Britain and African Nationalist Leaders: The Response to Arms Deals with South Africa, 1968-1972

Abstract

ABSTRACT In the Cold War, South Africa saw itself an important stronghold of the West, being also Britain’s fourth largest export market. Edward Heath’s Conservative government assumed that Pretoria would participate in the region’s defence, thus resumption of arms supplies for external defence was necessary, while African countries could not ignore their economic dependence on the White regime. On the other hand, Black Africa perceived South Africa as a danger to international stability. Kenneth Kaunda, Zambia’s president, warned that Western Powers' failure to ‘assist the oppressed’ was forcing nationalists into the communist bloc, while Julius Nyerere of Tanzania wrote that outside forces were oppressing Africans. The freedom struggle had become part of the global ideological conflict. For Britain, it remained part of Cold War issues and balance of payments questions; for Africans, it was something non-negotiable. Nonetheless, Western regional security favoured a flourishing arms market from which no one wanted exclusion.