Reflecting on the Nkomati Accord and Southern Africa

Reflecting on the Nkomati Accord and Southern Africa

On 16 March 1984, the two leaders of Mozambique and apartheid South Africa, Presidents Samora Machel and P.W. Botha, proceeded to a wooden canopy that was located on a parade ground consisting of red earth carved out of the shrub and bush on the Crocodile River bank. It is at this wooden canopy, where the eleven-page “Accord of Nkomati” was signed, signifying a non-aggression pact between the two countries. The progressive world was surprised by the fanfare and publicity that went towards the event, and more surprisingly by the clampdown on the national liberation movement in Mozambique following the signing of the Accord.

During the occasion, approximately 1 200 people were sweltering in ninety-degree heat on the banks of the Crocodile River between Mozambique and South Africa, where also Cuban, Soviet and American diplomats were present, including South African and Mozambican armed forces. A white railway coach stood on the exact spot marking the border between the two countries, out of which Mozambican President Samora Machel, clad in a Field Marshall’s uniform, emerged alongside the President of apartheid South Africa, P.W. Botha, who was wearing a pin-striped suit. It was an occasion, so it appeared, in which the leadership of both countries glittered and glowed in.

The era immediately preceding the Accord of Nkomati was one of marked hostility. Since the year before, on October 1983 a special unit of the apartheid South African Defence Force (SADF) had raided a base of the African National Congress (ANC) in the Mozambican capital, Maputo. It was the declared policy of the apartheid South African government to attack these bases, without remorse, wherever they might be, especially in the Frontlines States. Raids had been carried out in both Mozambique and Lesotho, and acts of assassination had been undertaken against prominent anti-apartheid revolutionary figures in almost all the neighbouring states.

This was done partly, as the apartheid regime claimed, in retaliation for ANC attacks on targets inside South Africa. Apartheid South Africa’s policy of attacking ANC bases in neighbouring countries, together with its support of counter-revolutionary movements like the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA) in Angola and RENAMO (Mozambique National Resistance Movement) in Mozambique, was seen by its black neighbours as one of deliberate destabilisation. The other part was that Mozambique was a self-declared Marxist People’s Republic and an outspoken supporter of the struggle against South Africa. Therefore, ideologically the two countries were miles apart.

Accordingly, one can deduce that the basis for dialectically opposed forces acceding to such an arrangement, as the Nkomati Accord, could then be attributed to several factors. The most important factor was the independence and freedom gained by Angola and Mozambique in 1974 and by Zimbabwe in 1980, which created a security gap for the Republic of South Africa, since it had lost its cordon sanitaire, the buffer zone it had enjoyed when these states were still under colonial and racist rule.

Added to these developments, was an upsurge in guerrilla operations, primarily led by the ANC’s armed wing, Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK), secondarily by the Pan-Africanist Congress’ (PAC) Azanian People’s Liberation Army (APLA), and mainly the South West Africa People’s Organisation’s (SWAPO) People’s Liberation Army of Namibia (PLAN) in South West Africa (Namibia), with the support of the Frontline States.

As a response to these developments, South Africa implemented a strategy of coercion designed to deal with any threat to its internal security against the strengthening revolutionary forces and to maintain its external influence as a regional power. During the 1980’s, therefore, southern Africa was characterised by an escalating pattern of coercion, aggression and destabilisation by apartheid security forces, directed towards the independent Frontline States. South Africa wanted to demonstrate that the harbouring of ANC and SWAPO “terrorists” carried a hefty price. These policies had a devastating effect on the stability of the region as a whole, as well as on the socio-economic developments of the Frontlines States.

Apartheid South Africa’s declared strategy was to negotiate from a position of strength, and its strength was not only limited to its military capacity. Pretoria also tried to create an impression that normalisation of economic relations with the apartheid state held considerable economic advantages for the Frontline States, especially Mozambique. The economic dimensions of the Nkomati Accord could also be potentially considered to be as far-reaching as the security and political ones.

In terms of security considerations, the Nkomati Accord rested on those provisions dealing with South Africa’s primary security concern – putting an end to Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK) attacks. When keeping in mind that the real thorn in apartheid South Africa’s flesh was the support and passage given to the ANC-MK cadres, which came as no surprise that a great number of the provisions dealt with that specific aspect. The desire to end apartheid South African assistance to RENAMO, was Mozambique’s primary concern, on the other hand, which became an important reason for signing the pact.

