toward the region from the Truman through the Johnson administrations, when the early commitment to oppose colonialism was overshadowed by Cold War concerns and, finally, declining interest in Africa. Thomas Borstelmann's Apartheid's Reluctant Uncle: The United States and Southern Africa in the Early Cold War (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993) focuses on the Truman administration and examines the role of racism, as well as Cold War concerns, in U.S.-South Africa policy. Alex Thomson brings these works up to date in U.S. Foreign Policy towards Apartheid South Africa, 1948–1994: Conflict of Interests (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), which assesses the conflicts inherent in U.S.-South Africa policy throughout the apartheid era. Kenneth Mokoena has compiled an invaluable collection of declassified documents in South Africa and the United States: The Declassified History (New York: New Press, 1993), which provides insight into U.S.-Southern Africa policies from the Kennedy through the George H. W. Bush administrations. Two works by Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Chester Crocker provide a glimpse into the thinking and internal workings of the Reagan administration's Africa policy network. “South Africa: Strategy for Change,” Foreign Affairs 59, no. 2 (Winter 1980–81): 323–51, outlines the constructive engagement policy that became the cornerstone of the administration's South Africa policy. High Noon in Southern Africa: Making Peace in a Rough Neighborhood (New York: W. W. Norton, 1993), a memoir written in response to his critics, is a defense of constructive engagement and provides an insider's account of policy battles within the administration. International relations scholar J. E. Davies provides a counterpoint to Crocker in Constructive Engagement? Chester Crocker & American Policy in South Africa, Namibia & Angola, 1981–1988 (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2007), in which he outlines the aims of Crocker's strategy, examines its implementation, and argues that it failed in its objectives.Google Scholar
A number of important studies examine the political and economic interests and roles of other outsiders in the region. Minter's, WilliamKing Solomon's Mines Revisited: Western Interests and the Burdened History of Southern Africa (New York: Basic Books, 1986) is a highly readable overview of the role of Western governments and businesses in creating and sustaining white-minority rule in Southern Africa. Sasha Polakow-Suransky provides an in-depth exposé of the military and nuclear ties that bound South Africa and Israel in The Unspoken Alliance: Israel's Secret Relationship with Apartheid South Africa (New York: Pantheon, 2010). Sue Onslow's edited collection, Cold War in Southern Africa: White Power, Black Liberation (New York: Routledge, 2009), includes case studies by leading scholars of the region who have used archival sources from the United States, the former Soviet Union, Cuba, Britain, Zambia, and South Africa. One of the contributors, Vladimir Shubin, has published his own book, The Hot “Cold War”: The USSR in Southern Africa (London: Pluto Press, 2008), an insider's view of the Soviet role in Southern Africa, bolstered by documents recently made available in the Russian archives. The Nordic countries were among the few Western states to support Southern African liberation struggles. For their involvement, see the Nordic Africa Institute's six-volume series, National Liberation in Southern Africa: The Role of the Nordic Countries, . The role of neighboring African states in struggles against white-minority rule in Rhodesia and Namibia are assessed in Carol B. Thompson's Challenge to Imperialism: The Frontline States in the Liberation of Zimbabwe (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1986) and Gilbert M. Khadiagala's Allies in Adversity: The Frontline States in Southern African Security, 1975–1993 (Athens: Ohio University Press, 1994).Google Scholar
The dynamics of the negotiated settlements in Angola, Mozambique, Rhodesia, Namibia, and South Africa, including the roles of foreign powers, are examined in two recommended books: Thomas Ohlson and Stephen John Stedman, with Davies, Robert, The New Is Not Yet Born: Conflict Resolution in Southern Africa (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 1994) and Thomas Ohlson, Power Politics and Peace Policies: Intra-State Conflict Resolution in Southern Africa (Uppsala, Sweden: Department of Peace and Conflict Research, Uppsala University, 1998). South African journalist Allister Sparks offers an in-depth account of years of negotiations between the ANC and the government of South Africa in Tomorrow Is Another Country: The Inside Story of South Africa's Road to Change (New York: Hill and Wang, 1995).Google ScholarPubMed
