Maravi

"According to the London Observer of 21 October 1978, at the point at which the Lancaster House Conference almost collapsed over the issue of whether a new government should assume the costs of compensating departing white settlers for their land, it was a secret intervention - reportedly at the request of President Nyerere of Tanzania and Shridath Ramphal, the Commonwealth Secretary - by Carter and Vance promising the funds that salvaged the Conference.

I suspect the Carter Administration did not require much prodding to proffer the funds - part of a multi-donor program. In fact, such assistance was planned under the Zimbabwe Development Fund envisaged by Kissinger in 1976. To say that the funding was being done at the request of the African parties just provides better cover for the managerial activities.

(By Holly Sklar)

It is important to note one fundamental difference between the Kissinger approachand the Carter/Young approach. The latter seems to be much more trilateralist. Whereas Kissinger maintains that the best thing to do with the radical nationalists (what he calls "ideological radicals," a category into which he places Mugabe but not Nkomo) is to isolate them, Young and Carter feel that it is best to maximize contact in the belief that the radical nationalists ultimately "want to share in the productivity of the American way of life."

But differences aside, there has been a consensus on one key point regarding Rhodesia: the need to maintain the interests of the multinational corporations operating there in the face of the growing military threat from the PF's fighting forces. How great is that threat? Is there any possibility that the Patriotic Front will take power through a military victory?

The thirteen years of war have been a bitter and cruel affair. The strategy used by the Rhodesian Forces - similar to that of the US forces in Vietnam- has been to terrorize the civilian population away from support they have consistently given the guerillas, whom they fondly call "The Boys". Some indication of the extent to which this type of counterinsurgency has failed isi provided by the fact that the Patriotic Front has today a pool of close to half a million refugees in the neighboring countries of Mozambique, Angola, Zambia and Botswana from which to draw political cadre and military recruits.

Likewise, the fact that South Africa assumed an increasingly overt role in the war is a direct indication of the Front's effectiveness. It has been known and reported for some time that South Africa is materially involved in the war in Zimbabwe, just as it has intervened in Angola and Mozambique.

....

Shortly before resigning from his United Nations Post, Andrew Young resonded to the question posed by Encore, a Black American magazine, "How important do you think Rhodesia will be as a campaign issue?" He said:

"Very important. Because the Republicans have decided that Zimbabwe is the new racial code word for "Let's keep the niggers in their place." In 1968, you remember, it was 'crime in the streets', in 1972 it was 'busing', in 1980 it is 'Rhodesia'.

Beginning with the 1975-76 mobilization protesting U.S. intervention in Angola and continuing into the Carter Administration, prominent Black American individuals and organizations have been carving out a role in determining the shape and direction of US policy and action in Africa. The publication of Kissinger's "whites are here to stay" memorandum (see introduction to Brown's article); revelations about the CIA's activities in Africa (extensively chronicled in John Stockwell's In Search Of Enemies: A CIA Story, 1979); and the 1976 Soweto uprising in South Africa galvanized Black and mixed organisations toward renewed levels of activity. In 1977 the NAACP sponsored a major factfinding trip to Africa and issued a report calling for sanctions against South Africa as well as Rhodesia.

How does the US manage to cooperatively play a "paramount, but no longer dominant" role? Several approaches are visible in the Carter response to congressional pressure to lift sanctions during the Spring of 1979 and in the US-British relationship in organizing the Lancaster House Constitutional Conference. First, in exemplary trilateralist fashion, the Carter Administration permits Britain to play the Matt Dillon marshall role at Lancaster House, with the US appearing as the faithful deputy Chester. Second, Carter makes certain that to whatever extent possible the US is given a very low profile; role-playing the silent deputy as well as the faithful one. Third, the Carter and Thatcher Administrations pursue steps which assure them maximum flexibility for in the post-Vietnam era it is flexibility and not raw muscle power which characterizes the winner.

The appointment of Lord Carrington, the British foreign secretary as Lancaster House Conference chairman, insured that trilateralism and corporate interests would be well served. The Lord served as Britain's secretary of state for energy in 1974 and was the minister of aviation supply from 1971-74. He is now or has been a director of the following multinationals:

Rio Tinto Zinc Corporation, Australia and New Zealand Bank, Hambros Bank, Barclays Bank, Amalgamated Metal Company and the Cadbury Schweppes Company. And if this background is not enough to ensure that he is a good, skillful and neutral chairperson, he has the additional qualifications of being a past member of the Trilateral Commission (See "Who's Who On The Trilateral Commission") and the president of the British-Iran Society.