The Crutches of Apartheid: Europe’s African Project and the Cold War
The world watched
in 1994 as free and open elections were held in South
Africa for the first time in that nation’s
history. This resulted in the defeat of
the Afrikaner National Party and with it, South
Africa’s policy of racial segregation,
commonly referred to as apartheid. The
voluntary manner in which F.W. de Klerk and others in the government gave up
this power raises many questions. The
most pertinent of these is why the National Party would give up this power
which it had gained and entrenched over the years through ideology, brutality
and government expenditure.
There are many
possible answers to this question and it is clear that no single factor led to
the establishment of democracy in South Africa. There were some factors that clearly had a
larger effect on this process than others.
By reviewing the conditions and events of apartheid South
Africa from its inception in 1948 to its
collapse in 1994, it is evident that the ability of apartheid to remain a
viable system relied upon the support of southern Africa’s
white-dominated settler states, as well as support from the Western
powers. With the end of the Cold War and
decolonization in southern Africa, the system and government
of apartheid was bound to fall from within.
Southern
Africa and the African continent were profoundly different places
in 1948 from the Africa of the 1990’s; the 1940’s could
be considered the high point of the
European colonial project on the continent.
Whether through direct or indirect rule, there was no doubt as to who
was running each state and as to what type of policies each would pursue. With most of the continent under the control
of the Europeans, and therefore following policies which were conducive to
European benefit, it made perfect sense to implement the same strategy of white
benefit in South Africa. Although much more radical and formal than
the previous segregation, the system created by Hendrick Verwoerd, which came
to be known as apartheid, was both accepted and successful in this
environment. After World War II, the
colonial powers, whether for post-war sentiment or lack of economic resources,
began to leave their African colonies and grant independence. This wave of independence swept Africa by the
1960’s but was abruptly halted in southern Africa, as “bellow the Ruvama and
Zambezi Rivers, Portuguese and settler colonies continued to thrive,
maintaining the cordon santaire, and so did apartheid, migrant labor patterns,
and the fraternal economy.” This system of white dominance in the region
would not be disturbed until 1974 as a result of the military coup in Portugal. With new leadership in Portugal,
its African colonies of Angola
and Mozambique gained
their independence a year later in 1975.
This independence to the region partially destroyed South Africa’s
“buffer” of white states and it took just five more years to destroy the buffer
completely with the collapse of Ian Smith’s white Rhodesia.
What
did this decolonization and retreat of white rule in southern Africa mean for
South Africa and apartheid? There were
many consequences of this change but the most devastating effects of apartheid
were the eventual loss of the region’s vast migrant labor force and the
creation of sanctuaries for the African National Congress, who by now had
developed a more violent and organized resistance movement towards the
apartheid regime. The migrant labor
force was imperative for the apartheid system to work; by receiving laborers
from its neighboring colonies the state was utilizing easily subjected workers
with no ties to the immediate area.
Without any ties, the workers would have no desire to unionize or start
families, both of which would eventually help fuel resistance. It is clear that “the South African
government viewed control of the foreign African labor supply as essential to
the overall control of the African population.” With new leadership in the region, the South
African government was surrounded by states unwilling to partake in the
“fraternal economy” of the past.
These
states were unwilling to lend out their work forces, which would only support
apartheid, undermining and draining their own economies. The National Party realized what the loss of
this labor force would mean to the validity of the system and made numerous attempts
to regain this labor. Under the
direction of P.W. Botha, the South African government actively pursued a
foreign policy of a Constellation of Southern African States, which in reality
would have been a system of forced economic dependence upon South
Africa and its infrastructure by South
Africa’s neighboring states. This policy became one of the many examples
of how “South Africa
attempted to supplant previous colonial authorities in bordering states with
new interstate structures that strengthened regional dependence on South
Africa.” This attempt to regain its regional economy
and migrant labor would not be realized since all of the region’s states, under
the auspice of the Lusaka Declaration, were attempting to pursue a form of
economic liberation from South Africa.
The
failure of South Africa
to regain its vast migrant labor supply brought about repercussions which were
bound to fall on the system of apartheid.
In 1974, right before the Portuguese coup, the South African Institute
of Race Relations reported that there were over 501,000 foreign workers in South
Africa, most notably in the mines. In 1984, a completely “surrounded” South
Africa only contained 282,000 foreign
workers. This extreme drop in migrant
labor is clearly correlated with the decolonization of the area. In an attempt to make up for this lost labor,
while still working within the guidelines of apartheid, the state began to recruit
“commuter workers” from the individual homelands throughout South Africa. By 1982, there were an estimated 773,000
“commuters” throughout the country.
