Paul E Masters. International Social Science Review. Volume 75, Issue 3/4, 2000.
In the British political parlance of the 1960s, “the Rhodesian problem” referred to the difficulty of dealing with the white settler minority in Southern Rhodesia. In 1964, Great Britain granted independence to Malawi and Zambia, former members of the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland, based upon constitutions providing for black majority rule. However, the third Federation member, Southern Rhodesia, rejected British efforts to bring a peaceful transition to majority rule and self-determination under democratic terms, and in 1965, unilaterally declared independence.
After the issuance of the Unilateral Declaration of Independence (UDI), British Prime Minister Harold Wilson predicted that the white settler regime led by Ian Smith would collapse in a matter of weeks. After fifteen years and 20,000 lives, the colony of Rhodesia gave way to the majority ruled, independent nation of Zimbabwe.
While Britain held the major constitutional and historical responsibility for the transition to independence and majority rule, it was not the only external actor. The United Nations Security Council played a role by imposing mandatory economic sanctions on Rhodesia in 1966 and 1968. Other international organizations involved in the conflict were the Organization of African Unity and the Commonwealth. African states that were significant players included Nigeria and the Frontline States of Angola, Botswana, Mozambique, Tanzania, and Zambia. Finally, the United States was actively involved in the transition process. The purpose of this paper is to examine American policy toward Rhodesia during the administration of Jimmy Carter. Studying Carter’s role in the transition from Rhodesia to Zimbabwe is useful not only in and of itself but also as a case study in how Carter tried to redirect American foreign policy toward Africa and the Third World in general.
The Shadow of Henry Kissinger
In 1969 the Nixon administration chose the “Tar Baby Option” which left the United States stuck like Br’er Rabbit to the white minority regimes of southern Africa: the Portuguese colonies in Angola and Mozambique; Rhodesia, Namibia, and South Africa. Nixon and his Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger, saw Africa through the prism of East-West confrontation. To them Africa was a hotbed of Soviet and Cuban adventurism that left the United States little choice but to side with white minority regimes that opposed the advance of communism. Symbolic of this mindset was the passage of the Byrd Amendment in 1971. This legislation permitted the United States to import chrome and other minerals from Rhodesia in open contravention of the UN sanctions of 1966 and 1968 for which the U.S. had voted. The strategic minerals found in southern Africa were felt to be vital to the military-industrial survival of the United States and its allies.
In 1975, the passing of the Portuguese African empire changed the political realities for U.S. policy in the region. After the departure of the Portuguese colonialists from Angola, the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA), a Marxist group with Soviet and Cuban support, fought a civil war with two other black nationalist groups supported by American covert assistance. Fearing a repeat of the Vietnam experience, the U.S. Congress passed the Clark Amendment prohibiting any further support to groups involved in the Angolan civil war. Having failed to prevent the MPLA from coming to power, Kissinger feared that events in Angola might be repeated in Rhodesia, and he began to refocus his attention on British-led efforts to negotiate a resolution to the conflict. A sense of urgency ensued after a Marxist African government came to power in independent Mozambique. This opened a new front on Rhodesia’s eastern border allowing black nationalist guerrillas to intensify the insurgency that had been waged from Zambia since 1972.
Confronted with the prospect of an expanded insurgency, Kissinger tried to remold U.S. policy in the region by announcing, in April 1976, American support for majority rule in Rhodesia. He began work on convening a conference on Rhodesia based on five general principles: 1) majority rule within two years; 2) formation of an interim government; 3) negotiations between the white minority regime of Ian Smith and black nationalist groups on the powers and composition of the interim government; 4) agreement of Britain and Rhodesia to enact enabling legislation; and 5) termination of UN sanctions. In December 1976, Kissinger convened a conference in Geneva; however, a stalemate quickly developed. One month later a new administration came to Washington with different ideas about American policy in Rhodesia and Africa.
