South African political leaders—as either prime ministers or presidents—have an average term of office of approximately nine years. If he conforms to average, De Klerk is likely to be the dominant figure in white politics for some time, and therefore his credentials are of some significance. At 53 he is young, he comes from a background steeped in politics and he has an impressive intellectual background as an academic lawyer. In 1972 he chose to enter Parliament rather than accept the offer of a chair in law at Potchefstroom University. Having entered Parliament, his talent as a debater helped him to win his spurs quite quickly and he became Minister of Posts and Telecommunications in 1978.

The political scene in South Africa today is perhaps one of the most complex in the modern world. The easiest analysis would be to have the white minority government on the one hand, and the back resistance and liberation organizations ranged against it on the other. Unfortunately, it is not that easy. The white minority itself is torn by divisions and differences in ideology, with essentially two divisions into the right-wing and the centrists. Both camps, however, are themselves divided into various notches on the scale to the right, but never beyond to the left of centrist. That position has been reserved for black politics, which is also positioned at various points on the scale to the left.

Upon taking office, a new administration has a unique opportunity to set its own goals and priorities. President Bush, although somewhat constrained by his links to the Reagan past as well as by his cold war (i.e., “globalist”) perceptions of the external world and by his self-imposed austerity measures, nonetheless retains a sometimes unrecognized room for maneuver. Taking into account the limitations in public economic resources that he faces, what policy options are open to his administration in its dealing with contemporary Africa?

There is a terrible tragedy in the making in South Africa. A blood-bath looms — and all of us are threatened by its consequences. The human costs of a prolonged and violent straggle in South Africa are incalculable both in terms of treasure and of lives — black and white — that it will consume. And the struggle for liberation in South Africa will increasingly affect the United States and the Western World. We cannot run and we cannot hide from the struggle or its consequences. All of our rationalizations for inaction will ring increasingly hollow and will only fuel racial division and conflict in America and throughout the world.

The nature of the post-apartheid society is very much on the agenda. In the multitude of publications, conferences and debates on this agenda, the bulk of the attention is given to the need for—and the possible characteristics of—a non-racial political system. Much less attention is given to the nature of the post-apartheid economic system, and to the structural changes necessary to synchronize it with the new political system and to ensure that it will have the fiscal capacity to sustain a truly democratic parliamentary system.

Health care services in South Africa are in decline. Inadequate resources, the fragmentation of services along racial lines, their division between a confused jumble of authorities together with a growing privatization of medical care are among the many factors having grave effects on an already poorly constructed health service. The persistence of high levels of infant mortality and the widespread nature of preventable disease provide clear measures indicating that existing health services have failed to meet the needs of the majority of the population for basic medical care. The changes that are currently underway in health services are making it less likely that they can adequately contribute to providing health for all.

(Readers of the Summer 1975 issue of ISSUE — entirely devoted to a discussion of the 1972 killings in Burundi — had the opportunity to take the full measure of the tragedy then visited upon the country, 18 years before the latest outburst of ethnic violence. As René Lemarchand noted at the time, “anyone for whom the name Burundi evokes more than a Lilliputian entity in the heart of Africa must look back to the events of 1972 with a sense of horror and consternation: in a matter of weeks tens of thousands of human beings were systematically slaughtered in what, in retrospect, can only be described as the nearest equivalent offered by Africa of a ‘final solution.’”

A century ago, Cecil Rhodes told a Dutch Reformed missionary’s mother that “your son among the natives is worth as much to me as a hundred policemen.” He was referring, of course, to the role many missionaries played in turning Christianity into an ideology which could be used to convince Africans not to resist white domination.

Rhodes’ modern-day successors—South Africa’s white rulers and their allies—have gone one dangerous step further. For them, it is not enough to use the church as a kind of ideological cheering section for white domination. Instead they are quite literally using pastors and missionaries as soldiers and policemen.

Utterly destitute, exhausted, and terrorized, hundreds of Mozambicans each day make their way to neighboring countries seeking protection. More than a million Mozambican refugees have now fled that nation. Millions more are displaced within Mozambique. In southern Sudan, hundreds of thousands have died and many more are at risk of starvation. More than two million other southern Sudanese have been uprooted from their homes. Many of them are living in squalid shantytowns built atop garbage dumps outside the Sudanese capital, Khartoum. Elsewhere in Africa, refugees languish in settlements where they have remained for years, dependent on international food aid, while more recently arrived refugees struggle just to survive.

The history of US policy in Southern Africa has been depressingly consistent. Because US government agencies and major corporations were so closely tied to the ruling white minorities of the region, it was only when majority forces rose up in armed rebellion and seized power that some members of the US elite were willing to accept the fait accompli of majority rule. But even then, there were powerful conservative forces that sought to “roll back” the advance of popular movements in countries like Angola and Mozambique. The Reagan administration sought to hold back the tide of leftist victories in southern Africa by giving Pretoria the international protection it needed to bring its neighbors to their knees.

This is an important time for Sub-Saharan Africa. First and foremost, because over half the region is actively engaged in wide-ranging programs of economic reform or structural adjustment. Second, because the donor community is in the process of deciding how these African efforts will be supported over the next several years. Lomé IV, (Europe’s major funding mechanism for Africa), its volume and how it is allocated, is a critical part of that process. So too are the current negotiations on the Ninth Replenishment of the International Development Association (IDA).

President Bush has a unique opportunity to link U.S. development assistance with grass roots Pan-Africanism. By broadening the focus of aid policy to include relations among networks of African nongovernmental organizations (NGO’s), the Administration can begin addressing the barriers to African participation in the surge of transnationalism that will undergird economic prosperity in the 21st century. Already, the emerging global pattern is clear: In 1992 the European Community (EC) will become the West’s largest integrated market. The Gulf States, as well as the five Maghreb states of North Africa, recently announced plans for greater political and economic unity. The incorporation of Hong Kong into the People’s Republic of China holds the promise of new modalities for accommodating radically different economic and political systems within the same national boundaries. And the list will continue to grow.

I would like to share an anomaly I observed in Kigoma Region of Tanzania. It is an anomaly because of its incompatibility with many of the decision-making models implicitly used to assess development aid programs. Such models are, of course, based primarily on the assumptions and observations made by economists, sociologists and anthropologists about the already developed countries. Implicitly, they assume a certain type of rationality which is taken for granted by both expatriate planners, and local planners trained in Western tradition. However, as I think that this example demonstrates, rational behavior in rural Third World communities may be predicated on assumptions outside the unspoken parameters of the social sciences.