Power Sharing Versus Partition in South Africa Klaus Baron Von Der Ropp the Black Consciousness Movement in South Africa Bruce Haigh
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AUSTRALIAN OUTLOOK Journal of the Australian Institute of International Affairs AUGUST 1981 VOLUME 35 NUMBER 2 ARTICLES Resources, Political Pressures and The International Legal Order Andrew Farran Australia, Commodities and The Third World R. J. Wickes The Role of Foreign Missions in an Independent Papua New Guinea R. W. Robin South Korean Defence Capability Michael Underdown Power Sharing Versus Partition in South Africa Klaus Baron von der Ropp The Black Consciousness Movement in South Africa Bruce Haigh International Peacekeeping: The U.N. Interim Force In Lebanon Ramesh Thadeus New Zealand and the Baltic States: Principle Versus Pragmatism in Foreign Policy David McCraw Security Treaty Between Australia, New Zealand and the United States R. L. Harry BOOK REVIEWS by Richard Butler, Richard Tanter, R. J. May, Rogert Stuart, M. R. Fernando, Martin Rudner, Andrew Mack, Robert Thornton, John H. Weltman, Wio Joustra, Richard Curtain, Bill Standish, Marian Sawer, K. Afrachteh, John Girting, Coral 8el1, Colin Jeffcott. AUSTRALIAN OUTLOOK Editor David Goldsworthy Review Editor R. J. May Volume 35, Number 2 August 198 l ARTICLES Resources, Political Pressures and The International Legal Order Andrew Farrar 119 Australia, Commodities and The Third World R. J. Wickes 126 The Role of Foreign Missions in an Independent Papua New Guinea R. W. Robin 138 South Korean Defense Capability Michael Underdown 152 Power Sharing Versus Partition in South Africa Klaus Baron von der Ropp 158 The Black Consciousness Movement in South Africa Bruce Haigh 169 International Peacekeeping: The U.N. Interim Force In Lebanon Ramesh Thakus 181 New Zealand and the Baltic States: Principle Versus Pragmatism in Foreign Policy David McCraw 191 Security Treaty Between Australia, New Zealand and the United States L. Harry 201 BOOK REVIEWS by Richard Butler, Richard Tanter, R. J. May, Rogert Stuart, M. R. Fernando, Martin Rudner, Andrew Mack, Robert Thornton, John H. Wellman, Wio Joustra, Richard Curtain, Bill Standish, Marian Sawer, K. Afraehteh, John Girting, Cora/ Bell, Colin Jeffeott. AUSTRALIAN OUTLOOK is the journal of the Australian Institute of International Affairs. which iS precluded by its rules from expressing an opinion on any aspect of international affairs. Any opinions expressed in this journal are, therefore, purely individual. AUSTRALIAN OUTLOOK is published in April, August and December. SUBSCRIPTION RATES in Australia $15 a year or $5 a COPY; overseas subscribers (except New Zealand) $l8 ayer or$6 a copy (including postage). Arrangements may' be made to despatch copies Surface Air Lift (SAL) to overseas subscribers at the rates applicable to the country in question. Subscriptions should be addressed to the Secretary. Australian Institute of International Affairs. Box El8l. Post Office, Canberra, ACT, 2600. ARTICLES SUBMITTED FOR PUBLICATION should be addressed to The Editor, Auszralian Outlook, C,/- Department of Politics. Monash University. Clayton. Vic. 3168. Correspondence concerning book reviews should be addressed to The Review Editor. Australian Out/ook. Box EI8l. Post Office. Canberra. ACT 2600. POWER SHARING VERSUS PARTITION IN SOUTH AFRICA Klaus Baron von der Ropp * Reading the international press on Southern Africa, and specifically South Africa, one gets the impression that it reports according to the motto 'dramatic today. forgotten tomorrow'. The question to be asked is whether the Western powers do not follow a similar policy. They seem not to act but just to react, and to have no concept of a constructive South Africa policy. In view of the dangers involved in this conflict such an attitude is hard to understand. Only half a year ago, in January-February 1981, the world was shown that in South and Southern Africa more than just a regional conflict is at stake: after the South African attack on an ANC office in Matola l Maputo, the USSR augmented its naval presence in Beira and Maputo. This 'gesture of solidarity' by the USSR towards Mozambique was in fact the logical consequence of the friendship treaty linking the two countries. Another country bound to Moscow through a treaty of friendship, the People's Republic of Angola, is more or less regularly the target of attacks by the South African armed forces fighting the Namibian liberation movement, SWAPO. Taking into account South Africa's extreme importance to Japan and Western Europe, and to a lesser degree North America, from both an economic and a strategic point of view, an interview given in 1977 by Egon Bahr, a leading German Social Democrat, should be remembered. In it the architect of the West German policy of detente towards East Germany, Eastern Europe and the USSR warned that if things came to the worst in the Republic, the South African conflict might turn into a new global war. ! Indeed, in South Africa a