“To have its cake and eat it too:” US policy toward South Africa during the Kennedy administration

Abstract

The assumption that US policy toward Africa was characterized by continuity during the cold war has recently been challenged by scholars who argue that President John F. Kennedy embarked on an African policy that was distinct from his predecessors. This may be true for black Africa, but Kennedy’s support for African nationalism did not extend to South Africa. This article reveals that Kennedy’s cold war priorities ensured continuity in US policy toward the apartheid state and, in some cases, additional cooperation as cold war crises increased the perceived importance of South Africa as an ideological and strategic ally and bastion against communism on a rapidly changing continent. This article also explores the role South Africa’s apartheid government played in this cold war alliance. The ruling National Party recognized its importance to US foreign policy goals and used this to stave off serious American criticism of its racial policies, deflect attention in the United Nations, and ensure continued economic and military cooperation with the United States.

Keywords:

• United States
• John F. Kennedy
• South Africa
• apartheid
• foreign policy
• cold war
• United Nations
• segregation
• National Party
• America
• race relations
• civil rights

Notes

1. John F. Kennedy, “Remarks at a Reception Marking African Freedom Day.” 15 April 1961. African Freedom Day was first proclaimed in a resolution of the first Conference of Independent African States at Accra in April 1958. http://www.jfklink.com/speeeches/jfk/publicpapers/1961/jfk125_61.html.

2. Meriwether, “Worth a Lot of Negro Votes,” 737, 741.

3. John F. Kennedy, Inaugural Address, 20 January 1961. http://www.jfklibrary.org/Asset-Viewer/BqXIEM9F4024ntFl7SVAjA.aspx.

4. Muehlenbeck, Betting on the Africans, xiii.

5. Ibid., 235.

6. Ibid., xv, xii.

7. There are many works on Kennedy’s foreign policy and its cold war focus, but comparatively less on his African policy in particular. Likewise, there are studies of American foreign policy toward southern Africa during the cold war, but few that focus on Kennedy and South Africa alone. In addition to Muehlenbeck’s work, some of the best are Borstelmann, Apartheid’s Reluctant Uncle, which shows that America’s main concern in the early cold war was Soviet expansion and that the USA sacrificed moral issues and lasting alliances with the developing world in favor of the strategic alliances with white supremacist regimes in southern Africa; Borstelmann, Cold War and the Color Line, which goes a long way to bringing together Kennedy’s domestic and foreign policies in assessing how policymakers sought to balance demands of African Americans, white segregationists, and white southern Africa; Noer, Cold War and Black Liberation, which explores US policies toward South Africa, Rhodesia, and the Portuguese colonies; Meriwether, “Worth a Lot of Negro Votes,” which examines how Kennedy used support for black Africa to win the black American vote in 1960 and display a commitment to racial reform without alienating the white South; De Vos, “Balancing Acts,” which assesses Kennedy’s unwillingness to extend his alleged support for African nationalism to the African National Congress, a group regarded as communist and terrorist.

8. Kennedy on the Presidency, 14 January 1960, CQ Fact Sheet on John F. Kennedy (Congressional Quarterly, Inc., 1960), in John F. Kennedy’s Pre-Presidential Voting Record & Stands on Issues. http://www.jfklibrary.org/Research/Research-Aids/Ready-Reference/JFK-Fast-Facts/Voting-Record-and-Stands-on-Issues-Page-8.aspx.

9. Martin Luther King, Jr, “Letter from a Birmingham Jail.” 6 April 1963. http://okra.stanford.edu/transcription/document_images/undecided/630416-019.pdf.

10. Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples, adopted by General Assembly resolution 1514 (XV), 14 December 1960. http://www.un.org/en/decolonization/declaration.shtml.

11. Ibid.

12. Falk, “Self-Determination under International Law,” 43. The other nations that abstained were Portugal, Spain, United Kingdom, Australia, Belgium, the Dominican Republic, and France.

13. UN Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples.

14. Frankel, An Ordinary Atrocity. The widely accepted figures of the dead and wounded, given by the South African police force, are probably significantly lower than the actual number of casualties. See ibid., 150–6 and appendices 2A, 2B, and 2C.

15. “South Africa on Trial,” New York Times, 30 March 1960, 36.

16. See Borstelmann, Cold War and the Color Line; Horne, “Race from Power;” Horne, From the Barrel of a Gun; Noer, Cold War and Black Liberation.

