South Africa: War, Revolution or Peace? / U.S. Foreign Policy in Sub-Saharan Africa
Gann, L.H. & Duignan, Peter & Price, Robert M.
BOOK REVIEWS These two monographs go well together. They agree on nothing of substance yet share a modesty of purpose. Professors Gann and Duignan write "not... to offer a set of alternative...
...The Anglo-American Plan on Rhodesia, for example, has ' the unfortunate hallmark of the now proverbial quagmire" and is accordingly blasted...
...For the Carter team can neatly be divided into those who applauded the Vietnam war from the sidelines (Carter, Brzezinski) or helped direct it (Vance, Brown, Warnke), and those who vehemently protested outside (now at the Assistant Secretary level: Richard Moose and Anthony Lake on Africa, Richard Holbrooke on Asia, Leslie Gelb on political-military affairs, and David Aaron at the NSC...
...But these countries were never really Marxist...
...Price displays a healthy skepticism for the lot, with rantings far more intriguing than usual since they come from the Left...
...Time for reasoned consensus-gathering has vanished...
...Rather their work sizzles only when describing the Carnegie Endow-ment's 1965 "contingency plan" for an invasion of South Africa...
...SOUTH AFRICA: WAR, REVOLUTION OR PEACE...
...Botha, should Namibia be settled...
...Botha, a high-level Afrikaner who is on the Prime Minister's Planning Advisory Council, has written an opus on the plan, adorned with lots of maps and graphs.But Gann and Duignan -envision no such boldness...
...Both schemes are laden with sociological mumbo-jumbo and devoid of political realism...
...Price writes that "in Angola, the Cubans and Soviets are present on the invitation of an established and internationally recognized government.'' He may have forgotten that the Marxist MPLA became the "established" government because of and not before, the massive Communist involvement...
...Johnson's How Long Will South Africa Survive...
...to offer a set of alternative policies," but to play up the preposterousness of our present policies...
...He's, against all three...
...During the Yom Kippur war, our European allies (except Portugal) closed down their facilities to the American airlift, even though all have permanent American bases...
...Less than one decade of Soviet chicanery in Somalia spawned the Ogaden invasion...
...Most qualified observers of the Soviet naval expansion agree that the Soviet navy has developed in response [to American naval power] and thus its primary task is to provide strategic defense of the Soviet heartland...
...All hopes, they write, "for a violent overthrow of the South African system...
...They know that the question of what to do about the white tribe on the tip of Kenneth L. Adelman lived and studied in Zaire from 1972 to 1975 when he travelled extensively in southern Africa...
...With at least eight conflicts involving more than 20 African states then raging, the OAU's mediation chairman opened his address by announcing, "Our job here is to return a smile on the lips of our brothers...
...True when the book was written...
...Curious that the Soviet navy dropped anchor off the shores of Angola during the war there, and helped supply the 16,000 Cuban combat troops (and 1,000 Soviet officers) in Ethiopia during its war with Somalia...
...Since then he has served in the State Department (AID) and as Assistant to the Secretary of Defense (1976-1977...
...Somehow Moscow has turned its aid program into an income-generating scheme for itself...
...They predict South Africa will plod along and recommend that the U.S...
...They indulge in no flashy language, as in John de St...
...to reach accommodation and a balance of power.' * Sounds much like the plan laid down in May 1977 by Pieter Koornhof (now the cabinet minister responsible for black affairs) which called for a " coalition of autonomous and mainly territorial based units, cooperating within a political system providing for consensual decision-making at both group and national levels...
...But this fantasy lives within the committed souls on American campuses who chortle about overthrowing the apartheid regime and throwing whites off Tabletop Mountain...
...None of this bothers Professor Price, who does not consider the Soviet Union a threat either to our interests or to our values of freedom and our hopes for peaceful solutions to problems...
...When I was in Luanda, during the first months of 1975, Lisbon announced Angolan decolonization for November 11...
...The Portuguese then turned over sovereignty ''to the Angolan people," decidedly not to the MPLA since the other groups (FNLA and UNITA) controlled the bulk of the territory and the majority of the population...
