Hands off Southern Africa; W. H. Chamberlin

Consider in retrospect Woodrow Wilson's message, calling for a declaration of war against Ger many in April, 1917: "Make the world safe for democracy." Mr. Chamberlin is a skilled observer and reo porter of economic and political conditions at home and abroad. In addition to writing a number of books, he has lectured widely and is a contributor to The Wall Street Journal and numerous magazines. 176 WILLIAM HENRY CHAMBERLIN The actual sequel to America's participation in World War I was the emergence and spread of two systems which were an utter negation of democratic principles as understood by Wilson and practiced in those countries of North America and Western Eu rope where democracy took firm root. These systems were fascism and communism, both products of the psychological aftermath of the destruction of human life on an unprecedented scale and the uprooting of old institutions and loyalties. Who remembers the Four Freedoms, the Atlantic Charter, or other professed aims of World War II, except to mark the complete contradiction between these objectives and the much less pleasant realities of the postwar settlement?

The crusading spirit that leads Americans periodically to plunge into wars or to take steps likely 1969 HANDS OFF SOUTHERN AFRICA 177 to provoke wars, in pursuit of moralistic and often quite im practical goals, is a compound of several elements. There is an ele ment of naive arrogance, ex pressed in the assumption that, by means of war, we can make what is perhaps an unsatisfactory situ ation better, not worse. There is the equally naive and arrogant as sumption that a political system which has served us well is auto matically best suited to the needs and requirements of peoples with different historical, political, eco nomic, and social backgrounds~ There is also in a crusading war the illusion, dangerous to a na tion as to an individual, of omnip otence, of ability to control to our liking the many new, some times unforeseeable, forces that will come to the surface as a by product of war. Woodrow Wilson was a scholar and a student of history. But how much he over looked, perhaps inevitably, when he envisaged a peace based on his fourteen points and guaranteed by a new institution, the League of Nations. The inability, for in stance, to obtain just postwar boundaries and a reasonable fi nancial settlement against the de sire of the European allies for an nexations and indemnities and the inflamed state of American public opinion. Or the violent revolution ary impulses that would be unleashed by the rancor of defeat and the disruption of familiar boundaries and institutions, to say nothing of the individual and social distress caused by the pro longed slaughter. Or the unwill ingness of sovereign states to turn over the responsibilities of their own defense and the issue of whether or not to participate in future hostilities to an untried or ganization like the League of Na tions.

In retrospect it seems evident that the best promise of a lasting peace, once World War I had be gun, would have been a compro mise settlement in 1915 or 1916 which would have been ac cepted by all participants, not with full satisfaction for any, but without leaving a sense of intoler able political and economic wrong. This was 'what President Wilson himself thought before the United States became a belligerent. The best critic of vVilson, the unsuc cessful peacemaker of Paris, was Wilson on January 22, 1917, plead ing for a "peace without victory" in an address to the United States Senate: "Victory would mean peace forced upon the loser, a victor's terms imposed upon the van quished. It would be accepted in humiliation, under duress, at an intolerable sacrifice, and would leave a sting, a resentment, a bit178 THE FREEMAN March ter memory upon which terms of peace would rest, not permanently, but only as upon quicksand. Only a peace between equals can last, only a peace the very principle of which is equality and a common participation in a common bene fit."

Not the least of the advantages of a peace by negotiation - before the final breaking point came in 1918 - would have been that such a settlement would most probably have averted the victories of com munism in Russia and fascism in Italy and national socialism in Germany, thus averting new causes of new wars. The U. N. Road to War The grave and disillusioning consequences of crusading wars are now written large for all to see. Yet, the United States cur rently risks being drawn into just this type of harmful and un necessary conflict. The place is southern Africa; the instrumen tality is the United Nations, or, more specifically, its AfroAsian bloc; the cause, the willingness of the United States representa tives at the UN to vote for reso lutions which may seem innocu ous on the surface, but which have explosive implications. The section of Africa which lies between the Zambesi River and the Cape of Good Hope has not set up native nationalist administra tions. This is because the Union of South Africa, the largest and richest of the four territories of southern Africa, and its northern neighbor, Rhodesia, are under the government of people with a strong pioneering tradition who are unwilling to trust their pros pects under the black racist re gimes that would be in prospect if a system of "one man, one vote"

