capitals, which SWAPO's unchallenged leader, Sam Nujoma, regularly visits. SWAPO's last consultative conference (held in Tanzania at the end of 1969) was attended by observers from West European countries as well as by observers from Czechoslovakia, Romania, the USSR, and Yugoslavia. Its military aid comes principally through the ALC, and its fighters have received military training in Egypt, Algeria, and Tanzania. It draws some foreign aid from the Soviet Union, as well as from Yugoslavia, Norway, Denmark, and Sweden, who channel it through the ALC.

SWAPO includes representatives from all major black ethnic groups, but its main strength lies among the Ovambo tribesmen, who constitute almost half of the total black population. Concentrated in the northern province of Ovamboland, the Ovambo have ethnic links with tribal clans across the border in southern Angola.

The sole rival of SWAPO within Namibia has been the South West African National Union (SWANU). Its internal base is largely confined to the small Hereros tribe in the south, whose chieftain, Clemens Kapuuo, is a prominent figure in the National Convention, which is a loose association of all black political organizations inside the territory of Namibia. SWAPO, however, was always a reluctant participant in the Convention and has lately become openly hostile to it and to Kapuuo. Abroad, the stature of SWANU has diminished, and the amount of international support and assistance it receives has declined to minimal levels.

South Africa, while not opposing self-determination for the peoples of Namibia, has sought to resist the independence of a single, undivided country by promoting the idea of seven or eight separate "Homelands," each of which would have the right to opt for separate freedom. However, the growing pressures in the UN Security Council and from its closer Western friends, as well as the emergence of an independent and stable black Angola might increase the pressures beyond Pretoria's military and political capacity to resist. Anticipating such a possibility, Vorster's regime has already begun to prepare white Namibians to face up to the need for fundamental

22 Such a possibility has been freely talked about by officials of the South African government in Namibia since the middle of October 1974, when it was first publicly mentioned by the Commissioner-General for Indigenous Peoples of South West Africa. 23 See Anthony R. Wilkinson, Insurgency in Rhodesia, 1957-73: An Account and Assessment, Adelphi Paper No. 100, London, International Institute for Strategic Studies, Autumn 1973.

changes. South Africa has offered to allow the country to become independent as two separate states: an all-black north in Ovamboland and a federation of blacks and whites in the south.22

On to Rhodesia

Turning to Rhodesia, one finds that, as in Angola, there have been three armed liberation groups aligned against the Smith regime-the Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU), the Zimbabwe African People's Union (ZAPU), and a splinter group of ZAPU-the Front for the Liberation of Zimbabwe (FROLIZI). In addition, the African National Council, led by Bishop Muzorewa, has continued to press for black political rights by legal means within Rhodesia. None of these movements has adopted any particular ideological position or developed strong foreign links outside of Africa, and all are African nationalist in outlook.

ZANU has been the group most active militarily. Its head, the Rev. Ndabaningi Sithole, had been in a Rhodesian prison from 1966 for his political activities against the Smith regime and was only released in November 1974. In his absence, ZANU-in-exile has been led by Herbert Chitepo. However, there appear to have been serious divisions of opinion in prison between Sithole and his lieutenants, notably Robert Mugabe, who claims to have deposed him. Chitepo, too, has been under challenge since the release of the ZANU leaders. The movement has enjoyed the close support of Tanzania and of FRELIMO. Beginning in 1972, ZANU began to operate effectively out of the latter's territory in the Tête Province of Mozambique. In December of that year, ZANU was able to achieve the prerequisite for a successful guerrilla struggle-a military base inside Rhodesia with local peasant support and reasonable communications to facilitate the movement of arms and trained men in and out of the country.23 In addition to receiving aid from Tanzania and FRELIMO, ZANU is the only Rhodesian guerrilla group that the African Liberation Committee of the OAU has endorsed in the last few years.

For its part, ZAPU is a divided movement. Its external backing has come mainly from Zambia and Algeria, with some Soviet support coming after ZAPU's leaders agreed to break off all relations with Peking in 1965. Its leader, Joshua Nkoma, was in a Rhodesian prison from 1966 until his release in November 1974. ZAPU's experience as an exile

Joshua Nkomo, left, now leader of the Zimbabwe African People's Union, and the Rev. Ndabaningi Sithole, leader of the Zimbabwe African National Union, pictured together at a May 1960 conference in London. These two were released from Rhodesian prisons last December in order to participate in talks with representatives of the lan Smith government in Lusaka, Zambia.

-Keystone.

group has been schismatic. When a group of young black Rhodesian graduates, known as the Front for the Liberation of Zimbabwe (FROLIZI) was formed in Zambia in 1971, one section of ZAPU led by Nkomo's two principal lieutenants-Robert Chikerema and George Nyandoro-joined with it, while a smaller wing of ZAPU attempted to merge with ZANU but failed to do so.

