Diplomats Shape New U.S. Policy Toward Bloodshed in South Africa

At the dawn of the Reagan era, Chester A. Crocker, the chief architect of Administration Africa policy, theorized about how the United States should wield its influence. Trying carrots instead of sticks, America would abandon threats against the South African government. Crocker theorized that by assuaging whites’ fears, the United States could gently persuade the Pretoria regime to loosen the shackles on black political and economic freedom.

As the Reagan era winds down six years later, Crocker is still ensconced as assistant secretary of state for African affairs, but the men working around him in the State Department and in the U.S. Embassy in South Africa no longer mention the former Administration plan. “Crocker’s policy of constructive engagement is finished,” says an official who helped prepare a report by Secretary of State George P. Shultz’s advisory committee on South Africa. “Constructive engagement has become a pejorative phrase,” he says.

Eight months after that report was released, there has been a subtle shift in strategy. The United States has abandoned a central tenet of constructive engagement relying on private dialogue and “confidence building” to persuade change in the white government. Instead the United States is paying greater attention to engaging black leaders while making U.S. opposition to apartheid more public. The Administration no longer views the white South African government as the pivotal center for change, nor as the main target of diplomacy designed to safeguard U.S. values and interests.

Despite this shift, it is difficult to fix a new label to U.S. policy toward South Africa. There has not been, nor will there be, any grandiose Reagan initiative as there was in the Middle East, nor a formal launch of a new policy.

The reason lies in State Department fatalism about racial conflict continuing for the foreseeable future in South Africa. Officials who used to talk about differences that U.S. policy could make in South Africa now believe it is futile to hope for a settlement during this Administration--or for years to come. Pretoria won’t budge on its refusal to share power with blacks and blacks remain unable to dislodge the government by force. “I come from the stations-of-the-cross-school of foreign policy,” says one State Department official, referring to Jesus Christ’s tortuous path as he carried the cross to his crucifixion. Suggesting that South Africans must endure more agony, he says, “You can’t skip any stations.”

That view reflects a sober realism following both the failure of constructive engagement and the toughening of Pretoria’s resolve after mild sanctions were imposed. “Before, there were unrealistic notions here and on the hill that actions taken by us would be decisive,” says the official. “There is more sobriety and realism now than there was a year ago.”

To avoid blame for the South Africa deadlock, U.S. officials now try to impress that realism on all South Africans and convince them that there isn’t much U.S. policy can accomplish. “South Africans, black and white, have fallen into the easy trap of looking to outsiders for solutions to their own problems. They hoped that we could act as a surrogate accepting responsibility for their own fates,” says the State Department official. “We stand ready to help, but we don’t have a lot of leverage. We never did.”

This is far different from earlier Administration attempts to counteract four years of hostile relations under Jimmy Carter. But efforts to work with the Pretoria government produced continued intransigence among members of the white Cabinet and increasingly virulent anti-Americanism among blacks.

Without any hope for concrete short-term gains, U.S. diplomacy has turned attention to long-term intangible issues, like instilling American values among black leaders who inevitably will run the country one day. “Our greatest leverage is far more intellectual,” says the U.S. official. “We’re talking about challenging people, giving them ideas to think about like constitutions or bills of rights.”

To exercise that influence, the Administration is establishing contact with a broad spectrum of black political leaders and organizations. Slowly it is mending the damage done by constructive engagement, which had become a battle cry for anti-Americanism.

Only a year and a half ago, the U.S. Embassy had trouble deciding whether to send a representative to a crucial political funeral in Alexandra township near Johannesburg, finally sending someone at the last minute. U.S. absence would have been conspicuous amid the full complement of foreign dignitaries who attended. Now U.S. officials pop up in obscure rural villages, visit victims of right-wing vigilante violence in hospitals and offer assistance to illegal squatters resisting government removal efforts.

A new crop of U.S. diplomats is at work for the past two years, a group unusually well-suited to cultivate contacts in black politics. One current U.S. official in Pretoria has several years’ experience in Lesotho and Botswana with the Peace Corps and the United Nations High Commissioner on Refugees. He speaks two languages spoken by black South Africans. Another official in Pretoria came from a stint in London, where he came to know African exiles and government officials who passed through. In Botswana, a listening post for developments in South Africa, the deputy chief of mission is a black American with experience in Mozambique. He once served on loan from the State Department to the House subcommittee on African affairs, a bastion of liberal activism.

In Washington, E. Gibson Lanpher has joined the Southern Africa desk. Lanpher was the U.S. delegate to the Lancaster House talks that ended the war in Rhodesia and negotiated the transition to black majority rule. Lanpher also met with leaders of the African National Congress in January to prepare for ANC President Oliver Tambo’s visit to Washington.

State Department officials say the assignment of experienced hands to South Africa issues isn’t part of a grand plan. Yet the assignments clearly help establish U.S. links outside the ambit of embassy cocktail parties.

Another cadre of relatively enlightened officials administer a $25-million budget at the U.S. Agency for International Development, which circumvents the host government and gives money directly to black labor, legal, and community organizations.

Yet many black South Africans remain leery of U.S. intentions--and especially U.S. money--after years of neglect. Walter Sisulu, an ANC leader serving a life sentence at Pollsmoor Prison issued a recent statement recently urging blacks to spurn U.S. aid: “When the ANC was banned, our people went to the West to ask for help. That request was shunned--but our struggle continued. Today those same people, who shunned us in 1960 are coming to us with dollars in their back pockets and ideas on how to solve our problems. We do not need them. We will win our struggle ourselves.”

His antagonism comes from his history. In 1960, a frustrated Sisulu, then 48, went underground to fight for blacks’ political rights. At that time, ANC petitions for U.S. support had gone unanswered for more than 50 years. The American Embassy never even invited blacks to a reception until July 4, 1963. By then, Sisulu was serving his life term. To overcome that history will require patience by U.S. officials. “The important thing,” said a U.S. official in Pretoria, “is to reflect what we stand for and let the current flow past us.”