Henry Kissinger is supposed to have said that the situation in Southern Africa was the most complex in the world today, and I sometimes wonder which of us has more of a problem dealing with it–we South Africans in trying to solve the sometimes intractable dilemmas of a divided and heterogeneous society, or Americans in trying to work out what on earth is going on down there.

South Africa’s system of apartheid and policy of separate development is unique among nations. Apartheid is the pervasive institutionalization of discrimination by law on the basis of race; separate development would deny South African citizenship to the blacks of South Africa. A central goal of U.S. policy with respect to South Africa is to encourage that country to end apartheid and grant full political participation to all its peoples. This key policy is diametrically opposed to the position of the government of South Africa.

The phenomenon known as the “brain drain” refers to the permanent or long-term migration of educated or skilled individuals from one country to another, usually from a poor Third World nation to an industrialized Western country. However, it also describes the migration of such persons between developed countries, such as from Canada to the United States and within countries, notably from impoverished rural areas to urban areas.

In evaluating the consequences of the $1.7 billion currently invested by U.S. corporations in South Africa, the issue is distinctly not whether or not the U.S. firms involved have adopted the Sullivan Principles. Those principles, purportedly designed to ensure upgrading and equal pay for blacks, are in reality little more than a smokescreen. Behind their rhetoric, U.S. transnational corporations continue to help South Africa build up its military-industry machinery to perpetuate oppression of the majority of black workers.

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.

The phenomenon popularly known as brain drain has attracted growing concern in the United States and abroad (Tulsa Daily World, 1967; Committee on Manpower... 1967; Asian Student, 1968a: 3; 1968b: 1; 1969: 3; Institute of Applied Manpower . . . 1968; U. S. Congress, 1968; Gardiner, 1968: 194-202; Bechhofer, 1969: 1-71; Committee on the International Migration . . . 1970). The notion has been expressed that the poor countries of the world are being deprived of their talent and robbed of their human resources by the exchange of scholars and students which goes on between nations (U.S. Congress, 1968: 16-25; Mondale, 1967a: 24-6; 1967b: 67-9). Implicit is the idea that many students from these less developed countries go to the more highly developed and industrialized countries for study and decide not to return to their homeland.

There are many prevailing notions and myths about the strategy and objectives of the Socialist powers and their associated socialist states in Southern Africa. A great deal of them are based upon the fears of rival powers and the propaganda of those ruling interests and minorities who suddenly now find themselves face to face, not with the in-effectual guerrilla movements they have discounted, but with real and basic international power.

Adapted from the production of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, British Broadcasting Corporation, and WGBH/ Boston.

On November 9, 1978 WBGH of Boston aired on public television the results of research, conducted by the British Broadcasting Corporation and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation over many months and three continents, into the channels by which South Africa has been receiving sophisticated weapons manufactured in the West, in violation of American and UN arms embargoes. What follows is a narrative based on the November 9 transcript which WGBH generously made available to the Current Issues Committee.

The purpose of this study was to ascertain if any relationship exists between ethnic membership and the brain drain, defined as expatriation or indefinite delay of return. It was hypothesized generally that such a relationship exists and that the Nigerian subjects of the study would differentiate themselves markedly on the questionnaire items based on their ethnic group membership. Specifically, it was hypothesized that Igbo respondents would be the least disposed to early return to Nigeria.

[The designation “Rhodesia” is used to distinguish the colonial state, with which this article is concerned, from the future decolonized “Zimbabwe”. Readers interested in a less theoretical but more closely documented version of the arguments presented in this paper, plus analysis of the options and prospects for the administration of rural development in Zimbabwe, are referred to Beyond Community Development: The Political Economy of Rural Administration in Zimbabwe (London, Catholic Institute for International Relations, 1978, 64 pp.) by the same author.]

Three members of the Rhodesian Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace visited the U.S. in late October and early November 1978. John Deary, Chairman of the Commission, Brother Fidelis Mukonori, S.J., Vice Chairman, and Michael Auret, Organizing Secretary, spoke to interested groups in the U.S. on the current situation in their country. These members of the Commission have had recent views of the situation from inside Zimbabwe/Rhodesia, both in the urban areas and in the operational zones.

This directory is a revision and updating of two earlier publications issued in limited numbers in xerox form, “A Select Register of Current and Recently Completed Research on South Africa in the Humanities and Social Sciences,” (New Haven, CT, 1977) and “Inventory of Current Research on Southern Africa” (2nd Preliminary version. New Haven, CT, 1977. Plus “Supplement,” Jan. 1978).

A social scientist once described Nigerian political behavior and culture in terms of a continual ability to move dangerously closest to the edge of disaster before pulling back just in time to avoid falling into the deep. Nigerians in high and low places have a passion for insisting on the absolute rightness of their positions and claims sometimes with little regard to the consequences for others as well as for themselves. Sometimes groups in the nation act as if they will rather be dead right than heed the political necessity of mutual accommodation and prudent compromise. The Daily Times Opinion of April 29, recalls Thomas Hobbes, the English philosopher (1588-1679) when it declared that “Nigerians are brutish and nasty. They are contentious and cantankerous. They are irreverent. And they are ungovernable. . . . [They] are an intensely political people, the more so today, when the promise of a return to civilian government has understandably led to the flexing of muscles by all manner of interest groups.” This is national high-wire politics at its best! But it is also dangerous politics at its worst. It reflects an ingrained political attitude about which more should be learned.