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Reagan and the Pax Afrikaana

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 November 2008

Lee Cokorinos  and
James H. Mittelman
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Extract

A Frequent error in foreign policy analysis is to allow government to set the agenda of inquiry. Officials invariably define the terrain too narrowly. Their concerns are short term, not only because of the immediacy of problems stalking policy-makers, but also because averting fundamental questions about the social forces that shape the day-to-day agenda of government redounds to the advantage of those who control state power. Consequently, the task of the analyst is to overcome the inhibiting parameters of public discourse. Without trivialising matters of practical politics, the analyst must transpose prefabricated questions into more productive lines of inquiry.

Type
Articles
Information
The Journal of Modern African Studies , Volume 23 , Issue 4 , December 1985 , pp. 551 - 573
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1985

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References

page 552 note 1 Correspondents Lewis, Flora, ‘Pax Afrikaana’, in New Tork Times, 25 01 1983,Google Scholar and Joseph Lelyveld, ‘Pretoria's Whites Preparing for Decades of Conflict with Black Insurgents’, in Ibid. 11 October 1983, who refer to a ‘Pax Pretoria’, suggest the term adopted here, though we assign a different meaning to it. See also de St Jorre, John, ‘Pax Pretoriana: stability in Southern Africa?’, in The New Republic (New York), 190, 3, 04 1984, pp. 20–3,Google Scholar and Price, Robert M., ‘Pax or Pox Pretoria?’, in World Policy Journal (New York), 2, 3, Summer 1985, pp. 533–54.Google Scholar

page 552 note 2 On the concept of hegemony, see Gramsci, Antonio, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, edited and translated by Hoare, Quintin and Smith, Geoffrey Nowell (London, 1971), pp. 181–2 and passim.Google Scholar

page 554 note 1 Kaplan, David E., ‘The Internationalisation of South African Capital: South African direct foreign investment in the contemporary period’, in African Affairs (London), 82, 329, 10 1983, pp. 482–3.Google Scholar

page 555 note 1 The Crocker documents are to be found in Leonard, Richard, South Africa at War: white power and the crisis in Southern Africa (Westport, Conn., 1983), p. 259, emphasis in original.Google Scholar

page 555 note 2 George M. Houser, ‘Relations between the United States and South Africa’, United Nations Regional Conference for Action Against Apartheid, New York, 18–21 June 1984, p. 37. Houser notes as well that the Reagan Administration's policy entrenches and moulds social relations inside Southern African societies.

page 555 note 3 For additional evidence, see Mittelman, James H., ‘Intervention in Southern Africa: America's investment in apartheid’, in The Nation (New York), 228, 22, 9 06 1979, pp. 684–9,Google Scholar and ‘The Other War in the South Atlantic’, in The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (Chicago), 39, 4, 04 1983, pp. 38–9.Google Scholar

page 556 note 1 ‘Destabilisation in Southern Africa’, in The Economist (London), 16 07 1983.Google ScholarPubMed

page 556 note 2 ‘Zimbabwe Clash Linked to South Africa’, in New York Times, 23 08 1982.Google Scholar

page 557 note 1 See Price, Robert M., ‘Pretoria's Southern Africa Strategy’, in African Affairs, 83, 330, 01 1984, pp. 26–7.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

page 557 note 2 E.g. ‘Southern Africa Transformed’, in Washington Post, 13 03 1984,Google Scholar and ‘The Winds of Peace’, in Time (New York), 26 03 1984.Google Scholar

page 558 note 1 ‘Death Haunts a Parched Land’, in The Economist, 16 07 1984.Google Scholar

page 559 note 1 ‘The Nkomati Accord’, in Africa News (Durham), 22, 13, 03 1984, pp. 3–9.Google ScholarPubMed

page 560 note 1 Karis, Thomas G., ‘Revolution in the Making: black politics in South Africa’, in Foreign Affairs (New York), 62, 2, Winter 1983–1984, pp. 399–400.Google Scholar

page 560 note 2 ‘Don't Praise Pretoria’, in New York Times, 4 04 1984.Google Scholar

page 560 note 3 Government of Mozambique, National Planning Commission, Economic Report (Maputo, 1984), p. 41.Google ScholarPubMed

page 561 note 1 Stoneman, Colin and Davies, Rob, ‘The Economy: an overview’, in Stoneman, (ed,), Zimbabwe's Inheritance (London, 1981), p. 119.Google Scholar

page 561 note 2 Kaplan, loc. cit. p. 475.

page 561 note 3 ‘Zimbabwe Survey: the challenge ahead’, in African Business (London), 05 1984, p. 70,Google Scholar and ‘Zimbabwe Survey’, in The Economist, 21 04 1984.Google Scholar

page 562 note 1 Interview with Chidzero, Bernard, Minister of Finance, Economic Planning, and Development, in Issues and Opinions (Harare), 1, 2, 07 1983, pp. 28–32.Google Scholar

page 562 note 2 ‘The Impact of U.S. Foreign Policy on Seven African Countries’, Report of a Congressional Study Mission to Zimbabwe, Sub-Committee on Africa, Committee on Foreign Affairs, U.S. House of Representatives, 98th Congress, 2nd Session, Washington, D.C., 1984, pp. 24–5.

page 562 note 3 Pauline Baker, ‘Obstacles to Private Sector Activities in Africa’, in Joint Hearings on Building Trade with Africa by the Sub-Committees on International Economic Policy and Trade, and on Africa, of the Committee on Foreign Affairs, and by the Sub-Committee on General Oversight and the Economy of the Committee on Small Business, 19 May 1983 and 2 June 1983, U.S. House of Representatives, 98th Congress, 1st Session, Washington, D.C., 1984, p. 220.

