Apartheid South Africa and the Collapse of the Portuguese Empire

CWIHP eDossier No. 76

Apartheid South Africa and the Collapse of the Portuguese Empire

Jamie Miller
November 2016

On 25 April 1974, Portugal’s right-wing dictatorship finally collapsed in a bloodless coup, which became known as the Carnation Revolution. For over a decade, Lisbon had been fighting in Portuguese Guinea, Angola, and Mozambique, all to keep control of its five-century-old African empire. But by the mid-1970s, Portugal’s colonial wars consumed almost half the government’s budget. A group of fed-up, left-wing military officers took power and promptly agreed to dissolve Lisbon’s colonial authority.

This prompted the disintegration of the political status quo in Southern Africa and unleashed two decades of race-infused conflict across the region.

Traditional Cold War history paid these events scant attention. Often embedded in the mindset and worldview of the American policymakers who featured as their key actors, historians neglected Southern Africa. One very prominent survey of the Cold War sitting on my shelf covers events outside the global north in just a single chapter. Africa does not feature at all, in favor of a focus on East Asia and the Middle East.

The new Cold War history—of which the Cold War International History Project has been a strong supporter—sees things differently. Africa is now recognized as an important theater of competition between different models for the world’s future social, economic, and political organization. And from decolonization onwards, Southern Africa was almost always the most prominent forum for this competition on the continent. Due to the centrality of race to politics there, it was perhaps the one live conflict zone where the West’s cause was most troubled and the Eastern cause most appealing. Innovative studies from diverse perspectives have shown how the West’s support for white rule in Southern Africa repeatedly weighed down its effort to “win over” the global south. The United States deemed it vital to intervene in Vietnam, the Six Days War, and repeatedly in Latin America—but strove desperately to overcome international and (eventually) domestic pressure to do anything meaningful about apartheid. Leaders in the Third World, often with first-hand knowledge of the racialized rule of colonialism, could not help but notice this, and it colored their understanding of the model that Washington offered them. Meanwhile, the West’s ideological foes made easy progress in Southern Africa by aligning themselves behind calls for racial justice. Into the 1980s, even as socialist economic systems spluttered and details of the endemic persecution of political foes seeped out of states from Cambodia to the Soviet Union, communist diplomats could simply pivot back to underlining their consistent support for organizations fighting against racist rule in Southern Africa. In a weak hand, it was the trump card they turned to over and over again.

Despite this progress, issues remain with how we tell the story of the Cold War in Southern Africa, two of which are pertinent to the document collection here. The first is a lingering prioritization of external actors, rather than a deep study of those on the ground in Africa. There is huge space for the study of political agendas in the region and how these were influenced by the Cold War, but these cannot be fully understood without studying local literatures, ideas, events, and perspectives. To take one example, the policies of apartheid South Africa are often portrayed in an oddly two-dimensional way. In particular, there has traditionally been little attention paid to the intellectual and ideological shifts occurring in Afrikaner circles in the years preceding the Carnation Revolution, or of domestic politics, or of changing political economies in the region, all of which extensively shaped the regime’s statecraft in important ways. Instead the regime’s policies have been taken at face value, from an external (and distorting) standpoint. The focus on “race”, or more accurately, a very particular conception of race, has obscured a much more nuanced terrain. We need to get inside that world in order to understand it. The same goes for other actors throughout the region.

A second issue is that of hindsight. The Carnation Revolution has often been seen by scholars as the moment when the stalled teleology of decolonization restarted, leading to the fall of white rule in Rhodesia, Namibia, and finally South Africa twenty years later. This is to read history backwards. There was nothing predetermined about how Southern Africa evolved after April 1974, no more than there was in the fractious and keenly contested processes of decolonization elsewhere in Africa years before. Political change in Portugal plainly heralded a turning point in African and world history. However, where history turned towards, what would replace the cordon sanitaire of white-ruled states to South Africa’s north, these were very much open questions—and ones whose answers the apartheid regime was determined to influence.

A New Era

On 24 April 1974, John Vorster went to bed a happy man. South Africa’s white electorate had gone to the polls earlier in the day and the outcome was never in doubt. When the counting was over, the National Party had been re-elected with 123 of 171 parliamentary seats. That same night, a continent away, Portugal’s right-wing dictatorship finally collapsed in a bloodless coup.