The apartheid government indeed relied on a regional security strategy which was based on bilateral non-aggression agreements with all its neighbours, as there were no possibilities for multilateralism, considering the manner it was perceived by its neighbours. What the apartheid regime was failing to fathom, was that a cordon sanitaire surrounding South Africa would not provide the required security, or constitute a buffer against an outside enemy, as the “enemy” was within, for as long as it pursued its racist policies.

According to the ANC’s analysis of the Nkomati Accord, its principal objectives were “to isolate the ANC throughout southern Africa and to compel the independent countries to act as Pretoria’s agents in emasculating the ANC as the vanguard movement of the South African struggle for national liberation. To liquidate the armed struggle for liberation in South Africa. To gain new bridgeheads for the Pretoria regime in its efforts to undermine the unity of the Frontier States, destroy the SADCC (Southern African Development Coordination Conference) and replace it with a so-called constellation of states and thus to transform the independent countries of southern African into its client states. And to use the prestige of the Frontline States in the campaign of the white minority regime to reduce the international isolation of apartheid South Africa and to lend legitimacy to its colonial and fascist state.”

Furthermore, the ANC deduced that the Botha regime, in pursuit of these aims had “sought to reduce the independent countries of our region to the level of its bantustan creations by forcing them to join the Transkei, Bophuthatswana, Venda and Ciskei bantustans in entering into so-called aggression pacts with Pretoria. Such accords, concluded as they are with a regime which has no moral or legal right to govern our country, cannot but help to perpetuate the illegitimate rule of the South African white settler minority. It is exactly for this reason that this minority has over the years sought to bind independent Africa to such agreements.”

In addressing the concerns of the Southern African region, the ANC confirmed that it was “profoundly conscious of the enormous political, economic and security problems that confront many of the peoples of our region. The blame for many of these problems must be laid squarely on the Pretoria regime which has sought to define the limit of independence of the countries of our region through a policy of aggression and destabilisation. … A just and lasting peace in our region is not possible while the fountainhead of war and instability in this area, the apartheid regime and oppressive system it maintains in South Africa and Namibia, continue to exist. The Botha regime knows that peace has broken out: rather, it has resorted to other means to continue its war for the domination of southern Africa.”

The South African Communist Party (SACP) also agreed with the ANC that “South Africa’s apartheid regime lies at the core of the cancer; it promotes discontent and revolutionary upheaval at home, which it seeks to contain by a combination of police-state terror and corruption of a black elite; it promotes conflict and upheaval outside in all the frontline states, to roll back the tide of independence and to reassert a new era of colonial-type economic and political dependence. The frontline states correctly understood their real situation when they created a cordon sanitaire of isolation around South Africa. The Nkomati Accord marks the breaking of that cordon. The Botha regime now feels more confident that it can spread the infection of apartheid and neo-colonialism more easily through Africa. The invitation of Premier Botha to visit a number of European states shows that his allies are of the same opinion” (The African Communist, No. 98, Third Quarter 1984).

ANC President Oliver Tambo accused Mozambique of responsibility for “the emasculation of the liberation struggle”. According to Tambo, “Let us look at this as it affects us now, but let us also think of tomorrow. How will this decision influence that tomorrow that we seek? How will our response to this matter, determine the situation in a year’s time?”

Tambo tried to put himself into FRELIMO’s (Mozambique Liberation Front’s) shoes by asserting that “I am not sure that in their position I would have gone quite as far as they have. But it must be accepted that the South African government, the South African regime, had decided to destroy Mozambique, to kill it as a state, and got pretty close to doing so. Mozambique, the leadership of Mozambique, were forced to choose, as it were, between life and death. They chose life, and life meant talking to the butchers of southern Africa; it meant hugging the hyena … For the rest of us, we must accept our position, but defend our own positions, defend our struggle” (Callinicos).

Sources:
Murdhi Awad Nassar Al-Khaledi, “Coercive Diplomacy: The Nkomati Accord Between Mozambique and South Africa”, Doctor of Philosophy (PhD Thesis), University of Kent, February 1990.
Editorial Notes, “What the Nkomati Accord Means for Africa”, The African Communist, No. 98, Third Quarter 1984.
Luli Callinicos, “Oliver Tambo: Beyond the Engeli Mountains”, David Philip, 2004.
Alfred Nzo, “ANC on the Nkomati Accord”, Sechaba, May 1984.
Thula Simpson, “Umkhonto we Sizwe: The ANC’s Armed Struggle”, Penguin Books, March 2016.
Gerhard Erasmus, “The Accord of Nkomati: Context and Content”, Occasional Paper, The South African Institute of International Affairs, October 1984.

Castro Khwela
Good day fellow Compatriots!