Southern Africa Vol..11 No. 1

Southern Africa Vol..11 No. 1 JJ3)~d])@lli~ November 1995 @1 ~@l!dl~Thl®~lli JA\ir~Jl© November 1995 REPORT Vol. 11 No.1 Contents Editorial: Freeman, Cockburn & Co. 1 NAMIIIA : Canada and South Africa: Less of the Same ... ......... .. 3 >.·· ·... ...:£._,c.•,. ... ,i SWAZILAND The U.S. Front: Newt-ering the Solidarity Movement . 8 Southern Africa Canadian Solidarity: REPORT After Anti-Apartheid 10 is produced 4 times a year by a volunteer collective of TCLSAC, Timeless Bombs: the Toronto Committee for Links The Mines of Mozambique 14 between Southern Africa & Canada The Southern Africa Minefield 603-1/2 Parliament St. 19 Toronto, M4X 1P9 Tel. (416) 967-5562 Decentralization in South Africa: Email [email protected] How Democratic? . 23 Submissions, suggestions and help in production are welcome and invited. South Africa: Elite Sport is Winning 27 ISSN 0820-5582 SAR is a member of the Canadian Magazine Publishers Assqciation. More on Mozambique Now: All rights reversed. 1. Not the Whole Story 30 2. Holes in the Story 32 Subscriptions Annual TCLSAC membership and Southern Africa Report subscription rates are as follows: SUBSCRIPTION: SAR Collective Individual (1 year) . $18:00 Institution . $40.00 Margie Adam, Carolyn Bassett, Christine Beckermann, Lois Browne, Marlea Clarke, MEMBERSHIP: (includes subscription) David Cooke, David Galbraith, Dave Hartman, Richard Pathak, Regular . $35.00 Joel Rosenbloom, JohnS. Saul, Lauren Swenarchuk, Unemployed Herb Vise , Joe Vise, Mary Vise Student . $18.00 Senior Sustainer over $100.00 Cover design by Art Work Cover photo by David Hartman Overseas add $10.00 Canadian Publications Mail Product Sales Agreement No . 569607 Freeman, Cockburn & Co. ------------~~~ A magazine like SAR stands or falls on the quality of its writers - and we must also rely on such writers' loyalty and shared commitment, rather than authors' fees, to keep the texts flowing. What could be more fitting, then, than to start our eleventh year of publication with an overview on the past ten years of Canadian policy-making towards southern Africa by Linda Freeman. For Freeman, as regular readers will ~now, has been our most reliable author, and perhaps our most widely read and cited one, over the first decade of SAR's existence. Each year she has provided us with an assessment - knowledgeable and well-documented, clear and acerbic - of official Canada's undertakings in the region. Now, in this her tenth instal ment, she presents a magisterial overview of official Canada's record over the past decade, an histori cal survey that effectively debunks many of the myths that have be gun to cluster around that record . But she also concludes on a sober ingly contemporary note, underscor ing the extent to which the or thodoxies of neo-conservative eco nomics, so prevalent in other policy spheres, also give officialdom license for the most selfish possible read ing of Canada's on-going interest in South Africa. Competitiveness, trade and investment, IMF rules: so Ottawa's litany goes, with any di rect concern for the fate of the dis possessed in South Africa (or else where, for that matter) increasingly down played. Other key articles in the present issue speak further to the implica tions of this kind of finding. Please note, however, that Freeman's own work - of which SAR readers (and editors) have been the most imme diate and grateful beneficiaries over the years - will soon take on the Southern Africa REPORT november 1995 1 ________________ @@~~@~~~n ________________ additional weight and substance of offers little real long-term prospect in the region itself. So we're pleased an about-to-be published book (by for African development anyway. to enter our second decade by of the University of Toronto Press) en We hope to sustain and further fering a range of articles, beyond titled Canada and South Africa in deepen reflection on such vexing our lead pieces, that provide novel the Trudeau and Mulroney Years. questions in forthcoming issues of and well-grounded insights on press This is the good news: readers SAR. Let us, for the moment, ing issues that confront southern will want to keep their eyes open for take comfort from the fact that Africans. Moreover - speaking of this volume, a stocking stuffer if ever there are support groups and NGOs authors! - we're particularly hon there was one (although such is the in North America (Sutton's article oured in this issue to have, along scope of Freeman's undertaking that comes with a preliminary listing of side veteran Linda Freeman, a no quite a big stocking will probably such organizations in Canada) that table first-time SAR contributor: be required). The bad news? continue both to critique their own Canada's leading singer-songwriter, Freeman's threat that her tenth government's policies and to reach Bruce Cockburn. annual contribution to these pages out to their counterparts - trade unions, women's groups, community