The New Penguin History of the World (201 page)

Scapegoats, inevitably, were sought. Increasingly, but perhaps explicably, given the completeness and rapidity of decolonization in Africa and the geographical remoteness of much of it, they tended to be found near by and old ethnic differences emerged in civil war and massacre. But resentment also came to focus on the racial division of black and white in Africa itself. This was flagrant in the most powerful of African states, the Union of South Africa. The Afrikaans-speaking Boers, who by 1945 dominated that country, cherished against the British grievances that went back to the Great Trek and had been intensified by defeat in the Boer War. They had led to the progressive destruction of ties with the British Commonwealth after the First World War, a process made easier by the concentration of voters of Anglo-Saxon origin in the provinces of Cape Town and Natal; the Boers were entrenched in the Transvaal and the major industrial areas as well as the rural hinterland. South Africa, it is true, entered the war in 1939 on the British side and supplied important forces to fight in it, but even then intransigent ‘Afrikaners’, as they increasingly called themselves, supported a movement favouring cooperation with the Nazis. Its leader became prime minister in 1948, after defeating South Africa’s senior statesman, Jan Smuts, in a general election. As the Afrikaners had steadily engrossed power inside the Union, and had built up their economic position in the industrial and financial sectors, the prospect of imposing a policy towards the black African that diverged from their deep prejudices was already inconceivable. The result was the construction of a system of separation of the races: apartheid. It systematically embodied and reinforced the legal reduction of the black African to the
inferior status he occupied in Boer ideology. Its aim was to guarantee the position of the whites in a land where industrialism and market economies had done much to break down the regulation and distribution of the growing black population by the old tribal divisions.

Apartheid had some appeal – on even less excusable grounds than the primitive superstitions or supposed economic necessities of the Afrikaners – to white people elsewhere in Africa. The only country where a similar balance of black and white population to that of South Africa and a similar concentration of wealth existed was Southern Rhodesia, which, to the great embarrassment of the British government, seceded from the Commonwealth in 1965. The aim of the secessionists, it was feared, was to move towards a society more and more like South Africa’s. The British government dithered and missed its chance. There was nothing that the black African states could do immediately about Rhodesia, and not much that the United Nations could do either, though ‘sanctions’ were invoked in the form of an embargo on trade with the former colony; many black African states ignored them and the British government winked at the steps taken by major oil companies to ensure their product reached the rebels. In one of the most shameful episodes in the history of a feeble ministry, Great Britain’s stock sank in the eyes of Africans, who, understandably, did not see why a British government could not intervene militarily to suppress a colonial rebellion as flagrant as that of 1776. Many British reflected that it was precisely that remote precedent which made the outlook for intervention by a remote and militarily weak imperial sovereign discouraging.

Though South Africa (the richest and strongest state in Africa, and growing richer and stronger all the time) seemed secure, it was, together with Rhodesia and Portugal, the object of mounting black African anger as the 1970s began. The drawing of the racial battlelines was hardly offset by minor concessions to South Africa’s blacks and its growing economic ties with some black states. There was a danger, too, that outside powers might soon be involved. In 1975, after the Portuguese withdrawal from Angola, a Marxist regime took power there. When civil war followed, foreign communist soldiers arrived from Cuba to support the government, while South African support was soon given to rebels against it.

The South African government soon showed that it could take action. It sought to detach itself from the embarrassment of association with an unyielding independent Rhodesia (whose prospects had sharply worsened when Portuguese rule came to an end in Mozambique in 1974 and a guerrilla campaign was launched from that country against it). The American government contemplated the outcome if Rhodesia collapsed at the hands of black nationalists depending on communist support. It applied
pressure to the South Africans who, in turn, applied it to the Rhodesians. In September 1976 the Rhodesian prime minister sadly told his countrymen that they had to accept the principle of black majority rule. The last attempt to found an African country dominated by whites had failed. It was another landmark in the recession of European power. Yet the guerrilla war continued, worsening as black nationalists sought to achieve unconditional surrender. At last, in 1980, Rhodesia briefly returned to British rule before re-emerging into independence, this time as the new nation of Zimbabwe, with a black prime minister.

