ReviewDialogue and Closer Association in Southern AfricaM. C. SiecleDepartment of History, University of RhodesiaThe Outward Movement in South Africa'sforeign relations was launched by PrimeMinister Leabua Jonathan's visit to Pretoria on3 September 1966, the first made by the leaderof an independent African nation to the Re-public. Lesotho's willingness to discuss mattersof common interest marked the beginning ofwhat many white South Africans hoped wouldbecome an ever-expanding circle of construc-tive dialogue and mutual understanding be-tween African states and themselves. Somesignal advances were made over the next fiveyears: the Malawi trade agreement of March1967, the acceptance of technical and econo-mic assistance by the former High CommissionTerritories, the vote of six African states infavour of dialogue at the Addis Ababa summitof June 19711 and Dr Banda's much publicisedstate visit to South Africa. The Vorster ad-ministration speeded up the implementation of'positive' apartheid in the Republic itself, de-veloping the political and economic infrastruc-ture of the so-called Bantu Homelands as anoutlet for African aspirations.South Africa in the 1960s is the subject oftwo works, one by Marquard* and the other acollection of essays edited by Rhoodie*, and isthe principal focus of a third work, a seriesof essays edited by Potholm and Dale,* whichappeared shortly before the Outward Movementbegan to lose momentum. Marquard's mono-graph, written by one of the Republic's leadinghistorians, is a plea for Southern Africanfederation on liberal lines. The other works arecollections of essays spanning a wide cross-section of political views on the affairs of thesub-continent, although the range of opinionexpressed in the Johannesburg publication isnaturally more limited. The editors give reasonsfor the choice of symposium format in theirrespective forewords: Potholm and Dale referto the lack in existing literature of 'a balancedpresentation of the differing and often antago-* I,. Marquard. A Federation of Southern Africa,London. Oxford Univ. Press, 1971, 142pp. £2,00.South African Dialogue* Contrasts in South AfricanThinking on Basic Issues, ed, N. J. Rhoodie, Johannes-burg, McGraw-Hill, 1972, 611 pp. R8,95. SouthernAfrica in Perspective: Essays in Regional Politics, ed.C. P. Potholm and R. Dale, New York, Free Press,1972, 418 pp. US$12,95.83nistic views of African nationalist spokesmen,government officials and scholars on the politicsof Southern Africa' (p.vii), while Rhoodieoffers his collection as a dialogue between localcontributors covering a wide spectrum of poli-tical views. Laudable aims, certainly; but thereare major flaws in both works. Essays arevariable in quality, often amounting to nothingmore than mere statements of official policyor exercises in polemic better suited to thedocumentary history. Rhoodie musters togetheran impressive gathering of local contributors,including inter alia three government ministers,leaders of the two principal Opposition parties,four prominent non-white political personalitiesand the leader of the Liberal Party (disbandedin May 1968), Alan Paton. Unfortunately, anundoubted virtue in Rhoodie's approach hasbecome a vice. There are too many short essayson similar topics, with consequent irritatingrepetition, and the value of the symposiumwould have been enhanced if there had beenhalf as many contributors writing at slightlygreater length and depth.Relations between the Bantustarw; and the'white' area of South Africa proper are dis-cussed in some detail, but the early coionialbackground is presented with a degree of biasin Rhoodie and largely overlooked by contri-butors to Part Two of Potholrn and Dale. Theessays by C. J. Jooste (Director, SABRA) andJ. H. Coetzee are re-statements of the Afrikanerinterpretation of South African history.2Coetzee's contribution to Rhoodie's volumeeven perpetuates the myth that Bantu tribesarrived some time after the Dutch settlementat the Cape (pp. 131-3). In this connection, itis interesting to note that even the pro-Government African Institute does not acceptthis discredited thesis: a map issued in 1967shows the Bantu in occupation of the Tran-svaal, Natal, the Transkei and most of theOrange Free State by 1650.3Jooste's contribution betrays further histo-rical distortions. He plays down the factor ofBoer expansionism during the nineteenth cen-tury, and attributes the race structure inheritedby the Malan government to the legacy ofBritish forward imperialism. Concerning theTrekboers, he remarks: 'The conquest ofpeoples was foreign to them. Their approachwas to occupy vacant land and to leave theBantu peoples to govern themselves in theirrespective national territories' (pp.4-5). This isat best a half-truth. The Mfecane had admit-tedly resulted in relatively depopulated areasin the Orange Free State with the withdrawalof tribes such as the Sotho and their