Although these events originated close to home, they were a surprise to Pretoria. Dispatches from Ambassador R. J. Montgomery in Portugal had given Pretoria very little indication that the military’s dissatisfaction with the Lisbon regime had reached a critical mass. Department of Foreign Affairs reports had downplayed the impact of General Antonio Spínola’s critique of Portugal’s colonial policies, for example, which had appeared months earlier and sparked the coup.

The prognoses from Portugal’s Southern African colonies were decidedly varied, too. Veteran Consul-General Mike Malone’s cables from Angola unequivocally (and accurately) related that the situation on the ground was actually improving rapidly in favor of the Portuguese. In November 1973, Malone surmised: “It is no doubt an exaggeration to say—as did a senior Portuguese Security officer in the course of a conversation with me a few days ago—that ‘the war in Angola has been won’. That it is well on the way to being won is, however, beyond dispute.” [1] (Document No. 1. See also Document No. 2)

The news from Mozambique was somewhat worse. In spring 1973, a lengthy DFA report cited a “deterioration” of the situation, with the Mozambique Liberation Front (Frelimo) expanding southwards “relatively fast.” Following a visit to Mozambique at much the same time, Montgomery agreed:

Where armed terrorism is in Angola an incidental nuisance and even then is limited to certain regions, one is soon made aware that it constitutes the crux of the problems in Mozambique.... Despite the losses which FRELIMO has suffered, they are nevertheless continuing to send reinforcements to the areas in which they operate.... It cannot be reported optimistically on the country’s future. [2] (Document No. 3)

South African Defense Force reports concurred: Frelimo’s penetration of the central and southern provinces, and even urban peripheries, was substantial. But despite the more ominous reports emanating from Mozambique, however, no-one in Pretoria in April 1974 believed that South Africa’s geopolitical foundation was about to disintegrate. The Portuguese had simply been there too long and the messages were too mixed to drive a major change in Pretoria’s policy.

This was a massive intelligence failure, and all the more so because South Africa’s military was closer at this time to Portugal’s than at any other point in time. Beginning in the late 1960s, white South African began to reframe their traditional hostility to decolonization and African nationalism in new languages that did not presuppose an incompatibility between racial groups. One philosophy emerging from this process was “total onslaught,” the notion that anti-apartheid hostility, in all its forms, was simply part of a campaign orchestrated from Moscow against the Western world. In this thinking, Southern Africa, with its mineral resources and strategic position, constituted a coveted prize. The international revolution of Marxist doctrine, Soviet and Chinese foreign policy, radical African states, and liberation groups like the African National Congress (ANC) or South-West African People’s Organization (SWAPO) were viewed as parts of a relentless and singular threat aimed squarely at Pretoria’s independence and the self-determination of the Afrikaner. Western state and non-state actors supporting the Third World’s campaign against apartheid were seen as simply playing into the communists’ hands.

Pursuant to this thinking, which quickly became dogma within the South African military, Defense Minister P.W. Botha and leading generals surmised that the fight against communist-backed insurgents to the north was South Africa’s fight too. From 1970 onwards, high-ranking South African, Portuguese, and (from 1971) Rhodesian military officials began to meet regularly as part of a new ALCORA structure to streamline military planning, share intelligence, and co-ordinate counter-insurgency operations. South Africa also began to seek more control over and involvement in the Portuguese counter-insurgencies. In mid-1973, it succeeded in persuading Portugal and Rhodesia to establish a Permanent ALCORA Planning Organization based in Pretoria and tasked with coordinating the logistics of joint military operations in Southern Africa. As seen in Document No. 4, in November of that year, P.W. Botha visited Portugal to conclude Operation Cadiz, under which South Africa offered a five-year undertaking to bankroll Portugal’s counter-insurgencies to the tune of 150 million rand.[3] This long-term commitment represented a marked departure from the much smaller annual agreements that had existed previously and was offered in addition to the 20 million rand in basic assistance that South Africa by now provided on a yearly basis. Botha was concerned that Portugal was using South Africa as an open checkbook: “It just keeps getting greater,” he scrawled on one Portuguese request.

