by Guy Arnold
The tiny state of Equatorial Guinea (former Spanish Guinea) suffered under the brutal and despotic rule of Macias Nguema from independence in 1968 until his overthrow by his nephew, Teodoro Obiang, in a coup of 3 August 1979. Obiang was proclaimed President on 11 October. The country at once received economic aid from Spain, which had suspended assistance to his uncle. Obiang embarked upon a policy of achieving better and deeper relations with France and sought membership of the franc zone. Like his uncle, Obiang was guilty of flagrant human rights abuses. There were coup attempts against him in 1981 and 1982, and again in 1986. Legislative elections were held in 1988 and several opposition members were given life sentences for alleged plotting against Obiang that September. In June 1989, as sole candidate, Obiang was elected president for another five-year term. Despite growing pressures and demands for real democracy during 1990 and 1991 Obiang refused to respond to calls for the establishment of a multiparty system.
ZAÏRE
President Mobutu Sese Seko’s corruption and political manipulations to maintain his position as undisputed master of Zaïre throughout the 1980s were successful. But he was laying the groundwork for the disasters that would affect the country at the end of the 1990s. An attempt to persuade Mobutu to reform was made at the end of 1980.
Thirteen members of parliament sent a 52-page letter to President Mobutu in December 1980 demanding political reforms. By this time, Mobutu had already managed to clip the parliament’s wings, thanks to diminished concern with the human rights situation in the Congo by Washington, then distracted by its Cold War priorities in the Horn of Africa and Afghanistan, as well as by the Iranian hostage crisis. For their audacity, members of the Group of 13, as the dissident parliamentarians became known, were jailed, tortured and banished to remote detention centres. In spite of this repression, most of them continued to fight for democracy.7
In April 1981 Nguza Karl I Bond, his Prime Minister, went to Belgium where he resigned and then launched an attack upon the country’s corruption. More persistent opposition in Belgium came from the Union pour la Démocratie et le Progrès Social (UPDS) (Union for Democracy and Social Progress) while some MPs in Kinshasa who supported the UPDS and criticized Mobutu were detained and only released as a result of overseas pressures. However, demands for a more democratic system during the years 1980–85 never seriously threatened Mobutu’s hold on power. In 1985 by dividing party and government functions of the Mouvement Populaire de la Révolution (MPR) he strengthened his position further.
Under Mobutu Zaïre pursued a high-profile foreign policy. Relations with Israel were restored in 1982, troops were sent to Chad as part of a peacekeeping operation in 1983 and in 1984 Zaïre suspended its membership of the OAU in support of Morocco’s walkout over the Western Sahara question. In 1986 Zaïre quarrelled with the front-line states over allegations that it was allowing the CIA to supply arms to União Nacional para a Independência Total de Angola (UNITA) in Angola through Zaïre (UNITA was backed at that time by apartheid South Africa). Through the 1970s and into the first half of the 1980s the IMF attempted to bring order to the country’s economy by imposing financial discipline, but its measures were unacceptable to Mobutu who broke with the Fund in 1986. Mobutu’s anti-Communism, as well as the geographic position of his vast country in the centre of Africa, made him a natural choice as an ally for the United States. He always supported the opponents of the Movimento Popular para a Libertação de Angola (MPLA) in Angola and allowed Zaïre to be used as a conduit for CIA aid to both Holden Roberto’s Frente Nacional de Libertação de Angola (FNLA) and Jonas Savimbi’s UNITA throughout the 1970s and 1980s. Corruption appeared central to all public activities in Zaïre: ‘In 1987, a Zaïrean academic said despairingly: “If things go on in this way in Zaïre, there will be no morality left.” They have gone on; and they have got worse. How have individuals responded to a situation of chronic repression and violence and the disintegration of social and economic institutions?’8 This despairing comment was representative of many Congolese under the man who gained the reputation of the most corrupt ruler in Africa.