...FOREIGN POLICY IN SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA Robert M. Price / Institute of International Studies / $2.25 Kenneth L. Adelman So what to do about it...
...No" crouches in the wings ready to take center stage...
...interests...
...Historians Gann and Duignan worry about black African tyrannies and elite kleptocracies, though without excusing South Africa's repugnant regime...
...Such satisfaction, however, cannot be achieved (given U.S...
...Gann and Duignan's analysis is solid...
...Even more provocative are three myths, long bandied about by Afri-canists, upon which Price builds his entire analysis: (1) The USSR can't further its strategic interests in Africa since even Ethiopia, Angola, and Mozambique have refused to permit Russian bases...
...belong in the realm of military fantasy...
...During less than two decades of Soviet involvement in Egypt, the Middle East suffered three wars...
...The actual leaders of the sundry "liberation movements," with whom I recently met in southern Africa, have far more savvy...
...military involvement there...
...But these changes, which seem so monumental (so unthinkable a few years back) to the Afrikaners, are greeted with a collective yawn by the blacks...
...Indeed, the Soviet Union can further its strategic reach by cuddling up to African states, and is now doing so...
...Now, with the Muldergate scandal unwinding, "Dr...
...Instead, the U.S...
...plod alongside, pressing for reforms "in the hope that piecemeal changes will have a multiplying effect"-just what the Afrikaners fear would catapult them out of-power...
...Or so I thought before venturing to Nairobi in February 1979 during the Organization for African Unity's (OAU) foreign minister summit...
...The authors' contention that the Nationalists will usher in fundamental change rests on a whole lot of optimism and a paltry bit of evidence: "The National Party no longer speaks of combating the Jews or repatriating the Indians...
...Professor Price writes to offer policy "options more realistic than those generally advocated by the academic establishment...
...Yet this party, ensconced in power since 1948, flows out of the Afrikaner volk with its unique language, history, religion, and culture...
...He minces no words by denouncing "the otherwise laudable values of non-violence, compromise, and minority rights" in Rhodesia...
...Admittedly, some labor reforms are underway, some restaurants have been desegregated, and some local authority has been granted in the black townships like Soweto...
...Africa will occupy our children and grandchildren...
...What's the color of the hand near the holster...
...Moreover, even a temporary Soviet presence can prove devastating...
...While arming groups throughout the continent, the USSR does virtually nothing to improve the daily lives of Africans...
...Moscow's weapons are relatively harmless, according to Price...
...Professor R.P...
...Easier still...
...By contrast, the regimes in Ethiopia, Mozambique, and Angola claim they are genuinely Marxist, and were placed and have remained in power by Russian arms and Cuban mercenaries...
...Help the ruling Afrikaners along the inevitable path of reform, counsel Gann and Duignan...
...As defined by the author, these "interests" primarily consist of expunging white racists from southern Africa...
...3) The Russians were legitimately invited into Africa...
...This idea has been floating around but is now being taken more solemnly as the dark clouds gather over the tip of Africa...
...The policy option "that would be most satisfying' 'is to arm and train the "liberation" groups of southern Afri-ca after breaking off economic relations with Rhodesia and South Africa...
...Soviet engagements in Egypt, Sudan, and Somalia were indeed short-lived...
...He even topped Nkomo by touring North Korea and Vietnam...
...Perhaps the Africans harbor no such myths and can come up with more useful policy approaches than our scholars...
...Price is on the right track and should have gone further...
...domestic politics), and so he advocates furnishing the "liberators" with food, clothing, medicine, etc...
...like the World Council of Churches, which handed over $85,000 to the Patriotic Front within weeks of its shooting down an unarmed civilian plane in Rhodesia and killing a score of dazed survivors on the ground...
...It will derive from the ruling National Party rather than the divided opposition...
...It was only later that the MPLA gained recognition, after it had become the first government outside Eastern Europe the Soviets installed by force of arms...
...should show a "willingness to accommodate"-good word, "accommodate" -"Soviet actions that do not threaten tangible U.S...
...Such indispensable aid makes for enduring ties...
...L.H...
...Easy enough...
