Africa

by Guy Arnold

  While Savimbi in Angola based his claims and determination to keep fighting upon the premise that the MPLA had not been endowed with full legitimacy at independence, ‘By contrast, however much RENAMO sought to destroy Mozambique’s infrastructure and eliminate FRELIMO cadres, it never seriously entertained the belief that it could itself challenge FRELIMO’s historical place in contemporary Mozambique.’ It could only legitimize itself as a party if FRELIMO recognized it as such. ‘Savimbi wanted total power; Dhlakama (the leader of RENAMO) wanted a share of the spoils.’17 By the end of the decade the FRELIMO government only exercised authority in major coastal towns and some garrisoned towns inland while RENAMO had substantial support or exercised control in the northern and central provinces across the Zambezi. By 1990 Mozambique had suffered three decades of devastating warfare and the country was in ruins with approximately a quarter of its population refugees, either inside or outside Mozambique.

  THE REST OF THE FRONT LINE

  Malawi under Hastings Banda had persisted in its isolated stand in relation to South Africa, and Rhodesia until 1980, though there was little evidence that it had benefited the economy. On the other hand, Malawi had joined SADCC as a founder member and hosted the organization’s November 1981 meeting. Although relations with Mozambique were uneasy – Malawi had maintained especially close relations with the Portuguese prior to 1975 – Machel visited Malawi in October 1984 when the two countries signed a general co-operation agreement. However, in July 1986 Mozambique accused Malawi of assisting the RENAMO guerrillas. In September Banda denied these allegations in a meeting with Machel, Kaunda and Mugabe at which Machel warned that he would close the border if such help continued. After the air crash in which Machel died South Africa claimed that documents found in the crash wreckage revealed a plot by Mozambique and Zimbabwe to overthrow the Malawi government. Events in Mozambique forced Banda to reconsider his policies. In April 1987 Malawi committed 300 troops to assist FRELIMO and the Tanzanians guard the strategic Nacala rail link from RENAMO attacks although this new accord was endangered later in the year when a civilian Malawi aircraft was shot down over Mozambique. By July 1988 Malawi was further affected by the war in Mozambique when it found itself acting as unwilling host to 650,000 Mozambican refugees, an event that saw a real shift in Malawi’s support from RENAMO to FRELIMO.

  Ever since its independence in 1966 Botswana had resolutely opposed apartheid and refused to establish diplomatic relations with South Africa although it was always obliged to pay careful attention to South Africa’s preponderant regional power. Under Seretse Khama and his successor Quett Masire, Botswana pursued a non-racial approach to politics and enjoyed universal suffrage while, generally, managing to avoid full-scale confrontations with its neighbour. During the 1980s, however, it became a target country for South African destabilization tactics and in 1981 joined with Lesotho, Swaziland and Mozambique to denounce South African tactics. In July of that year Machel visited Gaborone. There was already a Soviet embassy in Gaborone and Botswana then began to purchase arms from the USSR. This produced a series of press attacks upon Botswana in South Africa and the accusation that it was becoming a Communist base. Late in 1981 President Masire accused the US of backing South Africa’s ‘intransigent attitude’ and warned that South Africa was preparing to attack Botswana. Early in 1982 he warned that South Africa wanted to turn Botswana into another Lebanon.18 Despite huge pressures from Pretoria, for example, to enter into a non-aggression pact with South Africa that was designed to curb any ANC presence in Botswana, or the May 1986 cross-border raid at the time of the Eminent Persons Group visit to South Africa, Botswana had the satisfaction during the second half of the 1980s of seeing its currency, the pula (backed by its diamond wealth), becoming stronger on the international money markets than the rand. Already by 1984 diamonds accounted for 76 per cent of Botswana’s exports. Indeed, Botswana had been skilful in the way it had ensured maximum returns for the country for De Beers had been involved from the beginning and the government was always wary of South Africa exercising too much control over its diamonds. When the size of the Botswana deposits became clear this greatly strengthened the government’s hand. Diamond prices were kept high by a marketing monopoly that included the USSR. Botswana was able to insist on a series of renegotiations with De Beers and got from it one of the best mineral exploitation contracts in the world. Debswana was a 50–50 joint venture from which the Botswana government received 75 per cent of the profits. Despite South African pressures Botswana allowed the ANC to remain in the country, though not to use it as a base for attacks upon South Africa, and it had an open-door policy for refugees from the Republic.