Although these workers fixed the problem of the lost labor supply, with
them came workers with roots in the area who had the awareness to unionize and
form resistance. With the influx of
African workers, union membership increased, and “political unionism, although
not new to South Africa, reached unprecedented heights during the second half
of the eighties.” With the formation and rapid growth of unions
such as the National Union of Mineworkers and South African Allied Workers
Union, strikes occurred throughout South Africa. Most were a vehicle to resist
not just the economic but also the social inequalities of apartheid, which “was
in large part due to the pressures of popular struggles in the townships.” This increase in labor coming from within
South Africa resulted in the explosion of unions and created yet another
challenge to the aged and weakened system of apartheid. As a direct result of the increase in indigenous
labor, South Africa
faced a more expensive workforce that was empowered and socially cognizant.
A
new labor force in South Africa was not the only result of the decolonization
in the area. Besides opting for independence
from the South African economic system, southern African states were adopting
policies which were either supportive of or neutral towards apartheid’s most
visible form of resistance, the African National Congress. In many cases, these states were providing
the ANC with support and “suddenly South Africa
was faced with a ring of black states that would provide sanctuary to its
primary foe, the African National Congress.” These new sanctuaries provided the ANC with
the time and security to grow and organize, and it was no coincidence that it
took place during the ANC appeared to be at its strongest and most organized
levels. It was during the late 1970’s
and 1980’s that the ANC was able to establish a training camp for its armed
wing in Angola
and an educational facility in Tanzania. With these facilities and safety, the ANC was
able to swell in numbers and provide intense resistance to the apartheid
regime. These factors enabled the ANC to
push South Africa
into a state of emergency by 1986.
At the same time
that the ANC was organizing in the bordering or frontline states, the
government of P.W. Botha was taking the “total strategy” to the next
level. This new level witnessed the
destabilization policy, which doubled Pretoria’s military budget between 1977
and 1984. The destabilization policy
“was primarily designed to preoccupy the Frontline States with internal
economic and strategic problems so that they would not be able to serve as
effective bases for liberation movements such as the ANC.” This destabilization policy, which has
resulted in economic and military problems for southern Africa
up to today, can be considered a failure in regards to its intended purpose of
eliminating the ANC’s bases and power. Several
consequences arose from the destabilization strategy. The complete dissolution
of any chance for the aforementioned cooperation which South
Africa had planned to gain from its border
states was one such effect. More importantly,
however, the South African leadership began to realize how much effort and
money it would take to defeat the ANC or any future opposition movements to
apartheid and white rule.
Besides
decolonization, the conclusion of World War II introduced another factor which
was to have a direct effect upon the system of apartheid. This was the arms build up and strategic
placements commonly referred to as the Cold War between the United States and
Soviet Union. The Cold War, which lasted
from the end of World War II up into the early 1990’s, affected the entire
world, boding better for some states than others. The effect the war had on the apartheid
government was positive. The Cold War
created strange bedfellows and one of these odd relationships was the one
between Pretoria and Washington. Playing
to Washington’s fears of a communist “domino effect” in southern Africa,
Pretoria was able to secure American and Western sympathy, weapons, and more
importantly financial support throughout the duration of the Cold War and
apartheid. From Western support,
apartheid was able to survive with the help of ample funding for its “total
strategy”, and more importantly, relaxed sanctions from its major trading
partners.
Pretoria
spent massive amounts of its income on its “total strategy,” which many were
now seeing as delaying the inevitable fall of apartheid. So how could South Africa stick to this
strategy and avoid reform and bankruptcy?
The answer to this was with Western support, most notably coming from
the United States.
The
newly independent and developing states of southern Africa
were to become a battleground of ideologies.
Because of its anti-communist stance and the fact that most of the
regime’s “enemies” were being supported by the Soviets, South
Africa was in prime position to be the
beneficiary of American support. This
support was with the National Party for most of apartheid’s history and made
the issue a staple in every American President’s foreign policy during the Cold
War. No matter what period or ideology
an administration occupied, the policy towards the region was the same. In 1962, a memorandum coming from the Kennedy
administration stated that it was to “sell military equipment to South
Africa for purposes of containing
international communist aggression.” Whether it was being used for containing
“communist aggression” or to suppress riots in the townships, this military
equipment was being used for the benefit of the South African government.
Decades later, in
another African policy memorandum and following a meeting with UNITA leader
Jonas Savimbi, the Reagan administration took the same stance and rhetoric when
it stated that its purpose was “to reduce and if possible, eliminate Soviet and
Soviet-proxy influence, military presence, and opportunities in Angola
and southern Africa.” This “Soviet influence” was applicable to the
states in southern Africa who were anti-South Africa,
but more importantly, supported the ANC.
