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Evading the Embargo: How the U.S. Arms South Africa and Rhodesia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 August 2021

Michael Klare
Michael Klare*
Affiliation:
Institute for Policy Studies and Eric ProkoschAmerican Friends Service Committee
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Extract

Although the United States agreed to honor both the 1963 UN embargo on arms deliveries to South Africa and the 1966 arms embargo on Rhodesia, vast quantities of U.S. arms have been supplied to the two countries through a variety of clandestine and semi-legal channels. These deliveries have enabled the minority governments of Pretoria and Salisbury to intensify their control over the black majority and resist what they perceive as half-hearted calls for change on the part of U.S. officials.

Type
Research Article
Information
African Issues , Volume 9 , Issue 1-2 , Spring/Summer 1979 , pp. 42 - 46
Copyright
Copyright © African Studies Association 1979 

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References

Notes

1. UN Security Council Resolution No. 418, of November 4, 1977, which requires all member states to halt all transfers to South Africa of “weapons and ammunition, military vehicles and equipment, paramilitary police equipment, and spare parts for the aforementioned....”

2. See: Sean Gervasi, “What Arms Embargo?” Southern Africa, August 1977, pp. 2-6.

3. The authors are indebted to Robert T. Sylvester, “U.S. Arms Embargo Against South Africa; Is It To Be Effective?” (unpublished manuscript, April 12, 1978).

4. Study in Response to National Security Study Memorandum No. 39, Southern Africa, August 15, 1969, cited in ElKhawas, Mohamed A., ed., The Kissinger Study of Southern Africa (Westport, Conn.: Lawrence Hill & Co., 1976), p. 107 Google Scholar.

5. All data on aircraft performance characteristics are taken from Jane’s All The World’s Aircraft, 1976-77, and earlier editions.

6. ”Aircraft on the Border,” Paratus, May 1974, pp. 31-32.

7. Sylvester, op. cit.

8; All data on aircraft engines is from Jane’s All the World’s Aircraft.

9. Jane’s All the World’s Aircraft, 1973-74 ed., p. 122; SIPRI Arms Trade Registers (Stockholm, 1975), p. 84.

10. Our thanks to the Washington Office on Africa and the American Committee on Africa for assistance in this section of our paper.

11. Washington Post, March 23, 1978.

12. Jennifer Davis testimony as reprinted in “The U.S. Role in South Africa’s Military Build-Up,” New York, Africa Fund, n.d.

13. All data on military configurations are from Jane’s All The World’s Aircraft.

14. Information on Export-Import Bank loans to May 1976 as reprinted in: U.S. House of Representatives, Committee on International Relations, Subcommittee on International Resources, Food, and Energy, hearings. Resource Development in South Africa and U.S. Policy, 1976, pp. 270-288. Information on subsequent loans as released by the Export-Import Bank to the Washington Office on Africa and to the authors.

15. UPI, “Sale of Planes to South Africa Backed,” Washington Post, December 15, 1977.

16. New York Times, March 31, 1978.

17. New Haven Advocate, October 20, 1976.

18. Gervasi, op. cit.

19. Earlier, Michael T. Kaufman had reported in the New York Times (October 3, 1976) that some “ten new Cessna light reconnaissance and transport planes,” produced in Reims, France under license, had arrived in Rhodesia “through the sanctions net.”

20. According to Jane’s All The World’s Aircraft, the “primary structures” of the Reims 337 planes are produced in the United States and then shipped to France for assembly; only certain smaller components and equipment are French-produced.

21. New Haven Advocate, October 20, 1976; Wall Street Journal, October 21, 1976 and January 11, 1977.

22. Washington Post, March 23, 1978.