Friday, November 4, 1977, I am sure, is just another day for most of you gathered here to deal with some important business concerning this honorable association of scholars, professionals and other genuinely interested men and women.

This Association is after all basically a membership organization and it exists primarily through, and for its constituent members. Characteristically the first line of our By-Laws (as revised in April 1970) states that ‘The Corporation shall consist of not less than 100 members.”

I doubt that there are many groups in America which would have so many members who want to discuss foreign policy on a Saturday night. I am impressed with your seriousness and look forward to an interesting discussion after my remarks. I will not reveal whether / would give up a Saturday evening to hear what I am about to say. But I am glad to be here to listen to your comments and discuss your questions.

Judging by public tone, style, and ideological emphasis alone, the casual observer of U.S. foreign policy is impressed by the novelty of the Carter Administration’s approach toward Southern Africa. Kissinger had stressed America’s tangible interests, sought alliances with ideological “enemies” to advance or at least to protect those interests, and operated a clever, manipulative and secretive diplomacy with calculated ambiguity. The Carter Administration now seems to espouse once more American ideals and principles, open diplomacy for announced clearly-stated objectives, and decision-making by consent. But what is really involved is a reversion to the active use of ideology and salesmanship to manage its political and economic interests. It is of a piece with “helping our little brown brothers” in Puerto Rico, Cuba, and the Philippines, making the world “safe for democracy” and saving Vietnam from Communism.

“From a tiny stream grows a mighty flood ...”

At the end of 1966 U.S. direct investment in South Africa was $490 million. Ten years later the dollar value of U.S. direct investment had more than trebled, reaching a figure of at least $1.67 billion by 1976.

The newly independent nations of Africa have, without exception, proclaimed their desire to industrialize in order to create increasingly productive employment opportunities and higher living standards for all their inhabitants. Historically, colonial development was oriented to producing the raw material exports required by the factories of Europe, and importing the manufactured goods those factories produced. Colonial government expenditures were devoted to building the infrastructure—railroads, roads, ports—required to facilitate the export of raw materials. Colonial policies discouraged local manufacturing to preserve African markets for goods produced in European factories. Most of the investable surpluses created by raw materials production in Africa were siphoned out of the country in the form of profits, interest, and dividends of the oligopolistic colonial firms that owned the mines and estates, and dominated the foreign trade. Little capital was left for investment in new industries. At the time of independence, less than 10% of the national product in the typical African country consisted of manufactured output—among the lowest level of industrialization in the world.

Mr. Chairman, Members of the Subcommittee,

As you know, the United Nations Security Council called for an arms embargo against South Africa in 1963. Its objective was to prevent South Africa’s acquiring foreign weapons with which to build a modern military machine. South Africa did not have then, and lacks even now, the capacity to produce sophisticated modern arms economically. The Council reasoned at the time that if South Africa were denied supplies of modern arms it would find it difficult to resist the growing internal demands for dismantling apartheid. Many states saw the arms embargo as the best way to ensure peaceful change in southern Africa. And the call for an embargo was issued with that explicit purpose in mind.

In 1977, Congress authorized the expenditure of one million dollars for “the preparation of a comprehensive analysis of development needs of southern Africa to enable the Congress to determine what contribution United States foreign assistance can make.” AID was instructed to present specific proposals on how to spend this one million dollars. AID seems to have approached several groups of scholars heretofore critical of U.S. policy in southern Africa on the possibility of serving as “consultants” to draft this analysis. AID in late November approached the four of us as scholars in contact with persons knowledgeable about the region (and not ostensibly because of our links to the Association of Concerned African Scholars) to meet with them to discuss what kind of work ought to be done, could be done, and might be done by us. We agreed to meet with them in December in Washington.

In recent months, international attention has focused on southern Africa in response to the accelerated guerrilla wars in Rhodesia/Zimbabwe and Namibia and the intensity of the South African government’s attempts to repress popular unrest by massive bannings of virtually all African political and community organizations. These developments are but a continuation of the long process of decolonization in Africa which began over twenty years ago and which in recent years saw the independence of Angola, Mozambique, and Guinea-Bissau. Because of the intransigence of Portuguese colonial rule, the struggles for self-determination in the latter three countries took the form of protracted popular guerrilla struggles against colonial rule. The growing success of these struggles over the period of the 1960s and early 1970s brought about significant political changes within Portugal itself and led to the April 1974 coup.