Carter’s Africa Policy
As a symbol of the New South, Jimmy Carter came to the White House hoping to emphasize civil rights in his domestic policy and human rights in his foreign policy. Reflecting this emphasis, Carter appointed Congressman Andrew Young as his ambassador to the United Nations. A veteran of the civil rights movement, Young used his experience to redirect American policy at the UN to be more sensitive to the Third World majority in the General Assembly. Policy makers in the Carter administration viewed a Rhodesian settlement as a cornerstone of the president’s policy.
While serving in Congress, Young had worked to undo the Byrd Amendment. During his confirmation hearings Young stated: “I think a repeal of the Byrd Amendment is important in giving a signal to Ian Smith that he cannot count on U.S. support regardless of what he does.” Young felt the Amendment showed that America placed short time self-interest above moral considerations.
In March 1977, just two months after Carter took office, the Byrd Amendment was repealed (250-146 in the House; 66-26 in the Senate). Carter went to New York and told cheering UN delegates that the U.S. supported sanctions against Rhodesia. The substantial congressional victory resulted from political support among various interest groups throughout the United States.”
The repeal of the Byrd Amendment was part of a broader strategy to develop closer ties to African leaders and to come to a clearer understanding of common interests. Carter became the first American president to travel to Africa where he emphasized “African solutions to African problems.” In a speech in Lagos, Nigeria, Carter said:
We share with you a commitment to majority rule and individual human rights…We share with you a commitment to economic growth and to human development. We share with you a commitment to an Africa that is at peace, free from military interference by outside nations, and free from inevitable conflicts that come when the integrity of national boundaries are [sic] not respected. These three commitments shape our attitude toward your continent.
Carter accepted a regionalist perspective that argued that issues in Africa are unique to the region and should be evaluated accordingly. The “regionalists” in the administration rejected the East-West dichotomy of Kissinger’s linkage theory which tied Africa and other regions of the Third World to the central questions of U.S.-Soviet relations. They rejected abstract geopolitical theorizing that ignored the local realities. They were concerned about the presence of Cuban troops and Soviet arms in Africa but felt that dramatizing the East-West factor did more harm than good. The surest barrier to external intervention was African nationalism and economic development. The cause of majority rule was the way to prevent Soviet and Cuban exploitation. However, a commitment to majority rule, self-determination, and racial equality must be matters of basic human rights, not just a strategy to combat external intervention.
This regionalist perspective found support among personalities such as Cyrus Vance, the Secretary of State, Andrew Young, Richard Moose, Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs, and Anthony Lake, head of the Policy Planning Staff at State. They were joined by allies on Capitol Hill like Charles Diggs (D-Michigan) and other members of the House Subcommittee on African Affairs and the Congressional Black Caucus.
Those in the administration that continued to subscribe to Kissinger’s linkage theory were known as “globalists.” They argued for a recognition of the U.S. role as a great power with the primary security concern of containing Soviet expansionism. The Soviet Union and NATO demanded far more attention than the nations of Africa and other regions of the Third World. Too much attention to specific issues such as apartheid would mire the United States in a series of local civil conflicts and divert it from its primary goal of containing the Soviet Union. Globalism’s major supporters included Europeanists in the State Department, the Pentagon, the Central Intelligence Agency, the staff of the National Security Council, and National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski.
The turf and policy battles between the regionalists and the globalists continued throughout Carter’s term in office, with the former tending to dominate policy discussions in the first two years and the latter in the last two years. While the regionalists started to lose clout in the determination of Africa policy in general, they continued to dominate Rhodesia policy with their advancement of the Anglo-American proposals.
In the early years of the Carter administration the United States was an equal partner with Great Britain in the search for a peaceful resolution of the Rhodesian problem. Serving as point man for the administration, Andrew Young developed a warm personal relationship with David Owen, the newly appointed Foreign Secretary for the Labour government in London. Owen appreciated Carter’s high-level interest and commitment to an aggressive Rhodesian diplomatic effort. In Rhodesia on September 1, 1977, Owen and Young announced their new Anglo-American proposal for a settlement. Their plan called for: 1) an interim British administration with a UN peacekeeping force; 2) a constitution providing for universal adult suffrage; 3) guerrilla units to be incorporated into the Rhodesian army; 4) a Rhodesia Development Fund of at least $1 billion; and 5) independence under majority rule in 1978. Over the next six months all discussion on Rhodesia centered on these proposals.
