Africa

by Guy Arnold

  Guerrilla activity against the Smith regime began shortly after UDI. On 29 April 1966 ZANU guerrillas and troops of the Smith regime clashed at Sinoia. The military engagement was of minor importance but it did serve to illustrate the growing differences between ZANU and ZAPU that would be a permanent feature of the Rhodesia story both up to independence in 1980 and subsequently. The ZANU action took ZAPU by surprise and angered its leaders because their rivals had got in the first blow and made plain their intention of launching a full-scale guerrilla war. The next year, on 19 August 1967, only hours after their joint forces had crossed the Zambezi River into Rhodesia, Oliver Tambo, leader of the South African ANC, and James Chikerema of ZAPU called a press conference in Lusaka to announce a military alliance between their two movements. The group penetrated to within 60 miles of Bulawayo to cause a panic in Salisbury and the government turned to South Africa for aid. The presence of South African blacks from the ANC inside Rhodesia with ZAPU justified the prompt despatch of South African Police with helicopters to boost the European and African mercenary forces then at the disposal of the Smith regime. From this time onwards South African paramilitary units were to be stationed in Rhodesia and the Zambezi became the front line of the white-controlled South. By 1967, though guerrilla action was only beginning to make any impact, there was every indication that the struggle would develop into a bitter racial confrontation. By 1968 the activities of ZANU and ZAPU led the Rhodesian Commissioner of Police to warn: ‘It would be wrong to minimize the dangers which Rhodesia faces from terrorist infiltrations; these are now employing more sophisticated tactics and are well armed.’ In July 1968 South Africa experienced its first white casualty when police constable Daniel du Toit was killed on the Zambezi. The South African Prime Minister J. B. Vorster threatened Zambia which was applying sanctions to Rhodesia as well as permitting the guerrillas to pass through its territory: ‘If you want violence, we will hit you so hard you will never forget it.’ Rhodesian troops were deployed along the Rhodesia–Zambia border throughout 1969; by that year the different guerrilla groups had established a number of training camps inside Rhodesia. There were then approximately 2,700 South African forces in Rhodesia supporting the white regime which had 1,800 white regular troops and 1,800 black mercenaries of its own as well as several thousand white reservists. In June 1969 the Rhodesian Secretary of Defence said: ‘Should terrorist infiltration continue on the increasing scale evidenced to date, it will be necessary for further money to be found to maintain the army at the standard that will be required to meet this contingency.’ On 2 March 1970 Rhodesia became a republic and Clifford Dupont became its President. By this time the liberation movements realized that they and their cause would get no help from the West: ‘The Labour Party’s performance in office between 1964 and 1970 was a clear indication to the African liberation movements that they have little to expect from any British government except opposition. In the words of Labour Defence Secretary Denis Healey: “There is no such thing as a socialist foreign policy. There is only a British foreign policy.”’20

  The crisis and drama of UDI over these years tended to obscure the development problems of the other two ‘partners’ of the former Central African Federation, Zambia and Malawi, both of which became independent in 1964 and found, almost at once, that their policies had to be geared to events in Rhodesia.

  ZAMBIA

  ‘As guests for the independence celebrations converged upon Lusaka, somebody coined an expression about Zambia: “Africa’s second chance.” It might be able to succeed where others were failing.’21 Throughout the 1960s Zambia was to enjoy high revenues from copper, its principal export, and this enabled it to embark upon ambitious development plans. There was a Transitional Development Plan covering the years 1965–66; this was followed by the First National Development Plan (FNDP) for 1966–70 whose principal aims were as follows:

  1 To diversify from copper.

  2 To create 100,000 new jobs.

  3 To increase per capita income from £61 to £100.

  4 To maintain price stability.

  5 To minimize the urban-rural imbalance.

  6 To raise educational levels.

  7 To improve living accommodation and welfare.

  8 To develop new communications, sources of energy and transport.

  Hopes for rapid development were high and offers of aid substantial. Like other newly independent African countries Zambia regarded the trade unions as one of the only two nationwide organizations (the other was the armed forces) that might pose a threat to central government power; this was particularly the case with regard to the powerful Mineworkers Union of Zambia (MUZ) on the Copperbelt where, in any case, the mineworkers had long acted as a powerful political lobby. As the Rhodesian crisis unfolded, Kaunda feared a major military confrontation with the South that would be both racial and ideological and that Zambia would be unable to withstand on its own, hence his constant appeals to Britain to take firm action and his bitter anger at Wilson’s refusal to do so, which he saw as support for the white regimes. On a visit to Britain in July 1968, for example, Kaunda asked for ground-to-air missiles. He knew that the support he required would not be forthcoming from Africa; he wanted British or American support and did not want to turn to the Communists. Over the confrontation with Rhodesia he was always dependent upon British decisions and these were not made in his interest.