...As an ethnic entity, it summons up far more loyalty than a run-of-the-mill Western political party, which is based on interest, not kinship...
...Professor Price opens with a perceptive look at the schizophrenia of the Carter administration, tugged one way by non-interventionism [e.g., Shaba I and the sit-on-our-arms policy in the Horn) and another way by fears of Soviet rapaciousness [e.g., Shaba II and Carter's ludicrous White House invitation to that great anti-Communist bulwark, Prime Minister P.W...
...Three years of Soviet-Cuban meddling in Angola produced two perilous invasions (despite Fidel's brave efforts to stop them) of Zaire's economic heartland...
...But after Price persuasively warns against diplomatic involvement in Rhodesia, which could lead into that "proverbial quagmire," he urges U.S...
...There's the usual chapter about strategic minerals, the usual map of oil flowing around the Cape, and the usual tribute to South Africa's police and military might- and its importance to.Western economic and security interests...
...Curious that Moscow stations 18 to 20 warships in the Indian Ocean, where Western oil flows but where virtually no Soviet materials pass...
...Price overlooks the fact that the value of Soviet arms shipments to Africa in 1977 (over $1 billion) exceeded total 1976 deliveries from all other sources by nearly 25 percent...
...True enough, but access during a crisis may count for more than permanent bases...
...His emergence would make a mockery of fundamental reform...
...Gann and Duignan prescribe a new "co-sociational system" wherein the Whites, Blacks, Coloreds, and Asians are all represented, their "elites" acting "as brokers...
...Though Price objects to America's current involvement in southern Africa, he takes a shine to Fidel Castro...
...Since the Venture was estimated to require at least 100,000 troops and entail casualties between 19,000 and 38,000, there have been no takers for the Endowment for International Peace's one probe into the war business...
...Reform in South Africa will come from within...
...One bold step is needed, like chopping South Africa into one white homeland and a couple of truly independent black-ruled states...
...The Soviet-Cuban buildup, begun months before, was running full steam by Independence Day...
...Even if Treurnicht's reactionary forces are staved off, for a time at least, and even if South Africa is on the move, where is it moving to...
...No matter that one wing of the Patriotic Front is explicitly Marxist and the other bankrolled almost exclusively by the Soviet Union...
...2) There is nothing for the West to fear geopolitically since the Russians can't hold on to African friends...
...Jorre's A House Divided,* nor do they entertain outrageous theories, as in R.W...
...besides, their governments were firmly entrenched in power before inviting the Soviets in and after booting them out...
...The authors are solid...
...These states show no sign of creeping querulousness with Moscow...
...Though without any historical ties or direct economic interests to preserve in Africa, Moscow now supplies more than 75 percent of all weapons imported by Africans...
...Who ultimately controls the police and army...
...During the Angolan war, Algeria, Mali, Benin, Congo-Brazzaville, and other countries provided facilities for a successful Soviet airlift, even though none has permanent Soviet bases...
...Price claims Castro kindly warned Carter that the Cuban-trained Katangahs would rerun their Zaire invasion in June 1978 and even tried "to prevent this action...
...Robert Mugabe also dined in the Kremlin twice last year and spent endless days on the Marxist circuit of Cuba, Angola, and Ethiopia...
...The authors also take comfort in the fact that "the most powerful right-wing politician of the cabinet, Andres Treurnicht, is ignored-he remains .. .with little power...
...No matter that the future leadership of black-ruled Zimbabwe will be determined by which Patriotic Front faction receives the most Soviet-Cuban military aid...
...A free-lance writer in Washington, he is now with the Stanford Research Institute...
...As British Foreign Secretary David Owen said last April, "The value of Soviet aid to developing countries has declined since 1973-74 and debt service repayments to the Soviet Union now exceed new disbursements to the least-developed countries...
...No matter that both Front leaders realize this: Joshua Nkomo trotted off to Moscow in both October and November of 1978, going from there to Cuba for five days and then on to Angola to fawn again over then-visiting Castro...
...Since then, of course, Moscow has made several new "friends...
...Gann & Peter Duignan / Hoover Institution / $5.95 U.S...
Vol. 12 • July 1979 • No. 7