This left South Africa alone as the sole white-dominated state and the richest in the continent and the focus of black (which, in this context, meant non-white) resentment around the world. Although the OAU had been split by civil war in Angola, African leaders could usually find common ground against South Africa. In 1974 the General Assembly of the United Nations forbade South Africa to attend its sessions because of apartheid, and in 1977 the UN Commission of Human Rights deftly side-stepped demands for the investigation of the horrors perpetrated by blacks against blacks in Uganda, while castigating South Africa (along with Israel and Chile) for its alleged misdeeds. From Pretoria, the view northwards looked more and more menacing. The arrival of Cuban troops in Angola showed a new power of strategic action against South Africa by the USSR. Both that former Portuguese colony and Mozambique also provided bases for South African dissidents, who fanned unrest in the black townships and sustained urban terrorism in the 1980s.

These were no doubt among the reasons for changes in the position of the South African government. By the middle of that decade, the issue seemed to be no longer whether the more obnoxious features of apartheid should be dismantled, but whether black majority rule could be conceded by South African whites without armed conflict. A change was apparent when a new prime minister took office in 1978. To the dismay of many Afrikaners, P. W. Botha slowly began to unroll a policy of concession. Before long, though, his initiative slowed; continuing signs of hostility to South Africa in the United Nations, urban terrorism at home, an increasingly dangerous and militarily demanding situation on the northern frontiers in Namibia (allocated to South Africa years before as a UN trusteeship territory), and increased distrust of Botha among his Afrikaner supporters (shown in elections), all led him back towards repression. His last gesture to relaxation was a new constitution in 1983, which provided representation for non-white South Africans in a way that outraged black political leaders by its inadequacy, and disgusted white conservatives by conceding the principle of non-white representation at all.

Meanwhile, the pressure of what were called ‘sanctions’ against South Africa by other countries was growing. In 1985 even the United States imposed them to a limited extent; by then, international confidence in the South African economy was falling and the effects were showing at home. Straws before the wind of change in domestic opinion could be discerned in the decision of the Dutch Reformed Church, to which many Afrikaners belonged, that apartheid was at least a ‘mistake’ and could not (as had been claimed) be justified by scripture. There was also growing division among Afrikaner politicians. It probably helped, too, that in spite of its deepening isolation, South African military action successfully mastered the border threats, though it was incapable of defeating the Angolan government so long as Cuban forces remained there. In 1988 Namibia came to independence on terms South Africa found satisfactory and peace was made with Angola.

This was the background against which P. W. Botha (President of the republic since 1984) reluctantly and grumpily stepped down in 1989 to be succeeded by F. W. de Klerk. He soon made it clear that the movement towards liberalization was to continue and would go much further than many thought possible, even if this did not mean the end of apartheid in all respects. Political protest and opposition were allowed much more freedom. Meetings and marches were permitted; imprisoned black nationalist leaders were released. Meanwhile, an important change in the relations between the superpowers had produced agreements between the United States and the Soviet Union over ending the struggles in Angola and Mozambique and giving freedom to Namibia.

Suddenly, the way ahead opened up dramatically. In February 1990 F. W. de Klerk announced ‘a new South Africa’. Nine days later, the symbolic figure of Nelson Mandela, leader of the African National Congress, emerged at last from jail. Before long he was engaged in discussion with the government about what might come next. For all the firmness of his language, there were hopeful signs of a new realism that the task of reassuring the white minority about a future under a black majority must be attempted. Just such signs, of course, prompted other black politicians to greater impatience.

The transition to democratic rule in South Africa was not a simple one. Even though de Klerk, acting with speed and bravery, had rescinded most of the apartheid legislation by the end of 1991, there were many among the white elites who in various ways resisted change. But neither the 1993 assassination of Chris Hani, a prominent left-wing leader of the ANC, nor ethnic strife in the black townships (often fuelled by rogue elements inside the apartheid state), could unmake the road to majority rule. Increasingly,
the great majority of South Africans of all races came to view Nelson Mandela – reverently referred to by his clan-name, ‘Madiba’ – as the guarantor of political stability and economic progress in a new multiracial state. When he was elected president in 1994, Mandela spoke of a country reborn and a pride regained for all South Africans. But it was in the following year, when President Mandela put on the jersey of the all-white South African national rugby team – the Springboks – to celebrate their victory in the World Cup, that he became the symbol of national unity for whites as well as blacks. ‘Madiba magic worked for us,’ said the captain of the team. In 1999, as Mandela stepped down from the presidency, all of South Africa had reason to say the same.

