African Activist Archive

The memorandum discusses Secretary of State Kissinger's recent diplomatic shifts which raise disturbing questions about the direction of U.S. Africa policy. The mailing says on January 9, 1975, President Ford nominated Nathaniel Davis, former Ambassador to Guatemala and Chile, to replace Donald Easum, who had served as Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs for only nine months. The State Department also confirmed a report by Ken Owen, a reporter for South Africa's Argus newspapers, that William G. Bowdler is being considered to replace John Hurd as U.S. Ambassador to South Africa. The memorandum says earlier, in June, 1974, Kissinger chose Deane Hinton to be Ambassador to Zaire. The memorandum discusses the end of Portuguese colonialism and the transition to independence of Mozambique and Angola. The memorandum says the white minority government in Rhodesia is facing the strongest opposition since it unilaterally declared independence in 1965 and that guerilla warfare in the northeast is increasingly costly to the white regime. The memorandum points out that the Administration can hardly continue to base its southern Africa policy on the now well-known premise that white rule is here to stay, as stated in Option Two of the 1969 National Study Security Memorandum (NSSM) 39. State Department sources indicate that Kissinger directed that a new NSSM be prepared on the unexpected unraveling of Portuguese rule. The memorandum discusses apartheid, destabilization, Gulf Oil, MPLA, FNLA, FLEC, Frelimo, PAIGC, and Dr. Eschel Rhoodie. It discusses the issue of strategic minerals and says South Africa has chrome, coal, iron, uranium, manganese, gold and diamonds and that Zaire produces 55% of the world's cobalt.

African Activist Archive

MEMORANDUM ON RECENT STATE DEPARTMENT APPOINTMENTS AND SOUTHERN AFRICA

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