Kissinger's Mission to Zurich

In the hope of advancing a solution to the growing crisis in southern Africa, Secretary of State Henry Kissinger took to the road again last week. His itinerary: a brief stop in London to confer with British officials, then a flight to Zurich to meet with South Africa's Prime Minister John Vorster for the second time in less than three months. At the close of the three-day talks, Kissinger expected to fly back to London to report to British Prime Minister James Callaghan on the meeting's progress. Next week, said Kissinger's aides, the Secretary might well go to Africa to continue his discussions with Vorster and with other leaders, both white and black.

Deadline Pressure. Vorster's immediate concern is unrest at home. Over the past three months, 300 people have been killed and 1,600 injured in the continued rioting and violence within South Africa's black townships. Late last week violence spread to a white area for the first time, as 3,000 nonwhites clashed with police in central Cape Town. Over the long term, the U.S. hopes to persuade South Africa to abandon--or at least drastically modify--its system of apartheid, or racial separation. But for the moment, Kissinger and Vorster will concentrate on two problems on which some progress is possible: Namibia (or South West Africa) and Rhodesia.

There is deadline pressure in Namibia, the onetime League of Nations-mandated territory that South Africa has ruled since 1920 (TIME, Aug. 30). Last January the U.N. ordered South Africa to prepare an independence timetable for Namibia by Aug. 31, 1976, or face U.N. economic sanctions. Accordingly, South Africa assembled a constitutional conference in Windhoek, the Namibian capital, and last month the conference agreed on a multiracial interim government to prepare for independence on Dec. 31, 1978. Kissinger rightly called the decision "a major breakthrough" because "the principle of independence has now been accepted." Black African states were still not satisfied, however, because of the two-year delay, the lack of U.N.-supervised free elections, and because the South West African Peoples' Organization (SWAPO), the territory's most powerful political organization, was not represented at the Windhoek conference. Kissinger obviously believed Vorster could be persuaded to make further concessions. Indeed, Pretoria hinted last week that Vorster might be ready to let the U.N. monitor preindependence elections and would drop his opposition to allowing SWAPO to participate.

At his headquarters in Zambia, from which his organization wages a guerrilla war in northern Namibia, SWAPO President Sam Nujoma announced that he might be willing to talk. The non-whites at the Windhoek conference now hope to install an interim government by next June 30 and will invite SWAPO to take part.

Whether Kissinger and Vorster will be able to make any real progress on Rhodesia is much more doubtful. South Africa has become Rhodesia's only lifeline for its imports and exports, not to mention the military supplies it needs for pursuing its four-year-old war against guerrillas. So Vorster is obviously in a position to exert strong influence on the Salisbury regime if he should choose to do so. Prime Minister Ian Smith recently rejected a British plan for a two-year timetable leading to black majority rule. But he might be willing, at Vorster's and Kissinger's urging, to submit to another round of talks with black moderate leaders.

Vorster and Kissinger will probably also discuss a British-American plan under which the two countries would, in effect, subsidize Rhodesian whites for agreeing to black rule. Details of the plan are not yet known, but the cost is estimated at $1.5 to $2 billion.

Kissinger said in June that he would not meet with Vorster again unless some kind of progress had been made in the meantime. South Africa's U.N. Ambassador Roelofse Botha recently assured him that Pretoria was now prepared to make new concessions. Soon after that, Kissinger dispatched two of his deputies--Assistant Secretary for African Affairs William Schaufele and Undersecretary for Economic Affairs William Rogers--to sound out opinion in Tanzania, Mozambique, Zambia and Zaire. The leaders of those nations presumably approved another Kissinger-Vorster meeting.

Black Frustrations. Kissinger is undoubtedly aware of the risk in pursuing the African initiative during a U.S. election campaign. Mindful of the feelings of many U.S. voters, he told a largely black audience in Philadelphia last week that he views apartheid as "incompatible with any concept of human dignity." The rioting in South Africa, he said, was "dramatic evidence of the frustrations of black South Africans toward a system which denies them status and political rights." While Vorster blasted what he called "moral lessons and threats from other countries," he did not call off the Zurich meeting.

He is, after all, under severe pressure at the moment. At home, he has been hurt by the current turmoil. To the north, he is challenged by Marxist regimes in Angola and Mozambique. His strategy now is to reduce interracial pressure on South Africa by finding political solutions in Rhodesia and Namibia--but in such a way that his country's security is not jeopardized. In so doing, he hopes to buy South Africa enough time to fashion a genuine detente with black Africa.

For his part, Kissinger is worried that the Soviet Union and Cuba might again become actively involved in southern Africa, as they were in Angola. He has recognized, if a bit belatedly, the need for the U.S. to push harder on the white regimes in Africa to recognize black political demands before racial violence engulfs the whole southern third of the continent. Thus he and Vorster are in a position to talk business.

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