were introduced. This attitude is understandable because the ma jority of the African natives live under tribal conditions, isolated from modern life, and quite un familiar with Western political ideas and institutions. The remainder of southern Africa consists of two large Por tuguese colonies, Angola on the west coast and Mozambique on the east. Feeling that they stand or fall together, the governments of South Africa and Rhodesia and the Portuguese administrations in Angola and Mozambique maintain close contact in fighting subver sion. Approaches to Racial Problems Each of the states and adminis trations of southern Africa has its own distinctive approach to the African native problem. The Union of South Africa is com mitted to a policy of apartheid or separate development for its vari1969 HANDS OFF SOUTHERN AFRICA 179 ous racial groups: the whites, who are mostly of Dutch or British descent, the various native Afri can tribes, the East Indians and the "coloreds," some of them peo ple of mixed blood, some descend ants of indentured Malays. This implies separate facilities in schools, public accommodations, and political life. It is defended by most white South Africans and by some natives on the ground that a racially amalgamated so ciety in South Africa is neither possible nor desirable, that the various races are happiest if given separate opportunities. (Curiously enough, some of the extreme black nationalists in the United States seem to have reached a very simi lar conclusion.) To the South Africans - espe cially those who speak Afrikaans, a modified Dutch, and are of Dutch descent - apartheid is not mentioned apologetically, but is avowed and defended as a sincere effort to solve a difficult and com plicated racial problem. As com pensation for the denial of equal political, economic, and social rights to nonwhites in white areas of settlement, South Africans point to the separate colleges for the Bantus and other ethnic groups and especially to the gov ernment policy of setting up na tive administrative areas, some times called Bantustans, with elected native parliaments and governments, where whites are being squeezed out of existing shops and factories so that the Bantus may manage their own affairs.

One of these states, the Trans Rei, is in existence and others are projected for the future. I visited the Trans-Kei in the spring of 1968 and came away with the feel ing that the government was sin cere in its ideal of racial separate development; but there are for midable economic obstacles in the way of its realization. The land at the disposal of the present and future Bantustans cannot support the African native population. Those who seek work in urban areas encounter a good many reg ulations and restrictions. The white governing regime in Rhodesia has a somewhat differ ent approach. Apartheid, in its more extreme forms, does not exist in Rhodesia, where one is impressed by the numbers of na tive policemen and by the integra tion in most hotels and the use of African units in the small Rho desian army. Incidentally, these African units showed no sense of divided loyalty when called on to combat incursions of communist or nationalist-trained guerrilla bands operating from bases in Zambia. There are no African na tives in the South African par180 THE FREEMAN March liament in Capetown; but there are fifteen Africans among the sixty-five members of the Rhode sian parliament in Salisbury.

Portuguese policy in Angola and Mozambique is something else again. There is no official color bar for those natives who, by edu cation and habits, have acquired the status of assimilados, or civi lized people. The number of these assimilados, however, is still quite small. South Africa is completely free from any signs of native unrest, and the Rhodesian military and police forces have experienced little difficulty in dealing with guerrilla incursions. There has been more .serious fighting, the extent of which is hard to. gauge, in Angola and Mozambique, al though the principal towns and routes of communication have been securely held. The AfroAsian Sloe From the beginning, the newly independent African states have waged an unceasing vendetta against the southern part of the African continent that remains under white rule. As a matter of principle, they have been joined by most of the Asian members of the United Nations. It is through this institution that the danger of United States involvement in this foreign quarrel arises. The AfroAsian bloc that always votes against anything that may be con strued as imperialism (although selectively indifferent to Soviet demonstrations of this tendency) is weak in real political, military, and economic power. But it dis poses of disproportionate voting strength in the UN General As sembly.

The AfroAsian bloc in the UN has proved repeatedly that it has enough voting power to carry any resolution, however extreme, com mitting the UN members to hostile and punitive actions against the nations of southern Africa. These resolutions have no binding force; but they create a constant element of tension and strain in the rela tions of the United States with the Union of South Africa, Rho desia, and Portugal. In view of the fact that these countries have been uniformly friendly in their attitude toward the United States (they have paid their debts, ex tended a friendly welcome to United States tourists, and pro vided profitable .fields for trade and investment) there is no rea son for a U. S. policy of hostile pin pricks. Yet the United States has asso ciated itself with many hostile resolutions inspired by the Afro Asian bloc and in some cases has proceeded from words to deeds.