associatesto more readily defensible positions, but Joostestretches the reader's credulity to breakingpoint when he implies an element of conti-nuity between the Trekkers' early Africanpolicy and the modern Bantu Homelands con-cept. President Kruger's practice of allocatingsmall locations for the occupation of Africans,subject to their good behaviour4 (referred to inG. Jacobs' essay, p. 152), was designed to safe-guard Boer security and furnish labour sup-plies: it cannot be interpreted as evidence of anearly Afrikaner commitment to the Homelandsprinciple.Following the crucial Promotion of BantuSelf-Government Act (1959), the Homelandsbecame the principal focus of the Republic'spolicy towards Africans, in response to risinginternational condemnation of apartheid. Thispolicy, based on the assumption that the Home-lands are self-contained nation-states inembryo, is set out in the official contributionsof C. P. Mulder and M. C. Botha to Rhoodie'scollection. The ideology of apartheid em-phasised the historic ethnic differences betweenSouth Africa's major tribal groupings, anapproach which gained apparent post hocjustification from later events in Black Africasuch as the Nigerian Civil War. It receivedan adventitious boost from Britain's grant ofindependence to the High Commission terri-tories, two of which were ethnic states. Whileit is unwise to gloss over the problem of'tribalism' in African politics, as Hamutenyaand Geingob have done in their contributionto Potholm and Dale (p.88), Hellman's trench-ant observations in Rhoodie's collection (pp.20-6) of this aspect of South African SeparateDevelopment are very much to the point:Elsewhere in Africa, the newly in-dependent nations are struggling tosubdue tribalism and to develop anover-riding national unity within theirarbitrarily defined borders. But in SouthAfrica the national South African con-sciousness that was developing is deli-berately being undermined and a fadingtribalism is being revitalised. If divideand rule is the final objective, then suc-cess is undoubtedly being achieved.Compartmentalisation of the African84majority into so-called 'Black Nations' has adefinite psychological advantage for SouthAfrica's Whites in that it provides the illusionof near numerical equality between the 'WhiteNation'5 and each of these areas: according toJooste's table (pp. 5-6), the only Bantustanwhich exceeds the European population of theWhite area is Kwazulu. However, the Home-lands policy is fraught with potentially em-barrassing problems for the Republic whichmight, given the right circumstances, destroythe ideological facade of Separate Developmentand induce a return to the naked baaskapismof the Malan-Strijdom era. Bantustan leaderssuch as Chief Kaiser Matanzima of the Trans-kei, and Gatsha Buthelezi of Kwazulu, a con-tributor to the Rhoodie volume, have learntnot only the rhetoric of apartheid but alsoto take advantage of their symbiotic relation-ship with Pretoria to demand more intensivedevelopment and the restoration of ancestrallands. Banton's prediction6 that Matanzima'selectoral victory of 1963 would ultimately leadto a dilemma for the Department of BantuAdministration far deeper and much lesstractable than any which might conceivablyarise from the victory of his integrationist rivalVictor Poto appears to have been vindicatedby recent events. In February 1973, a meetingto discuss Homeland independence held be-tween Vorster, Buthelezi and Matanzimareached deadlock when the two African leadersrefused to accept any further constitutionaladvance until more land was added to theirareas.7 The impending extension of BlackAfrica's frontiers to the northern boundary ofKwazulu adds a new, possibly disturbing,element to the relationship between the Bantu-stans and Pretoria. In this context, Jacobs'reference (p. 163) to the homelands as potential'Cubas' is likely to win more sympathy fromthe white electorate than it did when it ap-peared in the United Party platform for the1966 election.The move towards political devolution inthe Bantustans has been accompanied by anextended dialogue on a possible associationof states to embrace not only a Republic par-titioned between Black and White but also theformer High Commission Territories andpossibly some of its northern neighbours.Several contributors to the works under reviewhave taken Dr Verwoerd's 'common market'speech of 1961 as the starting point, but thepolicy is of much earlier provenance. The con-cept of a South African commonwealth com-prising a federation of component ethnic groupswas put forward in a SABRA policy state-ment issued in 1952.8 It was developed furtherin Rhoodie and Venter's now classic work onapartheid philosophy published in 1959.9Historical evidence shows that interest incloser association, based on the extension ofpolitical control, had been a significant themeat various stages after unification. The 1910Act of Union