Abstract
What comes out of Africa is déjà vu. In 1977 R.W. Johnson noted that the difficulties and dilemmas facing the white regime were much the same in each postwar decade: domestic resistance, regional opposition, and global criticism.1 This remains true towards the close of the 1980s. But each is now graver and threatens to grow more so as the end of the milennium approaches.
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Notes
Cf. R. W. Johnson, How Long Will South Africa Survive? London, Macmillan, 1977, pp. 287ff.
Jaster, ‘South Africa’s Narrowing Security Options’, in Robert Jaster (ed.), Southern Africa: Regional Security Problems and Prospects, Aldershot, Gower, 1985, p. 72.
Cf. Deon Geldenhuys, The Diplomacy of Isolation: South African Foreign Policy Making, New York, St Martin’s Press, 1984.
According to Seegers, ‘The Defense Amendment Bill of 1984… states that the SADF is to be used for defense against external attack, the prevention and suppression of terrorism and internal disorder and, significantly, the preservation of life, health, and property and the maintenance of essential services’. Annette Seegers, ‘Apartheid’s Military: Its Origins and Development’, in Wilmot G. James (ed.), The State of Apartheid, Boulder, Colorado, Lynne Rienner, 1987, p. 159.
This group is not, nor ever has been, monolithic. Conflicts between ‘doves’ and ‘hawks’ over power and responsibility may well be the rule, not the exception. But these are conflicts over ways and means of maintaining ethnic supremacy, not over the end itself. That the end enjoys unanimous approval is made thoroughly clear in Afrikaans literature. Cf. Stanley Uys, ‘Whither the White Oligarchy?’, in Jesmond Blumenfeld (ed.), South Africa in Crisis London, Croom Helm, 1987, pp. 59ff.
Richard John Neuhaus, Dispensations. The Future of South Africa as South Africans See It, Grand Rapids, Michigan, Eerdmans, 1986, p. 69.
Deon Geldenhuys, The Constellation of Southern African States and the Southern African Development Coordination Council: Towards a New Regional Stalemate?, Johannesburg, South African Institute for International Affairs, 1981, p. 3.
Cf. M. Tamarkin, ‘South Africa’s Regional Options: Policy Making and Conceptual Environment’, International Affairs Bulletin, 7, 1983, p. 55.
Reginald H. Green and Carol B. Thompson, ‘Political Economies in Conflict: SADCC, South Africa and Sanctions’, in Phyllis Johnson and David Martin (eds), Destructive Engagement, Harare, Zimbabwe Publishing House, 1986, p. 246.
‘Rural Insurgency and Counter-measures’, in Mike Hough (ed.), Revolutionary Warfare and Counter-Insurgency Institute for Strategic Studies, Pretoria 1984, pp. 40ff.
Steven Metz, ‘The Mozambique National Resistance and South African Foreign Policy’, African Affairs, 85, October 1986, p. 492.
For instance, UNITA draws its support from the Ovimbundu, who make up about one-third of the Angolan population. RENAMO was, for a long time, little more than the extended arm of first the Rhodesian and then the South African secret service, but has taken to exploiting the growing dissatisfaction of the Mozambican population. Cf. Allen Isaacman, ‘Mozambique and the Regional Conflict in Southern Africa’, Current History May 1987, pp. 213ff.
Cf. Robert Davies, South African Strategy Towards Mozambique in the Post-Nkomati Period Uppsala, Scandinavian Institute for African Studies, 1985, pp. 12ff., upon which this section is based.
For the text of the Accord see: ARB, Political Series, 1–31 March, 1984, pp. 7166ff. The accord raises questions with far-reaching consequences for Mozambique, especially with respect to its membership in the Liberation Committee of the OAU. Cf. Winrich Kühne, Südafrika and seine Nachbarn: Durchbruch zum Frieden?, Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft, Baden-Baden, 1984.
Theodor Hanf, ‘Konflikte im südlichen Afrika’, in Hans-Peter Schwarz and Karl Kaiser (eds), Weltpolitik: Strukturen — Akteure — Perspektiven, Bonn, Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung, 1985, p. 660.
Heribert Adam and Kogila Moodley, South Africa Without Apartheid Berkeley, California University Press, 1986, pp. 73ff.
Deon Geldenhuys, What Do We Think? A Survey of White Opinion on Foreign Policy Issues no. 2, Johannesburg, South African Institute of International Affairs, 1984, pp. 7 and 10.
Cf. Kenneth W. Grundy, The Militarization of South African Politics, London, Tauris, 1986, p. 94.
Pretoria needs a communist bloc in the region, to justify the communist threat, to equate neo-apartheid with the defence of Western Christian values, and to obtain Western support as an anti-communist bastion. Cf. Robert Price, ‘Pretoria’s Southern African Strategy’, African Affairs, 83, 1984, p. 25.
Quoted in Winrich Kühne, ‘En Damoklesschwert hängt über dem Staat am Kap’, Das Parlament, 15 August 1987, p. 9.
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© 1989 John D. Brewer
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Braun, G. (1989). The Afrikaner Empire Strikes Back: South Africa’s Regional Policy. In: Brewer, J.D. (eds) Can South Africa Survive?. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-19661-6_5
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