The most controversial element in the Anglo-American plan was the incorporation of guerrilla units into the Rhodesian army. The guerrillas, known as the Patriotic Front, were led by Joshua Nkomo and Robert Mugabe. The Patriotic Front was a tenuous political and military alliance between the two leaders. Personal and ethnic factors separated Nkomo’s Zambian-based Zimbabwe African People’s Union (ZAPU) from Mugabe’s Mozambiquean-based Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU). These divisions were temporarily set aside for the sake of the struggle against Smith’s white minority regime.
Carter accepted the incorporation of guerrillas at the insistence of President Julius Nyerere of Tanzania. Carter believed that the Frontline States had a major role to play as supporters of the Patriotic Front. Owen adamantly opposed the administration on incorporation. He predicted that this would doom the Anglo-American proposals. Unfortunately, Owen proved to be right.
The Anglo-American plan was an anathema to Smith. However, he realized that the growing intensity of the guerrilla war and domestic economic difficulties caused by UN sanctions left him little room to maneuver. In an effort to capitalize on divisions between African nationalists inside and outside of Rhodesia, Smith announced an internal settlement on March 3, 1978. Smith’s internal settlement put the Americans and British on the defensive and set the parameters of the debate for the next year.
Smith was successful in persuading Bishop Abel Muzorewa and other internally based African nationalist leaders to agree to the internal settlement. The external leaders of the Patriotic Front were invited to participate if they agreed to lay down their arms, in effect, surrender. Knowing Nkomo and Mugabe would refuse such an offer, Smith counted on Muzorewa’s political ambition of leading the nationalist movement to lend legitimacy to his proposal.
The internal settlement centered on a new constitution that provided for universal suffrage but reserved twenty-eight seats in a one hundred seat parliament for whites, enough to provide whites with a veto over any constitutional changes. In addition, whites were to remain firmly in control of the civil service, judiciary, military and other levers of power. The new constitution was promulgated in January 1979, and the elections were held in April. Almost two million Africans cast ballots for the first time, with Muzorewa’s party capturing fifty-one of the seventy-two African seats, insuring the title of prime minister for Muzorewa. Smith’s party easily won all twenty-eight seats reserved for whites.
Smith hoped the internal settlement would secure acceptance from the international community and result in the termination of UN sanctions. With the economy no longer strangled by sanctions and, at least, the appearance of majority rule, Smith’s military could put an end to the insurgency waged by Nkomo and Mugabe. Thus, Smith focused his attention on the repeal of the sanctions; he turned to his political allies in the United States to aid him in this effort.
The Sanctions Debate
A changing international and domestic political environment helped the Smith-Muzorewa alliance in its lobbying campaign in the United States. In 1978 two crises in Africa added impetus to this change. In Ethiopia, the Soviets and Cubans intervened on a massive scale to help the government in Addis Ababa fight secessionist movements in Eritrea and the Ogaden. This intervention in the Horn of Africa caused concern over the U.S. commitment to stability in the Persian Gulf. In the same year Katangan rebels invaded Zaire’s Shaba province from bases in Angola. For a time it looked as if the West might lose access to Shaba’s cobalt, a strategic mineral found mainly in Zaire and the Soviet Union.
Carter’s reaction to these conflicts did not reassure American conservatives preoccupied with the U.S. strategic position in Africa and the world in general. Capitalizing on this concern, conservatives in the mid-term congressional elections in 1978 engineered the defeat of six influential liberal senators, including Dick Clark, chairman of the Senate African subcommittee. This was the beginning of a turn to the political Right that emboldened many conservatives and eventually led to Carter’s failure to win reelection in 1980.
The leaders of the New Right on the Rhodesian problem were Senators Jesse Helms (R-North Carolina) and S.I. Hayakawa (R-California). These senators invited members of the Rhodesian government to the United States to help them launch a massive public relations campaign to gain legitimacy. Just months after the announcement of the internal settlement, Helms failed by only six votes to pass legislation unconditionally removing sanctions.