LATIN AMERICA

By 1900, some Latin American countries were beginning to settle down, not only to stability but to prosperity. Argentina was one of the richest countries in the world. To the original colonial implantations in the continent had been added the cultural influence of nineteenth-century Europe, especially of France, to which Latin American élites had been drawn in the post-colonial period. Their upper classes were highly Europeanized and the modernity of many of the continent’s great cities reflected this, as they also reflected recent European immigration, which was beginning to swamp the old colonial élites. As for the descendants of the aboriginal Americans, they were hardly to be taken into account. In one or two countries, their suppression had been so complete as to produce near-extinction.

Almost all Latin American states were primary producers of agricultural or mineral exports. Some were relatively highly urbanized, but their manufacturing sectors were inconsiderable, and for a long time they did not seem to be troubled by the social and political problems of nineteenth-century Europe. Capital had flowed into the continent, only briefly and occasionally checked by financial disasters and disillusionments. The only social revolution in a Latin American state before 1914 (as opposed to countless changes in governmental personnel) began with the overthrow of the Mexican dictator, Porfirio Diaz, in 1911. It opened the way to nearly ten years of fighting and a million deaths, but the primary role was played by a middle class that felt excluded from the benefits of the regime, not by an industrial or rural proletariat, and that class was the main gainer, along with the politicians of the party which emerged to monopolize power until the 1990s. Although most Latin American countries could display class conflict aplenty in their countrysides, they did not appear to
suffer from the social bitterness of industrialized and urbanized Europe.

These promising-looking societies survived the First World War prosperously. It brought important changes in their relations with Europe and North America. Before 1914, although it was the predominant political influence in the Caribbean, the United States did not exercise much economic weight to the south. In 1914 it supplied only 17 per cent of all foreign investment south of the Rio Grande – and Great Britain much more. The liquidation of British holdings in the Great War changed that; by 1919 the United States was the largest single foreign source of investment in South America, providing about 40 per cent of the continent’s foreign capital. Then came the world economic crisis; 1929 was the doorway to a new and unpleasant era for the Latin American states, the true beginning of their twentieth century and the end of the nineteenth. Many defaulted on their payments to foreign investors. It became almost impossible to borrow further capital abroad. The collapse of prosperity led to growing nationalist assertiveness, sometimes against other Latin American states, sometimes against the North Americans and Europeans; foreign oil companies were expropriated in Mexico and Bolivia. The traditional Europeanized oligarchies were compromised by their failure to meet the problems posed by falling national incomes. From 1930 onwards there were more military coups, risings and abortive rebellions than at any time since the Wars of Independence.

The year 1939 again brought prosperity as commodity prices rose because of wartime demand (in 1950 the Korean War prolonged this trend). In spite of the notorious admiration of Argentina’s rulers for Nazi Germany and evidence of German interests in some other republics, most of them were either sympathetic to the Allies who courted them, or subservient to the United States. Most of them formally joined the United Nations’ side before the war ended and one, Brazil, sent a small expeditionary force to Europe, a striking gesture. The most important effects of the war on Latin America, however, were economic. One, of great significance, was that the old dependence on the United States and Europe for manufactured goods now became apparent in shortages. An intensive drive to industrialize gathered speed in several countries. On the urban workforces that industrialization had built up was founded a new form of political power that entered the lists as a competitor with the military and the traditional élites in the post-war era. Authoritarian, semi-fascist, but popular mass movements brought to power a new kind of strong man. Perón in Argentina was the most famous, but Colombia in 1953 and Venezuela in 1954 produced similar rulers. Communism had no such conspicuous success among the masses.