A row with Belgium dominated the politics of 1989. At a time when the Belgian government offered to reschedule Zaïre’s debts, Belgian journalists claimed that Mobutu was corrupt and that aid to Zaïre was misappropriated. In angry response, Mobutu rejected the rescheduling offer and ordered the 15,000 Zaïreans then in Belgium to return home. A Belgian judge ordered the seizure of all Mobutu’s assets in the country in compensation for the nationalization of a Belgian company back in 1973. However, when Mobutu threatened to break diplomatic relations with Belgium, Brussels rescinded the judge’s order. The row continued, however, until Mobutu threatened to make France its major trading partner. Belgium then caved in and agreed to cancel all Zaïre’s public debt as well as a third of its commercial debt and rescheduled the balance interest-free over 25 years. At the time Zaïre was doing well economically and as a result of these transactions was able to announce in June 1989 that it had paid off all its IMF debts. Mobutu was able to win such a confrontation because his country was seen as a storehouse of mineral wealth over which neither Belgium nor the West as a whole wished to lose control. By 1990, as the structures of the Cold War collapsed and demands for democracy mounted throughout Africa, Mobutu came under huge pressure to institute changes. In January 1990 Mobutu called for a dialogue between state and people to consider the country’s institutions. In May, 100 demonstrating students were massacred by troops at Lubumbashi University. Later, Mobutu announced his resignation as chairman of the MPR so that he could ‘rise above’ party politics. He established a special commission to draft a new constitution by April 1991 and allowed the free operation of political parties.
CHAPTER TWENTY - NINE
Endgame in Southern Africa
The 1980s proved to be the last decade of apartheid and with its passing the politics and economics of the region changed out of recognition. These changes that ushered in the last decade of the century were preceded by a crescendo of violence and few at the beginning of the 1980s believed that the apartheid state had only 10 years to run. In South Africa anti-apartheid violence reached a climax in the years 1984–86, following President Botha’s constitutional reforms of 1983 that still excluded the black majority from any share in power. The front-line states were subject to military incursions by South Africa throughout the decade. In Angola UNITA, supported by South Africa and the United States, waged war against the MPLA government; in Mozambique South Africa supported the rebel movement Resistencia Nacional de Mozambique (RENAMO); in Namibia it fought an increasingly difficult rearguard action to maintain its control. In 1990, however, the new South African President, F. W. de Klerk, recognizing the inevitable, signalled the end of apartheid and universal suffrage in his speech of 2 February. On 21 March Namibia finally shook off South African control to become independent.
THE FRONT-LINE STATES
South Africa had long used its economic strength to dominate its neighbours. Through the Southern African Customs Union (SACU), formed in 1969, it incorporated Botswana, Lesotho and Swaziland, as well as Namibia, into its orbit while the mining giant, the Anglo-American Corporation and its subsidiaries, extended AAC control far beyond South Africa into Botswana, Lesotho, Namibia, Zambia and Zimbabwe. The Republic’s rail and port infrastructure serviced vital imports and exports for the countries of the interior while migrant workers from the peripheral states went to work in South Africa’s mines (in the mid-1980s 280,000 such migrants sent home remittances worth R538 million).
The Southern Africa Development Coordination Conference (SADCC) was formed in 1980 in order to counter this all-pervasive influence, following a meeting at Arusha, Tanzania, by the front-line states. The object was to find ways in which the countries bordering South Africa could reduce their economic and transport dependence upon that country. The original members were Angola, Botswana, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Swaziland, Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe. SADCC was fo
rmed in response to a precise challenge: that of dominant South African power throughout the region. Of its members, only Malawi had recognized South Africa diplomatically, although Botswana, Lesotho and Swaziland were seen as the Republic’s ‘economic prisoners’. SADCC had an immediate impact during its first year: in November 1980 it held a donor conference in Maputo and raised pledges from the industrial countries of US$650 million for its development projects. The goal of SADCC was ‘to liberate our economies from their dependence on the Republic of South Africa, to overcome the imposed economic fragmentation, and to co-ordinate our efforts toward regional and national economic development’ according to the Lusaka Declaration of 1 April 1980 that saw the formal founding of SADCC.1 The Lusaka Declaration stressed that economic liberation was as important as political freedom and analysed dependence as follows:
This dependence is not a natural phenomenon, nor is it simply the result of a free market economy. The nine states and one occupied territory (Namibia) of Southern Africa were, in varying degrees, deliberately incorporated – by metropolitan powers, colonial rulers, and large corporations – in the colonial and sub-colonial structures centring on the Republic of South Africa. The development of national economies as balanced units, let alone the welfare of the people of southern Africa, played no part in the economic integration strategy.
