Africa on America’s Cold War Radar

CHARLES SANDERS, Kissinger in Africa (1976)

The United States’s interest in Africa took a backseat to other global hotspots including Vietnam and the Middle East, but in the mid-1970s Africa became another Cold War battleground. As reported in Ebony, an African American magazine, Secretary of State Henry Kissinger’s 1976 diplomatic tour of key African nations highlighted a renewed attention to the continent’s issues, motivated by the presence of military and economic support by Soviet and Chinese communist governments. These factors within the Cold War context influenced U.S. involvement in African affairs.

Upon his arrival in Dar es Salaam, one of the first stops on his tour of Africa in the spring, U.S. Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger stood beside his plane exchanging pleasantries with Tanzanian diplomats. Suddenly, a swarm of bees appeared above his head. They hovered for a while then flew away.

“If he had come as an enemy,” said one of the African journalists at the airport, “he’d have been stung right away.”

The story of the bees would be printed in The Tanzania Daily News, and mixed with the praise that Kissinger would receive for his “new program for Africa” would be a great deal of criticism and more than one comment that the bees might have made a mistake.

While in Africa, Kissinger met with six presidents — Jomo Kenyatta of Kenya, Julius Nyerere of Tanzania, Kenneth Kaunda of Zambia, Mobutu Sese Seko of Zaire, William R. Tolbert Jr. of Liberia and Léopold Sédar Senghor of Senegal. He explained details of his “new program” to African experts on international politics and economics, and held closely guarded talks with Joshua Nkomo, a leader of the African National Council, and with representatives of Mozambique, Botswana, Zambia and Tanzania, the militant “front-line” countries in the campaign to overthrow white governments in Rhodesia and South Africa.

In a long, detailed policy speech in Lusaka, Zambia, Kissinger made promises which, if implemented, will mark a radical turning point in American-African relations. He pledged U.S. support for black majority rule in Rhodesia (Zimbabwe), said that the present white regime will “face our unrelenting opposition,” and warned American citizens to get out of the country because the U.S. could offer them no protection there. He said the Ford Administration would urge Congress to repeal the Byrd Amendment which permits the U.S. to import Rhodesian chromium ($43 million worth last year) in defiance of United Nations sanctions against Rhodesia. He pledged $12.5 million in aid to Mozambique, which has suffered economic hardship since closing its borders with Rhodesia in an effort to block shipment of Rhodesian products. He said the U.S. would provide a black-ruled Zimbabwe with economic, technical and educational assistance. He said that the U.S. would urge South Africa to grant independence to South-West Africa (Namibia) and to end “institutional racism” — apartheid — and bring about “peaceful change” in the country’s racial policies. He said the U.S. would step up its various aid projects in Africa in an effort to speed development, and would give special attention to manpower training, rural development, advanced technology and transportation problems. For the black-ruled states of southern Africa, he said he would triple financial assistance to about $85 million during the next three years.

While President Kaunda embraced Kissinger at the end of the speech and said the U.S. would find him and “my colleagues, the Presidents of Tanzania, Mozambique and Botswana, cooperative, cooperative,” most other African leaders seemed to prefer a wait-and-see approach. President Nyerere, for example, responded to Kissinger’s call for a “negotiated settlement” in Rhodesia by declaring: “Negotiated settlement? In Zimbabwe, the war of liberation has already begun!” Nigeria, black Africa’s richest and most populous country, refused to allow Kissinger to visit it, and Ghana withdrew its invitation because of the “ill health” of the head of state, Gen. Ignatius K. Acheampong. U.S. officials blamed Nigeria and the Soviet Union for Ghana’s action and said they had learned of “Soviet agitation” of students in Accra.

One of Kissinger’s purposes for visiting Africa was to bolster the morale and polish the image of those heads of state — especially Mobutu of Zaire and Kaunda of Zambia — who are considered to be “friends of the United States.” President Mobutu has been in serious political trouble and his country has grappled with economic crises since backing — with U.S. and South African support — the losing side in the Angolan civil war. President Mobutu’s worries involve not only his political and economic problems but also the SAM-7 missiles and the estimated 350 heavy Russian tanks just across the border in the hands of his old foes. In Zambia, President Kaunda’s action in closing his borders with Rhodesia caused a loss of vital revenue in the face of declining world prices for Zambian copper ore. Zambia must make decisions about whether to cast its fortunes with the U.S. and other Western powers or with the powerful Soviet bloc. Kissinger’s visits to Kinshasa and Lusaka and the assurances were very well-timed.

Growing concern about Soviet influence on the African continent was one other reason for the visit. Soviet weaponry can be found in many African nations and Soviet technicians and military experts are living in Africa and lending expertise. A number of Chinese have arrived, too, especially in Tanzania, and are engaged in work ranging from teaching to building highways and railroads. Soviet and Chinese ships are the most prominent ones in the harbor at Dar es Salaam and trucks and heavy equipment built in Eastern bloc nations are seen on many roads. “For years, we begged the United States to pay some attention to us and help us, but we didn’t even exist as far as the Americans were concerned,” said a Tanzanian student sipping tea in the Kilimanjaro hotel. “Now that we have found friends elsewhere, Kissinger comes dashing over trying to stem the tide. Where has he been during the last 8 or 10 years?”

Kissinger was keenly aware of his Johnny-come-lately status and admitted publicly that Africa has had “low priority” in U.S. foreign policy schemes. He pleaded: “you have to remember that we’ve been preoccupied with a whole range of things — Vietnam, East-West relations, the Middle East, the oil crisis, our domestic problems. But my trip to Africa represents the beginning of a policy, not the end of one, so we ought to forget the mistakes of the past.”

In a commentary on the Kissinger visit, the influential Kenyan magazine, The Weekly Review, reminded its readers of the lucrative trade relations the U.S. has with Rhodesia and South Africa, and of the hundreds of millions of dollars worth of U.S. investments in the two countries. This reality, coupled with that of the traditional rivalry between the U.S. and the Soviet Union, prompted this analysis by the Review: “… it is only by a very elastic stretch of the imagination that southern African liberation problems can be included within [U.S. foreign policy objectives] … it is going to take a good deal of double talking on the part of the American secretary of state to convince his African hosts with any ‘ambiguous clarity,’ as he puts it, that Africa means more to Washington than a mere pawn in the great global power game.”

The Kissinger trip has raised a number of questions for which Africans — those whose hopes were buoyed, those whose frustrations were assuaged, those who have had no reason to believe in promises from Washington — will be waiting for answers: Is the U.S. really prepared to give meaningful help to Africa in its continuing struggle for liberation, development and eventual self-sufficiency? Has a deal been struck between the U.S. and South Africa to “sacrifice” Rhodesia in order for South Africa to “buy time” and continue apartheid? In the face of escalating activity by Soviet-backed guerillas against white regimes in southern Africa, would the U.S. risk war to “stop communism” and protect American investments there?

Then there is the bottom-line question: Did those bees in Dar es Salaam make a mistake?

Charles Sanders, “Kissinger in Africa,” Ebony 31 (August 1976): 52–54, 56, 58.

READING AND DISCUSSION QUESTIONS