South Africa's Strategic Vulnerabilities: The 'Citadel Assumption' Reconsidered

Abstract

In assessing the patterns of conflict in southern Africa, it is commonplace to stress the theme of South Africa's overwhelming strengths against the threat of black nationalist forces. Most observers support this thesis of South African invulnerability by citing the country's enormous mineral resources, impressive military capabilities, continuing strategic importance and economic links with the west. Leonard Thompson (in Thompson and Butler, 1975: 408) ably summarized this popular view, citing other noteworthy domestic and international variables to buttress the point: In resisting terrorists South Africa's government has the ardent support of four million Whites who consider their very survival is at stake. South Africa has a far more powerful industrial base and far more formidable military equipment than any government that has been overthrown by guerrilla forces. It has the capacity to produce atomic weapons; the terrain in the vicinity of its borders is treeless or sparsely wooded savanna, which affords guerrillas scant opportunity for concealment. Moreover, the South African revolutionaries in exile are divided into rival factions; the capacity of Black African states to launch military expeditions against the Republic is limited by domestic economic and political weaknesses, interstate rivalries, and serious logistic problems; and neither the Soviet Union nor the People's Republic of China seems prepared to make a major commitment in southern Africa in the near future. Consequently, although guerrilla groups launched across South Africa's land frontiers may become a continual irritant to the regime, they do not seem likely to be able to overthrow it.