American Policy Toward Southern Africa: Critical Choices

Abstract

Since Waldemar Nielsen published his generous, unheeded and ultimately wrong prediction, much has happened in southern Africa and in the United States. In southern Africa, with the exception of the situation in Portuguese-speaking Africa, little has changed and American policy has remained largely as Nielsen then described it. Since the April 25, 1974 coup in Lisbon which overthrew the New State dictatorship, remarkable changes have begun to occur in Portugal and in her African territories: Portugal has granted independence to Guinea-Bissau (September 12), and has pledged independence to Angola and to Mozambique at an undetermined future date and in a manner as yet to be clearly explicated. But American policy toward Portugal and toward the territories it still controls in southern Africa maintains extreme caution. Our policy has remained rather passive, unimaginative, in want of innovation and, it seems, replete with compromises. In short, present American policy here appears to lack any clear conceptual basis or purpose.