Kissinger in Southern Africa

UNTIL THE ANGOLAN WAR of 1975, Southern Africa had a limited place in the strategic thinking of Secretary of State Henry Kissinger '50. His policy for the region, formulated in 1969, envisaged complete maintenance of the status quo for the white minority regimes, including the Portuguese colonies. But the Portuguese revolution of 1974, and more importantly for cold warrior Kissinger, the successful use of Cuban troops and Soviet arms against American and South African intervention in the Angolan civil war, have forced him to adapt his strategy to the changing realities of Southern Africa. It is in this context that Kissinger's current diplomatic initiative in Rhodesia must be understood.

The key to Rhodesian Prime Minister Ian Smith's capitulation on transition to majority rule within two years was South African pressure. South African Prime Minister John Vorster appears to have threatened that if Smith did not accept majority rule he would end fuel and water supplies to Rhodesia, as well as cutting its rail links to the outside world, thus bringing the Rhodesian economy to its kness immediately. Vorster's aims are quite straightforward: he hopes to consolidate apartheid at home by sacrificing Rhodesia and so defusing violent conflict on his borders. At the same time, his policies are designed to change world opinion about South Africa and to revive his attempts at detente with black leaders.

While Kissinger and the Ford administration have no commitment to apartheid per se, their vision of America's strategic and economic interests in the region aligns them with South Africa. Kissinger's basic strategy has not changed since 1969: he has not suddenly become more concerned with human rights nor has he come to consider black nationalist regimes as better allies than the military and economic might of South Africa. What has changed is his estimation of the possibilities of non-revolutionary change in those areas of Southern Africa outside South Africa itself. Kissinger recognizes that the new strength of the forces pushing for change in Southern Africa, as well as superpower competition, means that a less intransigent approach to the dismantling of white minority regimes is necessary if a radical shift in the balance of forces in the region is to be avoided.

As a result, Kissinger's strategy in the short and medium term is extremely similar to Vorster's. The aims of the current diplomatic initiative are to prevent violent conflicts which could bring into being radical regimes militarily hostile to South Africa on its borders and to legitimatize South Africa in the eyes of the world. By having Vorster play an apparently reasonable role in dismantling white minority rule in Rhodesia Kissinger may be laying the groundwork for eventual cosmetic reforms in South Africa itself.

Given the basic aims of the negotiators, it is not surprising that the actual peace plan contains many ambiguities which leave room for undermining the future of majority rule in Rhodesia.

The nature of the interim government. The provisions in the settlement for white veto power and control of the army and security forces of the transitional government will seriously undermine the ability to produce effective majority rule. Majority rule can mean many different things in practice--Smith has not yet accepted the principle of one man, one vote, for example--and a government with a white veto power and white monopoly of legal coercive force could easily produce a constitution which is not truly democratic though it is nominally committed to majority rule.

Investment guarantees and the International Development Fund. These are designed to encourage white Rhodesians to stay and to prevent any major transfer of wealth from whites to blacks. Smith explicitly said that he rejected any plan "to buy white Rhodesians out." What could result from this provision is a situation in which Rhodesia formally becomes a majority rule state but where the bulk of its wealth and effective power remain concentrated in the hands of a white minority. It is unconscionable that wealth and power accumulated under explicitly racist and exploitative conditions should be allowed to control the country's future development. Similarly, there is a danger that the development fund provisions of the settlement will be used to preclude any experimentation with non-Western models of development in Rhodesia.

Cessation of guerrilla activity. Given Smith's past record as a negotiator, the black leaders are undoubtedly reluctant to end guerrilla war and international economic sanctions before the installation of an acceptable majority rule government. Otherwise there will be no effective pressures to force Smith to comply with the agreement. The anti-guerrilla provisions of the agreement also imply that those forces which desire radical social change within Rhodesia itself--and which are largely responsible for making these negotiations necessary--are essentially to be shut out of the political process. This will of course be unacceptable to the guerrillas themselves and is probably one of the front-line black presidents' major objections to the settlement, particularly on the part of Machel of Mozambique and Neto of Angola. Finally, the anti-guerrilla provisions take advantage of the major black weakness in this situation: intense disunity among the various factions of the liberation movement. Smith may be hoping that these divisions will make it impossible for the blacks to present a united front in constitutional negotiations, and thus allow him to retain effective power after transition to nominal majority rule against a fragmented opposition.

THESE AMBIGUITIES in the Rhodesian settlement are sufficient to require a quite different sort of agreement, and the front-line African presidents are right to have rejected this one. They do not appear, however, to have rejected the principle of negotiation with American involvement. This is also politically intelligent--Black Africans have nothing to gain from a bloody and protracted guerrilla war nor from the dependence on Soviet aid such a war would require.

The front-line presidents recognize that Kissinger is willing to sacrifice the marginal Rhodesia for the sake of consolidating the much more critical position of South Africa. But they also realize that it is possible at this point to gain a great deal for blacks in Rhodesia and Namibia by negotiation, while the situation within South Africa is considerably less hopeful for the moment. And despite the conservative expectations of Kissinger and Vorster's strategy, the dismantling of white minority regimes on its borders cannot help but encourage renewed struggle on the part of those on whom the overthrow of apartheid must ultimately depend--the blacks and coloreds of South Africa, who have already shown tremendous courage in resisting the humiliations of a brutal and racist police state.