17. Borstelmann, Cold War and the Color Line, 147.

18. Horne, “Race from Power,” 54.

19. De Vos, “Balancing Acts,” 104.

20. This overview of the more complex events in the Congo is informed by Sneddon and Zeilig, The Congo, 87–100.

21. Scholars have shown that the National Party came to power in 1948 having won by a narrow margin of seats, not votes. This meant the Nationalists toed a cautious line of “practical” apartheid during its first term (1948–53) and only began implementing ideologically driven total segregation in the latter part of the 1950s. See Posel, Making of Apartheid, 49–51, 73.

22. Policy Statement by the Department of State on the Union of South Africa, 1 November 1948, in United States Department of State, Foreign Relations of the United States (hereafter FRUS), 1948, Vol. V, Part 1 (Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, 1948), 524. Available at the website of the University of Wisconsin Digital Collections, http://digital.library.wisc.edu/1711.dl/FRUS.

23. See, for example, FRUS, 1945: The British Commonwealth, the Far East, Vol. VI, 291, for one reference to South Africa in the entire volume regarding postwar economic settlements and mutual aid; between 1948 and 1954 documents relating to South Africa were included in volumes entitled The Near East, South Asia and Africa. Only after 1955 did the Office of the Historian dedicate volumes to Africa.

24. Bissell, South Africa and the United States, 8. For discussions of South Africa being treated as a colonial problem and the US government relying heavily on European and white settler authorities see, for instance, Borstelmann, Cold War and the Color Line, 71 and Nagan, “The US and South Africa,” 266.

25. In South Africa’s 1940s: Worlds of Possibilities editors Saul Dubow and Alan Jeeves present a collection of essays showing that the implementation of apartheid at the close of the 1940s was by no means the only – or even the most likely – outcome of a decade in which several “new” South Africas were imagined by African nationalists, Afrikaner nationalists, and liberal/social-democratic advocates. In this respect, it was not inevitable that black majority rule would not come about, but foreign office records reveal a very rudimentary level of knowledge on South Africa, its politics, and apartheid.

26. Briefing Paper for Senator Kennedy, undated. Papers of John F. Kennedy. Pre-Presidential Papers. Presidential Campaign Files, 1960. Issues. Position and Briefing Papers, 1960. Briefing Papers: Foreign policy: Africa. http://www.jfklibrary.org/Asset-Viewer/Archives/JFKCAMP1960-0993-021.aspx.

27. See Dudziak, Cold War Civil Rights, for an assessment of how the cold war pressured Washington’s policymakers into supporting African American equality as a means of avoiding potentially harmful criticism.

28. Mokoena, South Africa and the United States, 47.

29. Editorial note, FRUS, 1958–60, Vol. XIV, document 244, Office of the Historian.

30. Ibid.

31. Kennedy, “Statement Concerning the Recent Violence in South Africa.” 24 March 1960. Papers of John F. Kennedy. Pre-Presidential Papers. Presidential Campaign Files, 1960. Speeches and the Press. Speeches, Statements, and Sections, 1958–60. March 1960, 19–31. http://www.jfklibrary.org/Asset-Viewer/Archives/JFKCAMP1960-1026-003.aspx.

32. Henry Cabot Lodge, “Telegram from the Mission at the United Nations to the Department of State.” 20 November 1957. FRUS, 1955–57, Vol. 18, document 321, Office of the Historian.

33. National News (Official Election Newspaper of the National Party), 19 May 1948, 2, Box 1, Folder 10, MS 1556, Accession 2004-M-051. South Africa Historical Collection, Sterling Memorial Library, Yale University.

34. CIA, “South African Politics and US Security,” 17 November 1950 7; Stueck, The Korean War, 74.

35. Giliomee, The Afrikaners, 499.

36. Suppression of Communism Act no. 44 of 1950, in Landis, “South African Apartheid Legislation II,” 471, n. 254.

37. Barber and Barratt, South Africa’s Foreign Policy. See also St Jorre, “South Africa,” for useful commentary on South Africa’s domestic racial policies dictating its foreign policy.

38. Jaster, The Defence of White Power, xiv.

39. CIA, “The Political Situation in the Union of South Africa.” 31 January 1949, 3.

40. Noer, Cold War and Black Liberation, 28.

41. Harold Brown to Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense, “U.S. Policy towards Portugal and Republic of South Africa.” 8 July 1963. Papers of John F. Kennedy. Presidential Papers. National Security Files. Countries. Africa: General, July 1963. JFKNSF-003-013. John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum. http://www.jfklibrary.org/Asset-Viewer/Archives/JFKNSF-003-013.aspx.

42. Memorandum of Conversation: Visit of the South African Ambassador, 15 March 1961. FRUS, 1961–63: Africa, Vol. XXI, document 375, Office of the Historian.

