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Diplomacy in Black and White: America and the Search For DIPLOMACY IN BLACK AND WHITE: AMERICA AND THE SEARCH FOR ZIMBABWEAN INDEPENDENCE, 1965-1980 By William L. Bishop Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Vanderbilt University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY in History August, 2012 Nashville, Tennessee Approved: Professor Thomas A. Schwartz Professor Gary Gerstle Professor Moses Ochonu Professor Michael Bess Professor James L. Ray i Copyright © 2012 by William Lowrey Bishop All Rights Reserved ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Many people assume that writing a dissertation is a solitary endeavor. As I have come to discover over the past six years, however, nothing could be further from the truth. Throughout the course of writing this dissertation, I have incurred many debts. Although I will probably never be able to repay them, I would like to acknowledge several individuals and institutions who have helped to make this project possible. I would first and foremost like to thank Professor Thomas Schwartz. I could not have asked for a more engaged and supportive adviser. There is no way I would have completed this project if not for his guidance, support, and good humor. I also owe an enormous debt of gratitude to my other committee members: Professors Gary Gerstle, Moses Ochonu, Michael Bess, and James Ray. Each of them has provided extensive personal and professional guidance for which I am extremely grateful. My work and my thinking have benefited greatly from their input and suggestions. I am also indebted to Professors Andy DeRoche and Phil Muehlenbeck, both of whom helped me to navigate my way through Africa and through graduate school. I would also like to thank my friends and colleagues at Vanderbilt for making my time in Nashville so enjoyable – both intellectually and personally. From study sessions to trivia night at Corner Pub, my experience in grad school would have been far less enjoyable without all of you. And, of course, I would like to thank my family (especially my parents, my sister, and Amanda) for their loving support. Finally, this dissertation would not have been possible without the support of the Vanderbilt University Department of History, the Gerald R. Ford Library, the Vanderbilt University College of Arts and Sciences, the Society of Historians for American Foreign iii Relations, the Lyndon B. Johnson Library, and the Robert Penn Warren Center for the Humanities. Thank you one and all. iv Table of Contents ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ............................................................................................... iii INTRODUCTION ...............................................................................................................1 Chapter 1. THE LIMITS OF AFRICAN INFLUENCE: KENNETH KAUNDA AND THE RHODESIAN CRISIS, 1964-1974 ............................................................................................................13 The Zambian Response to UDI......................................................................................16 Satisfying No One: Britain’s Response to UDI .............................................................22 The Johnson Administration and Rhodesia: Keeping As Far Away as We Could ........28 The Nixon Administration and Africa: Accomplishing Nothing In Particular ..............34 Conclusion .....................................................................................................................44 2. THE LIMITS OF REALISM: HENRY KISSINGER AND THE RHODESIAN CRISIS, 1976....................................................................................................................................47 Explaining Kaunda’s Tears ............................................................................................49 Kissinger’s African Safari..............................................................................................56 To Lusaka and Beyond ..................................................................................................65 Playing the South African Card .....................................................................................73 The Anglo-American-South African Initiative ..............................................................80 The Geneva Conference and Its Aftermath ...................................................................90 v Conclusion .....................................................................................................................97 3. THE LIMITS OF IDEALISM: JIMMY CARTER AND THE RHODESIAN CRISIS, 1977- 1978..................................................................................................................................102 Jimmy Carter, America’s Human Rights President .....................................................104 Britain Looks Down the Dark Rhodesian Tunnel........................................................111 London Calling: The March 1977 Anglo-American Summit ......................................118 Acting in the Closest Concert: The Anglo-American Proposals .................................122 The Collapse of the Anglo-American Proposals .........................................................127 Kicking the South Africans in the Teeth ......................................................................132 Conclusion ...................................................................................................................138 4. “KEEPING FAITH” IN RHODESIA, 1978-1979 ......................................................139 Absolutely Nobody Has Anything to be Happy About ...............................................141 Toward the Rhodesian Election ...................................................................................148 The Rhodesia Lobby ....................................................................................................152 Countervailing Forces ..................................................................................................161 Conclusion ...................................................................................................................172 5. THE LIMITS OF WESTERN INFLUENCE: NIGERIA, THE FRONTLINE STATES, AND THE LANCASTER HOUSE SETTLEMENT OF 1979 .................................................177 Explaining Thatcher’s Volte-Face ...............................................................................180 Winning the Commonwealth Seal of Approval ...........................................................190 vi A First-Class Solution at Lancaster House? ................................................................196 Arriving at a First-Class Solution ................................................................................209 Conclusion ...................................................................................................................217 EPILOGUE ......................................................................................................................221 CONCLUSION ................................................................................................................246 MAPS ...............................................................................................................................256 WORKS CONSULTED ..................................................................................................259 vii Introduction From Rhodesia to Zimbabwe: A Transnational Account1 On the morning of February 8, 1977, Police Superintendent John Potter and his men carefully loaded seven white plastic bags into a police van. Inside the bags were the bullet- riddled corpses of seven missionaries who had been stationed at St. Paul’s, a Roman Catholic mission in northern Rhodesia (present-day Zimbabwe). The dead included two Jesuit priests, a lay brother, and four nuns of the Dominican order. The victims ranged in age from 34 to 73. All were white. According to the sole survivor of the attack, the missionaries had been watching a popular British television program when a group of 12 black guerrillas entered the mission, herded the missionaries out of the television room, and gunned them down at point-blank range. When he learned of the slayings, Archbishop Patrick Chapaika (a Zimbabwean) was beside himself. He described the missionaries as “fine servants of the African people” and denounced those who had killed them. Nor was the Archbishop the only member of the Catholic Church to condemn the incident; Pope Paul VI publicly decried it as an act “without reason.”2 The St. Paul’s massacre appalled many Rhodesians. For although the colony had been in a state of civil war since 1966 (the year after its white-supremacist leaders had broken with the British crown in an effort to preserve their privileged position), the guerrillas had previously limited their attacks to farmers in remote parts of the country. Assailing those who monopolized 1 Terminology can become confusing when writing about Zimbabwean history. Present-day Zimbabwe has only existed since April 1980, when the country achieved independence under majority rule. Prior to that, the territory was known by its colonial name of Rhodesia. Therefore, when writing about Zimbabwe prior to 1980, I will refer to it as Rhodesia. When writing about events since 1980, I will use the name Zimbabwe. I will refer to members of the white minority as Rhodesians and members of the country’s black majority as Zimbabweans. 2 Account based on The Times (of London), “Rhodesians Stunned by Massacre of Seven White Missionaries,”
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