The Non-Interference Policy

The circumstances in which South Africa reassessed its national security strategies in mid-1974 was therefore not only one in which a friendly state had collapsed, but one in which its closest military ally had surrendered to their common enemy.

As excerpts from Document No. 5 illustrate, the military became riveted by the idea that a Frelimo-ruled Mozambique would provide a conduit for anti-regime insurgents—tools for communist powers, in its view—to strike against South Africa’s industrial heartland in the Transvaal. A major Military Intelligence threat assessment from August 1974 predicted:

These [post-Carnation Revolution] governments will, although forced to a degree to rational action to achieve political consolidation and economic growth, become a factor which will strengthen th[e] terrorist onslaught against the RSA…. [B]oth SWAPO and the SA ANC will enjoy much greater freedom of movement through Angola and Mozambique while they will receive more direct and indirect moral and material support.... The timescale according to which events will likely develop will be defined chiefly by the USSR and China: the two powers who have the greatest incentive to create and manipulate tension in Southern Africa.[4]

Accordingly, the military developed an invasion plan, replete with strategic points for gathering troops, key targets to disable in Lourenço Marques, and lists of the troops and equipment needed for success (Document No. 6).[5] The rationale given for such action reflected the seamless way in which the total onslaught paradigm had fused with the older neo-imperial and racist geopolitical perspectives: “[T]he building up and strengthening of white solidarity in the white-controlled states” was critical “[f]or combatting the communist bear.”

Yet John Vorster and his allies saw things differently. To understand why, we must engage with the intellectual and ideological shifts occurring in Afrikaner circles in the preceding years; to ignore these is another shortcoming of reading history forwards from 1974. The onset of decolonization had been viewed with fear and dismay in white South Africa. Vorster’s predecessor, Hendrik Verwoerd, had introduced a practical solution to the emergence of African nationalism and increasing international pressure: the creation of homelands, or bantustans, for each African “national community.” Blacks would be excluded from the white state and granted the opportunity to progress separately towards “survival and full development, politically and economically.” But the cynicism of this response to decolonization was barely concealed. “A psychotic preoccupation with the rights, the liberties and the privileges of non-white peoples is sweeping the world,” Verwoerd observed in public.

By contrast, Vorster realized that the old framework of norms, values, and institutions that sustained the South African regime both domestically and abroad was losing currency fast. In this context, he reasoned that the emergence in the post-colonial era of the nation-state as the sole repository of legitimate sovereignty opened a path to justify Afrikaner independence on the very same basis as that claimed by new African states. African nationalism, previously viewed as an existential threat, could actually be used to strengthen the regime’s claim to legitimacy. This meant two things. First, the regime had to prove the “African” credentials of the Afrikaner state and find areas of common ground with African leaders to do so. The early 1970s saw South Africa reach out energetically to a host of anti-communist states, which by 1974 had left a conceptual and policy legacy to rival the military’s focus on the total onslaught. Second, to bolster the principle of non-interference in a sovereign state’s affairs, it had to support the emergence of other nation-states—not just its own. This underpinned a new language of acceptance, aid, and development in independent Africa and in the homelands, but it also meant redefining the white polity’s interests and identity in purely national terms, which cut across traditional transnational racial affinities with white Rhodesians and South-West Africans. The consequences of this thinking would turn out to be dramatic in both places.

As Document No. 7 shows, this thinking heavily influenced Vorster’s response to the Carnation Revolution. To the Prime Minister, this new wave of decolonization posed little threat to South Africa:

We must view the developments in Moçambique in the light of our own policy, which is based on self-determination. Several neighboring countries are under Black governments and we ourselves are in the process of creating some more by leading our own Black homelands to independence.

The emergence of a Black government in Moçambique

therefore does not upset us in the least.

OR  [sic]

is but another proof that our policy based on self-determination [in contrast to Portugal’s policy of assimilation] is a sound one.[6]

South Africa had substantial economic leverage over Mozambique, too, which was seen as providing something of an insurance policy underwriting the new direction.