A few weeks after his initial defeat, Helms again pushed a vote in the Senate. The administration launched a counterattack based on the constituency for U.S.-African affairs that helped Carter get elected in 1976. Born of a merger of civil rights organizations, young black professionals, church groups, some labor unions, college students, and anti-Vietnam War groups, this coalition had supported Carter during several primary elections because of his human rights and anti-apartheid stance. Carter’s coalition was not able to defeat the New Right but did force Helms and his colleagues to compromise.
This compromise, known as the Case-Javits Amendment to the International Security Assistance Act of 1978, was adopted by the Senate on July 26 and later accepted by the House. It called for the removal of sanctions against Rhodesia if the President determined that two conditions had been met: 1) the Rhodesian government agreed to negotiate on all relevant issues at an all-parties conference held under international auspices; and 2) the holding of free elections in which all political and population groups were allowed to participate. The Amendment redefined the terms of the U.S. debate over Rhodesia and put the administration on the defensive.
The debate in the U.S. over implementing the Case-Javits Amendment and thus lifting sanctions centered on differing perceptions of the April 1979 election that brought Muzorewa to the office of prime minister. Proponents of the internal settlement saw the election as consistent with the requirements of Case-Javits while critics argued that Smith and Muzorewa were more concerned with projecting the right appearance than negotiating a fair settlement.
Among the supporters of the internal settlement, the American Conservative Union played a leadership role by sending a team of four distinguished individuals to observe the election. The team included syndicated columnist Smith Hempstone, former Congressman Howard Pollock, former U.S. government official Byron Engle, and CBS commentator M. Stanton Evans. The ACU determined that the election was conducted on a free and fair basis with a voting turnout of nearly sixty-five per cent. The observers concluded that the election was a brilliant success especially in light of the fact that it was held in the midst of a civil war.
The human rights group Freedom House also sent a team, headed by Bayard Rustin, to observe the election. Rustin concluded that the election was more fair than any other he had observed in Africa and was a major step toward the creation of a democratic, multicultural, multiracial society in Zimbabwe-Rhodesia (as it was called in the new constitution). Both Freedom House and the ACU felt the time had come to lift the sanctions.
After the announcement of the internal settlement and even before the election, a number of other interest groups such as the Woman’s Missionary Society, the International Council of Christian Churches, the American Security Council, the American Legion, and the Heritage Foundation urged Carter to lift sanctions. They were aided by a distinguished group of U.S. Senators led by Helms and Hayakawa that included Howard Baker, Strom Thurmond, Jake Garn, Orrin Hatch, Robert Dole, Russell Long, Harry Byrd, Barry Goldwater, and John Stennis, among others. Editorial comment in the United States strongly favored Smith and the internal settlement. Papers such as the New York Post, Phoenix Gazette, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Cleveland Plain Dealer, and the Miami Herald expressed support for the internal settlement and the lifting of sanctions well before the elections were held.
Smith’s critics in America were not in any way sympathetic to Muzorewa’s elevation to prime minister. They regarded the internal settlement resulting in a new constitution and elections to be a complete sham used to perpetuate minority rule. The same groups that opposed the earlier efforts of Helms to lift sanctions coalesced once again to criticize the April election. The coalition included such interest groups as the National Bar Association, the United Nations Association, the International Commission of Jurists, the AFL-CIO, the National Conference of Black Churchmen, Operation Push, Transafrica, the NAACP, the Black Women’s Coalition of Atlanta, the Council of 100, and the Association of Black Women Lawyers of New Jersey. The coalition had the support of allies on Capitol Hill that included members of the House African subcommittee, the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Clement Zablocki (D-Wisconsin), and, of course, the Congressional Black Caucus. Referring to their opponents, Caucus Chairman Cardiss Collins (D-Illinois) declared: “We are painfully aware that some of those who oppose full implementation of civil rights for blacks in the United States also favor the immediate lifting of sanctions on Rhodesia.”
