South Africa naively agreed to stop supporting neighboring Rhodesia as part of negotiations with warring Marxist countries for the survival of its own Apartheid system, according to a prominent historian on the subject.
In
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, author, journalist and historian Peter Stiff says South Africa was caught up in many “hot wars” in Africa during the Cold War, with battlefronts in Angola, Mozambique, and Namibia. The country was caught up in a geo-political strategy between the Soviets and Americans, with the Soviets seeing the South African Cape as a choke point for international traffic and desperately wanting its control.
Rhodesian independence in 1965 threw open another battlefront, right on the South Africa’s doorstep. “There wasn’t Apartheid [in Rhodesia]. The idea was to have a partnership rule and rule by civilized people. But of course, the world didn’t want that, they wanted the country handed over to blacks immediately. And of course, the blacks they wanted Rhodesia handed over to were Marxists run by Robert Mugabe. No matter how much the Rhodesians protested, well, it didn’t matter because that is what the world wanted. It wanted the handover to Mugabe. And of course you know as they say, the people who sow the wind reap the world wind.”
South Africa supported the Rhodesian government, flying in the face of crippling sanctions from the world community. Eventually, South African Prime Minister John Vorster entered negotiations with the nation’s Communist enemies and his support for Rhodesia was put on the table. “He negotiated with President Kenneth Kaunda, who had been voted in as “President for Life” in Zambia, which was done with go-betweens. Kaunda said, ‘look, if you sort of ditch Rhodesia, and go against Rhodesia, stop helping them, then we’ll recognize the South African Apartheid government, because we understand you’re just another tribe in Africa, albeit a white one’. Of course this was absolute bloody nonsense, but Foster believed it, and that’s when he stopped helping Rhodesia”.
The end of South African support for the land-locked and sanctioned Rhodesia sealed its fate. “Rhodesia fought really to the last. It had the world reeling up against it, completely. Of course, eventually it had to give way. It only had a population of 300,000 whites”.
Stiff believes a mixture of Foster’s own hubris and South African naivete led him to believe that he could negotiate with Marxists who would live up to their end of the bargain. An example of Foster’s hubris can be found during negotiations in Zambia. Rent-a-crowds were set up to greet him there, and he believed the crowds were genuine. “It was absolutely ridiculous. In his own sort of biography, he sort of wrote quite proudly of these people. But it was so obviously a rent-a-crowd it was impossible that he could think otherwise,” says Stiff.
Unfortunately, the South Africans were also isolated and not very worldly. They just could not understand the nature of the situation in the broader context and it was almost a provincialism to think that they could negotiate. “They felt that they should be just left alone to continue life as they had always done. They would not interfere with anybody and nobody would interfere with them but of course that’s not the way of the world”.
“Of course they had no intention of allowing Apartheid to continue in South Africa,” says Stiff. South Africa faced its own series of sanctions and international isolation during the 1980’s, which led to so-called “open elections,” ending National Party rule and the end of Apartheid in 1994.
Swift believes that, had South Africa truly been left alone, it would have eventually worked out its own issues of race and class. “If they had been left alone, they could have done it”.
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