  At the end of his long political career Kaunda’s reputation rested far more upon his role in international affairs and as the leader of the front-line states than for his home policies, yet in the early years after independence he was both liberal and imaginative in his approach to the country’s many problems and did not, for example, imitate his neighbour and friend Julius Nyerere by imposing a one-party system upon Zambia. Despite the arguments for a one-party state, then routinely deployed in much of Africa, for eight years Kaunda resisted pressures to make UNIP the sole party, insisting that any such demand had to come through the ballot box and not be imposed from above. In 1967 he said: ‘We go further and declare that even when this comes about we would still not legislate against the formation of opposition parties because we might be bottling up the feelings of certain people, no matter how few.’22 Although much influenced by Nyerere, Kaunda’s ‘humanism’ was not derived simply from the Arusha Declaration and ujamaa. As a friendly critic puts it: ‘There are marked differences between the intellectualism and grasp of doctrine shown by Nyerere and the earnest high-mindedness of Kaunda.’23

  In terms of aid there was a growing Zambian relationship with China over these years: China provided assistance in constructing a road to the remote Western province; in 1965 Zambia accepted China’s first military mission to Africa; eventually, with Tanzania, it entered into an agreement for China to finance and construct the TANZAM railway linking Dar es Salaam with Kapiri Mposhi in Central Zambia; and in July 1969 China opened its New Chinese News Agency (Hsinhua) in Lusaka. If UDI stimulated economic diversification in Rhodesia it also acted as a spur to make Zambia reduce its dependence upon the South. The Mwaamba coalmine in the Southern province was developed to replace coal and coke from Wankie in Rhodesia. A new hydro scheme was developed on the Kafue River and a second power station was built on the north bank of the Kariba Dam, financed with a £35 million loan from the World Bank to make Zambia independent of power from the South. To the east an oil pipeline was completed in 1968 from Dar es Salam to Ndola and the Great North Road to Dar es Salaam was fully tarmacked. Despite many important developments, the Zambian economy remained overwhelmingly dependent upon copper. In 1968 production reached a record 595,000 tons with exports earning £300 million or 95 per cent of total export earnings to contribute £104 million to government revenues. In 1969 Kaunda announced plans to take a 51 per cent stake in all the copper mines, effectively those of Anglo-American and Roan Selection Trust. At the same time that Zambia was making these development advances it was attempting to impose UN sanctions upon Rhodesia and even with subs
tantial reductions was still obliged to take imports from the South.

  From independence to the end of the decade a principal Zambian concern was always transport and communications. The country was landlocked and its traditional exit routes all passed through the white-dominated-South – Rhodesia, Mozambique and South Africa. There was the alternative route through Angola along the Benguela railway but in Angola, too, a war was being waged against the Portuguese and transport along that route become increasingly precarious. These facts formed the background to the search for an alternative that would ultimately be provided by the Chinese-built TANZAM railway, although that would not be opened until 1976. The export of its bulk copper was Zambia’s top priority. In December 1965 Zambia imposed sanctions on Rhodesia and Rhodesia retaliated by cutting off oil supplies to Zambia. The United States, Canada and Britain then began to airlift oil from Dar es Salaam to Elizabethville in the Congo, only 60 miles from the Copperbelt. The airlift was reduced in April 1966 when the United States and Canada withdrew from the operation. Meanwhile the 1,200-mile ‘Hell Run’ dirt road from Kapiri Mposhi to Dar es Salaam was tarmacked and this allowed the oil to be transported more cheaply by road tankers. In October 1966 Zambia awarded a contract to ENI to construct a pipeline from Dar es Salaam to Ndola. In May 1966 Rhodesia demanded advance payment in convertible currency for all Zambia’s freight (coal and copper) and Zambia refused in a move that was seen as a bid to force Britain to act against Rhodesia. The other routes into Zambia could not cope with the demand, however, and in July Zambia had to give way and pay for ‘limited’ tonnages being carried once more by Rhodesia Railways. The ENI pipeline was completed in 1968 and opened by Kaunda on 2 September, allowing Zambia to end petrol rationing on 31 October after three years.

  These development, transport and UDI-related problems were overshadowed by the disloyalty of a significant proportion of the whites then resident in Zambia. ‘The bitter heritage of pre-independence race relations in Zambia is aggravated by the continued existence of a large white minority within the country, many of whom make no attempt to identify politically with Zambia, and some of whom have engaged in spying and sabotage on behalf of southern African regimes which Zambia regards as immediate threats to its security.’24 As a direct result of pre-independence race relations, one of the first acts of the independent National Assembly was to pass the Penal Code (Amendment) Act of 1964, which made it a criminal offence ‘for any person to utter any words or publish any writings expressing or showing hatred, ridicule or contempt for persons because of their race, tribe, or place of origin’. In 1966 Kaunda had to dismiss almost his entire special branch (they were white officers) for leaking secrets to Salisbury or withholding information from him. In April 1967 the British government was reported to be ‘coldly furious’ at the arrest of a number of Europeans who were put on trial in May on charges of spying when an extensive spy network was uncovered. Britain did not apologize when the spying accusations were proved to be true. In September neighbouring Malawi established diplomatic relations with South Africa to bring another South African presence to a third Zambian border (after Rhodesia and the Caprivi Strip of Namibia). In September 1967 Zambia requested Britain to take appropriate action over the South African police presence in Rhodesia; instead, Britain expressed concern that Zambia might be used as a base for guerrillas. By 1968 Zambia’s foreign policy had become increasingly concerned with the growing South African involvement in Central Africa, as well as the continuing guerrilla activity along Zambia’s borders, and threats of retaliation from all of Zambia’s southern neighbours. The 1960s proved to be a fraught decade for Zambia: it began with the battle to dismantle the Central African Federation and the achievement of independence; Zambia then had to face all the political and development problems of a new state and on the whole coped with them remarkably well; but its achievements were constantly overshadowed by the pressures of UDI and the growing fear of a racial and ideological war that could engulf the entire region.