A number of works provide important insights into South African political, economic, and social dynamics and the long struggle for majority rule. In The Mind of South Africa (New York: Ballantine Books, 1990), South African journalist Allister Sparks provides a highly accessible comprehensive history of South Africa from white settlement through the uprisings of the 1980s. Thomas G. Karis, Gwendolen M. Carter, Gail M. Gerhart, and others have edited an invaluable compendium of primary documents covering a range of organizations and 100 years of opposition to white-minority rule: From Protest to Challenge: A Documentary History of African Politics in South Africa, 1882–1990, 6 vols. (Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution Press, 1972–). Tom Lodge's Black Politics in South Africa since 1945 (New York: Longman, 1983) offers a comprehensive, well-documented analysis of internal and external struggles against political and racial oppression from 1945 to the aftermath of the 1976 Soweto uprising. In contrast, Gordon Winter's Inside BOSS: South Africa's Secret Police (Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin Books, 1981), by a veteran of South Africa's Bureau of State Security, offers an insider's view of the internal workings of the police state.Google Scholar
Several books examine the role of the African National Congress in the struggle against apartheid. Mandela's, NelsonLong Walk to Freedom: The Autobiography of Nelson Mandela (Boston: Little, Brown, 1994), much of which was written covertly while the author was in prison, is a seminal firsthand account by the ANC leader and first president of postapartheid South Africa. Raymond Suttner, a former member of the ANC underground and political prisoner, offers a unique view into the workings of the outlawed ANC inside South Africa in The ANC Underground in South Africa, 1950–1976 (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2009). Two journalists provide a window into the ANC's armed struggle. Stephen M. Davis's Apartheid's Rebels: Inside South Africa's Hidden War (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1987) is a highly readable account based on extensive written documents and hundreds of interviews. Howard Barrell's MK: The ANC's Armed Struggle (New York: Penguin Books, 1990) brings the story to the beginnings of the negotiations that ended apartheid. A more critical view of the ANC's armed struggle and the party's relationship to the South African Communist Party is offered by Stephen Ellis, a former editor of Africa Confidential, and Tsepo Sechaba, a pseudonym for an ANC insider, in Comrades against Apartheid: The ANC and the South African Communist Party in Exile (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1992). The Ellis-Sechaba book is heavily criticized in Soviet activist-scholar Vladimir Shubin's ANC: A View from Moscow (Bellville, South Africa: Mayibuye Books, 1999), which is based on ANC and South African Communist Party documents and the archives of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and the Soviet Afro-Asian Solidarity Committee. Leading American authority Thomas G. Karis traces the evolution of the ANC and its program and rejects the notion that the ANC was communist dominated in “South African Liberation: The Communist Factor,” Foreign Affairs 65, no. 2 (Winter, 1986–87): 267–87.Google Scholar
The role of international solidarity movements in the struggle against apartheid is investigated in numerous works. The most comprehensive assessment to date is The Road to Democracy in South Africa, vol. 3, International Solidarity, ed. South African Democracy Education Trust (Pretoria: UNISA Press, 2008), and . The Road to Democracy in South Africa, vol. 5, African Solidarity, ed. South African Democracy Education Trust (Pretoria: UNISA Press), is forthcoming. Håkan Thörn's Anti-Apartheid and the Emergence of a Global Civil Society (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009) focuses on the transnational character of the anti-apartheid movement, with special emphasis on the Swedish and British organizations. Roger Fieldhouse's Anti-Apartheid: A History of the Movement in Britain: A Study in Pressure Group Politics (London: Merlin Press, 2005) examines the roles of the British Anti-Apartheid Movement and the International Defence and Aid Fund. William Minter, Gail Hovey, and Charles Cobb Jr.'s No Easy Victories: African Liberation and American Activists over a Half Century, 1950–2000 (Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, 2008) is an invaluable edited collection that includes reflections, interviews, and photographs involving key participants in the American solidarity movement, focusing not only on South Africa but also on liberation struggles throughout the region. Francis Njubi Nesbitt's Race for Sanctions: African Americans against Apartheid, 1946–1994 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2004) zeros in on the critical role of African Americans in moving the anti-apartheid struggle from the periphery to the mainstream of American politics. Elizabeth Schmidt's Decoding Corporate Camouflage: U.S. Business Support for Apartheid (Washington, DC: Institute for Policy Studies, 1980), is an example of activist scholarship that was intended for use by the grassroots divestment movement that mobilized against American corporate involvement in South Africa. An exposé of the way in which a highly touted fair employment code was used to disguise U.S. business support for apartheid, the book was banned in South Africa.