While the net effect of guerrilla actions to date has not been exceptional, this pressure, when combined with an international campaign of economic sanctions imposed by the United Nations, has created something of a siege atmosphere in Salisbury. White immigration-an important barometer of political morale-is declining, and more young white Rhodesians than ever before are now emigrating." Rhodesia has responded to the guerrilla threat with a sharp escalation of security measures. Official sources report killing some 468 guerrillas since December 1972 but estimate that some 350 to 400 are still operating inside the country. Rhodesia has rapidly increased its expenditures on defense and

24 Financial Mail (Johannesburg), Oct. 12, 1973.

police activities, to a point where they account for 15 percent of the 1975 national budget.25

The tendency of the Smith regime to overreact has played into the hands of the guerrillas in one important respect. A tough policy of forcibly relocating some 100,000 tribesmen in the northeastern area has turned a largely passive peasant community into an actively discontented population more willing than before to supply new recruits for insurgent forces.

The collapse of Portuguese power in Africa has sharply changed the environment in which the Zimbabwe liberation forces will be operating. While the potential for guerrilla action has grown as a result of the installation of FRELIMO in power in neighboring Mozambique and the OAU African Liberation Committee's new concentration on the liberation of Rhodesia, there is also a significant new opportunity for negotiations in that country as a result of the move toward détente worked out at Lusaka between certain black African presidents and the Republic of South Africa. Not only is Salisbury now faced with a more credible threat of guerrilla activity the length of its border with Mozambique, but it appears likely to find itself simultaneously deprived of its South African military prop as a result of commitments made by the Vorster regime at Lusaka.

It was in this sober new setting that lan Smith agreed to release temporarily his black Rhodesian political prisoners, including Sithole and Nkomo, in order that they might travel to Lusaka to participate in working out the agreement of last December. There, the black presidents virtually compelled the liberation forces to consent to unite under the umbrella of the African National Council and to disband all other groups-both in exile and within Rhodesia. The pro tempore leadership of the reconstituted Council would comprise Joshua Nkomo, Bishop Muzorewa, and the Rev. Sithole." The black leaders also pledged to cease guerrilla actions subject to agreement on the holding of constitutional talks with the Smith regime and the release of all political detainees.

While the liberation forces have consistently stated that they would accept nothing less than full majority rule, they have not insisted on its immediate achievement. This should leave room for nego

25 The Military Balance, 1974-75, London, International Institute for Strategic Studies, 1974.

26 The Guardian, Dec. 9, 1974.

has been difficult for Tambo to deny a role to the Communists in the movement. (Indeed, the ANC has sided openly with Moscow in the Sino-Soviet struggle, and while most of its military personnel have received their training in Algeria and Tanzania, some cadres have been trained in Eastern Europe and Cuba.)

The ANC's chief rival has for a number of years been the Pan-Africanist Congress (PAC), which seceded from the ANC under Robert Sobukwe's leadership in 1969. This group was outlawed in South Africa in 1960; after spending ten years on Robben Island, Sobukwe is now a banned person living in Kimberley. In exile, the PAC-a blackconscious and militantly anti-Communist movement -has declined in strength, largely because a series of splits robbed it of most of its ablest leaders. Its exile leader is Potlako Kitchener Leballo, around whose personality many of the debilitating quarrels have swirled. Although the PAC has flirted with Peking, it has received only token support from the Chinese. It has very few armed guerrillas in its train

exile is due entirely to the strong support of the ALC, which, inexplicably, favors it with funds out of all proportion to the movement's effective strength. The third exile movement committed to armed struggle against the minority white regime in Pretoria is a small elitist group-the African People's Democratic Union of South Africa. It grew out of the Non-European Unity Movement, whose leadership is largely Trotskyite and made up of middleclass professionals. Its exile leader is Isaac Tabata, a well-known Trotskyite pamphleteer and writer, who has campaigned against the dangers inherent in the involvement of Communist governments in the black liberation movement. The APDUSA has infiltrated a number of its trained cadres back into the Republic only to have them quickly caught, tried, and imprisoned. It has, so far, received no ALC financial support.

Few policy options appear open to the weak guerrilla forces as they attempt to wrest liberation from a regime evidently as impregnable as that of Prime Minister Vorster. In light of Pretoria's military strength, the guerrillas seem no more capable of establishing a real foothold inside South Africa on their own today than they were more than a decade ago when Nelson Mandela first proclaimed the necessity of creating a military capability in order to extract political concessions from Pretoria." As a result, South Africa's insurgents have had to rely heavily on outside support, primarily from those black African states most involved in advancing majority rights on the subcontinent.

