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American Policy Toward Southern Africa: Critical Choices

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  31 May 2017

Douglas L. Wheeler
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Extract

Since Waldemar Nielsen published his generous, unheeded and ultimately wrong prediction, much has happened in southern Africa and in the United States. In southern Africa, with the exception of the situation in Portuguese-speaking Africa, little has changed and American policy has remained largely as Nielsen then described it. Since the April 25, 1974 coup in Lisbon which overthrew the New State dictatorship, remarkable changes have begun to occur in Portugal and in her African territories: Portugal has granted independence to Guinea-Bissau (September 12), and has pledged independence to Angola and to Mozambique at an undetermined future date and in a manner as yet to be clearly explicated. But American policy toward Portugal and toward the territories it still controls in southern Africa maintains extreme caution. Our policy has remained rather passive, unimaginative, in want of innovation and, it seems, replete with compromises. In short, present American policy here appears to lack any clear conceptual basis or purpose.

Type
Research Article
Information
African Issues , Volume 4 , Issue 2 , Summer 1974 , pp. 4 - 8
Copyright
Copyright © African Studies Association 1974 

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References

NOTE: Parts of this commentary were first published in “Rethinking Southern Africa,” by Douglas L. Wheeler, in The Christian Science Monitor 1 August 1974.

1 Letter from Mr., Franklin H., Williams in Washington Post, 7 June 1974; also cited and reprinted in African Studies Newsletter, vol. VII, no. 4 (August 1974), pp. 31–32.Google Scholar

2 Steel, Ronald, “Foreign-Policy Advice,” The New York Times 20 August 1974.Google Scholar

3 Charles, W. Yost, “Lessons of Cyprus,” The Christian Science Monitor, 20 August 1974.Google Scholar

4 See the article by Bruce, Oudes, “The Friendly Skies of Air Rhodesia,” Ramparts (August 1974), pp. 15–20. 5 William V. , Shannon,Google Scholar “The Cult of Crisis,” The New York Times. 27 August 1974.

6 For further information on Rhodesian sanction issues and the Congress of the U.S., contact The Washington Office on Africa, 110 Maryland Ave., N.E., Washington. D.C. Telephone: 202-546-7961.