page 562 note 4 ‘Mozambique’, in Foreign Economic Trends and their Implications for the United States (FET 84–66), U.S. Department of Commerce, Washington, D.C., 1984, pp. 4–5.Google ScholarPubMed

page 563 note 1 ‘Zimbabwe's U.N. Vote May Mean Cut in U.S. Aid’, in Africa News, 21, 17, 10 1983, pp. 1–2 and 11.Google Scholar

page 564 note 1 ‘Zimbabwe's Easing of Military Curb Said to Be in Return for U.S. Food Aid’, in Washington Post, 11 04 1984.Google Scholar Outstanding examples of sensationalist editorial commentary are ‘Add a Little Snubbery to Our Foreign Policy’, in Washington Times, 14 09 1983,Google Scholar and ‘What Price Independence?’, in Barron's (New York), 21 04 1984.Google Scholar

page 564 note 2 ‘Assembleia Popular’, in Tempo (Maputo), 378, I, 01 1978, pp. 53–4.Google Scholar

page 565 note 1 Allen, and Isaacman, Barbara, ‘A Rare Glimpse of How Mozambique Governs Itself’, in Christian Science Monitor (Boston), 27 12 1979.Google Scholar

page 565 note 2 U.S. Department of State, Country Reports on Human Rights Practices for 1983, Report to the Committee on Foreign Affairs, U.S. House of Representatives, and the Committee on Foreign Relations, U.S. Senate, Washington, D.C., 1984, pp. 250–9. Some of the following paragraphs on human rights summarise arguments in Mittelman, James H., Underdevelopment and the Transition to Socialism: Mozambique and Tanzania (New York, 1981), pp. 34–6, 106–7, 116–17, and 252.Google Scholar

page 566 note 1 Although Article 17 of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights (to which Mozambique is a signatory) states that ‘Everyone has the right to own property alone as well as in association with others’, subsequent human rights covenants exclude property ownership. It would be difficult to sustain the argument that, under international law, the ownership of property is a human right.

page 566 note 2 See Urdang, Stephanie, ‘The Last Transition? Women and Development in Mozambique’, in Review of African Political Economy (London), 27–28, 1983, pp.8–32.Google Scholar

page 566 note 3 No one who has lived in Mozambique denies that Frelimo's campaign against tribal ideology and racism has met with considerable success. For instance, as expressed by Kaufman, Michael, ‘Mozambique is Viewed as Africa's Best Hope for the Flowering of Socialism's “New Man”’, in New York Times, 14 11 1977:Google Scholar

‘Certainly the cohesion witnessed during a two-week visit to Mozambique was remarkable in terms of black Africa. Although most of the Portuguese have left, the degree to which whites, blacks, and Asians live together was striking.

In much of Africa whites and blacks often use the same restaurants but they do not always share the same tables. Here they do. Throughout the continent the sight of black nannies holding white infants is common, but only here has this reporter seen white women holding the black children of their friends.’

See also ‘Frelimo Struggles Against the Odds’, in Rand Daily Mail (Johannesburg), 18 07 1983: ‘The apparent absence of tribal division is remarkable in a country of ten different tribes who speak 18 different languages and dialects. The absence of racial hostility after the strains of war provides testimony unusual in Africa to President Machel and to Frelimo's ideals. The vehement anti-racism and best-person approach leads to a cabinet of nine blacks, eight whites, two Asians and two coloureds.’Google Scholar

page 567 note 1 The varied histories of the Soviet Union, China, Vietnam, Cuba, Chile, and Angola are no exception.

page 568 note 1 ‘U.S. Slashes Aid to Zimbabwe by Almost Half’, in Washington Post, 20 12 1983.Google Scholar

page 568 note 2 Foreign Assistance Legislation for Fiscal Years 1984–85, Hearings of the Sub-Committee on Africa, Committee on Foreign Affairs, 17 and 22 March, and 13 April 1983, U.S. House of Representatives, 98th Congress, 1st Session, Part 8, Washington, D.C., p. 111.

page 569 note 1 Interview, U.S. State Department official, Washington, D.C., 7 March 1983. Asked to explain the ban on development assistance to Mozambique, he indicated that ‘Mozambique has identified with the Soviet Union and jumped totally into that camp’.

page 569 note 2 Legislation on Foreign Relations Through 1982, Current Legislation and Related Executive Orders, Vol. I, Committee on Foreign Relations, U.S. Senate, and Committee on Foreign Affairs, U.S. House of Representatives, Washington, D.C., 1983, p. 361.Google ScholarPubMed

page 569 note 3 Telephone interview, U.S. State Department official, 5 September 1984; ‘U.S. Plans Military Aid for Marxist Mozambique’, in Christian Science Monitor, 14 01 1985. The Administration's request for military aid was subsequently denied because of stiff pressure from conservative Republicans in the Senate.Google Scholar

page 570 note 1 Chester Crocker, ‘The Role of the U.S. Private Sector in Zimbabwe’, Address before a Conference sponsored by the American Bar Association and the African-American Institute, New York, 26 March 1982.

page 570 note 2 The Impact of U.S. Foreign Policy on Seven African Countries, pp. 24–5.

page 571 note 1 Ferguson, Clyde and Cotter, William R., ‘South Africa-What Is To Be Done?’, in Foreign Affairs, 56, 2, 01 1978, pp. 253–74, recommended 41 different measures.Google Scholar A scaled-down position is outlined by Lake, Anthony, ‘Do the Doable’, in Forgien Policy (New York), 54, Spring 1984, pp. 102–21.Google Scholar