situation is being developed that, in the not too distant future, could easily go beyond the control of even the US. Western Approaches to the South African Con./Yiet Until the mid-seventies the traditional Western South Africa policy aimed more or less at stabilising a liberalised version of thestarus quo. It thus overlooked the interests of South Africa's blacks (about 20 million people, or 70 per cent of the country's total population). As is well known, in 1976-7 black South African schoolchildren made it clear that the days of baasskap (white supremacy) were numbered. Only then did most Western countries realise that it was not in their interest to continue to support a political order which was little more than institutionalised racism, and which would sooner or later collapse. The West furthermore began to fear that anyone who stood at the side of Pretoria abandoned the rest of Africa to the political opponent, i.e. the Soviet Union. It was acknowledged at the time that South Africa made important contributions towards finding solutions for the problems posed by Zimbabwe/ Rhodesia and Namibia/ South West Africa. But the question was raised whether the South African regime was in a position to solve its own problems in the little time which remained. Correctly it was judged in the Western capitals that to pose this question was probably to answer it in the negative. * Research Officer. Foundation for Science and Politics, Ebenhausen. Federal Republic of Germany. I. Deutsches Allgemeines Sonntagsblatt 10 July 1977. See in this context the scenario developed in David Goldsworthy, 'South Africa`. in Mohammed Ayoob (ed.), Conflict and lntervention in the Third World (Croom Helm. London, 1980), pp. 235ff. 158 POWER SHARING VERSUS PARTITION (i) The Policy of the Carter Administration As a consequence, the US and its main allies (some of them not without hesitation) took a radically new line, summed up in Andrew Young's call for 'one-man-one-vote in one state' as the new political order for South Africa. However welcome such statements may have been in black South Africa? and the other parts of Africa, the new approach, as was to be expected, failed completely to impress white South Africa. Demands such as those made by Andrew Young and Vice-President Walter Mondale definitely do not represent a step in the direction of a solution to South Africa's dilemma. The very opposite is the case. The white Africans see such demands as an invitation to commit collective suicide. Their natural response is to retreat into the laager, or in the phrase of a leading German journalist, Gunther Gillessen, to continue their 'attempt to emigrate from history'. Although a revolution from above is absolutely imperative, the white Africans under pressure would be prepared at best to accept a policy of very limited gradual change, and would be more likely to follow a policy of what Heribert Adam called 'modernising racial domination'. And they would do so even at the risk of causing a great catastrophe. Assuming that there is no intervention on the part of one of the superpowers, the white South Africans would be able to hold out for a relatively long period of time with such a policy. The Western world has sold them all the armaments they need to fight a very bloody war against the neighboring states and the huge Fifth Column at home. (ii) Essentials of a Constructive Policy Alan Paton, a long-time liberal and ardent opponent of South Africa's political system, warned in an interview with the liberal West German weekly Die Zeit that if the growing number of militant black South Africans and the outside world continued to stick to the 'one-man-one-vote in one state'formula. then the country at the Cape of Good Hope would cease to exist. In his view an 'integrated` society, i.e. a society which lacked very strong safeguards for minorities, would only be achieved at the price of millions of dead. And Chief Gats ha Buthelezi, the only moderate black South African leader who still has a strong following, argued along similar lines in a speech to the National Council of Churches in New York: 'I know more than most the readiness of whites to scorch the earth in the eleventh hour and to die in defence of the indefensible'.3 Unlike his militant critics at home and abroad, Buthelezi knows, for instance, that the terror of the Afrika- nerWeerstandsbeweging (AWB) will undoubtedly match that of Gusch Emunim, to defend what it thinks to be the white mans legitimate interests. Against this background it is quite surprising how glibly leading representatives of the Carter Administration and quite a number of leading West European politicians over- looked the fact that there exists a white South African nation of about 4.5 million people. Like the people of European origin in Australia, Canada, the US, New Zealand and Argentina, the white South Africans are not Europeans living in a foreign continent but an autonomous nation, a nation that developed at the Cape over more than three centuries.