Toward A New South Africa

Contents: Introduction • U.S. Foreign Policy: "A Matter of Interest" • Smoke and Mirrors • 1. The "Anti-Communist" Argument • 2. The "Strategic Interest" Argument • 3. The Selective Definition of "Legitimate Violence" • Chronology • Toward a New South Africa • Resources • Coalition for a New Foreign and Military Policy • The pamphlet includes a box U.S. Import Dependence on Four Key Strategic Minerals. The pamphlet says civil war is consuming South Africa; the country is embroiled in a violent conflict that may well lead to the death of thousands upon thousands of its citizens; the past two years have established beyond any doubt that the black majority is prepared and willing to pay the price of untold suffering to end apartheid. The pamphlet says what is so unconscionable to many Americans is that our own government refuses to use our considerable economic and diplomatic influence to help dismantle apartheid and stave off the specter of escalating violence in the country; the United States is and for decades has been a willing partner with the South African government in maintaining an immoral, racist policy towards the black population of South Africa; in conducting this policy, the U.S. government betrays the tenets of democracy and morality upon which our country was founded. The pamphlet says we review U.S. economic interests in South Africa to help explain why the Reagan administration wants to prevent any fundamental change in political relations in the region and we outline the strategic importance of such investments to the maintenance of apartheid. The pamphlet says the driving interest behind U.S. involvement in South Africa has been economic profit. The pamphlet says U.S. economic involvement in South Africa began during World War I when U.S. investors were eager to join British companies in exploiting the world's largest gold and diamond deposits; U.S. investment in South Africa's mining sector continued to grow until World War II when U.S. companies began developing other industries, such as explosives and chemicals, to support mining activities; the profitability of these investments was reflected in the ability of the United States to acquire 60% of the Western world's $33 billion in gold by 1960. The pamphlet says while the gold industry continued to provide the backbone of the South African economy, cheap labor and government incentives attracted U.S. investments to new areas of fledgling South African industry; U.S. investors concentrated on automobile production, tires, textiles, and oil refinement; by 1960 over half of all cars produced on the African continent came from South Africa and most of those were produced by U.S. companies and powered by gasoline refined by U.S. subsidiaries; during this period, South Africa emerged unquestionably as the most important industrial country in the region of southern Africa; economic development of the neighboring countries of Mozambique, Angola, Zambia, Botswana, and Zimbabwe was tied to and driven by the growing economic power of the apartheid regime. The pamphlet says direct U.S. investments have accounted for approximately 20% of total foreign investments in South Africa, second to Great Britain's 50%; U.S. capital, however, has been concentrated in key industrial sectors; when the United Nations voted in favor of an arms embargo against South Africa in 1977, some of the over 400 U.S. companies operating in that country helped the apartheid government to develop its own armaments, not to mention South Africa's vital oil refining, and electronics industries; U.S. companies provided technology and capital, while the South African government provided tariff and tax incentives. The pamphlet says massacres of black people at Sharpeville in 1960 and Soweto in 1976 taught the United States and other Western nations how to help stabilize the South African economy in times of political upheaval such as the country is embroiled in today. The pamphlet says Administration spokespeople constantly proclaim America's distaste for apartheid yet, in the same breath, they portray South Africa as the bulwark against communist expansionism in southern Africa; U.S. policymakers have long argued that the Pretoria government is an irreplaceable ally in the East-West struggle by asserting that South Africa is containing the communist threat posed by the governments of Angola, Mozambique as well as the anti-apartheid liberation movements of Namibia and South Africa. The pamphlet says forty-nine percent of the surveyed blacks supported Nelson Mandela, the ANC's imprisoned leader, as the future president of their country; while South Africa's foreign minister, Roleof Botha, has met privately with President Reagan, no leader of the African National Congress has been received by our government. The pamphlet says the strategic importance of South Africa's minerals (chromium, vanadium, manganese, and platinum-group metals) has been deliberately exaggerated to justify continued U.S. participation in the apartheid economy. The pamphlet says for ideological and chauvinistic reasons, administration officials have condemned the armed struggle waged by the ANC and the South West African Peoples' Organization (SWAPO) as illegitimate while claiming the anti-government rebels in Angola are freedom fighters and worthy of U.S. military support. The newsletter says as of 1979, when a U.S. satellite recorded a double flash in the south Atlantic, South Africa has been acknowledged as a nuclear military power; the Pretoria government, however, has consistently refused to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty; since May, 1980, the Reagan administration has approved at least seven export licenses for South Africa's nuclear program. The pamphlet says since 1920, South Africa has occupied Namibia; since 1950 they have done so in violation of the rulings of the International Court of Justice. The pamphlet says currently, the apartheid regime maintains a virtual state of martial law in the neighboring territory with over 100,000 troops; Pretoria has extended apartheid to Namibia in order to exploit its neighbor's mineral resources, repress its population, and launch attacks against Angola with impunity. The pamphlet says in September, the Angolan Defense Ministry reported bombing raids by the South African Air Force; spokespeople for the apartheid government also admitted sending 500 soldiers into the North Cabinda region of Angola ostensibly in "hot pursuit" of SWAPO rebels. The pamphlet says this pamphlet was written by Matthew Walker, Southern Africa Project Coordinator, who gives special thanks to the following for their patient guidance and editing: Jean Sindab, William Johnston, Stephanie Urdang, and William Minter. The newsletter discusses the role U.S. companies have played in developing South Africa's nuclear industry, a nuclear weapons test, loans, private banks, liberation movements, the South African Communist Party (SACP), the Soviet Union, the Reagan Administration, capitalism, Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Chester Crocker, Secretary of State George Shultz, the Stillwater Complex in Montana, the Cape Sea Route, the Indian Ocean, the Middle East, cold war hysteria, white supremacy, Pik Botha, geographical location, naval facilities, the State Department, reimbursable military aid, the Mutual Defense Assistance Act of 1949, the 1963 arms embargo, the United Nations Security Council, the Carter administration, the Colt Arms and Ammunition Company, U.S. nuclear collaboration, A.J. Roux, the South African Atomic Energy Board, Washington and Pretoria: Partners in War, South Africa's Regional Violence and the U.S., the International Court of Justice (ICJ, World Court), the Mozambican National Resistance (MNR), the CIA, the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA), the National Front for the Liberation of Angola (FNLA), the Southern Africa Development Coordinating Conference (SADCC), the South African Defence Force (SADF), Clark Amendment, Jonas Savimbi, the Nkomati Accord, Cuban troops, U.S. foreign policy, apartheid's cheap labor, restrictions on the black trade union movement, Botswana, Zimbabwe, and Zambia.