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From International Socialism (1st series), No.95, February 1977, p.6.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for ETOL.
ANOTHER major problem that Carter inherits from Ford and Kissinger is the crisis in Southern Africa. The efforts at détente between the black and white regimes in the region are stalemated, while the wars of liberation in Zimbabwe and Namibia continue to escalate and the black youth movement in South Africa itself is far from cowed.
Probably another major US intervention like Kissinger’s last September will be required before the chances of neo-colonial solutions in Zimbabwe and Namibia will improve. What will the attitude of the new administration in Washington be? Will Carter’s debt to the black voters who elected him President be translated into a hard line towards white racism in Southern Africa?
All the signs are that Carter will continue the Kissinger policy of collaboration with the apartheid regime in South Africa. Recently the Johannesburg Financial Mail, the South African equivalent of the Economist, reported:
‘Carter aides are actively searching for a successor to Export-Import Bank chairman Stephen Dubrich to begin the gradual relaxing of American credit restrictions on financing loans for South African business ventures.
‘Carter’s South African plan is based on the assumptions that continued economic improvement will prevent the domestic racial problems in South Africa from exploding into civil war, and that an expanded US business presence will contribute to peace and offer a positive internal force for improving the status of Blacks – both on the job and politically.
‘To that end. Carter’s trade and economic aides will work to encourage US businessmen to make investments in South Africa’.
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Last updated on 8.2.2008