  Lesotho under Chief Jonathan had a troubled independence especially after Jonathan had aborted the 1970 elections, which he was losing. He boosted his position by periodic attacks upon the apartheid policy of his giant neighbour whose territory completely surrounds Lesotho. Jonathan’s main political opponent, Ntsu Mokhehle of the Basutoland Congress Party (BCP), had become exiled in South Africa from where his Lesotho Liberation Army (LLA) launched periodic attacks into Lesotho. These attacks acted as a destabilizing factor upon Jonathan and as such suited the South African government. Violence by the LLA had first erupted in 1978 and continued into 1979. From South Africa Mokhehle said he would only take part in elections if representatives of the Communist bloc were expelled from Lesotho. After further confrontations in 1982 and 1983 Jonathan promised to hold new elections. His own popularity declined sharply through 1984 and 1985 and at the beginning of 1986 South Africa effectively blockaded Lesotho after Jonathan had refused to sign a joint security pact or expel members of the ANC. On 20 January 1986, Jonathan was deposed by Maj.-Gen. Justin Lekhanya and placed under house arrest. He died in April 1987 while in South Africa for medical treatment. Jonathan’s role had been unimportant in real terms though he did manage to act as a constant irritant to South Africa.

  Deeply conservative and pro-Western, Swaziland nonetheless proclaimed its neutrality in international affairs, much to Pretoria’s satisfaction since its eastern border with Mozambique meant, had Swaziland chosen such a course, that it could have acted as a dangerous conduit for ANC forces passing through into South Africa. Swaziland improved its relations with Marxist Mozambique after the signing of the Nkomati Accord in 1984. In an attempt both to neutralize and bind Swaziland closer to it, South Africa proposed in the late 1970s to transfer to Swaziland the adjoining KaNgwane Bantustan or homeland of the Swazis then in South Africa and another area, the Ingwavuma region of KwaZulu that would have given Swaziland direct access to the Indian Ocean. Whether South Africa really intended to do anything of the sort is doubtful but the prospect of Swazliand regaining its ‘lost lands’ persuaded King Sobhuza II to enter into a secret security agreement with South Africa in 1982, following which the Swazi authorities harassed the ANC and expelled its representatives from the country. Following strong white and black opposition, South Africa dropped the land transfer proposals in 1984. This did not appear to affect Swaziland’s close relations with South Africa. After the signing of the Nkomati Accord, the Swazi government disclosed its secret agreement with South Africa and over the following year deported more than 200 alleged members of the ANC to Zambia or Tanzania. Defying the rest of the front-line states at the January 1985 SADCC meeting, which was held in Mbabane, the Swazi prime minister defended his country’s close links with South Africa. Later that year at the Commonwealth summit at Nassau in the Bahamas, Swaziland was the only country to support Margaret Thatcher’s opposition to Commonwealth sanctions against South Africa. Despite this record, South Africa was not deterred at the end of 1985 from raiding border villages for supporting the ANC and continued to raid into Swaziland over the next three years.