itself had facilitated eventualAfrikaner political and ideological dominanceover the country as a whole, while the awardof a mandate over South West Africa, capturedby Union soldiers in 1915, had given Pretoriavirtual sovereignty over an adjacent territory.According to the late Richard Meinertzhagen,South African forces serving in the East Afri-can campaign had hoped that German EastAfrica would be granted to South Africa aswell.10 General Smuts' offer to the SouthernRhodesian electorate in 1922 and his later visionof a 'great African Dominion stretching un-broken throughout Africa'11 were further mani-festations of South African sub-imperialismunder the British aegis.It is interesting to note that, at this stage,Smuts' Afrikaner opponents strongly con-demned his 'outward movement', feeling thatit would strengthen the Imperial tie and exposeSouth Africa to the swaari gevaar from theNorth. No such reservations were expressed inthe case of the High Commission Territories,which, though black, were regarded by allparties alike as an integral part of South Africaand sooner or later destined for incorporation.Thus Afrikaner nationalists were in the fore-front of the fifty-year struggle (see J. P. Stevens'contribution to Potholm and Dale) with Britainover the issue of their absorption. The pro-tracted debate ended only in 1962, when Ver-woerd evidently decided that South Africa'sobjective could be achieved by economic means.Verwoerd's change of heart over the futureof these territories and the commencementof the Outward Movement in general was in-duced by Britain's rapid decolonisation of herdependencies in the early sixties, a processwhich threatened to isolate the Republic. Whileit was militarily secure for the foreseeablefuture, the outward movement provided avaluable psychological crutch to an administra-tion that wished to regain international res-85pectability after adverse reactions to theSharpeville massacre and its implementation ofpetty apartheid measures.In character, the outward policy of Ver-woerd and Vorster has been naturally quitedifferent from that of their predecessors fortyto fifty years before. The stridently anti-colonialtone of international politics precluded anyproposal involving the extension of sovereignty,however limited Š indeed, South West Africa(Namibia) became the Achilles heel of the out-ward movement, despite the breathing-spacegiven South Africa after the International Courtof Justice's surprising judgment of July 1966Š and in practice, the Republic's endeavourshave been in the fields of Dialogue, economicassistance and co-operation. Several schemeshave been put forward by South African ex-perts: one such, comprising an economiccommunity covering the sub-continent south ofZaire and' Tanzania, is discussed in EschelRhoodie's contribution to Potholm and Dale.A further outline, involving a measure ofSouth African control over its neighbours, isset out at length in Marquard's A Federationof Southern A:\rica. The author argues eloquent-ly for a federal association between South Afri-ca, Lesotho, Swaziland, Botswana and possibly-South West Africa (Namibia) to stem whathe terms the drift towards 'stagnation or to acollision between white and non-white' (p.l).However attractive his liberal treatise may seemto those hopeful of a just and peaceful solutionto South Africa's racial problems, it showslittle regard for present-day realities. Forreasons discussed more fully below, it is diffi-cult to foresee either the black states of South-ern Africa agreeing to surrender a moiety oftheir sovereignly to a federation which wouldbe dominated economically if not politically bythe white regions, or the United Nations ap-proving the inclusion of South West Africa(Namibia). Marquard's federal proposal restson the further assumption that a drastic libera-tion of apartheid should be made, includinginter alia the possible political inclusion ofColoureds and Indians in the white regions(p.4), free movement of African labourers(p.98), by implication, the augmentation ofBantustans (p.7l) and the release of non-whitepolitical detainees prior to a constitutionalconference (p.131). If these are to be pre-requisites for federation, it is unlikely that theMarquard plan will be realised in the nearfuture; moreover, one doubts whether the for-mer High Commission Territories and theUnited Nations would consider them adequate.There has been a tendency for observersto overstress the central role of economic andgeopolitical factors when discussing relationsbetween the former High Commission Terri-tories and South Africa: Weisfelder, one of thecontributors to Potholm and Dale (pp. 125-140)has couched his essay in such a framework.However, a thesis based solely on these elementsis much too limited. Three other factors mustbe taken into account: the lingering memory ofSouth African expansionism, outlined above;the related hatred of