African Activist Archive

Mailing including a cover letter and memorandum. The cover letter says the Nixon administration is moving steadily toward increasing U.S. ties and commitments to South Africa and Rhodesia while ignoring African committed to change in southern Africa. The mailing says a new incident has come to light between the preparation and mailing of this material: the failure of the White House to implement an arranged meeting between President Nixon and Zambian President Kenneth D. Kaunda with the Organization of African Unity delegation who were in the United States for the United Nations Twenty-fifth Anniversary celebration. The cover letter says the enclosed memorandum deals with the recent Administration decision to license the sale of aircraft to South Africa and allow the importation of stockpiled Rhodesian chrome. The memorandum The United States has contradicted its supposed anti-apartheid sympathies by relaxing restrictions on planes for South Africa at a time when the arms embargo on South Africa has become a major issue at the United Nations. The memorandum quotes Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs David Newsom. The memorandum says in the long run, the United States has strengthened South Africa in far more deadly respects: helping it into the status of nuclear power; introducing it to space techniques; contributing know-how to its first missile launch; allowing the U.S. motor industry to train it in self-sufficient production, and the like. The memorandum says South Africa's serious armament program and attempt at self-sufficiency (now nearly complete) started after the Sharpeville Massacre of 1960 when it decided to cope with a hostile majority with potential outside support by violent suppression. The memorandum says of particular relevance to the U.S. policy of supplying light aircraft may be the Air Commandos; established in 1964, it is made up of private pilots and planes commissioned in times of emergency or war and includes about 240 pilots and planes. The mailing discusses Lear jets, Secretary of State Rogers, Ambassador John Hurd, settler munities, liberation forces, guerrilla forces, French and proposed British sake if arms to South Africa, H.L. Coughlin, the Congressional Record, Britain's Conservative Party, the South African Defence Force (SADF), the police, the Permanent Force, the Citizen Force, the Coloured Corps, Cessna, South West Africa, Prime Minister Vorster, the South African House of Assembly, the Caprivi Strip, the League of Nations, the Official Secret Amendment Act, and political prisoners.

African Activist Archive

U.S. MOVES TO AID SOUTH AFRICA BY LICENSING SALE OF PLANES

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