From: mark@uctvax.uct.ac.za
Newsgroups: soc.culture.african
Subject: Re: Death of Evil Empire II
Date: 9 Nov 92 16:47:46 GMT
Article-I.D.: uctvax.1992Nov9.144746.203240
Organization: University of Cape Town

kautaj@silver.ucs.indiana.edu (kauta) writes:
> The US will never stop this practice...old habits never die. They just smell
> that way. The righteous Jimmy Carter's linkage of aid to human rights was 
> really just a ploy. No more. Rhodesia and SA were tramping on the blak race 
> with impunity during his era..Slick Willy is not supposed to behave 
> differently. I am just curious, what are SA papers saying about this change 
> of guard at the white house? Maybe Mark Ramsden would fill us in on this...

From what I've read there seems to be general consensus here
that the policy of the new US administration will not
involve any major changes from before.  It has been
suggested however that there will a shift from covert
support for Inkatha to some covert support for the ANC by
the new administration.  According to news reports:

SA ambassador to the US Harry Swartz said he did not expect
any significant changes in American foreign policy towards
SA, and added that he had had several "friendly" discussions
with Bill Clinton in the past.  He expected the ANC to benefit
from better relations with the new president while Inkatha,
which had a lot of support from Bush/Reagan would lose most
of that.

FW de Klerk said he looked forward to continuing the
friendly relations between SA and the US.

The ANC extended hearty congratulations to Clinton, and 
Nelson Mandela sent personal messages to both Clinton and
Bush.  Shortly afterwards Clinton telephoned Mandela,
and according to Ms Gill Marcus of the ANC they had a warm
discussion.

I did not notice any PAC comment on the implications of the
result, but there was a statement issued by them
congratulating Clinton, and expressing the hope that he
would seriously consider the putting effective pressure on
the SA government towards the establishment of a
democratically elected constituent assembly.

I did not notice any response from Chief Mango.  Gavan
Evans, writing in the Weekly Mail, suggests that given a
shift in emphasis by the new administration it is a matter
of time before either Mango or Pik (or both) issue a
blustering attack on US policy.

Jaap Marais of the (ultra-right) Herstigte Nationale Party 
suggested the new administration would be "more openly
hostile towards white South Africans".

An editorial in the _Cape Times_ stressed the difficulties
that Clinton will face in rebuilding an American economy,
while an editorial in _The Argus_  emphasised what it saw as
Clinton's personal weaknesses (as enumerated by the Bush
campaign).

For a more in-depth analysis, the following opinion-piece
appeared in the Cape Times, November 5 1992, written by
Peter Vale of the Centre for Southern African Studies at the
University of the Western Cape:

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CLINTON VICTORY CHANGES TONE OF US-SA RELATIONS
By Peter Vale

Bill Clinton's victory in the US presidential election
offers hope for a new beginning in relations between South
Africa and the United States.

For 12 years the two governments have been formally absorbed
in a series of engagements, not all of which were fully
appreciated by both sides.

The first of these was Chester Crocker's much-vaunted policy
of "Constructive Engagement".  It was intended as Crocker
recently reminded us in his memoirs as a nudge to South
Africa's leaders towards political change and simultaneosly
to bring peace to Southern Africa.

For many South Africans, engagement with Pretoria was not
more that a nod in the direction of South Africa's then
president PW Botha, and the series of destructive policies
which led to two states of emergency and the infamous
Rubicon speech, which stripped the country of one-third of
its wealth

Shambles

Constructive engagement, may argue, also sanctioned South
Africa's policy of regional destabilisation which exacted a
terrible price on our neighbours and, as seriously, sowed
death and destruction amoung South Africans in exile.

While Crocker has recently claimed success for constructive
engagement, by the time Namibia became independant and FW de
Klerk set South Africa's political process adrift, his
policy seemed in a shambles.  Were this not so, why was it
that by the time these events came to pass, Crocker had been
replaced as US Assistant Secretary of State for African
Affairs by Herman Cohen?

New Problems

Cohen too has attempted to engage Pretoria and, through it
southern African issues.  In some ways his task has been
easier than Crocker's.  The ending of the Cold War, for
example, both freed South Africa's political process and
loosened up the ri-gidity of regional relations.  Both of
these have helped Pretoria to build its international
relations with the United States.

Some residual problems have tripped Cohen up, however, and
new ones, such as the drought, have presented unique
opportu-nities.  Amoung the former, count the very lingering
and potentially very destructive war in Angola and the
simmering conflict in Mozambique as the most important.  In
both these cases, the United States has relied on Pretoria's
Pik Botha as an important interlocuter.  This has also
helped to strengthen the formal links between Washington and
Pretoria.

Differences

As Clinton turns his mind both to South Africa and the
region, thoughts will not stray far from Cohen's agenda:
bring and end to the violence in South Africa, push forward
the settlement process and stabilise the prospects for peace
in both Angola and Mozambique.

The levers at hand will not be very different from those
Crocker and Cohen have used.  But there are important
differences in touch and tone.

By design, rather than accident, the Reagan and Bush
administrations found themselves on the side of South
Africa's white minority.  The very divisive nature of South
Africa's politics cast the Democrats - deservedly or not -
as the friends of South Africa's majority.  Obviously this
alone makes a great difference to the way the mass of South
Africans look on the judgment delivered yesterday by
Americans.

If - with good reason, incidently - black South Africans
were suspicious of both Crocker and Cohen, then Clinton's
Assistant Secretary for African Affairs will find a more
sympathetic tone, a more receptive ear on that particular
side of South Africa's own political divide.

But both sides will miss a unique opportunity to build
something new if they insist in portraying their
relationship through the distorted lens of 'my enemy's enemy
is my friend'.

The end of the Cold War and South Africa's search for
political accord have helped to free the US-South Africa
connection of an ideological straitjacket.

Resented

Which brings us to the question of touch.  Conservative
lobbyists - the Heritage Foundation and the International
Freedom Foundation, most notably - have been closely
associated with American policy towards South Africa for the
best part of 12 years.  True they did not hold it prisoner
but when bureaucrats such as Crocker and Cohen faltered,
they elbowed policy in certain directions.  This ideological
bias has been resented by many both in South Africa and in
the region.

There is, of course, no hope that Clinton's men will produce
a South African policy free of the wider impulses which
drove his entire campaign.  But the ideological touch which
a Clinton White House will bring to its policy will be
closer to the aspi-rations of South Africa's majority and, I
dare say, to others in the region.

This is why they applauded his victory yesterday and why
they will watch his early moves to-wards this region with
great anticipation.
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