  The British role in Southern Africa was crucial to any resolution of the apartheid-fuelled confrontations of the region. Seven of the nine SADCC countries, as well as Namibia, had been British colonies and Britain had always had strong link
s with Mozambique, much of whose development had been financed from London. But it was always firmly biased towards South Africa and the Thatcher government in particular, though claiming to oppose apartheid, went to great lengths to defend the South African position and maintain a regional status quo. ‘No other country has stronger links with the southern African region than Britain. Given the consequences of South Africa’s regional policy, Britain’s especially strong links with South Africa heighten its responsibilities towards the whole region, to help resolve the interlinked issues of apartheid, conflict, and economic decline … Of all the elements of Britain’s long and complex colonial history in Southern Africa, its history in South Africa, especially its role in laying the foundations for apartheid, is perhaps of greatest significance to present-day southern African affairs. Although apartheid was introduced by the National Party after it first came to power in 1948, nevertheless the foundations of disfranchisement and institutionalized racial discrimination at all levels of society had already been laid’ by Britain when it agreed the peace treaty with the Boers in 1909 that betrayed the black populations of the Boer Republics and effectively prepared the ground for lasting white-minority rule in the most economically powerful nation of the region.19

  SOUTH AFRICA

  Despite the ‘Muldergate’ scandal that ended the political career of Vorster, and the many problems that white South Africa had faced through the 1970s, the regime entered the new decade as strongly entrenched as ever. P. W. Botha, the new Prime Minister, tried to soften the government’s policy by eliminating ‘petty apartheid’ although retaining core apartheid – the denial of equality of rights to the black majority. But the impossibility of making apartheid work in a state where the white minority depended on the black majority for the smooth functioning of the economy meant that the system began to break down through the 1980s as black opposition to apartheid erupted on all fronts. A central source of South Africa’s strength had always been its huge and lucrative mining sector that historically had attracted British, American and other investments. At its core was the giant Anglo American Corporation with tentacles all over Southern Africa and big interests in Botswana, Zambia and Zimbabwe as well as Namibia. Its subsidiary De Beers dominated the non-USSR diamond mining and marketing and its interests included Angola and Tanzania. The story of mining exploitation in South Africa is one of the least defensible aspects of that country’s history20 although Anglo’s Harry Oppenheimer, by judicial statements deploring apartheid and with donations to the Progressive Party, attempted to present an acceptable mining face to the world, though few were fooled by it.

  In 1979 a mysterious flash in the South Atlantic was interpreted as a South African nuclear test; the US, safeguarding its ally, said that its monitoring service had not detected anything but the denial was not believed and South Africa was suspected of having become a nuclear power. Later, in 1993, President de Klerk admitted that South Africa had a number of nuclear bombs or warheads and agreed to destroy them. UN Resolution 558 of December 1984, which requested all states to stop importing arms, ammunition or military vehicles produced in South Africa, was passed unanimously.

  In 1982 the UN General Assembly proclaimed an International Year of Mobilization of Sanctions against South Africa. In 1984 the General Assembly rejected the new South African racially segregated tricameral constitution. By 1985, as violence escalated throughout the South African townships, the Security Council condemned the Pretoria regime for killing defenceless Africans. Despite these expressions of UN disapproval, the coming to power of President Reagan in the US and Prime Minister Thatcher in Britain tilted the diplomatic battle at the United Nations in South Africa’s favour for much of the decade. From 1985 onwards there were specific calls for the release of Nelson Mandela while three attempts to extend mandatory sanctions to South Africa – in 1985, 1987 and 1988 – were vetoed by Britain and the US while France abstained. Altogether, there were 45 Western vetoes on South African questions between 1974 and 1988. During all this turmoil education remained strictly segregated and the government spent seven times as much on the education of a white child as on a black child. A telling sign of the breakdown of apartheid was the increasing urbanization of Africans and though some Africans were recognized as ‘urban insiders’ legally entitled to live in the metropolitan areas permanently, the pass laws were still used in an attempt to keep others out; but it had become a losing battle. In 1984, for example, 238,894 Africans were arrested for pass law offences but neither such arrests nor other measures could stem the flow of Africans into the urban areas. As a result, accepting what it could not prevent, in 1986 the government repealed a total of 34 legislative enactments that between them constituted the pass laws, and announced an ‘orderly urbanization’. Further, the government repealed other segregation laws, bans on multiracial political parties and inter-racial sex and marriage and ceased the reservation of particular jobs for whites only. At the same time it opened up business centres in cities to black traders and desegregated some hotels, trains, restaurants and other public facilities. One of the most telling pressures upon the ability of the whites to maintain control was the country’s changing demography: in 1936 whites represented 21 per cent of the population, by 1960 19 per cent, by 1980 16 per cent and by 1985 15 per cent while officials predicted that the figure would have fallen to only 10 per cent in 2005.21

