Seeing Friends and Affinities in Southern Africa

George P. Shultz has decided to make his first trip to southern Africa as secretary of state. What he should do is take President Reagan along. In a relatively short period of time, Reagan could learn a great deal that would help him untangle and correct current misbegotten American policies in that turbulent part of the world.

The visit would be easy to arrange, because the President already has an invitation. Just last month, President Kenneth D. Kaunda of Zambia, speaking on behalf of six of the black-ruled “front-line states” in the region, suggested that Reagan see for himself how the grave economic problems of these countries are being aggravated by the continuing racial crisis in South Africa. Now the number of African countries willing to welcome the President is up to eight.

Of course, Reagan would not have to restrict his itinerary to places like Zambia, Zimbabwe and Botswana. He could also call on his friends in white-ruled South Africa, with whom he has been carrying on a “constructive engagement” for more than five years.

If Reagan spoke with people on all sides in South Africa--from government officials in Pretoria to exiled leaders of the African National Congress in the Zambian capital of Lusaka--and if he visited the black township of Soweto and the Crossroads squatter camp, he would learn things that elude most Americans.

Indeed, there are many reasons why it would make sense for the Administration to entertain Kaunda’s original proposal.

A Reagan visit to southern Africa would instantly raise the American consciousness about the neediest and most neglected continent. It would help destroy some stereotypes of Africa as a backward, uncivilized place. And it would demonstrate Reagan’s personal interest in peace for a region that is becoming almost as volatile as the Middle East.

In terms of both domestic and international politics, the trip would be a clever move; the President could score points against the Democrats and the Soviet Union at the same time.

If Reagan is the quick study some of his friends and associates say, there are certain things he would discover. Some of his previous travels abroad have proved enlightening. He returned from Latin America, for example, saying “You’d be surprised. They’re all individual countries,” and, after visiting China, he said capitalism was flourishing there.

In southern Africa, he would find that for all their fancy boasts, the white rulers of South Africa have done little to dismantle the structure of apartheid. Thus the level of violence continues to increase. If he asked around about Jonas Savimbi, the allegedly pro-Western guerrilla leader in Angola who now has CIA money and anti-aircraft missiles, he would learn that Savimbi is viewed as a garden-variety opportunist, that his “freedom fighter” designation is an artifact better applied to American, than African, politics.

But there are some more subtle and perhaps surprising lessons that Reagan could learn--all of them bearing upon his fundamental world view:

The ANC, rather than being the vanguard of the communist menace in South Africa, appears increasingly to be accepted as part of the mainstream--a moderate force in the rapidly changing spectrum of that country’s black politics.

To be sure, the ANC has a military wing, and some of its young militant members, asserting that more traditional tactics have failed, have become more violent in response to intensified government oppression. Civilians, in addition to military and police officers and facilities, are now victims. It is also true that there are at least a dozen card-carrying communists among the ANC’s 30-member Executive Committee. (It is no secret, of course, that there were communists in the broad-based coalition that formed the nationalist movement in 1912.)

But the basic tone of the ANC’s political leadership remains conciliatory. Indeed, even after 22 years in prison, ANC leader Nelson Mandela supports negotiation over confrontation.

This willingness to negotiate with the white regime makes the ANC vulnerable to charges of selling out. Most of the “comrades” who have taken charge in the black townships seem to want nothing more to do with the ANC and other multiracial organizations like the United Democratic Front. Even Zulu leader Mangosuthu Gatsha Buthelezi, until now a bitter rival of the ANC and the UDF, may soon find it necessary to form an alliance with them against the far more radical forces that are growing in influence.

Zimbabwe, hardly the Marxist state that its ruler’s rhetoric would suggest, in fact accommodates capitalism and operates a Western-style economy.

Prime Minister Robert Mugabe has made many mistakes. His human rights record, with regard to members of the Ndebele black minority, is not good. He has often seemed to sacrifice other interests in his drive to create a one-party state. He has indeed been tactless in dealings with the United States and other Western nations that generously aided Zimbabwe.

But the fact remains that Mugabe, ignoring more radical forces in his own party, has complied with guidelines laid down by the International Monetary Fund, reducing consumer subsidies and strengthening the agricultural sector. Redistribution of land has proceeded slowly and cautiously since independence in 1980, and few farmers have been among the whites leaving the country.

Many whites who did flee to South Africa decided that its future looks far bleaker than Zimbabwe’s and have returned. Their prosperity is almost assured when the government reserves 82% of its precious foreign exchange for the private sector, 75% of which is still controlled by foreign business interests.

The few U.S. companies that have invested in Zimbabwe tend to be happy with the results. Richard B. Patton, a senior vice president of the H. J. Heinz Company, with a 51% interest in a food and soap manufacturer there, says that Zimbabwean officials have “honored every agreement we’ve had with them. There has been no interference from the government whatsoever.”

Except in Angola, where Cuban troops help stave off Savimbi’s UNITA and the South African Defense Force, there is very little Soviet or Eastern Bloc presence in southern Africa.

The political and economic culture of the region remains Western in its orientation. Social habits, patterns of consumption and technological trends have all been influenced by the long (albeit exploitative) relationship with the European colonial powers, and there have been few overtures to Moscow.

Even in Angola and Mozambique, despite resentment that the Portuguese used American weapons to try to put down nationalist movements and hang on to their colonies, there is a great desire to emulate the Western way of life. Indeed, Mozambique’s president, Samora M. Machel, soured by his own experiment with Marxist economic doctrine, has been appealing for U.S. investment and offering financial guarantees to companies willing to take a chance.

Americans often misinterpret nasty criticism from Africans as some kind of sign that they are going over to the other side in the global East-West struggle. The uproar over a Zimbabwean Cabinet minister’s harsh remarks about constructive engagement during a Fourth of July party at the U.S. Embassy in Harare is a case in point; the Reagan Administration suspended economic aid to Zimbabwe.

“What Americans do not understand,” said a southern African with the World Bank, “is that speeches like that one grow out of a sense of affinity. We feel that because we are part of the same family, we have the right to criticize our friends and we hope we will be listened to calmly. We have common reference points.”

The United States, because of a regional policy that has appeared to lend support to the white-supremacist regime in Pretoria, is steadily losing its reputation as friend to the helpless and oppressed.

The instinctive good will that black South Africans and others in the region felt toward Americans has been threatened by constructive engagement. Whereas many Africans once felt inspired by the democratic ideals expressed in the Declaration of Independence and other basic U.S. documents, they have come to believe the United States is subordinating those principles to a misguided geopolitical interpretation of events in South Africa--a belief that somehow black rule would guarantee Soviet influence.

David Hirschmann, a South African academic who had been teaching in Kansas, recently returned to his country to do research on black attitudes toward the United States. Conducting in-depth interviews, Hirschmann found “rising anger among middle-class, non-radical blacks--a feeling that seems to grow every time President Reagan makes a speech on the South African situation.”

The danger, says Hirschmann, is that this anger is fostering “a broad anti-Americanism and a growing attitude of anti-capitalism.” Thus, the American fear of Soviet influence could turn into a self-fulfilling prophecy.

But Reagan is in a position to help reverse this and other alarming trends in the region. An educational visit to southern Africa may be the way to start.