The Cold War had North-South dimensions as well as East-West ones and the global impact of the CW has hecome a major research field. In southern Africa, that impact was particularly significant, with US support for the apartheid regime into the late 1980s and Soviet involvement on the side of liberation movements. It is now possible to separate the myths from the reality and to begin to trace the ways in which the countries of southern Africa experienced the Cold War and to explore how their histories were shaped by it.
I would like to show how the South African government bought into the ideology of the Cold War, and the perception that the primary threat to South Africa was the so-called Soviet threat. How did the South African government in the 1980s develop, in conjunction with western counter-insurgency strategists, its doctrine of counter-revolutionary warfare? How did it unleash such warfare on the region, nowhere more so than in Angola and Mozambique?
In recent years efforts have been made to write a history of the liberation struggle in Southern Africa, but one issue remains missing or distorted in most of the books and articles on the subject: the involvement of the Soviet military in the support of this struggle. The history of military co-operation between the USSR and the liberation movements in Angola, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Namibia and South Africa has still to be written. The same applies to co-operation with Moscow in the post-independence period. So far the attempts to do so are hardly successful, not only due to the lack of accessible documents, but also due to an uncritical attitude to the available materials. Several South African and Western scholars claim that ‘training personnel’ from the USSR ‘reached the newly established ANC camps in Tanzania and Zambia’ in 1964 when they arrived 15 years later, and not in Tanzania or Zambia, but in Angola. Soviet ‘General Konstantin Shaganovitch’, whose name appeared in the reports of Pretoria's intelligence ‘travels’ from one book to another, never existed in reality (Fred Brigland even named several chapters, ‘General Shaganovitch's offensive’).
The paper will address in particular the issues of training of the African combatants in the USSR and activities of the Soviet teams attached to ANC, SWAPO and ZAPU as well as to the armed forces of the independent African countries. It will assess to what end the Soviet involvement influenced the strategy and tactics in the Southern African battlefield. While most of the Russian archives are still ‘sealed off', oral history sources are invaluable for painting a veritable picture of that involvement from the early 1960s to 1991.
During the decades of anti-apartheid struggle the attempts of the apartheid regime to present the ANC and the SACP as Moscow's puppets turned Soviet assistance into a particularly sensitive issue for both organisations, as well as for the Soviet side itself. This still remains at least partially true into the second decade of post-apartheid South Africa. While the role of the Soviet Union is recognized in general terms, there are few publications on this topic and practically no discussion of the nature, scale and goals of Soviet assistance to the ANC in the context of the Cold War. Nor is there any analysis of popular perceptions of the Soviet Union in South Africa in that period. A debate on all these subjects is necessary for a better understanding of the Soviet legacy in Southern Africa. The authors present their view of the Soviet role based on new archival documents and interviews, as well as on the reassessment of existing materials.
My paper discusses the construction of the Soviet Union and Eastern European socialist republics as the evil pole in a Manichean discourse created to manipulate and blind public opinion in apartheid South Africa. After 1989 the binary simplicity of Cold War thinking has been dismantled and as a result similarities in terms of discourse and policies, previously disguised behind the South African 'total strategy' against USSR's 'total onslaught' are emerging. I start my discussion from Mark Behr's novel The Smell of Apples as a text that outlines the simplified logic imposed by totalitarian and authoritarian regimes, be they socialist or white supremacist. The shared leftist allegiance, yet the different Marxisms; the state-sponsored nationalisms, yet the existence of a militant nationalism; the authoritarian discourses that incited South African imagination against Soviet plans (and the other way round): these produce a series of mirrorings and reverse-mirrorings in the histories of the two countries.
Rhodesia represents the ultimate paradigm of the role and impact of the Cold War in the region, showing its domestic and international dimensions. Anti-communist ideology and associated propaganda provided a vital state building tool for the Rhodesian Front government: firstly, to reinforce a sense of white solidarity and identity, and as a means to marginalize white liberalism; secondly, as the means to co-opt black traditional elites and moderates in opposition to the challenge from more radical elements within the black Rhodesian/Zimbabwean ethnic communities.
The Cold War also provided the vital framework for Rhodesian foreign policy and international relations. Not only did it fundamentally shape RF perceptions of black 'extremism' being orchestrated and directed by Moscow and Beijing; Rhodesian obduracy over an accelerated transition to one-man-one-vote also further radicalised Zimbabwean nationalism, encouraging rival nationalist factions to seek regional and superpower support and assistance. Anti-communism provided the basis of the 'unholy alliance' between Salisbury, Pretoria and Lisbon between 1964-1974 against the 'advancing tide' of black nationalism, despite the claimed differing domestic agendas and underlying animosities between the three white minority governments. The RF's anti-communist credentials also provided a important foundation of Rhodesia's bid for recognition from the Western international community - that it was anti-communist, not racist. Although this presentation did not secure de jure recognition for the renegade regime, the Cold War ensured that Rhodesia remained intimately linked with the Western intelligence establishment (see the example of the Geneva conference), as well as important sections of the international political community below the level of diplomatic representation.
This paper explores the relationship between the winding down of the Cold War in the late 1980s and the transitions to democracy in Namibia and South Africa by considering two debates about the impact of the Cold War on southern Africa. The first concerns Namibia's long road to independence. Was the US policy of Constructive Engagement and its concern to eject the Cubans from Angola the prime cause for the failure of Namibia to obtain independence in the 1980s? The second debate relates to the transition from apartheid to democracy in South Africa itself. To what extent did the Cold War play a determining role in that transition? Had the Cold War ended sooner, might apartheid have ended sooner? Without the winding down of the Cold War, would apartheid have ended when it did?