Vorster’s government therefore publicly and repeatedly stated that it would not interfere to preserve pan-white interests in Southern Africa. The archives also show it rebuffing a series of requests for help from white settler or multi-racial-but-right-wing groups seeking support, funds, and arms for coups in both Angola (by at least five separate groups between April and September 1974) and Mozambique (at least three groups). South African support was even sought by similar organizations in Portuguese Guinea and Equatorial Guinea (Document No. 8).[7]

The Gambler

By the end of the Southern Hemisphere winter, the aftermath of the Carnation Revolution was clearer—and, from a South African perspective, not in a good way. The government in Lisbon was lurching to the left; the South African military attaché in Lisbon reported in late July that Vasco Gonçalves, the new Prime Minister, was “an out and out communist.” Angola was, as predicted, deteriorating into a three-way power struggle. Power in Mozambique was to be handed over to the leftist Frelimo movement. All of this raised the alarm in the corridors of power in Pretoria, where anxiety was already high.

P.W. Botha duly wrote to Vorster on 2 October, the day before he was due to attend a national security meeting with the Prime Minister and other leading generals at Groote Schuur, the Prime Minister’s Cape Town residence (Document No. 9).[8] Botha’s views diverged sharply from official policy. “[T]he change of government in Mozambique is certainly the greatest potential threat which the RSA has ever had,” the Defense Minister declared. “The RSA would be foolish to allow itself to be deceived through sweet talk [mooi praatjies] of economic ties, Cabora Bassa power, non-interference and the like.” Instead of seeing the decolonization of the Portuguese colonies as an opportunity to prove the regime’s much-vaunted ability to coexist peacefully with black African governments, the Minister for Defense saw events through the prism of a communist-backed Organization for African Unity assault against white rule in Southern Africa. Reflecting the SADF’s August threat assessment, he told Vorster that the new governments in Luanda and Lourenço Marques would be inherently hostile to South Africa for ideological reasons and would therefore “in all likelihood be terrorist oriented”. Instead, he argued, the dominant framework for South Africa’s security policy should be that of a Southern African domino theory: “the potential frontlines can not be seen in isolation—each is an outpost on the OAU’s path to its central goal—the RSA.”

Vorster was unreceptive. Even as Botha called for an integrated, renewed commitment to working with Rhodesia and SWA against hostile forces, the Prime Minister was contemplating a quite different and incompatible strategy: working with Kenneth Kaunda’s Zambia to broker an end to white rule in Rhodesia, while also making moves to create a multi-racial independent state in SWA. This détente policy, he surmised, would show that South Africa could help solve Africa’s problems, not just contribute to them, as well as underline the distinction between the Afrikaner state, with its long national history on the continent, and the colonial remnants in Rhodesia and SWA.

Kaunda was a particularly unlikely partner in peace for Vorster.As the chairman of both the OAU and the Non-Aligned Movement in the early 1970s, Kaunda had been at the forefront of the international anti-apartheid campaign. An accord reached between Muller and his Portuguese counterpart Rui Patricio in June 1971 stated specifically that “both South Africa and Portugal agreed that President Kaunda of Zambia was a danger to the peace and tranquility of Southern Africa” and urged cooperation with Rhodesia to counter his influence (Document No. 10).[9] In addition to the ideological and political hostility, there was also a great deal of personal animosity between Kaunda and Vorster, after the latter’s efforts to engage Lusaka through the outward policy had descended into an exchange of acrimonious letters.

After tentative, secret contacts in August—with Botha kept out of the loop—the key leap forward came in a meeting between Vorster and Kaunda’s foreign policy point man, Mark Chona, in Cape Town on 15 October 1974. As the extract from Document No. 11 details, this was a meeting of two sides that had been forced together by events, despite their incompatible political traditions, philosophies, and worldviews.[10] However, each sought to avoid an escalation of rising tensions into a regional war with Cold War and racial overtones, and soon transcended the initial awkwardness to make an astonishing amount of concrete progress. Chona told the leader of the apartheid regime that he spoke not just for Kaunda, but had come from meetings with Julius Nyerere of Tanzania, Seretse Khama of Botswana, and Samora Machel and Joaquim Chissano of Frelimo. “All to a man” had reiterated the Lusaka Manifesto’s acknowledgement of Pretoria’s non-colonial status “in the strongest possible terms.” They saw South Africa as an “independent and sovereign state” and agreed that the Afrikaners were “not merely people in Africa, but people of Africa”:

Vorster: We are just as much part of Africa as you are.