Central to this coalition’s criticism of the election was their argument that there was not one election but three elections, none of which was fair. The first election was held in January 1979, and involved only whites, comprising three per cent of the population. Whites alone voted to ratify a new constitution that guaranteed them twenty-eight per cent of the seats in the new legislature and control over the civil service, the police, the military, and the judiciary for ten years. The second election, held in early April, was also a whites-only process where they selected their legislators. In late April, blacks, comprising ninety-seven per cent of the population, were permitted to vote for the first time. Whites were allowed to vote for black or white political parties; blacks could only vote for other blacks. There was no voter registration and ninety per cent of the country was under martial law.
Interest groups on both sides of the dispute continued to marshal their forces. On June 7, 1979, Carter announced his decision not to lift sanctions. The President concluded that the two key provisions of the Case-Javits Amendment had not been met by the authorities in Zimbabwe-Rhodesia. First, the Smith-Muzorewa government’s expression of support for an all-parties conference to discuss all relevant issues was not sincere due to their launching over several months of major air strikes against opposition camps in Zambia. Second, the election was not free and fair because it was held under a constitution that was drafted and approved by whites only. This document guaranteed the white minority a veto power in the new parliament and control over many important levers of power for years to come. Externally based opposition parties were prohibited from holding meetings, from having political rallies, and from expressing their views. Finally, citing UN resolutions, the President said lifting the sanctions would be a direct violation of international law.
Carter recognized that he did not have support for his position in the Senate but soon after his June 7 announcement the House voted overwhelmingly in favor of legislation that essentially abandoned the Case-Javits conditions. It authorized the President to make a decision on maintaining sanctions based on his perception of the national interest. The supporters of the internal settlement finally lost the debate. Carter’s decision had enhanced the British government’s ability to maneuver as the focus for the resolution of the Rhodesian problem began to shift to London.
The Lancaster House Conference
In May 1979, the Labour government that had worked with the Carter administration as an equal partner was replaced by a Conservative government headed by Margaret Thatcher. The new Prime Minister came to power stressing two key points with regard to the Rhodesian problem. First, she insisted on Britain’s central role in the resolution of the conflict due to its constitutional and historical interests. Second, she supported the internal settlement and was ready to recognize the regime of Bishop Muzorewa. In what has been described as “the education of Maggie Thatcher,” the new Foreign Secretary, Peter Carrington, convinced her to drop her support for the internal settlement. In September all parties, including Muzorewa, Smith, Nkomo, and Mugabe, assembled at Lancaster House in London under the auspices of the new British government. The Americans had been relegated to the sidelines.
There is no doubt that Carrington’s conduct at Lancaster House emphasized British centrality in the negotiating process. Although remaining on the periphery, the Carter administration did make certain contributions that ultimately led to a successful conference. Perhaps the most important contribution was the possibility of financial aid to Zimbabwe. The conference had stalemated over the question of financing land resettlement and redistribution schemes a majority rule government might undertake. Nkomo and Mugabe balked at the idea of compensating whites for land that the Patriotic Front felt had been stolen from its original African owners. While Carter’s commitment on this issue was rather convoluted and cautious, just offering the possibility of U.S. aid to compensate landowners was enough to offer the Patriotic Front a face-saving way out of the impasse.
The conference participants had agreed that Commonwealth peacekeeping troops would oversee the transitional phase to bring about a majority rule government; UN peacekeepers, as had been suggested in the Anglo-American proposals of a few years earlier, were to be excluded. Carter quietly bolstered the British negotiating position by offering to fly the peacekeepers to Zimbabwe on American C5A Galaxies. In addition, financial and logistical support was offered to resettle 200,000 Zimbabwean refugees who had been encamped in Zambia, Mozambique and Botswana.