SADCC, despite this disclaimer of the colonial powers, was nonetheless dependent upon Western capital injections to further its anti-South African agenda and only in 1987 did the USSR and other Communist countries consider providing aid. At the SADCC heads of state meeting in Maputo, eight of nine leaders (Hastings Banda of Malawi did not attend) agreed that, ‘South Africa can invade and occupy sovereign states, blow up vital installations, and massacre populations at no apparent cost to its relations with its major allies… Some of the friends of South Africa who provide the racist regime with the capital, technology, management skills, and deadly weapons necessary to carry out such a policy also seek to improve their relations with SADCC.’ The best way to do so, they added, was to ‘use their influence to check the aggression being waged against SADCC member states’.
All the SADCC states were liable to South African destabilization raids and other tactics. Pretoria met what it called the ‘total onslaught’ of the Soviet Union with its ‘total strategy’ under which it justified the destabilization of its neighbours. South Africa’s white leaders equated the ‘red peril’ with the ‘black peril’ and claimed that South Africa was defending Christian values while its insistence upon the Soviet threat had two advantages: ‘On the one hand, all criticisms of apartheid can be dismissed as communist-inspired. On the other hand, it allows South Africa to demand that the West support it as a bastion against communism, despite any distaste for apartheid; when the West attacks apartheid it only aids Moscow.’2 However, the total strategy, which placed the entire country on a war footing, that allowed destabilization was based upon a fallacy since destabilization was most likely to lead to more calls for Soviet support because Britain and the United States were on South Africa’s side and would not oppose its policy of destabilization. South Africa saw providing support to RENAMO in Mozambique as the best way to stretch Zimbabwe’s resources and lessen its capacity to cause problems for South Africa since RENAMO constantly targeted the railways to Beira and Maputo upon which Zimbabwe relied for its imports and exports. Proof of South Africa’s support for RENAMO after the Nkomati Accord was passed secretly to the ANC by Derek Hanekom, later Lands Minister in Mandela’s cabinet. During the 1980s South Africa invaded three capitals (of Botswana, Lesotho and Mozambique) and four countries (Angola, Swaziland, Zambia and Zimbabwe); its agents attempted to assassinate the prime ministers of Lesotho and Zimbabwe; it backed the rebel movements RENAMO in Mozambique and UNITA in Angola; disrupted oil supplies to six countries; and attacked the railways that affected Angola, Botswana, Malawi, Mozambique, Swaziland, Zambia and Zimbabwe.3
Once Zimbabwe became independent in 1980 it replaced Zambia on the immediate front line facing South Africa across the Limpopo. Throughout the decade, however, President Kaunda played a leading role in co-ordinating opposition to the apartheid state and from 1985, when Nyerere stepped down as President of Tanzania, became chairman of the front-line states. It was Zambia’s misfortune that confrontation so engaged President Kaunda that he neglected the economic growth and well-being of Zambia to the extent that his country became one of the most indebted in the world (on a per capita basis) while his own popularity as the founding father of independent Zambia slumped.