Chona: Exactly.

As Chona stressed in various formulations on no fewer than five occasions during the conversation, Africa would not “take the fight” to South Africa and there was “no question of interfering in the internal affairs of South Africa.” Instead, the presidents wanted South Africa’s co-operation on the Rhodesian issue, an impasse that was “a stumbling block in trying to get Africa to understand the South African problem,” which was “totally different." This was exactly what the South Africans wanted to hear.

From November 1974 until the Victoria Falls conference in late August 1975, the central mechanism remained that decided at the 15 October meeting. The Zimbabwean nationalists would halt operations and agree to a cease-fire; this was the carrot that Pretoria used to convince Ian Smith to sign on. In exchange, Salisbury would release all political detainees and lift the ban on both ZANU and ZAPU; this measure was central to winning over the deeply skeptical African leaders across the region. Both sides committed to meet “without preconditions” at a conference to negotiate a new constitution. Vorster would act as guarantor for the Rhodesian commitments and Kaunda for the nationalist ones.

It was now time to bring the arrangement out of the shadows through a carefully choreographed public interchange. On 23 October, Vorster invited the entire diplomatic corps to the Senate in Cape Town in expectation of a major address on South Africa’s place in Africa (Document No. 12).[11] “Southern Africa has come to the crossroads,” Vorster duly declared. “[The] choice lies between peace on the one hand or an escalation of strife on the other. The consequences of an escalation are easily foreseeable. The toll of major confrontation will be high. I would go so far as to say that it will be too high for Southern Africa to pay.” Vorster emphasized the need for self-determination in SWA and indicated his government’s renewed desire for a lasting settlement in Rhodesia: “I know it is being said in some quarters... that South Africa is holding the Rhodesian Government back” from concluding a settlement, he announced. “I want to say that that is not so.... I believe that now is the time for all who have influence to bring it to bear upon all parties concerned to find a durable, just and honorable solution.”

The second act of this diplomatic gambit unfolded the next day, as the new Ambassador to the UN, Pik Botha, addressed the United Nations Security Council. For the first time, South Africa’s UN delegation included three non-whites: a black, an Indian, and a Cape Colored. In the first part of the speech, Botha stuck to the well-worn script of the Vorster era. The characteristic defiance, the warning to potential meddlers, the claims of a rich Afrikaner anti-colonialist heritage, the insistence on separation not domination as the core of apartheid, and the professions of a willingness to cooperate with independent Africa were nothing new. Then, in a passage reproduced in newspapers worldwide, Botha appeared to signal the scaling back of apartheid: “I want to state here today very clearly and categorically: my Government does not condone discrimination purely on the grounds of race or color…. We shall do everything in our power to move away from discrimination based on race or color.” Both at home and abroad, this was seen as an earth-shattering departure from existing South African policy. The United States, the UK, and France all felt they had sufficient cover to veto an African Group resolution to expel South Africa from the United Nations—the first ever triple veto. Yet the careful wording was entirely in keeping with the Vorster vision for South Africa’s domestic political evolution. Pretoria was signaling its intention to progressively repeal certain regulations which discriminated among the citizenry by race alone and attracted plenty of unwanted international criticism, like segregated hotels and beaches. But it had no intention of moving away from separate political development, with the population divided not by “race or color” but by ethnicity or, in Pretoria’s terminology, “nation.”