  The South African government was on the defensive throughout the decade. The so-called Soviet ‘total onslaught’ could only be countered with a ‘total strategy’ at every level. In 1982 the chief of the SADF, Gen. Constand Viljoen, announced a new ‘area defence system’ to meet the growing ‘area war’ assault by the ANC. This ‘legitimized’ attacks upon the front-line states. The police and the military worked together in maintaining internal order and by and large the police were seen as more repressive than the soldiers. Thus, after 800 children, some as young as seven years, had been arrested following school boycotts, Brig. Jan Coetze, the Soweto Police Chief, said: ‘We are cracking down. We will not allow 5,000 stupid students to disregard law and order in Soweto and South Africa.’22 The same Coetze had remarked the previous July, ‘In our operations, the South African Police and the South African Defence Force operate as one unit.’ The apparent relish with which senior policemen such as Coetze spoke of dealing with Africans was partly aimed at their black populations in the hope – unrealized – of intimidating them, partly it was a form of defiance aimed at an increasingly hostile world and partly, perhaps, a cruel gesture of despair as even the most obtuse members of the police must have begun to realize that the situation was getting beyond them. Police violence reached its height during the disturbances of 1985–86. ‘The incidence of violence in South Africa involving the police has now reached almost pathological proportions. Police are easily provoked into drawing lethal weapons, their treatment of suspects and arrestees is frequently disgraceful and their use of unnecessary force in respect of minor offenders has become so common as to be considered normal conduct.’23 The police budget, meanwhile, rose steadily.

  Following the Nkomati Accord South Africa had begun to speak of itself as the regional power whose interests always had to be taken into account so that, for example, it had the right to demand the withdrawal of the Cubans from Angola, according to its Foreign Minister Pik Botha.24 Further, the more the US and the USSR paid attention to South Africa, the more they confirmed its belief in itself as the regional superpower. However, in the long run the state of the economy would dictate what should happen. ‘Before the political turmoil of the mid-1980s, South Africa was a net importer of capital. However, during the first half of the 1980s, a foreign debt had begun to be accumulated and when, in August 1985, President Botha declared that the government would not be pressured into abolishing apartheid, and foreign banks began to call in their loans, the country was turned into a net exporter of capital.’25 Constant violence and the absence abroad or in prison of black political leaders led to the rise of Bisho
p Desmond Tutu as a spokesman for the oppressed, and a gentle churchman was transformed into a political orator. He had risen rapidly in the Anglican Church, had been made Bishop of Lesotho in 1976 and now used his church platform to speak out against apartheid. When in 1984 a government commission attacked the South African Council of Churches (SACC) for identifying with the ‘liberation struggle’ Tutu, its Secretary-General, said: ‘Until my dying day I will continue to castigate apartheid as evil and immoral…’ He was awarded the Nobel Peace prize in 1984 for his non-violent approach to apartheid and was elected Archbishop of Cape Town on 14 April 1986. Meanwhile, the constant police brutality that was shown night after night on television in Britain over 1985–86 had a significant impact upon British public thinking. Many British people who to that time had usually adopted a ‘kith and kin’ sympathetic approach to the plight of the white South African minority began to change their attitudes. They did not, perhaps, become anti-apartheid activists but they certainly no longer defended the white position and the change represented an important shift in British thinking.