One irritant to Anglo-American relations during the negotiations was a matter of timing. Carter insisted that the U.S. was prepared to lift sanctions when the British governor arrived in Rhodesia, and the process leading to impartial elections had begun. Carrington had wanted Carter to lift sanctions simply when the governor took up his office. The Foreign Secretary believed that Carter’s position added to the Patriotic Front’s fear that if sanctions were terminated the elections would be canceled; this enhanced fear might increase the level of distrust Nkomo and Mugabe had in the British government. The British eventually accepted the American position on this issue.
While the New Right had lost the sanctions debate in the United States, they continued to express an interest in the Rhodesian problem. This continued interest proved to be an embarrassment to the Carter administration. Two aides to Senator Helms, John Carbaugh and James Lucier, attended the Lancaster House conference as observers. Carrington felt they were endangering the negotiations by making promises to Smith and Muzorewa on behalf of the U.S. Congress. After some fancy footwork, Secretary of State Vance was able to convince the Senator to order his aides home.
In spite of such interference, the British brought the feuding parties to agreement in December. The United States lifted sanctions, followed by the United Nations and the Frontline States. In February 1980, new elections were held, and on April 18 the independent state of Zimbabwe came into being with Robert Mugabe as prime minister. The “Rhodesian problem” had finally been resolved.
Assessment and Conclusion
Jimmy Carter came to the White House advocating a regionalist approach to foreign policy. “African solutions to African problems” was the guiding principle in the administration’s Africa policy. The surest way to combat Soviet and Cuban expansion in the region was American support for majority rule, human rights, and economic development. A few years later the conservative mood that swept across America had an impact on American official thinking about Africa. A congressional shift to the Right as a result of the 1978 mid-term elections coupled with the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 served to revive the globalist approach to Africa advocated by Kissinger. These events culminated in the promulgation of the Carter Doctrine in 1980. Carter declared:
We have increased and strengthened our naval presence in the Indian Ocean, and we are now making arrangements for key naval and air facilities to be used by our forces in the region of Northeast Africa and the Persian Gulf.
The prism of East-West confrontation was now to control policy, resulting in increased militarization across Africa. Yet despite the significant policy shift, the regionalist approach continued to dominate decision-making with regard to the Rhodesian problem. Several factors help explain this continuity.
The political strength and sophistication of the domestic interest groups advocating majority rule in Rhodesia helped Carter maintain his regionalist focus. The National Bar Association, the United Nations Association, Transafrica, and many others worked tirelessly to promote majority rule by making sure the administration did not lift sanctions. They correctly emphasized that their opponents were many of the same individuals who had tried to block the advancement of civil rights for many Americans. Promoting civil rights at home and majority rule abroad was simply the right way to go. These interest groups were supported on Capitol Hill by the Congressional Black Caucus and others and in the administration by Andrew Young, Richard Moose, and Anthony Lake. They combined forces to convince Carter that their moral argument was in the national interest.
The centrality of the British to the resolution of the dispute also helps explain the persistence of the regionalist perspective. Both Labour and Conservative governments clearly understood their constitutional and historical responsibilities in Rhodesia. Having ushered in majority rule in their other former colonies, they continued to press this principle in the negotiations on Rhodesia. Concerns about Soviet expansion in the region were clearly subordinated to the promotion of African nationalism. If the British were ever to ignore these priorities, the Commonwealth with its dynamic African membership was there to help them keep their focus.
Finally, the guerrilla leaders of the Patriotic Front prevented the Rhodesian problem from ever developing into a cockpit of U.S.-Soviet rivalry. Both the Soviet Union and China supplied arms to the guerrillas but competition between the communist giants mitigated against domination of the guerrillas by either one. In addition, tension between ZANU and ZAPU reduced the influence of the communist patrons. Mugabe, the eventual winner in this contest, deeply distrusted the Soviets who had continually pressed him to accept Nkomo’s leadership. These tensions plus genuine sentiments of African nationalism among the Zimbabwean leadership worked against the further internationalization of the conflict.
Maintaining the regionalist approach to the Rhodesian problem enabled the Carter administration to achieve a clear diplomatic victory. One of the major players in this victory, Andrew Young, later stated that contributing to political and racial peace in Zimbabwe was his most gratifying experience during his tenure at the United Nations.