Kaunda’s Diplomacy

Abstract

In April 1975, following a black-tie dinner at the White House, Zambian President Kenneth Kaunda boldly confronted U.S. President Gerald Ford’s administration about its “lack” of a clear policy for southern Africa. Continued inaction about apartheid in South Africa, white rule in Rhodesia, and South African control over Namibia, he charged, provided “psychological comfort to the sources of evil.” Recalling the actions of G. Mennen Williams, John F. Kennedy’s Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs, who “could be slapped in the face by a white reactionary on our soil and yet, undaunted, still smile, still stand by US principles of freedom, justice, and national independence based on majority,” Kaunda wondered aloud, “What happened to that America?” Nancy Kissinger, Andy DeRoche reports, was “horrified” by the speech (27–28). So, too, was her Secretary of State husband, but Kaunda’s speech served its purpose. As did his direct departure from Andrews Air Force Base to Havana the following day. Kaunda wanted to jolt the Ford Administration into action, and jolt it he did, but, to his dismay, the administration largely limited its focus to opposing Soviet involvement in Angola—not to ending white rule in southern Africa. That result deeply frustrated Kaunda who, as DeRoche writes, “wanted Washington to intervene in southern Africa but with diplomacy and development, not with arms and ammunition” (56). It was an uphill battle, but one, DeRoche shows, that Kaunda waged unceasingly between 1975 and 1984 when he “arguably played the most important role among all African statesmen regarding US relations with their continent” (preface).