Hazardous Courses in Southern Africa

George F. Kennan

From Foreign Affairs, October 1970

George F. Kennan was a career officer in the U.S. Foreign Service from 1926 to 1953, retiring as Ambassador to the Soviet Union. He was later a Professor at the Institute for Advanced Study.

There is a sharp division of opinion among foreign observers and among well-informed South Africans themselves as to the present underlying trends and possibilities in the political life of the Republic. Some feel that the results of the recent election, repudiating the right wing of the Nationalist party and strengthening somewhat the position of its more moderate opponents, is the beginning of a trend in the direction of greater liberality and maturity of official policy -- a trend bound to become strengthened as more young people come into the picture as voters. Others, seared perhaps too often by past disappointments, are skeptical. They see the Nationalist leaders as unshakable in their political monopoly, implacable in their commitment to the most unfeeling promulgation of apartheid, deaf to both outside and inside criticism.

The author, believing that no country in South Africa's position can live for long without change, and that change, in this instance, can hardly fail to be for the better, is himself inclined to the more optimistic of these analyses. But he is free to admit that there is, as yet, no adequate proof, one way or the other. It is entirely possible that he is wrong.

However this may be, the main determinants of change will be and must be, as in any other great country, internal. Over the long run no outside force can ever make great, lasting and beneficial changes in another country's life. This does not mean, however, that foreign reaction and opinion have, in the case of South Africa, no influence at all. They have some. There are few South African Whites who are not aware that not all things are as they should be in South Africa and who are not in some way sensitive to outside opinion with relation to these conditions. The manner in which such people react to foreign opinion may vary greatly, however, from positive response to the most violent and determined resistance, depending upon the tenor and spirit of the criticism to which they find themselves subjected. If white South Africans are given to feel that they are viewed with implacable hatred by the outside world, and that the demands made upon them are ones that could be satisfied only by their punishment and humiliation or by some sort of mass emigration, this will only get people's backs up, produce a feeling that safety lies only in a deeper commitment to the principles of white supremacy, and cause otherwise moderate and well-disposed elements to rally in despair around the most intractable nationalist leadership. If, on the other hand, they are confronted with a foreign reaction that takes some account of the measure, the reality and the uniqueness of their problems, they may be importantly aided, as well as stimulated, to find better solutions.

Neither Blacks nor white liberals nor any other South Africans are aided, for example, by demands for Western policies designed to damage the South African economy. Aside from the fact that no outside efforts in this direction are likely to have any appreciable success, they are conceptually wrong in the first place. The black man would be the first to suffer from any serious failure in the process of economic growth. His best chances for a relaxation of apartheid lie, on the contrary, precisely in the continuation of the present rapid economic development of the country. No thoughtful and informed friend of the black African population of South Africa could logically wish for the obstruction and failure of the country's economy.

Similarly, efforts to bring about the isolation of South Africa from the remainder of the world community are simply counterproductive. The country, separated as it is by thousands of miles from the remainder of the Western world, already suffers from an excess of isolation. Apartheid is to some extent the reflection of this isolation. The reactionary and racist tendencies within South African society positively thrive on it. Nothing, on the other hand, with the exception of the economic development, places a greater strain on those tendencies than does extensive personal contact between South Africans and reasonable people in other countries. Apartheid is simply one manifestation of a great national introversion, and why any opponent of that system would wish to intensify the very condition it feeds upon is difficult to imagine.

Finally, the well-meaning outside critic will do well to avoid specific advice to the South Africans as to the manner in which their problems might best be solved. It is all right for him to record, and to emphasize, his disbelief that better, more humane and more hopeful approaches could not be found to South Africa's problems than those that dominate official policy today. It is all right for him to use his influence, in a friendly but earnest way, to bring the white South Africans to a reëxamination of their own situation in a spirit larger and more compassionate, less dominated by petty anxieties and more cognizant of the community of fate that links them to their non-white fellow citizens, than the present inspiration of their policies. But the outsider will do well to avoid the responsibility he would incur by recommending specific courses of action.

The real state of mind of the South African native remains, so far as many of us can see, a book with seven seals. No one knows how this native would react to specific alternatives in the future course of South African policy. The hour is late. It may be too late. A relaxation of the present iron hand might open the way to a brighter period in South African life. But it might conceivably, on the other hand, set in motion uncontrollable forces whose play could end only in violence and disaster. The writer does not believe this last to be the case. He is inclined to think that the white establishment in South Africa still has options more hopeful than that. But he cannot know for sure; and there is no reason for him to make assumptions. No changes in official South African policy will ever be successful unless they spring in the main from the workings of the country's own public opinion and political process. It is inadvisable and unproductive for outsiders to relieve the South African authorities of even the smallest degree of their own responsibility by forcing their hand and trying to tell them what to do. Let the friends of the various South African peoples hold the white rulers of that country to the recognition that to the outside world the present pattern of South African apartheid is abhorrent in aspect and unconvincing in rationale; but beyond that let it be the task of those rulers, who know their own situation better than any outsider can, to find the conceivable alternatives.

IV

Nowhere is the conflict between the United Nations and the present ruling power in southern Africa so formal, so acute and so complete as in the case of South West Africa. Not just the General Assembly but in this case the Security Council as well has flatly demanded that South Africa withdraw immediately its administration of the territory and hand it over to the authority of the United Nations, and has threatened South Africa with "effective measures in accordance with the appropriate provisions . . . of the United Nations Charter" in the event of noncompliance. The South African rejection of these demands has been no less determined and categoric. The impasse is now complete. It is all the more dangerous because positions have been so formalized on both sides.