Working with "the Devil": Zambia and Southern Africa's Detente, 1949-1976 By Walker Swindell: 6396836

Abstract

On 25 August 1975 Zambian President Kenneth Kaunda met with South African Prime Minister B.J. Vorster on the railway bridge overlooking the Victoria Falls. This meeting marked the highpoint of a diplomatic exercise known as southern Africa’s détente (1974-1976). This was a period that saw the warming of relations between Apartheid South Africa and independent African states including Zambia. The purpose of this meeting was for both men to act as witnesses to negotiations between the white minority government of Rhodesia and the representatives of the Zimbabwean national liberation movements. Yet the sight of an avowed African nationalist shaking hands with the leader of one the most racially repressive states of the late twentieth century has confounded scholars to the present day. The decision to participate in southern Africa’s détente seems all the more perplexing considering that Kaunda and his United National Independence Party (UNIP) government had been providing the liberation movements of southern Africa with valuable political, logistical and financial support. Since that meeting scholars have argued that the Zambian government engaged with the Vorster regime because of the economic strains placed on the landlocked country’s economy by the war in neighbouring Rhodesia. These scholars present Zambia’s engagement with South Africa as a deviation from their policy of support for the African nationalists of the region.

However, based on a close analysis of a range of primary sources including oral history interviews, government documents and telegrams produced by the American ambassador to Zambia I argue that the Zambian government participated in southern Africa’s détente because it was in keeping with their long-held and practiced foreign policy whose aim was to assist fellow African nationalists in their campaigns for independence by a preference for non-violent means such as negotiations with political rivals in order to achieve that aim. As a result the decision to cooperate with the South African government in order to get the Rhodesians and Zimbabwean nationalists to the negotiating table in order to peacefully resolve the conflict did not represent a diversion in Zambian policy but in actual fact represented an attempt at its realisation. In making this argument I have centred the thinking and actions of the Zambia’s foreign policy actors: Kaunda, Special Advisor to the President Mark Chona and Foreign Minister Vernon Mwaanga. In making this argument and adopting this approach I am inspired by and contribute to the growing literature on African foreign affairs. This has seen scholars rationalise controversial foreign policy decisions on the part of African governments by centring the thinking and actions of policymakers through a close analysis of archival sources and situating them within the context of nationalist politics. This thesis is the first study into the history of the Zambian government’s involvement in détente that adopts this approach. In doing so I shed light on this remarkable event in the history of the southern African region during the era of decolonisation.