WEEKLY REVIEW SPECIAL REPORT NEW CHALLENGES FOR SOUTH AFRICA

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP85T00875R001000080019-9
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: S
• Document Page Count: 12
• Document Creation Date: December 27, 2016
• Document Release Date: May 11, 2010
• Sequence Number: 19
• Publication Date: April 18, 1975
• Content Type: REPORT

 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/09: CIA-RDP85T00875R001000080019-9
Secret
meekly Review
Special Report
New Challenges for South Africa
Secret 25X1
April 18, 1975
Copy N2 658
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/09: CIA-RDP85T00875R001000080019-9 ,
 25X1
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/09: CIA-RDP85T00875R001000080019-9
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/09: CIA-RDP85T00875R001000080019-9
 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/09: CIA-RDP85T00875R001000080019-9
NEW CHALLENGES FOR SOUTH AFF ICA
A Quandary in Rhodesia
Lisbon, Pretoria, and Salisbury had long
shared a common interest in keeping the bulk of
southern Africa under white rule. To the black
Africans, this was an "unholy alliance," but it had
always been more apparent than real. Solid col-
laboration had been inhibited by mutual distrust
as well as by different approaches to their com-
mon racial problem. Portuguese and Rhodesian
officials feared South African predominance in
any joint venture, while Rhodesians and South
Africans shared a basic contempt for Portuguese
counterinsurgency capabilities.
Special Report - 1 -
SECRET
A month after the Portuguese coup, Rho-
desian Prime Minister Smith visited Vorster to
discuss the effect of an early grant of independ-
ence to Mozambique. Their joint press conference
after the talks made it appear that they saw eye
to eye and that both would welcome an
independent black government in Mozambique,
provided it was stable and maintained construc-
tive relations with Rhodesia and South Africa.
Security authorities in Salisbury and Pretoria had
no doubt, in fact, that the new Lisbon govern-
ment would sooner or later turn Mozambique
over to the insurgent Front for the Liberation of
Mozambique.
April 18, 1975
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/09: CIA-RDP85T00875R001000080019-9
 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/09 : CIA-RDP85T00875R001000080019-9
Smith and Vorster drew different inferences
from such a take-over. Vorster recognized, as
Smith did not, that a black government in
Mozambique would nullify South Africa's
strategic interest in maintaining white control of
Rhodesia. Smith's break with Britain in 1965 had
posed diplomatic problems for Pretoria; the
South Africans, for example, never officially
recognized the bre;kawa;' regime. They did
provide discreet economic, financial, and military
support to Smith because a white-ruled Rhodesia
was regarded as a buffer against black insurgent:
who might operate against South Africa from
Zambia or Tanzania. A black government in
Mozambique would, however, permit such in-
surgents to outflank Rhodesia.
Both Smith and Vorster understand that a
hostile government in Mozambique may block
Rhodesian or South African trade that now flows
through Moza:ribican ports. Vorster perceives that
Rhodesia is much more vulnerable to these
dangers than South Africa. Loss of access to
Mozambique's seaports would be a crippling blow
for the Smith regime, but merely a temporary
setback to the South Africans. The bulk of Rho-
desia's overseas trade flows through Beira and
Lourenco Marques, and rerouting through South
African ports would be prohibitively expensive.
Lourenco Marques, however, handles only one
fourth of South Africa's overseas trade, mostly
from the Tran_,aal mining and industrial area. A
new South African port is scheduled to open in
1976 that will further reduce the present impor-
tance of Lourenco Marques to South Africa.
Black Insurgency
Mozambican support for insurgency, a
remote contingency for Pretoria, is a present
danger for Salisbury. The Rhodesian guerrillas
who have been active in northeastern Rhodesia
since late 1972 infiltrated through Mozambique
from bases in Zambia and Tanzania. The Front
for the Liberation of Mozambique has held out
hopes to the Rhodesian insurgents that, after
Mozambique becomes independent, they may
extend their infiltration routes along Rhodesia's
entire eastern border with Mozambique. Smith's
security forces, dependent on a limited pool of
Special Report - 2 -
whito reservists, could not expand sufficiently to
cope with a major increase in guerrilla operations.
Last June, the prospect of early independ-
ence for Mozambique apparently encouraged the
leaders of the African National Council, the
largest black political organization in Rhodesia, to
reject Smith's proposals for a constitutional
sad i:lement. Smith had offered to broaden the
franchise grarlualiy for Rhodesian blacks, who
outnumber whites 20 to 1, but in a way that
would have kept them from gaining a majority ir.
Parliament for at !east 40 years.
Smith countered with an election in which
his party won all 50 of the parliamentary seats
allocated to whites. Black candidates who sup-
ported the council's rejection of the Smith
proposals won 7 of the 8 seats allocated to the
some 7,000 blacks who are allowed to vote.
