Abstract
The southern Africa strategy of the Nixon and Ford administrations has always courted controversy. Beginning with a 1972 New York Times article, this policy has amassed a range of comment, almost all of it negative in tone.1 Most scholars associate the Nixon and Ford years with at least a “tilt” toward white rule in southern Africa. More radical interpretations suggest this policy resulted in a “full embrace” of the minority rule governments.2 Drawing such conclusions, many critics focus on just one phrase from a leaked 1969 National Security Council report. They home in on policy option two of the Interdepartmental Group for Africa’s response to National Security Study Memorandum number 39 (NSSM39). This option suggested that “the whites are here to stay …” in southern Africa.3 Campaigners saw these words as symbolizing the West’s moral intransigence. The United States and its allies were accused of colluding with an abuse of human rights in order to protect strategic and economic interests.4
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