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Periodical article | Leiden University catalogue | WorldCat |
Title: | South Africa and the Owen/Vance Plan of 1977 |
Author: | Onslow, Sue |
Year: | 2004 |
Periodical: | South African Historical Journal |
Issue: | 51 |
Pages: | 130-158 |
Language: | English |
Geographic terms: | South Africa Zimbabwe |
Subjects: | civil wars peace treaties foreign policy negotiation Politics and Government international relations Ethnic and Race Relations Inter-African Relations |
External link: | https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/02582470409464833 |
Abstract: | Between late June and the beginning of September 1977 a series of meetings took place between the South African premier, B. Johannes Vorster, and his Rhodesian counterpart, Ian Smith. This intense flurry of diplomatic activity marked the period in which renewed Anglo-American hopes of an international settlement to the Rhodesia question, as proposed by the British Foreign Secretary, David Owen, and the American Secretary of State, Cyrus Vance, and a parallel acceptable solution to the South West African (now Namibia) issue, were dashed. Drawing on the original handwritten transcript of the Vorster-Smith meetings, this paper reveals the intricacies of South African intentions and diplomacy. Examination of these meetings offers an insight into the dynamic of South African-Rhodesian relations at a critical juncture in the Cold War in southern Africa, the preoccupations and divergence of opinion between Pretoria and Salisbury, and their differing responses to the challenge of militant African nationalism supported by the Soviet bloc. South Africa's preferred version of progress towards black majority rule in South West Africa clearly influenced both the content and presentation of its policy towards Rhodesia in mid-1977. Notes, ref. [ASC Leiden abstract] |