43. McGeorge Bundy to Dean Rusk, 22 March 1961. FRUS, 1961–63: Africa, Vol. XXI, document 377, Office of the Historian.

44. Kennedy to Swart, 29 May 1961. Papers of John F. Kennedy. Presidential Papers. President’s Office Files. Countries. South Africa, Republic of: General, 1961. http://www.jfklibrary.org/Asset-Viewer/Archives/JFKPOF-124-005.aspx.

45. Rusk addendum in ibid.

46. Joseph Satterthwaite to Department of State, 25 May 1961. FRUS, 1961–63: Africa, Vol. XXI, document 379, Office of the Historian.

47. Chester B. Bowles to Roswell L. Gilpatric, 30 June 1961, in ibid., document, 383.

48. Adlai Stevenson to Dean Rusk, 2 June 1961, in ibid., document 380.

49. Telegram from the Department of State (Dean Rusk) to the Embassy in South Africa (Joseph Satterthwaite), 25 August 1961, in ibid., document 384.

50. Memorandum from Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security (Haydn Williams) to Deputy Secretary of Defense (Roswell L. Gilpatric), 16 September 1961, in ibid., document 385.

51. See Nesbitt, Race for Sanctions for analysis of the African American anti-apartheid struggle throughout the cold war.

52. For a discussion of the NAACP and South Africa see Hyman, “American Segregationist Ideology,” ch. 2.

53. Appeal for Action against Apartheid: Statement Issued Jointly by Chief Albert Luthuli and Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr, 10 December 1962. http://www.anc.org.za/show.php?id=4650.

54. Resolutions, American Negro Leadership Conference on Africa, Columbia University, 23–25 November 1962, 4, Folder 6, Leagues and Organizations, American Negro Leadership Conference on Africa, 1962, Box III:A196, Administrative File, 1956–1965, NAACP Records, Part III. Library of Congress, Washington, DC.

55. Noer, Cold War and Black Liberation, 1–2.

56. Kennedy’s “Report to the American People on Civil Rights,” 11 June 1963, is available at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, http://www.jfklibrary.org/.

57. Williams to Rusk, 12 June 1963, in Mokoena, South Africa and the United States, 54.

58. Rusk to Williams et al., 15 June 1963. FRUS, 1961–63: Africa, Vol. XXI, document 406, Office of the Historian.

59. Ibid.

60. Ibid.

61. Williams to Rusk, 12 July 1963, in Mokoena, South Africa and the United States, 59–60. Such repercussions included the potential loss of military installations, scientific facilities, communications facilities, and landing rights in other African states.

62. Ibid.

63. Dudziak, Cold War Civil Rights, 167, 175, 222.

64. Mokoena, South Africa and the United States, 15.

65. Rusk and Robert McNamara to Kennedy, 16 September 1963, in ibid., 65.

66. Bundy to Rusk, 23 September 1963. FRUS, 1961–63: Africa, Vol. XXI, document 415, Office of the Historian.

67. The Citizens’ Council 5:11 (August 1960), 4.

68. Kathleen Teltsch, “Segregation Line Defended at U.N.,” New York Times, 29 September 1959, 6.

69. Apart from the Little Rock Crisis, the American South had witnessed the brutal murder of 14-year-old Emmett Till, an African American lynched by white men in Mississippi who were later acquitted by an all-white jury. Further, in 1956 white violence and intimidation surrounded a number of school integration attempts, some requiring the dispatch of the National Guard.

70. Geldenhuys, The Diplomacy of Isolation, 26.

71. Memorandum from Kennedy to Rusk, 7 November 1963. FRUS, 1961–63: Africa, Vol. XXI, document 422, Office of the Historian; Memorandum of Conversation, 4 October 1963. FRUS, 1961–63: Africa, Vol. XXI, document 417, Office of the Historian.

72. Memorandum from Kennedy to Rusk, 7 November 1963, in ibid., document 422.

73. Die Transvaler quoted in cable from US embassy in SA to Department of State, 3 August 1963.

74. Ibid., 5 August 1963.

75. Research Memorandum from the Director of the Bureau of Intelligence and Research (Hughes) to Secretary of State Rusk, 12 August 1963. FRUS, 1961–63: Africa, Vol. XXI, document 413, Office of the Historian.

76. Memorandum from William H. Brubeck of the National Security Council Staff to the President’s Special Assistant for National Security Affairs, Bundy, 26 November 1963, in ibid., document 424.

77. CIA National Intelligence Estimate, “Short-Term Prospects for South Africa.” 20 May 1964, 1. Available at the Central Intelligence Agency Freedom of Information Act Electronic Reading Room, http://www.foia.cia.gov