Nevertheless, Vorster had fulfilled his part of the deal with Kaunda. He had provided the Zambian President with the support he needed to avoid criticisms that he was selling out the pan-African cause by working with the apartheid regime: an apparent commitment that the reform of apartheid was indeed part and parcel of dialogue with Pretoria. Now Kaunda played his part in the carefully choreographed drama, as seen in Document No. 13.[12] “This is the voice of reason for which Africa and the world have waited for many years,” he declared at the University of Zambia. If South Africa was committed to opening the path for peaceful change, then “Africa, in accordance with the principles laid down in the [Lusaka] Manifesto on Southern Africa, stands ready to help create conditions for peaceful change.... [W]e also pledge our commitment to help find a peaceful solution in Rhodesia provided it is based on criteria which meet the demands of the people.” He then wrote to Vorster, issuing the green light for progress (Document No. 14). He said that Zambia had done its part of the deal, having:

urged [the nationalists] to desist from armed struggle if negotiations are possible and to accept a formula which falls short of One Man One Vote as long as its results go beyond parity [between the races]. So having gone this far, I earnestly urge you to use your influence on Mr. Smith to cross at this opportune moment the Rubicon of Rhodesian political development…. In accordance with our November program, he should now move to release all political detainees and political prisoners, remove restrictions on the movement of leaders, lift the ban on ZAPU and ZANU and all the other measures which are outlined in the program. [13]

The letter shows, crucially, that he explicitly (and rashly) told the regime that a political settlement that could be engineered to give whites substantially disproportionate political power in a new Zimbabwe was not just feasible, but supported by the African Presidents.

What did the white Rhodesians think of all of this? Document No. 15 encapsulates the prevailing skepticism and frustration. [14] The Rhodesians were mired in a slowly intensifying civil war, but they were a long way from realizing the need to transfer power to a black majority, regardless of the specific formula. “[P]rogression to parity in Parliament,” Smith told his main lieutenant, Secretary to the Cabinet, Jack Gaylard, in private, “would be measured in centuries and not decades.” Vorster failed to appreciate that he needed to apply serious pressure on Salisbury to convey the message and secure his desired outcome. This was one of the central political errors of Nationalist history. A transfer of power to a multi-racial Zimbabwe in 1975, on the terms envisaged by Kaunda, was very achievable—and would have altered the subsequent history of the region.

Failure was the ultimate outcome, but in the Southern Hemisphere summer of 1974-75, success appeared a real possibility. As Rhodesia’s nominal colonial ruler, Great Britain had tried repeatedly over the preceding years to re-establish control over the renegade Smith regime. Its efforts had met with failure, thwarted by Smith’s determination, Britain’s unwillingness to back its position with military force, and the hollowness of its claims to imperial dominion even as it shed nearly all of its former colonial possessions. Yet such was Vorster’s apparent progress on the Rhodesia issue that in early January 1975, British Foreign Minister James Callaghan hastily endeavored to get involved in the negotiations. At a meeting in Port Elizabeth, Vorster was in rare form. Callaghan’s visit was the first to South Africa by a top-level British leader since Harald Macmillan gave his famous and humiliating “wind of change” speech in 1960. His host simply could not resist getting his own back on behalf of a spurned Afrikanerdom. “[I]f the British were to come in at this moment,” Vorster told Callaghan, choosing his words carefully, “they would wreck the whole thing.”[15] (Document No. 16)

Jamie Miller earned his doctorate from the University of Cambridge in 2013, and has been a Fox Predoctoral International Fellow at Yale University, a Visiting Assistant Professor at Quinnipiac University, and a Postdoctoral Fellow at both Cornell University and the University of Pittsburgh. His first book, An African Volk: The Apartheid Regime and its Search for Survival, was published by Oxford University Press in September 2016, while his most recent article, “Africanising Apartheid: Identity, Ideology, and State-Building in Independent Africa,” appeared in the fall 2015 issue of the Journal of African History. His commentary on historical and contemporary global affairs has appeared in the London Review of Books, The Chronicle of Higher Education, The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, History News Network, the Imperial & Global Forum, and The Conversation.

***

Document No. 1
Mike Malone to Secretary for Foreign Affairs, Pretoria, 'Angola: The Progress of the War,’ 27 November 1973
[Source: Angola: Political Situation and Developments, 16, 1/22/1 OS, South African Department of Foreign Affairs Archives. Obtained by Jamie Miller.]

Document No. 2
South African Mission to the United Nations to the Secretary for Foreign Affairs, 'Special Committee of Twenty-Four: Consideration of the Question of Territories Under Portuguese Administration,’ 15 March 1974
[Source: Portugal’s African Territories, 1, 1/14/10, South African Department of Foreign Affairs Archives. Obtained by Jamie Miller.]

