One Against the Mob, by Anthony Harrigan. Crestwood Books, $1.00 The New Republic, by Anthony Harrigan. The Bookmailer, $2.20 South West Africa, by Thomas Molnar. Fleet, $4.00
It is difficult to name many cold war episodes in which Great Brit-. ain and the United States have been able to mesh the gears of their con_ tradictory policies. Whether the subject is Red China or Cuba or North Vietnam, Suez or Katanga, we just can’t seem to get together. When Washington. is willing to stand tall against the Communists, Whitehall isn’t, and vice versa. A foreign policy crisis in which England and America have worked out their differences and fought side by side against a common foe is therefore a noteworthy event encouraging to advocates of Western unity. That the foe doesn’t happen to be Communist, isn’t threatening free world security, and hasn’t launched a war against anybody are, admittedly, troublesome details. The fact remains that unity has been achieved. A common purpose unattainable with respect to Chinese Communists, Korean Communists, Vietnamese Communists or Cuban Communists has been triumphantly forged in a holy war against—a nti-Communist Rhodesia. We cannot unite in defense of Western influence; we can unite, it appears, in the destruction of it. Anthony Harrigan’s handbook on the Rhodesian question, One Against the Mob, explores this paradox at enlightening length. The associate editor of the Charleston, S.C. News and Courier tackles, one by one, the reasons given for Anglo-American hostility to an independent Rhodesia. Embargo, boycott, currency freeze, interference with neutral vessels are all justified, on the official presentation, because the Rhodesian government of Ian Smith is a “dictatorship” of whites over blacks, violating the canons of one-man one-vote democracy. To which Harrigan replies as follows: 1) Rhodesia is not a dictatorship. It has pursued a reasonable course of extending the franchise to all qualified voters, black or white, applying its property and literacy criteria without regard to race. The alternative demanded by the Wilson government is to turn Rhodesia into another Congo. Rhodesian policy aims at intelligent participation in government by all citizens when they understand what “participation” and “government” mean. There is no racial segregation in Rhodesia, and Salisbury has expended great sums in improving the educational, medical, professional and other opportunities of its African citizens, far outstripping the performance of the nativist regimes which are its severest critics. 2) To argue that the internal policies of the Smith regime make sanctions mandatory is hypocrisy on the face of it. There is no semblance of “democracy” in Algeria, Egypt, Kenya, the Congo, Nigeria, Ghana, Guinea, or Tanzania. Yet we do not impose sanctions against these countries, we do not break relations with them. More flagrant still, we maintain diplomatic relations and conduct trade with the most spectacular despotism known to history—the Communist world empire. 3) Culturally and strategically, Rhodesia is a rampart of the West. Its citizens fought together with Americans and Britons in World War II (Prime Minister Smith was an RAF pilot). It has aligned itself with the free world in the cold war struggle—offering to send troops to Vietnam. And it is the repository of natural resources which could be of critical importance in the confrontation of East and West. Why do we accord worse treatment to this government, which menaces no _ one, than to the Communists who seek our destruction? Why overturn a stable pro-Western regime and replace it with the kind of turmoil which has opened the rest of Africa to Communist penetration? : Rhodesia is not, of course, the only issue upon which Western leadership has been able to unite. There is also South Africa, which has come in for its full share of hostility in Washington and London, although the latter, in deference to its commercial interests, treads somewhat cautiously. The problems confronting the Pretoria government are examined by Professor Thomas Molnar in South West Africa, and by Mr. Harrigan in an essay called The New Republic. — In its larger particulars, the South Africa case is essentially the same as that of Rhodesia. The Pretoria regime – is more authoritarian than its neighbor to the north—yet, as the two authors demonstrate, its policies are considerably less onerous than those prevailing in the African states which criticize it. Apartheid and stringent internal security measures still provide room for such things as opposition parties and newspapers—items not greatly in evidence in Algeria or Guinea. Once more, however, the United States and Great Britain direct their ire at the lesser authori-— tarianism and ignore the greater. Professor Molnar examines in detail one facet of the South African story which, thanks to the proceedings of the World Court and recent deliberations of the General Assembly, has been much in the headlines. This is the matter of Pretoria’s mandate authority in South West Africa, the sprawling desert country where nativist regimes charge mismanagement and brutality resulting from apartheid. Molnar tackles the larger question of “separate -development”’ and the particulars of the South West Africa case. He concludes that apartheid offers the best promise for both black and white in South Africa and demolishes the assertions of “genocide,” militarization, and so forth with which Ethiopia and Liberia have regaled the United Nations. Among other things, Molnar notes that when South Africa’s accusers were given an opportunity to produce witnesses backing up their charges they refused to do so—even though Pretoria itself offered to pay the way of its adversaries. The petitioners also balked at having the World Court visit the territory to see things for itself. Finally, when confronted by South Africa’s detailed refutation of their charges, the petitioners admitted their allegations were without substance and shifted the grounds of their attack. There could hardly be a better measure of the irresponsibility of the “Afro-Asian bloc,” or of its hypocrisy. In the same vein, both Molnar and Harrigan show that the “pan-—African” enemies of Rhodesia and South Africa are guilty of the very crimes they impute to Salisbury and Pretoria, and frequently of a good deal more. The authors observe that economic standards for African workers are considerably higher in the two alleged cppressor states than in the countries bringing the indictments. In South Africa, Harrigan reports, immigration from neighboring states is heavy and continuous, with an additional 20,000 Africans trying each year to enter the country illegally. When all is said and done, it is South Africa and Rhodesia which provide a functioning civilization, jobs, and homes. However the Tourés and Kaundas may bluster, the native African has observed that fact, and voted emphatically with his feet—in favor of Rhodesia and South Africa.
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