In the aftermath of the events of 1974, both the South African liberation forces and their mentors in the ALC see improved opportunities to achieve political concessions by posing the threat of armed action against South Africa. They believe that an intensified commitment to armed struggle in the wake of consolidation of black power in Mozambique (and, presumably, in Angola), and in a context of increasing pressure on, or actual elimination of, white supremacy in Rhodesia, will serve to focus international attention on South Africa and help to mobilize African and other support for the liberation cause. This strategy includes among its aims pressuring Western decision-makers to reduce their own economic, political, and military support for the

Congress and head of its external mission.

28 Nelson Mandela, No Easy Walk to Freedom, London, Heinemann, 1965.

- Camerapix via Keystone.

Besides producing these external results, the strategy is also expected to be an important tool (perhaps with the sharpest cutting edge) for bringing about change in a racially discordant but economically flourishing country. A heightening insurgency, it is anticipated, will provide a militant focus for discontented blacks both in the cities and in the countryside. It will exacerbate disagreements among different white political and economic groups over what the proper response should be. It will help intensify the confrontation between white industry and black urban labor and the adverse effects that a policy of restricting the employment of blacks in skilled occupations-even when jobs go unfilledhas on economic growth. It will accentuate the growing militancy and unity of the leaders of the Bantu Homelands, who at their 1973 black summit rejected Pretoria's offer of separate independence and demanded an effective voice in deciding the constitutional future of all South Africa. Finally, it will highlight the failure to date of official policies of "separate development" to reduce racial tensions and to keep down the number of blacks in so-called "white areas," which comprise some two-thirds of the territory of the Republic.

The success of such a strategy will depend essentially on what kind of international and internal situations actually confront the Vorster regime and how it perceives them. Advocates of the armedstruggle strategy claim to see some encouraging trends in this regard. They point to the increasing isolation of South Africa in the world community evidenced by the overwhelming General Assembly vote to expel the country from the UN; the growing support for the liberation movement not only from African and Arab governments but also from the Soviet Union, China, the Scandinavian states, and other countries; and a greater awareness in Western nations of the seriousness of the racial cleavage in South Africa and its implications for the future of its white-minority regime as well as for Western investments. Inside South Africa, there have been signs of mounting black militancy, as well as of greater readiness on the part of white South Africans to challenge the age-old assumptions behind the status quo of white supremacy; of growing tension in the government about the situation along the northern frontier since the Portuguese collapse; and of an increasingly expressed awareness among whites that, while the external pressures for change are

Prime Minister himself has spoken in urgent terms of the need to change conditions within the Republic and has promised to eliminate the more "irritating" aspects of the application of the policies of apartheid, although it is highly doubtful that the kind of cosmetic measures he has in mind will satisfy the country's black majority, or its external supporters.

As suggested at the outset, South Africa's black movements cannot count on the immediate influx of heavy amounts of military aid from the OAU, for the latter has chosen to concentrate for the present on the liberation of Rhodesia. Furthermore, the Pretoria regime appears to have bought some time for itself by at least temporarily coming to terms with such implacable foes as Zambia's President Kaunda and Tanzania's President Nyerere by agreeing to withdraw military support from Rhodesia. (A reversal of that decision would of course embroil Pretoria in an immediate and major conflict with the guerrillas and their backers in a tactically poor setting, with the brooding threat of international involvement -a scenario described by some as the "Vietnamization of Southern Africa.")

Despite the current atmosphere of détente, however, South Africa remains extremely edgy about the challenge posed by the liberation movements and their backers. Over the last several years, government spokesmen have spoken in dire terms of "a state of war," of "outside forces threatening the peaceful coexistence of the people of Africa," or even of the threat of air attack by "perhaps the Egyptian air force or by Tanzania's MIG-17's." " In this siege atmosphere, South Africa's defense budget has soared from $688 million in 1973-74 to $1,200 million in 1974-75. The Republic now has 200,000 men under arms and a reserve force of about 80,000.3°

29

In its anxiety, Pretoria tends to view the threat of armed struggle as being closely linked to the Soviet Union's growing naval interest in the Indian Ocean and would like to picture the military challenge to apartheid as part of a Moscow-inspired offensive against the Western defense system, of which the

29 These statements were made in 1973 and 1974 by the South African Defense Minister, Mr. P. W. Botha; the Chief of the Army, Lt. Gen. Magnus Malan; and the Commandant-General, Admiral H. H. Biermann. Their statements will be found in Paratus (Johannesburg), the magazine of the South African Defense Force.

30 The Military Balance, 1974-75, op. cit.