Document No. 3
R.J. Montgomery, South African Ambassador, Lisbon, to Sekretaris van Buitelandse Sake, 'Besoek aan Angola en Mosambiek: Augustus 1973,’ 12 September 1973
[Source: Angola: Political Situation and Developments, 16, 1/22/1 OS, South African Department of Foreign Affairs Archives. Obtained by Jamie Miller.]

Document No. 4
Samesprekings tussen sy edele die minister van verdeding van Portugal en sy edele die minister van verdediging van Suid-Afrika te Lissabon, 29 November 1973
[Source: Portugal: Samewerking, Volume 4, MV/56/5, Box 23, Group 2 – MVV/ P. W. Botha, South African National Defence Force Archives. Obtained by Jamie Miller.]

Document No. 5
Direktoraat Militêre Inligting, 'Die Terrorisbedreiging teen die RSA en SWA: Huidige Stand en Verwagte Uitbreiding' (Excerpts), August 1974
[Source: MI/STRAT/1/4, Box 403, Group 3 (Volume 1) – AMI/HSI, South African National Defence Force Archives. Obtained by Jamie Miller.]

Document No. 6
Kolonel J.F.J. van Rensburg to Hugo Biermann, Chief of the Defense Force, 'Operasie waardering van die RSA se Moontlike Aktiewe Militêre Betrokkenheid in Mosambiek,’ 21 May 1974
[Source: Operasie Waardering van die RSA se Moontlike Aktiewe Militêre Betrokkenheid in Mosambiek, Volume 5, HS 11/1/2/2 DG OPS, Box 417, Group 3 (Volume 1) – AMI/HIS, South African National Defence Force Archives. Obtained by Jamie Miller.]

Document No. 7
Draft Speech for John Vorster, 'Mocambique,’ late 1974
[Source: Eerste Minister: Buitelandse Sake, 1/564, I13/2, MEM, National Archives of South Africa. Obtained by Jamie Miller.]

Document No. 8
Letter, B.G. Fourie to General H.J. van den Bergh, 10 September 1974
[Source: Portugal’s African Territories,  1, 1/14/10, South African Department of Foreign Affairs Archives . Obtained by Jamie Miller.]

Document No. 9
Die Militêre Milieu in Suider-Afrika Waarin die RSA Hom Tans Bevind, 2 October 1974
[Source: I15/2, 1/572, MEM, National Archives of South Africa. Obtained by Jamie Miller.]

Document No. 10
Discussion Between the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Dr The Hon. H. Muller and the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Portugal, His Excellency Dr Rui D’Espiney Patricio, 23-24 June 1971
[Source: Portugal Relations With SA, 1, 1/14/3, South African Department of Foreign Affairs Archives. Obtained by Jamie Miller.]

Document No. 11
Meeting between the Hon. Prime Minister and the Zambians, 15 October 1974
[Source: AJ 1975, 1/157/3, South African Department of Foreign Affairs Archives. Obtained by Jamie Miller.]

Document No. 12
Statement by the Prime Minister, the Honourable B.J. Vorster, in the Senate on 23 October 1974
[Source: Africa: SA Policy in Africa and Relations with African States, 16, 1/99/19, South African Department of Foreign Affairs Archives. Obtained by Jamie Miller.]

Document No. 13
Address by His Excellency the President, Dr. K.D. Kaunda on the Occasion of the Conferment of the Degree of Ll.D (Honoris Causa), University Of Zambia, Saturday, October 26, 1974
[Source: Eerste Minister: Buitelandse Sake, I13/2, 1/564, MEM, National Archives of South Africa. Obtained by Jamie Miller.]

Document No. 14
Letter, Kenneth Kaunda to J.B. Vorster, 15 November 1974
[Source: Eerste Minister: Buitelandse Sake, I13/2, 1/564, MEM, National Archives of South Africa. Obtained by Jamie Miller.]

