“Basically I am with the whites in Southern Africa. I think that it is no better for the majority to oppress the minority than vice versa. But in my [public] comments I will support majority rule in Rhodesia … [and] say the same about South Africa, but softer.” So said U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger to President Ford in 1976, while he was busily combating Soviet and Cuban influence in the region and attempting (in competition with the Soviets and Cubans) to join with South African Prime Minister B. Johannes Vorster, Zambian President Kenneth Kaunda, and Tanzanian President Julius Nyerere in steering outlaw and white-ruled Rhodesia toward black rule.1Outing Kissinger is among the revelations of this book’s exemplary mining of the U.S. State Department records, now that they are available for the 1970s. Scarnecchia also dug deeply into the British Foreign and Commonwealth documentary record, employed private American notes of conversations from the same period, used South African files, and even found fugitive Soviet and former Yugoslav materials. This sifting and fitting together of the complementary archival details is imaginative, thorough, and full of telling revelations.Several long chapters document Kissinger’s major role in promising Vorster, and even Ian Smith of Rhodesia, that the United States wanted anti-communist, not necessarily anti-white, outcomes for Rhodesia. What Scarnecchia shows for the first time is the extent of Kissinger’s involvement in the myriad aspects of winding down white rule in Rhodesia, as well as his genuine cynicism regarding future black rule. Kissinger got on very well with Vorster and Kaunda. They joked. They shared surprisingly realistic views of the liberation apparatchiks. Kissinger conversed with Joshua Nkomo, as the presumed heir apparent but never reached Robert Mugabe, Zimbabwe’s first president. Ultimately, Kissinger surprised few people when he told British Ambassador Ivor Richard, “We don’t give a damn about Rhodesia,” really, but we did want “to set a pattern for the rest of Africa”.2 For Africanists and foreign policy wonks, all of the detail regarding Kissinger and others’ negotiating methods and opinions will be welcome. For others, the abundant amount of detail will doubtless seem daunting.This book also contains revelations about the assassination of Herbert Chitepo, the leader of the Zimbabwe African National Union (zanu) in Lusaka and the resulting rise to power of General Josiah Tongogara and (later) Mugabe, as well as about the rivalries within zanu and between zanu and the Zimbabwe African People’s Union (zapu) that helped to cripple, or at least retard, the victory of Africans over Rhodesia.Scarnecchia’s archival research demonstrates conclusively that Kaunda favored Nkomo, doing everything within his power to support him and zapu against their zanu rivals. Nyerere, however, was much more circumspect, knowing that the fate of the movement’s leadership would eventually be decided in the liberation camps by the cadres who were training and later fighting in the bush. Mugabe’s radicalism appealed to this mostly CiShona-speaking group whereas Nkomo’s backers largely conversed in his SiNdebele language.Even though the overall diplomatic and negotiating history of the 1970s, and the manner in which Britain finally brought renegade Rhodesia to heel, has long been known, this book tells us what the principals thought about their different strategies and tactics, why each pursued particular courses of action, and for what reasons. Prime Minister Smith of breakaway Rhodesia thought for some years that he could genuinely create his audacious white-run redoubt at a time when the rest of Africa was decolonizing rapidly and the walls of his settler endeavor were being breached by waves of ever stronger guerilla fighting forces. But he reckoned falsely that apartheid South Africa would support him forever (Kissinger’s talks with Vorster put paid to that dream), that Britain would eventually acquiesce, and that the rest of Africa would descend so fully into chaos that outsiders would let his buccaneering prevail.Instead, the Americans assiduously attempted to usher Africans into power in Zimbabwe. They often pushed Britain farther than its prime minister and cabinet wanted to go. They refused to let Britain’s more complaisant policies of appeasement rule the day. Driven as the Americans were by a fear of the Soviet Union or Cuban soldiers moving into Rhodesia (or Zambia) or intervening, as the Cubans had done so effectively in Angola, they joined hands with zapu and zanu in exile, but they worked mostly with Kaunda as he gave aid and succor to the rebels. Kissinger told his embassy in Lusaka that the United States “will not tolerate another massive Cuban move”.3 Otherwise, he thought Nkomo more moderate and reasonable than Mugabe, the putative zanu leader, but he tended to follow Kaunda’s lead regarding the two liberation movements.U.S. Ambassador Andrew Young and Secretary of State Cyrus Vance made key policy decisions during the Carter presidency. Both were much more nuanced, much more aware (as was Nyerere) of the power of those insurgents who ultimately backed Mugabe. But Young, surprisingly, was much more willing to accept an internal Rhodesian option that tried to install a puppet black government under Methodist Bishop Abel Muzorewa.Scarnecchia’s research enables anyone interested to follow the twists and turns of Zimbabwe’s liberation in detail. Such is the clear virtue of a book that closely recounts the failure of the 1976 Geneva negotiating conclave (Smith walked out early), the near establishment of a puppet Rhodesian multiracial government in Rhodesia (with Muzorewa the figurehead but Smith pulling the strings), and of the steps that led from a cleverly run constitutional conference in 1979 to an electoral triumph by Mugabe and zanu in 1980. Scarnecchia, however, stints his examination of that final constitutional conference.This traditional historical narrative reflects what Britons and Americans were thinking and doing from afar to end white rule in Rhodesia, and how they reasoned and adjusted. But Scarnecchia says little about what the various African leaders were doing and saying at the time (except via interpretive remarks from foreign diplomats). He also reports only hearsay about the progress of the guerilla war itself, or the maneuvers of both Nkomo and Mugabe on behalf of their followers. Unless an embassy official put a conversation or an interpretation into the record, nuance and texture are absent.Near the end of the book Scarnecchia helpfully discusses at length Mugabe’s attempt to punish SiNdebele speakers (16 percent of the population) for supporting Nkomo, their kinsman. A local bishop rightly termed the “cleansing” (as it was termed in CiShona) “genocide.” Mugabe and Emmerson Mnangagwa, Zimbabwe’s president in 2022, were ruthless in ordering their North Korean trained Fifth Brigade to extirpate innocent and hapless civilians in Matabeleland. Mugabe wanted to remove potential opponents on his way to establishing a one-party state. He also sought to rid himself of competition from Nkomo. At least 20,000, possibly 30,000, Africans lost their lives in the ensuing maelstrom of torched villages, multiple stabbings, mass shootings, and gang rapes. The British embassy knew what was happening but turned a blind eye. The Americans were more critical in private but felt unable to undercut their British colleagues. From the archival record of conversations and internal reports, Scarnecchia provides a solid record of what was happening behind the scenes in this early, unprovoked, and brutal attack on Zimbabwean civil society.Since no other researcher has so immersed himself in the granular diplomatic record of this period, Race and Diplomacy is a major contribution, well wrought and revelatory, if mono-disciplinary, in its methods.
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Open Access
Dec 29, 2023
Valentyn Krysachenko 