African Activist Archive

Contents: Starting Points: A Summary of Major Trends • Contingencies • Priorities • Suggestions for Discussion • ACAS Actions • From Eisenhower to Reagan, there has been a remarkable continuity of U.S. policy: a more or less vigorous condemnation of white minority rule, trailing African opinion and United Nations majorities, combined with a stubborn refusal to diminish Western support for those regimes in practice. At key times, however, sympathizers of African liberation in the United States have been able to throw their influence on the other side, succeeding in limiting CIA intervention in Angola in 1975, for example, and in stopping U.S. recognition of the Rhodesian "internal settlement" after 1978. The paper aims to project policy priorities for the middle-range future, as the struggle for southern Africa moves into the mid-eighties. It identifies major trends in southern Africa, pointing to the new generation of activism in South Africa, including the upsurge in black trade union organizing. There seems little likelihood that Pretoria will concede an internationally acceptable settlement in Namibia, which might bring SWAPO to power and give further encouragement to black South Africans. A recently leaked State Department cable estimates total U.S. financial involvement in South Africa as "probably in excess of $14.6 billion." In the upcoming U.S. election year of 1984, the paper suggests concentrate on enlarging the base of support in Congress on African questions, by raising the issues to candidates and identifying a few key races to which Africanist support might be directed. It also suggests preparing an "Africanist platform" and launching a campaign for signatures from Africanist scholars. It urges making the issue of destabilization and regional warfare a priority for study and also recommends a major symposium on this issue during the 1984 ASA meeting in Los Angeles and possibly a similar event in Washington, D.C. which ACAs could co-sponsor. The document mentions UNITA guerrillas, sanctions, the UN Security Council, the arms embargo, TransAfrica, divestment, IMF (International Monetary Fund), the Export Administration Act, nuclear technology, and oil.

African Activist Archive

Priorities for Change in U.S. Southern Africa Policy, 1984-1985

A draft policy paper for the Association of Concerned Africa Scholars

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