Document No. 15
J.F. Gaylard to Air Vice-Marshal H. Hawkins, 20 February 1975
[Source: Volume 1, Détente: Official Communications with South Africa, Box 6, Deposit 4, Ian Smith Papers (ISP), Cory Library, Rhodes University.]

Document No. 16
Telegram from the UK Embassy, Blantyre, to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, 5 January 1975
[Source: Rhodesia Part II, PREM 16/634, The National Archives, United Kingdom. Obtained by Jamie Miller.]

[1] Mike Malone to Secretary for Foreign Affairs, Pretoria, “Angola: The Progress of the War”, 27 November 1973, in Angola: Political Situation and Developments, 16, 1/22/1 OS, South African Department of Foreign Affairs Archives (DFAA).

[2] R. J. Montgomery, SA Ambassador, Lisbon, to Sekretaris van Buitelandse Sake, “Besoek aan Angola en Mosambiek: Augustus 1973,” 12 September 1973, in Angola: Political Situation and Developments, 16, 1/22/1 OS, DFAA.

[3] “Notule van die Vergadering van die Ministers van Verdediging van Portugal en die RSA Gehou in Lissabon 29 November 1973,” 29 November 1973, in Portugal: Samewerking, Volume 4, MV/56/5, Box 23, Group 2 – MVV/ P. W. Botha, South African National Defence Force Archives (SANDFA).

[4] Direktoraat Militêre Inligting, “Die Terrorisbedreiging teen die RSA en SWA: Huidige Stand en Verwagte Uitbreiding,” August 1974, in MI/STRAT/1/4, Box 403, Group 3 (Volume 1) – AMI/HSI, SANDFA.

[5] Kolonel J. F. J. van Rensburg to Hugo Biermann, Chief of the Defense Force, “Operasie waardering van die RSA se Moontlike Aktiewe Militêre Betrokkenheid in Mosambiek,” 21 May 1974, in Operasie Waardering van die RSA se Moontlike Aktiewe Militêre Betrokkenheid in Mosambiek, Volume 5, HS 11/1/2/2 DG OPS, Box 417, Group 3 (Volume 1) – AMI/HIS, SANDFA.

[6] Draft Speech for John Vorster, “Moçambique,” late 1974, in Eerste Minister: Buitelandse Sake, 1/564, I13/2, MEM, National Archives of South Africa (SANA).

[7] Brand Fourie to Hendrik van den Bergh, 10 September 1974, in Portugal’s African Territories, 1, 1/14/10, DFAA.

[8] “Die Militêre Milieu in Suider-Afrika Waarin die RSA Hom Tans Bevind,” attached to P. W. Botha to Vorster, 2 October 1974, in I15/2, 1/572, MEM, SANA.

[9] “Discussion Between the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Dr The Hon. H. Muller and the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Portugal, His Excellency Dr Rui D’Espiney Patricio,” Pretoria, 23-24 June 1971, in Portugal Relations With SA, 1, 1/14/3, DFAA.

[10] “Meeting between the Hon. Prime Minister and the Zambians,” 15 October 1974, in AJ 1975, 1/157/3, DFAA.

[11] Statement by the Prime Minister, the Honourable B.J. Vorster, in the Senate on 23 October 1974, in Africa: SA Policy in Africa and Relations with African States, 16, 1/99/19, DFAA.

[12] “Address by His Excellency the President, Dr. K.D. Kaunda on the Occasion of the Conferment of the Degree Of Ll.D (Honoris Causa), University Of Zambia, Saturday, October 26, 1974,” in Eerste Minister: Buitelandse Sake, I13/2, 1/564, MEM, SANA.

[13] Letter, Kenneth Kaunda to J.B. Vorster, 15 November 1974, in Eerste Minister: Buitelandse Sake, I13/2, 1/564, MEM, SANA.

[14] Gaylard to Hawkins, 20 February 1975, in Volume 1, Détente: Official Communications with South Africa, Box 6, Deposit 4, Ian Smith Papers (ISP), Cory Library, Rhodes University.

[15] UK Embassy, Blantyre, to FCO, Record of Callaghan-Vorster meeting in Port Elizabeth, 5 January 1975, in Rhodesia Part II, PREM 16/634, The National Archives, United Kingdom.