At about this same time, Smith's security
advisers concluded that an early withdrawal of
Portuguese forces from Mozambique would favor
the Rhodesian guerrillas. Smith's closest aides,
however, seemed confident that the South
Africans would provide enough reinforcements to
match any guerrilla inroads. The aides were
encouraged in this belief because the South
African government had increased its police con-
tingent in Rhodesia from 300 in mid-1972 to
roughly 1,600 in mid-1974.
By then, however, Vorster was seeking to
avoid an open-ended commitment to help Smith
in emergencies. Senior South African officials
realized that even a moderate black government
in Mozambique would come under strong inter-
national pressure to support the Rhodesian insur-
gents unless Smith moved toward early majority
rule. The South Africans recognized that in-
creased pr'-)tection of Smith would undercut
Pretoria's efforts to develop constructive relations
with Mozambique.
Zambian P':!sident Kaunda is a man with a
strong preference for peaceful rather than violent
change, and a Rhodesian settlement has become
SECRET
April 18, 1975
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/09: CIA-RDP85T00875R001000080019-9
 classified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/09 : CIA-RDP85T00875R001000080019-9
for him a matter of increasing urgency. Zambia
has not been able to offset the economic cost of
its boycott of the Smith regime since Salisbury's
break with Britain. Even the Tan-Zam railroad,
when it is completed next year, will not fully
. )mpensate for the stoppage of Zambian ship-
ments over Rhodesian rail lines to Indian Ocean
ports in Mozambique; port congestion in Tan-
zania will still delay Zambian shipments.
The mutual interest of South Africa and
Zambia in a Rhodesian settlement brought
Vorster and Kaunda together last October to seek
a way to end guerrilla warfare and reopen settle-
ment negotiations. From then on, the mediation
effort has grown to involve Tanzanian President
Nyerere, President Khama of Botswana, and
Samora Machel, head of the Front for the Libera-
tion of Mozambique.
Since November, Kaunda, Nyerere, Khama,
and Machel have met repeatedly with the rival
Rhodesian nationalist groups, while Vorster has
kept in close touch with Kaunda and Smith. The
combination of sustained pressures-Vorster on
Smith, and the four black mediators on the Rho-
desian nationalists-has brought progress toward a
negotiated settlement:
? In December three Rhodesian insurgent
groups merged with the non-insurgent African
National Council.
? A few days later Smith and the leaders
of the enlarged council agreed to a truce.
? In early February, Smith began meeting
with the council leaders to try to arrange for
the constitutional conference that was called
for in the truce agreement.
In order to force both sides to observe the
cease-fire, the black African mediators have scaled
down their support for the Rhodesian insurgents,
and Vorster has cut back his support for Smith's
counterinsurgency teams. The black mediators
told Rhodesian insurgent leaders, who wanted to
retain control of their individual guerrilla forces,
that all future aid would go to a newly unified
command structure. Vorster told Smith in Janu-
Special Report -3-
SECRET
ary that the 1,600 South African police then in
Rhodesia would be gradually withdrawn, and
more than half had Jett by late March.
Implications for Pretoria
While V o rster has pushed-and pushed
hard-for Smith to come to terms with Rhodesia's
blacks on early majority rule, he has no intention
of allowint, majority rule in South Africa. Most
South Africans, including Vorster, concede that
racial discrimination exists in their country, but
they have also convinced themselves that
apartheid, when perfected, will eliminate the
most galling aspects of discrimination.
In the South African view, the Rhodesian
situation is quite different from theirs; when the
white Rhodesians rejected the South African
course-apartheid-many years ago, they made a
multiracial society inevitable. The South Africans
believe that Salisbury must, as a result, either
move toward majority rule at a pace that satisfies
Rhodesian blacks or face a dangerous insurgency
supported more actively than before by neighbor-
ing black African governments.
The Smith government, in an effort to make
sure that South Africa does not desert white
Rhodesia, has maintained contacts with right
wingers in Vorster's Nationalist Party who share
Salisbury's views. Nevertheless, the efforts of the
right wingers to bring Vorster to view the cause of
Rhodesian whites as identical with that of South
African whites have been unsuccessful.
The loosening of Portugal's grip on the reins
in Angola has serious implicatic,ns for Pretoria's
ability to deal with any unrest that might develop
in Namibia (South-West Africa).
Dissident Ovambo tribesmen, who inhabit
northern Namibia adjacent to the Angolan
border, found that Portuguese security forces in
Angola, after the coup in Lisbon, were no longer
apprehending refugees and handing them over to
South P `ricar. police. By mid-1974, an Ovambo
exodus to Angola wa:; under way, and a large
April 18, 1975
lassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/09: CIA-RDP85T00875R001000080019-9
 lassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/09: CIA-RDP85T00875R001000080019-9
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