Table Of ContentHOW LONG WILL
SOUTH AFRICA SURVIVE P
R.W. Johnson
For my friends
Anne Summers, Margaret Tite, and Gavin Williams
who, in a difficult time, helped
© R. W.Johnson 1977
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be
reproduced or transmitted, in any form or by any means,
without permission
First edition 1977
Reprinted 1977, 1978, 1982
Published by
THE MACMILLAN PRESS LTD
London and Basingstoke
Companies and representatives
throughout the world
Typeset in IBM Century by
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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Johnson, Richard William
How long will South Mrica survive?
1. South Africa - History 2. South Africa -
Politics and government- 1961-
1. Title
968.06 DTI79.9
ISBN 978-0-333-22095-5 ISBN 978-1-349-15831-7 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-15831-7
The paperback edition of this book is sold subject to the
condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent,
resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher's
prior consent, in any form of binding or cover other than that
in which it is published and without a similar condition including
this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser
Contents
Preface iv
A Political Map of Africa vi-vii
Introduction Black Pantomime at the Palais des Nations 1
Chapter 1 The Sharpeville Crisis and the Defeat of
Revolution 17
Chapter 2 The Recovery from Sharpeville and the
South African Economic Miracle 26
Chapter 3 From Isolation to Detente-and Failure 46
Chapter 4 South Africa's Salvation: The War over
Gold 67
Chapter 5 The Crisis of the Early 1970s 83
Chapter 6 A New International Economic Order? 102
Chapter 7 The New Politics of Detente, the Great
Powers - and Rhodesia 112
Chapter 8 Mozambique, Angola-and the Search for
New Alignments 129
Chapter 9 The Road to Soweto 172
Chapter 10 Southern Africa 1976: Henry Kissinger's
Last Gamble 209
Chapter 11 Payoffs and Sequels 243
Conclusion How long will South Africa Survive? 287
Appendix List of Acronyms and Terms used in Text 328
Preface
Although this book has been written by someone who works
as an academic, it will be evident to the reader that it is not
written in the accepted academic style. In part this is because I
have wished to keep footnoting to a minimum. I have worked
from a plethora of sources, including a vast array of newspapers
and periodicals, and did not wish to swamp the reader in
attributions. But the book is also written the way it is simply
because I wanted to do it that way. It deals with a large and
dramatic subject set in a contemporary period. The full truth
relating to some of the questions it raises may not be known for
many decades, if ever. It would be as foolish to imagine that the
Quai d'Orsay will rush to assist future scholars in understanding
French intrigues in Angola as it would be to expect that Dr
Kissinger's memoirs, when they appear, will reveal the full
complexities of US policy towards southern Africa. Properly
speaking, then, the materials do not yet exist for a fully
academic study of this book's subject, South Africa's develop
ment towards its present crisis. If such a study were attempted
it would have to be altogether more hesitant and cautious in its
approach to a number of burning issues than this book is. But
that was, for me, largely the point. They are burning issues. I
have preferred to take the scholarly risks I have in order to
tackle important but speculative concerns rather than leave
them alone. The reader will have to judge whether I have
backed hunches too outrageously far.
Although an Englishman by birth and now again by
residence I enjoyed (and that is the right word) a South African
boyhood. I have not, though, attempted to write about South
Africa before. In 1976, however, I found myself caught up
again by the sheer drama of events in southern Africa. It has
been a strange experience to recapture old emotions and
excitements in the writing of this book. I have tried to avoid
flat value judgments where possible, but I have not minded if
some of the excitement showed.
There are a number of people I should like to thank for
having helped me. John Winckler was at all times a constructive,
supportive and essential contact and friend at Macmillan, and
Allan Aslett was unfailingly helpful and considerate there too. I
have benefited, as well, from friends at Oxford, not so much in
Preface v
the immediate preparation of the manuscript, but more
pleasurably and lengthily through discussions of southern Africa
with them over time; from Gavin Williams, Charles van Onselen,
Belinda Bozzoli and Stanley Trapido. They all know more than
me; I have learnt much from them and have enjoyed doing so.
