Mozambique, Angola — and the Search for New Alignments

Abstract

Pretoria’s policy of detente after April 1974 had two major objectives: the achievement of a Rhodesian settlement, and the establishment of the friendliest possible relations with whatever new black governments might emerge in Mozambique and Angola. In Mozambique there was never much question but that FRELIMO would be that government and, as we have seen, Pretoria from the outset put aside all earlier hostilities to the guerrilla party in an attempt to win its friendship. Despite FRELIMO’s bitter heritage of hostility to the White South, despite her powerful Soviet and Chinese backers, and despite Mozambique’s quite open and large-scale support of the Zimbabwe guerrillas operating against Rhodesia, Pretoria was able to achieve, at least temporarily, a quite remarkable accommodation with the new regime of Samora Machel. So successful was this policy that it was even able to survive the utter disaster of South African armed intervention in Angola. For Angola was quite a different story.