  MALAWI

  Dr Hastings Banda had been outside Africa for 40 years when he finally returned to Nyasaland in 1958 to lead the fight against the Central African Federation. As a young man he had gone to South Africa to earn money; from there he had gone to the United States and put himself through university, to Britain where after qualifying as a doctor he had worked for years as a general practitioner and won the affection of his poor patients whose fees he had often waived. He had returned to Africa in the 1950s to practise medicine in the Gold Coast and was there when it became independent as Ghana. His successful fight against the Federation made him a hero to Africans throughout the continent yet after independence he was to act in a very different way to the orthodox socialist nationalists who had become the norm elsewhere on the continent. He rapidly eliminated all opposition in the form of his younger, more radical colleagues, including the men who had gone to Ghana to beg him to return and lead the fight against the Federal Government, and he then proceeded to create one of the most autocratic systems in Africa with himself as the principal arbiter of Malawi’s fortunes, a position he maintained in highly idiosyncratic style until the 1990s.

  Malawi became independent on 6 July 1964. Eight weeks later Banda faced a hostile cabinet in which his younger, more radical colleagues wanted to accept a loan from Communist China, which Banda described as a ‘naked bribe’. This was the ostensible cause of the split but there were others: they wanted Banda to speed up the process of Africanization and take a tougher anti-colonial line. There were also differences of style, personality and outlook. Banda had imbibed none of the nationalism or radicalism then sweeping Africa, which affected his younger colleagues. He dismissed three ministers – Kanyama Chiume (Foreign Affairs), Orton Chirwa (Justice and Attorney-General) and Augustine Bwanausi (Works, Development and Housing); a further three ministers – Yatuta Chisiza (Home Affairs), Willie Chokani (Labour) and Henry Chipembere (Education) – resigned in sympathy to deprive the cabinet of virtually all its leading members. Subsequently, they launched unsuccessful revolts against Banda. Shocked by a degree of opposition he had not expected, Banda reacted by giving greater responsibilities to white expatriates and turning for support to the less educated masses as opposed to the radical intelligentsia. The events of September 1964 represented the parting of the ways that set Banda on his lone authoritarian course. From being regarded as the leader of one of the most militant nationalist movements, Malawi under Banda now came to be seen as one of the most conservative countries in Africa. In any case, at independence Malawi was rated as one of the poorest countries in Africa and was heavily dependent upon the white South with many thousands of Malawians working in Rhodesia and South Africa. The main aim of the Malawi Congress Party (MCP) prior to independence had been to destroy the Federation; the party emerged after independence without any development blueprint for the new country, 90 per cent of whose people lived on and by the land.

  Through the 1960s Banda showed himself to be at odds with most of black Africa’s leaders though, except for a powerful individualist streak in him, it was never clear as to just why he should have behaved in this fashion. He laid claim to large stretches of Mozambique, Tanzania and Zambia as parts of the former Maravi Empire though these claims only succeeded in antagonizing his neighbours and he took to lecturing the rest of Africa about its attitudes towards the white-controlled South. In 1966, for example, Banda warned that any attempt by African states to use force against the white-ruled states would end in disaster since neither singly nor in combination were they able to match Rhodesia, South Africa and Portugal and he warned the Malawi Parliament that an attack on South Africa would be seen by the Europeans of the whole southern region as a threat to exterminate them so that they would be driven to desperate measures.25 In October 1967 Yatuta Chisiza, who had resigned in 1964, led an abortive anti-government raid in the north of the country after Banda had announced that Malawi was to establish diplomatic relations with South Africa. It was easily defeated and
Yatuta and 14 others were later executed. Banda appeared to be secure and the other ministers who had opposed him now abandoned the struggle. The pace of Africanization remained slow and at the end of 1967 expatriates still outnumbered Malawians in the higher grades of the public service although that year saw the appointment of the first three African permanent secretaries. This slow pace may have annoyed aspiring Malawians but it reassured the 8,000-strong expatriate community. However, what really set Banda apart from other African leaders was his policy towards the South. ‘Banda’s alienation from his fellow African leaders and his authority within Malawi formed the backdrop to the development of his policy towards South Africa. The constraints which contact with the mainstream of African thought would have imposed on him were absent; in his own country there was no one to contradict or question the schemes he set in motion. The adage remained in force, “Kamuzu knows best.”’26 On an official visit to Kenya in September 1967 Banda gave a speech in which – bravely – he said, ‘South Africa could not be boycotted or isolated into liberalism.’ Threats by African countries merely accelerated the ‘laager’ mentality of whites in the South. Perhaps only in Kenya under Kenyatta with whom he had a good deal in common could Banda talk like this.