Indian Ocean as a Zone of Peace: An African Perspective

Abstract

This paper analyzes the reasons why South Africa looms so large in the African perspective on the subject of Indian Ocean as a zone of peace. Because South Africa plays a pivotal role in both defending and promoting Western political, economic and military interests (brought into sharp focus by the closing of the Suez Canal and again by the oil squeeze), it successfully secures the support - sometimes open but always tacit - of the Western powers, which it then uses, not only to buttress its brutal racist minority regime internally, but also to expand its domination externally in the southern part of the continent. South Africa has acquired an additional leverage with the West in its international power game by virtue of the fact that it is a major uranium producer. Furthermore, the West, primarily America, would find South Africa very useful in its interventions in Southern Africa both to prevent a radical change in the status quo and to have unhindered access to the vast natural resources of the region. With South Africa's clandestine nuclearization, with the connivance if not collusion of some Western countries, its capacity for thwarting African aspirations has increased enormously.