Africa

IN A CONTINENT where conservative empires like Germany, which originally held today's Namibia and Tanzania (except for Zanzibar), Belgium, England, and France, it is interesting to note how two of the most important African countries clung to conservative ideologies after independence: Kenya and South Africa. Both are effective case studies of how assuming power can bring about extensive change in the tactics and ideology of a national independence movement.

Although the Mau Mau of Kenya, led by Jomo Kenyatta, committed many atrocities during the struggle for independence, it was not motivated by any real political ideology, like the communists who later fought the Portuguese in Angola and Mozambique, or would overthrow and kill Emperor Haile Selassie in Ethiopia. Kenyatta's struggle for independence was a purely pragmatic one, and did not embrace communism or any other leftist ideology. Though constitutionally a oneparty state, Kenya conservatively planned its post-independence future under Kenyatta and his successor, Daniel arap Moi. According to the Kenyan government, “Kenya welcomed both private and government investment. Every farmer needed to be sure of his land rights, land consolidation, and land registration for title deeds. The government wanted to ensure that property was used in the mutual interest of the society and its members. Varying forms of ownership were introduced to avoid concentration of economic power and a progressive system of taxation introduced to ensure an equitable distribution of wealth and income.”

Politically, however, Kenya sided clearly with the democracies against regional terrorism, which began after the Arab defeat in the Middle East war of 1967. As Gordon Thomas writes, it was the Israeli Mossad that enlisted Kenya in the battle against the attempt by the Chinese communists to subvert Africa. The Chinese communists formed a direct threat to the moderate Kenyan government, and the Mossad gave the Kenyans vital information. It was in gratitude for this that arap Moi let the Israelis use Nairobi, the capital of Kenya, as a refueling stop in the epic Operation Thunderbolt in July 1976, the rescue of the Jewish hostages held by Arab terrorists in Idi Amin's anarchic Uganda.

After its declaration as the Union of South Africa in 1961, the Boer government entered into a bloody struggle against the left-leaning African National Congress (ANC), in which its BOSS intelligence service would become the most rightist and feared organization on the continent. Anti-terrorism brought South Africa and Israel into a natural alliance, fostered by Israel's Prime Minister Golda Meir. Both the ANC and the Palestine Liberation Organization (Israel's enemy) were ideological kinsmen, and a further diplomatic demarche would occur between South Africa's Prime [Page 502]Minister P.W. Botha and Ezer Weizman that, according to Thomas, amounted to a mutual defense pact.

In September 1981, South Africa's Minister of Defense Magnus Malan asserted that “the onslaught here is communist-inspired, communist-planned, and communist-supported.” Israel gave South Africa much aid in return for uranium destined for the Israeli nuclear research facility at Dimona in the Negev Desert. However, once the ANC assumed power in 1994 under Nelson Mandela, its political coloration significantly changed.

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