Several books provide penetrating insights into the struggle for majority rule in Rhodesia/Zimbabwe. Martin, David and Johnson's, PhyllisThe Struggle for Zimbabwe: The Chimurenga War (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1981) is a well-documented account of the unfolding of the liberation struggle by journalists with unusual access to secret documents and key players in the ZANU camp. The contributions of ZAPU, in contrast, tend to be understated. For a deeper look at the roles of both liberation movements, as well as that of the rural populace more generally, readers should refer to Ngwabi Bhebe and Terence Ranger's two-volume edited collection, Soldiers in Zimbabwe's Liberation War and Society in Zimbabwe's Liberation War (Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 1995–96). American journalist Julie Frederikse explores the Rhodesian regime's propaganda war in None but Ourselves: Masses vs. Media in the Making of Zimbabwe (New York: Penguin Books, 1984), which includes a wealth of photographs, songs, posters, newspaper accounts, and interviews that provide a unique grassroots perspective of the war. Participants’ views are further evident in three firsthand accounts. Maurice Nyagumbo's With the People: An Autobiography from the Zimbabwe Struggle (London: Allison & Busby, 1980) was written by a ZANU stalwart who spent nearly two decades in prison, jail, or detention. Joshua Nkomo's Nkomo, The Story of My Life (London: Methuen, 1984), authored by ZAPU's founding leader, focuses on his role in the liberation struggle and his experiences with the ZANU-dominated government that took office in 1980. In Serving Secretly: An Intelligence Chief on Record: Rhodesia into Zimbabwe, 1964–1981 (London: John Murray, 1987), Ken Flower, head of Rhodesia's Central Intelligence Organisation, offers insight into Rhodesian government actions during the liberation war and its role in the creation of RENAMO, the insurgent organization in Mozambique.Google Scholar
Three books focus on U.S.-Rhodesian relations in the post–World War II period; each notes the importance of the American civil rights movement in the shaping of American policies. Horne's, GeraldFrom the Barrel of a Gun: The United States and the War against Zimbabwe, 1965–1980 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001), which is based on archival research in Zimbabwe and the United States, explores the transformations in American policy, especially during the intensification of the armed struggle in the 1970s. Anthony Lake's The “Tar Baby” Option: American Policy toward Southern Rhodesia (New York: Columbia University Press, 1976), which focuses on the policies of the Nixon and Ford administrations, is especially useful in its analysis of the Byrd Amendment's passage and implementation. Andrew DeRoche's Black, White, and Chrome: The United States and Zimbabwe, 1953–1998 (Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, 2001), which examines U.S.-Rhodesian relations from the Eisenhower to the Clinton administrations, offers the most complete diplomatic history to date. Two works focus on the role of UN sanctions in bringing about majority rule. William Minter and Elizabeth Schmidt's article, “When Sanctions Worked: The Case of Rhodesia Reexamined,” African Affairs 87, no. 347, (April 1988): 207–37, , was among the first to challenge the accepted wisdom that sanctions had been ineffective, if not counterproductive. Based on contemporary journalists’ accounts and extensive interviews in postindependence Zimbabwe, the article was followed by more in-depth studies such as David M. Rowe's Manipulating the Market: Understanding Economic Sanctions, Institutional Change, and the Political Unity of White Rhodesia (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2001), which provides a comprehensive analysis of the ways in which economic sanctions influenced the transition to majority rule.Google Scholar
For Namibia, three books about South African occupation and the liberation struggle are especially recommended. Soggot's, DavidNamibia: The Violent Heritage (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1986) was written by a defense lawyer who had close contact with many of the participants. Peter H. Katjavivi's A History of Resistance in Namibia (London: James Currey, 1988) was written by a scholar who was also a leading SWAPO official and participant in the events. Denis Herbstein and John Evenson's The Devils Are among Us: The War for Namibia (Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Zed Books, 1989) is particularly useful for its focus on South African methods for countering popular resistance and Western political and economic involvement in Namibia. Also recommended is John Ya-Otto's Battlefront Namibia: An Autobiography (Westport, CT: Lawrence Hill, 1981), a firsthand account by a SWAPO leader of the organization's first fifteen years and his own initiation into the struggle.Google Scholar
Focusing on the role of outsiders, Cooper's, Allan D. edited collection, Allies in Apartheid: Western Capitalism in Occupied Namibia (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1988), explores Western economic interests in Namibia and the grassroots campaigns against them. Peter H. Katjavivi, Per Frostin, and Kaire Mbuende's Church and Liberation in Namibia (Winchester, MA: Pluto Press, 1989) examines the role of the church in Namibia, investigating in particular its support for the liberation struggle. Written by two SWAPO members (Katjavivi and Mbuende) and a Swedish theologian (Frostin), the book includes a range of important church documents on the issue. In Namibia and the Nordic Countries (Uppsala, Sweden: Scandinavian Institute of African Studies, 1981), Hans-Otto Sano and his coauthors explore Nordic countries’ political and humanitarian support for the liberation struggle.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
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