Robert Mugabe’s victory in the pre-independence elections in Zimbabwe of March 1980 was a severe blow to South Africa. ‘For the South Africans the outcome was a particularly bitter blow. They had invested US$300 million in the Rhodesian war against the nationalists and they had invested heavily in the election campaign against ZANU.’4 Further, South Africa sought to create a Constellation of Southern African States (CONSAS), which they would dominate economically and technologically. Other front-line leaders might prove malleable, but not Mugabe, who advocated Marxist-Leninist policies, was an outspoken critic of apartheid and determined to lessen his country’s dependence on South Africa. He at once became a leading member of SADCC. ‘Zimbabwe’s geographical and historical ties to South Africa, including the fact that it inherited Pretoria as its largest trading partner at independence, left it particularly vulnerable to economic destabilization. Joining the SADCC 17 days before independence was a recognition of this harsh reality. It was also a public statement that it wanted to do something about it.’5 Zimbabwe, nonetheless, had to take South Africa’s grip on the region into account. At independence 19 per cent of Zimbabwe’s total trade was with South Africa and 41 per cent of all Zimbabwe’s manufactured exports went to South Africa, 60 per cent of these under a preferential trading agreement of 1964. Abrogation of the agreement would cost Zimbabwe Z$50 million a year and the loss of 6,500 jobs. On the eve of independence, therefore, Mugabe said: ‘We must accept that South Africa is a geographical reality and, as such, we must have some minimum relationship with it.’ South Africa began by cutting off fuel supplies to Mugabe’s Zimbabwe so that the rehabilitation of the Beira–Mutare oil pipeline and the Beira railway became a top priority. At the height of the RENAMO war, between 27 February 1986 and 9 September 1987, the railway was sabotaged on average just over once a week.6 From July 1985 onwards Zimbabwe deployed troops in Mozambique to assist FRELIMO against RENAMO and guard the Beira Corridor. In September 1987 a government official estimated the cost of maintaining 10,000 troops in Mozambique at US$1.5 million a day although that included the salaries of the soldiers. During the 1980s, while it played a significant role as a front-line state, the ZANU government of Mugabe also fought the ‘Dissidents’ War’ at home (1982–87) whereby the power of Nkomo’s ZAPU was broken as an opposition to pave the way for the creation of a de facto one-party state.
SOUTH AFRICA’S TWO FLANKS: ANGOLA AND MOZAMBIQUE
South Africa became deeply embroiled in Angola from 1975 when it made its immediate post-independence invasion of the territory. Pretoria feared the MPLA government’s Marxist orientation and Moscow links and saw a Marxist Angola as a threat to the region. Moreover, South Africa sought to remain in Namibia for economic and strategic reasons despite its international obligation to grant Namibia independence. In order to weaken the Angolan government, if not overthrow it, South Africa supported the insurgent movement of UNITA throughout the 1980s. Over the years 1975 to 1987 it made major efforts, including armed incursions, to assist UNITA in its bid to seize power in Luanda but the up-and-down unreliability of UNITA and the substantial military assistance provided by Cuba for the MPLA thwarted this South African design. By the end of the decade rising South African casualties and the defeat (or stalemate) it sustained at the battle of Cuito Cuanavale made the policy unsustainable and forced South Africa into serious negotiations over Namibian independence. South African incursions into Angola were substantia
l in scale and cost: over December 1983–January 1984, for example, Operation Askari saw the SADF penetrate 300 kilometres into Angola to capture Kassinga and bomb Lubango and other towns. The SADF pulled back after suffering heavier losses than expected and being privately warned by the Soviet Union not to escalate the conflict.7
Angola sustained a contradictory relationship with the United States throughout these years. On the one hand, the United States was Angola’s most important trading partner for its oil (which Chevron largely controlled) and the United States’ fourth trading partner in Africa as a result. At the same time Washington refused to recognize the MPLA government and gave its support to UNITA and South Africa in their attempts to undermine it, even as US oil payments to Luanda were used to buy arms and pay for the Cuban troops Washington wanted to force to leave the country. This complex relationship represented one of the many hypocrisies of the Southern African situation. When President Reagan’s government provided assistance for UNITA and Jonas Savimbi visited Washington where he met the President and had talks with the State Department, the Soviet Foreign Minister and two senior generals met with Angolan government officials and then warned that the USSR might increase its military aid to Angola if Savimbi obtained more aid from the US.8 In any case, by the mid-1980s two wars were being fought in Angola: the civil war between the MPLA government, backed by the USSR and supported by the presence of some 20,000 Cuban troops, and UNITA, in its turn supported by Zaïre, the US and South Africa; and a second war between SWAPO, with bases in southern Angola, and South Africa, which made frequent incursions across the border from Namibia to destroy SWAPO and ANC bases.