With the help of U.S. aid, the South African Defense Force was able to
strengthen its sympathetic rebels in the area, such as RENAMO in Mozambique,
UNITA in Angola, the Lesotho Liberation Army, and the Selous Scouts, a militia
made up of white Rhodesians based in the Northern Transvaal. With this strength and support these groups
were able to undermine most of southern Africa’s states
with resulting economic turmoil. With
these internal problems and governments in shambles, most of these states did
not have the time or resources to provide South
Africa with a strong anti-apartheid
resistance and could merely provide the ANC with sanctuary, which was not
completely guaranteed in times of civil war.
Military and financial support from the West acted as a crutch for the
rapidly deteriorating system of apartheid and it was obvious to most,
especially to those in Pretoria,
what would happen if this crutch were to be removed.
If
military aid can be considered one crutch to a weakening apartheid system, then
the lack of harsh sanctions can be considered the other crutch. It was evident to the United States and Great
Britain, South Africa’s biggest trading partners and Cold War allies, that the
economics of apartheid were inapplicable in the current world market. The policy of separate development was not
conducive to the modern economy and the loss of South Africa’s migrant labor system
exploited this weakness. Both countries
also knew that strict international sanctions would ruin the government and
render the system of apartheid useless.
So why then did these two countries not, both advocates of human rights
that denounced apartheid, decide not to exploit this blatant weakness?
The answer lies
once again with the Cold War and the fear of losing strategic ground in South
Africa, with its mineral wealth and geopolitical location, to communists. When asked to comment on the situation,
former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher responded that she saw “a
communist dominated South Africa as more alarming than a white-dominated South
Africa.” This response from Thatcher illustrates the
general reason as to why there was such a lack of strict sanctions on South
Africa. It was because “operating from a Cold War perspective, the United
States, along with Western Europe,
was reluctant to rock the boat in South Africa
for fear of creating a situation that would encourage a communist revolution
there.” Since the general populations of both
countries, as well as world opinion, denounced apartheid and expected a
response from their governments, general apathy towards Pretoria
was not a viable option. To respond to
public outcry, the United States and Western Europe (led by Great Britain)
introduced the sanctions and disinvestment campaign.
“Between June 1961
and October 1988, there were no fewer than 619 episodes of sanctions applied by
governmental and nongovernmental agencies against South Africa.” It is hard to fathom how a state and economy
as weak as South Africa could survive this economic isolation. The reason behind this survival is the fact
that these sanctions provided no real “teeth” and the disinvestment campaign
had the effect of creating hundreds of South African subsidiaries which were to
be run by Afrikaners. The United States
Anti-Apartheid Act, the main piece of legislation for the implementation of
sanctions, was even described by Washington
insiders as “a jumbled piece of Christmas tree legislation with some eighteen
different types of sanctions riddled with loopholes apparent to all.” The United
States sanction on South African
agricultural goods is a good example of how the sanctions did or did not
work. A complete ban was implemented on
any South African agricultural goods sold to American markets. This was an excellent stance in theory, but
in reality, the United States
never received a substantial amount of agriculture from South
Africa.
Western Europe, on the other hand, depended quite
heavily on South African produce during the winter months and a strict sanction
was never placed on South African produce coming to Europe. The type of give and take sanctioning that
occurred with many products and markets of Cape Town and Johannesburg kept
local businesses competitive with the world’s most powerful economies, thus
keeping the outdated government and economy alive.
Beginning
in the 1980’s, the South African government and its system of apartheid were becoming
increasingly dependent upon military and economic support from the West. With the dissolution of the Soviet Union in
the early 1990’s the “red menace” was no longer the primary concern in
Washington and London. With this,
neither country saw any further danger in pulling out support from South Africa
and implementing proper sanctions.
Foreign policy in southern Africa focused on
developing economic ties and dealing with the region’s social problems. It was up to South
Africa’s Prime Minister F.W. de Klerk to
decide what the loss of these crutches meant for the future of not only white South
Africa, but for all of South
Africa.
As
history shows, de Klerk made the momentous decision to hold open elections in South
Africa and dissolve the system of
apartheid. Shortly afterwards, many
debated the actual factors which led de Klerk to make this drastic
decision. It is no surprise that this
decision came almost immediately after the conclusion of the Cold War; in an
economic and military sense, it proved a seemingly necessary one. The bitter fighting from the previous decades
made it obvious to de Klerk what would happen if South Africa faced this
growing resistance alone, without its former partners. The long and brutal civil war that would have
followed was something that nobody in South Africa wanted. Economically, the consequences were just as
severe and de Klerk knew of them first hand.
As opposed to Botha, “F.W. de Klerk had a civilian inner circle-and
particularly close links with the Transvaal business
circle.” Decolonization had already destroyed the
migrant labor system, one of the staples of apartheid. Now that the Cold War
was over, future economic isolation would absolutely destroy the already
weakened economy. This weakened economy
could by no means support the “total strategy” of the past and prevent the
impending onslaught of resistance. The
closure of two dark chapters, the Cold War and European colonization of Africa,
led to the closure of a third.