apartheid, which has attimes overridden economic and geographicalconsiderations; and the unpredictable personal-ity factor of certain black African leaders.The deterioration of relations betweenLesotho, significantly the most dependant ofstates in the sub-continent, and South Africaafter 1971 affords an apt illustration of thesefactors. In October, 1971, Chief Jonathanlaunched a strong attack on Separate Develop-ment at Lesotho's fifth anniversary celebrations,and intervened to prevent the visit of an IvoryCoast representative to Pretoria for talks onDialogue. His Minister of Foreign Affairs de-clared Lesotho's support for African guerillasat a conference of non-aligned states held inGuyana during August 1972. Two furtherevents, Lesotho's vote against South Africain the United Nations sanctions debate ofNovember, 1972, and Chief Jonathan's spon-taneous outburst at the time of the Carletonvilleshootings further demonstrate that a modelof Lesotho-South African relations based solelyon the 'hostage theory',12 is inadequate to meetall circumstances. It remains to be seen whetherthe recent accord reported between ChiefJonathan and Vorster has really healed thiswidening ideological breach.13Moving north from the Southern Africanheartland, the personality factor in regionalpolitics is exemplified further by the strangecase of Malawi, whose links with South Africaare not entirely explicable in economic terms.The internal split between Dr Banda and his'Young Turks' over a number of issues includ-ing (according to Speck in Potholm and Dale,p.211) relations with the white south reflectedthe common political dichotomy amongst olderand younger nationalists; a similar feature maybe discerned in Banda's distrust of his more86ideological contemporaries in Zambia andTanzania.Regional politics in Southern Africa havemoved into a period of extreme uncertaintysince the publication of the works under review.Apart from the manifest tension between theRepublic and some of its enclave states,14 notedearlier, and the continued Rhodesian stalematewhich has in turn contributed to the failure ofPretoria's approaches to Lusaka,'5 the Portu-guese coup of April 1974 has injected a morefluid element into the body politic of the sub-continent. Potholm's remark that 'Mozambiqueis in many ways the key swing unit in thesub-system of Southern Africa' (p. 150) is nolonger a mere academic speculation. Portugal'sabrupt decision to de-colonise its overseaspossessions has drawn attention to the now self-evident factor, under-rated in Potholm's pro-jection (p.324), of metropolitan Portugal inSouthern African regional politics. It remainsto be seen whether, as in the instance of Zam-bia's decision to keep its border with Rhodesiaclosed, ideology rather than economic self-interest will determine the future pattern ofinter-state relations in Southern Africa._ AREFERENCESsGabon, Ivory Coast. Lesotho, Madagascar, Malawi and Mauritius. Five other nations abstained.2See particularly F. A. Van Jaarsvcld, The Afrikaner's Interpretation of History, Cape Town, Simondium, 1964.The best objective account is that of E. S. Munger, Afrikaner and African Nationalism: South African Parallelsand Parameters. London, Oxford Univ. Press, 1967.3Sce Bulletin of the Africa Institute of South Africa. 195/, 5* .iu, cover.4E, A. Walker, A History of Southern Africa, London, Longmans, 3 959, p.277.sTerms as used in South African Information Service, Progress through Separate Development: South Africa inPeaceful Transition, New York 1968, p.4.«M. Banton, Race Relations, London, Tavistock Publications. 1967, p. 183.^Financial Mail (Johannesburg), Decentralisation : a Financial Mail Special Survey, 30.hi.1973, p.53.eSouth African Bureau of Racial Affairs, Integration or Separate Development? Stellenbosch, Sabra, 1952, p.35.sN. J. Rhoodic and H. J. Venter, Apartheid: a Socio-historical Exposition of the Origin and Development ofthe Apartheid Idea, Cape Town, H.A.U.M., [1959], p.26.<°R. Meincrtzhagen, Army Diary 1899-1926, Edinburgh. Oliver and Boyd, 1960, p. 164.HS. G. Millin, General Smuts, 2 vols., London, Fabcr"& Faber, 1936, IE p.41.2.izAfter J. Halpern, South Africa's Hostages. London, Penguin, 1965,isBvlletin of the Africa Institute of South Africa. 1974, 7, 141-6,'"President Khama of Botswana followed Lesotho's lead in September 1973 and expressed support for the guerrillamovement, later officially recognising Guinea-Bissau, Bulletin of the Africa. Institute of South Africa, 1974, 7, 5.isProspects of a detente between Zambia and South Africa brightened at the time this review was being written,with a speech by the South African Prime Minister, The Senate of the Republic of South Africa, Debates, FirstSession, Fourth Senate, cc.3335-46, 23.x.1974. The cooling of relations between Zambia and Tanzania overincreased railage costs on copper may have been a contributory factor to this new development.87