Cockburn writes with character may well be her last - for she is istic eloquence and at first hand ( af poised to move on to other work organizations, rural cooperatives, and the like - in southern Africa. ter a recent trip to Mozambique) (albeit work that remains southern about one of southern Africa's most Africa-focused). Do we hear a haunting problems, the ubiquitous sigh of relief from Ottawa's foreign presence of land-mines in the rural policy mandarins? Not so fast: * * * areas. As both Cockburn and, in don't tell Freeman, but we plan It seems safe to say that, in sustain a related article, Alex Vines testify, to coax her out of retirement from ing such efforts, there is no substi these are bombs - not time bombs time to time, precisely to continue tute for information about what is so much as timeless bombs - that her heretofore successful efforts to actually happening on the ground, have been strewn recklessly across keep those mandarins a little more the path of development in coun honest than they might otherwise be tries like Angola and Mozambique, inclined to be! a deadly legacy of the region's long Meanwhile, the tasks of southern agony of war. And they are primed, Africa-related political work do More quite literally, to go off: again ... continue in Canada, as Sue Sutton Canadian- and again. finds in her survey in this issue of rnagaz1nes Other articles probe the current what's left of the erstwhile anti than ever before! state of play in various spheres apartheid movement in Canada. It's of South African policy-making - true that the loss of the political For your home and workplace, or for discerning specifically, sports policy and local focus that apartheid's evil system gift Ideas, the 1996 Canadian Magazine Catalogue offers something special for everyone. government (as analyzed by Douglas provided has reduced the salience New This Yur: 10% off on 1\No or More Booth and by David McDonald, of South Africa in Canada, and Subscriptions I respectively) - that are also proving the issues of equitable development To get your listing of more than 250 great to be mine-fields, albeit of a more and democratic empowerment that magazines, send us this coupon today with $5 {including GST, shipping and handling). We are figurative and immediately political remain are less easy to get a bead on also happy to take VISA or Mastercard kind. And there is even some good for many Canadians. Moreover, as orders by fax or phone. Tal (416) 504-0274 Fax {416) 504-0437 news , in the form of a response Jim Cason (another author familiar, by Ken Wilson to an article in over the years, to SAR readers) '" CMPA a previous issue on post-electoral observes of the support movement in '"""'"' 130 Spadina Avenue. Suite 202, ~ Toronto, Ontario MSV 2L4 Mozambique. In striking contrast the United States, there are difficult to the tone and substance of that dilemmas inherent in Africa-related Send me the new CMPA Catalogue 1996. I enclose my credit ca rd in forma t1 on or earlier article, Wilson suggests that political work in the present global ""' cheque for SS (GST, postage and handling • are covered in this amount). there is much that should inspire us context. Name in some of the current developments Cason notes, in particular, the Address in Mozambique. Could it be that irony of being forced to struggle the struggle really does continue, for a better deal for Africa (in Cit Prov both in southern Africa and in North terms of aid, trade concessions, Postal America? As we enter our second the availability of IMF /World Bank 0 Cheque enclosed 0 Visa 0 Mastercard decade of publication we can only # d.Jte funds) within a global economic make one promise on that front: our Signature system that, left untransformed, writers will keep you posted. 2 november 1995 Southern Africa REPORT _________ ©~1J]1CffiM-----------,----- Canada and South Africa: Less of the Same BY LINDA FREEMAN his first visit here as head of state of Canada's mixed record the new South Africa. Linda Freeman is SAR's Ottawa Yet, as the nine previous articles correspondent; she has just completed in Southern Africa Report have a book on Canada and South Africa in The prospect gives us a moment demonstrated, this memory is highly selective. The record was always the Trudeau and Mulroney Years. to reflect on the Canadian govern more mixed and the contribution ment's part in bringing apartheid more nuanced than the official view to an end and to assess its involve As South Africa's government of na would have us believe. tional unity grapples with recon ment in the transition. Legend struction, attention in Canada and has it that Canadian Prime Minis Although Diefenbaker did not the world has necessarily moved on ters from Diefenbaker to Mulroney side with the other white domin from the long struggle to end apart played a leading role in combatting ions in supporting apartheid South heid.

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