Hard choices in South Africa
Hehir, J. Bryan
Church/world watch Hard choices in South Africa J. Bryan Hehir IT appears TO BE A cyclical theme in U.S. foreign policy that a new administration sets its course in reaction to its predecessor....
...An example of the potential of the church was the May 1 lth pastoral letter of Archbishop Denis Hurley of Durban...
...First, there is an examination of the sources and structure of the apartheid regime...
...Congress, the research institutes, and the Reagan administration who opposed the Carter policy toward Rhodesia now support its outcome in Zimbabwe...
...the policy of pressure on South Africa (never severe) is judged to be counterproductive...
...The success in Zimbabwe, however, intensifies attention on the two remaining issues of southern Africa: Namibia and South Africa...
...The Carter policy gave high priority and visibility to African issues after years of neglect...
...The president has declared South Africa to be a loyal ally, has met in a cordial session with Prime Minister Botha, and sent clear signals that a new day exists for South Africa in Washing-tion...
...The new position paper deserves careful attention in the United States...
...The new theme for U.S.-South Africa relations is cooperation rather than confrontation...
...the eighties will not pass without the West being tested on South Africa...
...After four years of negotiation under United Nations auspices, and with major U.S...
...Other analysts draw a different scenario for the eighties in South Africa...
...Many disagree with CIIR, but no serious observers dismiss or disparage its work...
...The CIIR study notes those characteristics which are uniquely South African, and those features of the present regime which resemble the "national security states" of Latin America and Asia...
...These are strong words and stark choices...
...poses for those inside and outside South Africa flow from detailed scrutiny of two realities...
...In the face of this propaganda the church is always a central actor in the South African drama...
...The CIIR paper is hardly naive about the repressive capacity of the South African government's "total strategy...
...Zimbabwe was the Africa issue of the seventies...
...This Thermido-rean pattern is bipartisan...
...Its stream of publications was used in the media, referred to in debates in Parliament, consulted in the Foreign Office, and crucial to the formation of a constituency in Britain...
...The transition from Rhodesia to Zimbabwe constituted a watershed in the politics of southern Africa: many in the U.S...
...CIIR's language is hardly that of British understatement: ' 'In the final analysis the South African government is faced with two alternatives, a rapid movement to majority rule under genuine black leaders . . . or an unprecedented level of repression...
...policy toward southern Africa...
...But they come from an institution with a proven record of analysis during the Rhodesian war...
...The first consequence of the new look is a shift in the U.S...
...Although it would be premature to say the Reagan administration has a firm policy on southern Africa, it is clear that the future will be designed in reaction to the past...
...Its silence can be deafening and its voice can be decisive...
...The Reagan team is striving on several fronts, from defense-spending to infant formula, to signal friend and foe that a new mood and a new method rule in Washington...
...The Carter administration planned to dispel Kissinger's realpolitik by its emphasis on human rights...
...A courageous and persistent critic of apartheid for years, the archbishop an(Continued on page 415)ed on page 415...
...This is the conclusion of a powerful document, South Africa in the 1980s, recently published by the Catholic Institute for International Relations in London (1 Cambridge Terrace, London NW 1, 14JL...
...Clearly, no single study catches all the complexity of the moment...
...The changes are perceived to place the United States in support of the South African view of the Namibian problem...
...Namibia may be the first sign, but the ultimate test of the U.S...
...The unique threat to the church is that "spokesmen for the apartheid system and those who support and enforce it frequently appeal directly to Christianity to justify their actions...
...support, to establish a formula for Namibian self-determination, the Reagan administration has now called for substantial changes in the negotiating framework...
...At the decisive Lancaster House conference, CIIR acted as a resource center for the Patriotic Front delegation...
...view of southern Africa will be its South Africa policy...
...A British historian described CIIR as the most effective English lobby on the Rhodesia question...
...But the CIIR paper emphasizes one factor which others may miss: the role of the church...
...It also reaped the reward of a peaceful settlement of the Rhodesian civil war...
...The hard choices it...
...In this effort the British played the major diplomatic role, but an American administration less committed to black self-determination could have undercut the British efforts...
...Faced with this internal prospect in South Africa, "The West can perhaps avoid choosing between South Africa and the rest of the continent in the first years of the 1980s, but the price for procrastination may prove unac-ceptably high...
...A central topic in this reversal of style and substance is U.S...
...In the face of this frightening engine of state power, however, CIIR finds the decisive dimension of the South African drama in another place: "The black nationalism that grows out of the 1970s is now more than ever the main motor for change that will drive the troubled history of South Africa in the next decade...
...position on Namibia...
Vol. 108 • July 1981 • No. 13