I am grateful, too, to my colleagues at Magdalen, They have,
in the broadest sense, made the college where I have the luck to
work a tolerant and stimulating place and I have benefited
accordingly.
Finally, my thanks go most of all to Anne Summers, to
whom I owe a debt quite above and beyond that acknowledged
on the dedication page. She encouraged me from the outset to
write; found time from her own writing to read and comment
on the first three chapters; was endlessly patient with me; and
allowed me to renege shamefully on my commitment to equal
shares in domestic and parenthood duties. She also performed
the difficult but occasionally necessary duty of preventing
Rebecca and Dicken from being other than a comfort and help
to me. Neither she, nor they, nor anyone else, should bear any
of the blame for whatever errors of judgment this book may
contain.
R. W. Johnson
Apri11977 Magdalen College, Oxford
NOTE ON CURRENCY
The South African unit of currency, the Rand, was tied to the £
sterling at a rate of R2 = £1 until the 1967 devaluation of the£.
From October 1972 the Rand was tied to the $instead and its
value oscillated between $1.4Q-1.50 with the floating of the$.
In June 1975 the Rand was devalued from $1.49 to $1.42 and
in September 1975 to $1.15.
A N
0 C E A N
ATLANTIC
0 C E A N
MALAGASY
400 600
Scale Miles
A Political Map of Africa 1977
RADICAL STATES
Algeria Guinea Bissau
Benin Libya
Republic of the Congo Malagasy Republic
Ethiopia Mali
Republic of Guinea Tanzania
COUNTRIES WITH TREATIES OF FRIENDSHIP WITH USSR
Angola
Mozambique
Somalia
POLITICALLY AMBIVALENT STATES
Djibouti Nigeria
Ghana Uganda
Mauretania Zambia
CONSERVATIVE PRO-WESTERN STATES
Botswana Morocco
Cameroun Niger
Central African Empire Senegal
Chad Sierra Leone
Egypt Sudan
Gabon Swaziland
Ivory Coast Togo
Kenya Tunisia
Liberia Voltaic Republic
Malawi Western Sahara
Zaire
WHITE-RULED STATES
Namibia South Africa
Rhodesia
INO IAN
OCEAN
ATLANTIC
OCEAN
~majorr ailways
--major roads
lftli;S
Bantustans
0 200 400 600
Scale Miles
Introduction: Black
Pantomime at the Palais des
Nations
As Christmas 1976 neared and the Geneva conference on
Rhodesia wore on it seemed increasingly clear that the meeting
was haunted. To wander in the halls or grounds of the Palais des
Nations is, to be fair, a pretty strange experience in its own
right. For these are the headquarters of the ill-fated League of
Nations and the ghosts of Woodrow Wilson, Clemenceau, and
Lloyd George linger quite unmistakably on this hillside over
looking the fair city of Geneva The buildings themselves
awkwardly juxtapose the new brutalism of steel and glass with
the palladian echoes of Versailles. To stroll in the gardens is to
a
imagine oneself an extra in L'Annee Derniere Marienbad,
particularly now that the carefully arcadian and landscaped
grounds are dominated by the huge and futuristic monument to
Soviet space achievements which the Russians have recently -
and mysteriously - insisted on erecting. The combined effect is
uncomfortably weird - as if a spaceship has come to rest in the
Petit Trianon. In these surroundings it is quite impossible not to
remember the ill-fated conception, the naive pretensions, and
the impotent failures of the League of Nations. The sad truth
was simply that the League was, in a fairly direct sense, a case of
infant mortality. Its progenitor, Woodrow Wilson, picked a quite
unnecessary fight with the U.S. Senate over it and, on losing,
chose to make the League the central issue of the 1920
Presidential campaign. It took very considerable reserves of
foolishness and arrogance on Wilson's part to provoke the
ambivalent Republicans into principled opposition to the
League. But such reserves Wilson did indeed possess and he
deployed them to great effect. The ensuing Republican land
slide put paid to all prospects of American participation in the
League, which was stillborn as a result. Accordingly real power
never resided within the Palais des Nations and, inevitably, an
element of play-acting quickly overtook the League's proceed
ings. And now, in 1976, the same thing had happened again.
The Conference on Rhodesia was, equally unmistakably, an
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