FACTORS THAT DISTANCED THESE TWO AFRICAN HEROES APART EACH OTHER. MUGABE vs MANDELA. South Africa has been conducting an undeclared terrorist war on the Front-line States, and in particular on Angola Lesotho, Mozambique. Tanzania and Zimbabwe, for more than three years. This war has been waged across an entire subcontinent, using every means of modern warfare from armored divisions and squadrons of bombers to economic sabotage, subversion and assassination. Moreover, the Reagan Administration is a willing partner in the secret war in southern Africa. It has thrown the weight and power of the United States behind South Africas campaign to destabilize the Front-line States. South Africa and the U.S. are now full partners in an almost invisible war to change the political balance in the region and to preserve and reinforce the principal institutions of the apartheid system. Indeed, from its inception, it was clear that the Reagan Administration would seek to preserve the status quo in South Africa as part of an anti-Socialist crusade, just as it announced it would do in El Salvador. It has therefore pursued a two track policy, revealing its commitment to South Africa and its antagonism to radical change, but concealing many of its actions in support of South Africas war. The war against the Front-line States has been much more complex than many observers have suspected. And the Central Intelligence Agency has inevitably played an important role in it, carrying out a second, secret track of U.S. policy, coordinating various programs of covert warfare and undertaking important operations. The 1981 Southern Africa Policy Review When the Reagan Administration took office, the new Presidents foreign policy advisors shared the view that the U.S. had to become actively engaged in southern Africa. The Administration, however, needed a coherent position and a consistent set of policies for the region. In early 1981, therefore, President Reagan ordered a major review of U.S. policy towards southern Africa which was carried out in the National Security Council by an inter-departmental committee which included senior representatives of the Department of State, the Central Intelligence Agency, and the Department of Defense. The review resulted in a classified policy paper offering the President a number of alternative courses of action in southern Africa. By the summer, the President had signed off on an option, in a secret National Security Decision Directive, which was to carry the U.S. into a tacit alliance with South Africa in its terrorist war against the Front line States. What follows is a reconstruction of the policy towards southern Africa settled upon by the Reagan Administration in the summer of 1981, based upon official speeches (in quotations), public documents, and known U.S. actions. President Reagan decided upon a general posture which would be supportive to South Africa in a region increasingly threatened by instability. The United States would seek to encourage peaceful evolutionary change in order to forestall mass revolutionary violence within South Africa. Beyond South Africas borders, the U.S. would seek to counter Soviet influence in the region. In particular, U.S. policy would seek to help bolster the security of South Africa, that is, to foster regional security by means which would meet South African needs. To pursue these objectives, the President decided upon the following specific lines of action: With regard to South Africa, to move towards closer and more supportive relations with the Government of South Africa; to encourage the Government of South Africa to move to wards a nonracial liberal democracy by moderate reforms of apartheid; to support, politically, financially, and by other means, those elements inside and beyond the Republic which foster peaceful and evolutionary change there; to assist South Africa in resisting the international efforts to isolate it, especially at the United Nations. In Namibia, to help end the guerrilla warfare that has continued in northern Namibia and southern Angola for 15 years; to seek the removal of Cuban troops from Angola; to seek a peaceful solution of the Namibian question which would allow South Africa to retain control of the country and yet be acceptable internationally. In the region as a whole, to seek to end the dangerous cycle of violence in the region and to direct the impetus toward change into peaceful channels; privately to encourage South Africa to pre-empt any armed threat-guerrilla or conventional-from its neighbors and to use its military superiority for that end; to apply strong pressure, with others, against Angola and Mozambique and eventually to seek radical changes in the internal political balance in those countries; to apply pressure against the governments of Tanzania, Zambia, and Zimbabwe and gradually to draw them closer to the West; to cooperate closely with South Africa in mounting pressures against the Front-line States; to use U.S. diplomacy to help establish the rules of the game that will limit and discourage the application of outside force in the region. And publicly, to maintain strict secrecy about active collaboration in support of South Africa; to maintain strict secrecy about certain actions taken against the Front-line States; to mount an extensive campaign of political action and propaganda in Africa, Western Europe, and the United States to ensure that actions of the U.S. government remain invisible or are accepted by public opinion.
Posted on: Thu, 15 May 2014 04:53:01 +0000
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