For instance, it is associated with 1969 HANDS OFF SOUTHERN AFRICA 181 an arms boycott of the Union of South Africa, although the arms which South Africa wishes to pur chase abroad are sophisticated weapons which would he useless.in civil disturbances. When I visited South Africa in the spring of 1968, Admiral Biermann, com mander of the small South Afri can navy, put to me a question that puzzles many of his country men: "Why do the Americans and British expect us, in the event of war, to keep the sea route around the Cape of Good Hope open and refuse to sell us submarines and other naval equipment we need?" It was not an easy question to answer. The United States has gone still further in· the case of Rhodesia, and in plain violation of its own national interest. This former British colony, where Britain has exercised no control over internal affairs for decades, declared its independence three years ago. It has maintained this status despite feeble harassing inroads of com munist or black nationalist ter rorists across the .frontier from Zambia (formerly Northern Rho desia) and despite sanctions against its exports and imports initiated by Great Britain with the support of the UN and the participation of the United States.

American trade with Rhodesia (with its 225,000 whites and four million natives) has been neces sarily on a small scale. But that country has been an important source of a strategic material, chrome, which the United States does not produce itself. The prin cipal other source is the Soviet Union. On the record of the two, which is the greater threat to peace, the Soviet Union or Rhodesia? Every reasonably intelligent person knows the answer. Yet the United States, by refusing to buy Rho desian chrome, has seemed to pro ceed on the theory that it is more endangered by Rhodesia than by the Soviet Union. U. S. Meddling in Africa The United States has taken up a wholly unnecessary attitude of meddling partisanship on another African issue: South Africa's ad ministration of the huge, sparsely populated, former German colony of Southwest Africa. This area, acquired by South Africa as a mandate from the long-deceased League of Nations, has been vir tually incorporated in that coun try for more than half a century.

It could not be detached without a difficult military expedition in forbidding and difficult terrain, a task which no one has the ap parent force or desire to under take. It is always unwise to threaten 182 THE FREEMAN March by implication measures which there is no intention to implement. Yet former U.S. Ambassador Arthur Goldberg went out of his way at the UN to assert that South Africa had forfeited its mandate and had no other au thority to administer this terri tory. The United States also gave its assent to one of the most futile and ridiculous projects ever spawned by the United Nations. This was the establishment of a "United Nations Council for Southwest Africa," with an as signed function of administering the territory until independence, a goal which the Council was in structed to do all in its power to achieve by June, 1968. June, 1968 has come and gone, and what this phantom Council has achieved has been precisely zero. It is futile and undignified for the United States to take part in such silly games.

Leave Them Alone In the light of the unhappy re sults of crusading wars in the past, a rethinking of American policy toward southern Africa seems clearly in order. As indi viduals, Americans may be con vinced or unconvinced by the ar guments for and against the pres ent situation in the Portuguese colonies, in South Africa, and in Rhodesia. One point that should not be overlooked in considering denunciations of the present re gimes in the Union of South Africa and Rhodesia is that hun dreds of thousands of African na tives have "voted with their feet" by voluntarily leaving other parts of Africa to seek higher wages and better opportunities in these two countries. The wise course for a country which, like the United States, has not made a conspicuous success of its own race relations would be to adopt a strictly "hands off" policy toward southern Africa, to abstain from voting on provocative UN resolutions, to withdraw the arms embargo on South Africa, and to dissociate itself from sanctions against Rhodesia. (Many of the Britons who are best informed on Rhodesian realities would breathe a sigh of relief if we would pull the rug from under a sanctions policy that has been getting no where fast.) If the present re gimes in southern Africa are doomed by the course of history, as some of their critics believe, we assume no obligation to save them. But why, in the name of realism and common sense, should we play the role of Che Guevaras and Mao Tse-tungs and help to let loose the horrors of racial strife over an area with whose peoples we have no quarrel? ~ of the FREE MARKET ROBERT H. EAGLE SOCIAL and economic changes, changes in tastes and technology, appear inevitable. Many of yester day's products and processes have passed from the scene, replaced today by countless goods and ser vices unheard of a few years ago.