Struggle for Southern Africa

Robert G. Mugabe

From Foreign Affairs, Winter 1987/88

Summary:  The Republic of South Africa is both engaging in a 'vicious and ugly' civil war and 'waging an undeclared war against its neighbours'. After reviewing RSA intervention in Mozambique and Angola, and arguing that the front-line states are opposed to apartheid, not to whites or to Western interests, calls for US policy-makers to match words with deeds, namely by backing a policy of economic sanctions. Then prime minister, now president of Zimbabwe.

Robert G. Mugabe is Prime Minister of the Republic of Zimbabwe, and currently chairman of the Non-Aligned Movement.

We know that the leaders of these bandit units are campaigning hard for recognition by the United States. They have secured the support of several congressmen. Following the July 1985 repeal of the Clark Amendment (which banned aid to Angolan rebels) and the granting of aid to UNITA in March 1986, a meeting of these various organizations was held in Washington in August 1986. They hoped to get the kind of recognition and assistance that Jonas Savimbi?s UNITA has been granted. To deny the legitimacy of the government of the Popular Liberation Movement of Angola (MPLA) is to invite chaos and disorder. UNITA?s support is drawn from a single ethnic group, not from the population of the whole country. The South Africans have made no secret of their intention to overthrow the Angolan government. Cuban troops were invited by the MPLA government to defend the sovereign government of Angola, part of whose territory had been overrun by South African forces.

We would be as delighted as the Angolans to see the Cubans, and indeed all foreign troops, leave Angola?once South African troops have withdrawn, the occupation of Namibia by South Africa has ceased and an independent government has emerged there, and the violent apartheid state of South Africa has been destroyed. The root cause of the stalemate in Namibia?s progress toward independence is South Africa?s insistence that the popular liberation movement SWAPO (South West African People?s Organization) should not rule, and U.S. insistence that the departure of Cuban troops from Angola be linked to Namibian independence.

The Western nations have failed to implement U.N. Security Council Resolution 435, passed in 1978, which calls for Namibian independence. South Africa?s attempt to set up a transitional government as an alternative to SWAPO has failed dismally. South Africa?s administrator-general continues to rule Namibia with an occupation force of 120,000 South African military and locally raised irregular forces. No one can accuse SWAPO of being a communist organization; it has a national, democratic program with a socialist approach, the form and timing of which are to be determined by an independent legislature. South Africa?s campaign for regional dominance has cost about 500,000 lives in Angola and Namibia in the past five years, according to an estimate by the United Nations Children?s Fund.

Given South Africa?s destructive strategy against all its neighbors, we are shocked that the U.S. Congress, instead of coming willingly to our assistance, has attached conditions to the proposed $50 million in aid to SADCC. The aid legislation, passed in July, includes the Pressler Amendment, which bars assistance to countries in the region that advocate the form of terrorism commonly known as "necklacing" or allow persons who practice "necklacing" to operate in their territory. "Necklacing" is used by certain persons in the townships in South Africa against those they regard as collaborators with the regime. No country in the region has ever condoned the practice nor has any South African liberation movement. We have condemned it forth-rightly from every public platform. We are a peace-loving people who are appalled by the brutality that is a fact of daily life in South Africa, brutality that is unleashed first and foremost by the regime.

We in the region regard that vote in Congress as an attempt to blackmail us into supporting apartheid, since it concerns a practice over which we have no control whatsoever. The so-called necklacing practiced in the South African townships certainly did not come from us and has never been experienced in any of the other liberation wars in southern Africa. To suggest that we condone it is a mere excuse for the United States to continue supporting apartheid instead of assisting the forces of freedom and justice.

V

What are the vital interests of the United States in our region? More than half of the United States? purchases of a dozen minerals considered strategic or critical are imported from South Africa. Most of the strategic minerals, however, can be purchased elsewhere in the region. For example, although South Africa accounts for about one third of the world?s production of chrome ore, my country contains most of the known deposits of high-grade chrome ore. Zambia, Zaïre and Botswana are also alternative sources of some strategic minerals.

The United States is tied to the South African economy by as many as 200 U.S.-based multinational companies, which have direct investments estimated at billions of dollars. The pressure of the anti-apartheid protest has forced several companies to divest their shareholdings in South Africa. It must also be noted that these corporations? investments in black Africa north of the Limpopo River and south of the Sahara are much larger than those in South Africa.

Another common excuse for the maintenance of U.S. relations with apartheid South Africa is the protection of the Cape sea route. This is an old excuse for policies of aggression in our region. The British government used it as the main justification for proposing to sell arms to South Africa in 1971. But it is common knowledge that modern air transport has made the Cape sea route irrelevant as a strategic point. The U.S. Secretary of State?s Advisory Committee on South Africa, which published its report in January, concluded that "the active collaboration of the South African government, whatever its ideology, is not an important factor in protecting the Cape sea route."

These then are the cosmetic issues for which there are alternatives and solutions. The Advisory Committee report goes on to say: "A greater source of danger to the West is the growth of Soviet influence in the region, promoted by white intransigence in South Africa, growing political instability, rising levels of racial violence, and armed conflict."