Bumpy Mission

DIPLOMACY

Rough start in Africa

The Reagan Administration's stance toward Africa has been one of most hotly debated aspects of its emerging foreign policy. Thus, it seemed like a sound idea to send Chester Crocker, who was recently designated as Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs, on an extensive tour of both black Africa and white-supremacist South Africa. As it turned out, however, he encountered a bumpy reception in both camps. The rebuffs dramatized the difficulty of the Reagan Administration's attempt, as Crocker put it, to "walk the line" between South Africa and its hostile neighbors.

Crocker was snubbed at the outset by Mozambique's President Samora Machel who simply refused to meet with him. He spent several days trying to assure black African leaders that there would be no "tilt or endorsement of apartheid," his pains, he then received a less than enthusiastic welcome from the South Africans. An expected meeting with Prime Minister P.W. Botha, for instance, conspicuously failed to materialize. "It doesn't suit us," Botha was quoted as saying about Crocker's solicitous meetings with black African leaders. Thus, on both counts, it seemed to be an inauspicious start for the Reagan Administration's Africa policy.

Crocker's eleven-country expedition was aimed at testing the Reagan Administration's proposed alternative to the failed U.N. plan for bringing independence to Namibia, the South African-administered protectorate. The U.N. plan, which was supported by the Carter Administration, had called for a U.N. peacekeeping force to monitor a cease-fire in the 14-year-old guerrilla war between the insurgent South West Africa People's Organization (SWAPO) and South African forces. This was to have been followed by U. N.-supervised elections for a national assembly that would write a new Namibian constitution.

Now, in its stead, Crocker proposed that a constitutional convention, along the lines of the London conference t transformed Rhodesia into independent Zimbabwe, should be held prior to elections. The difference would be critical: under such a scheme, Namibia's predominantly white anti-SWAPO political parties, backed by South Africa, woulD be assured a role in a new Namibian government, even if they were defeated at the polls.

Not surprisingly, the Crocker plan drew sharp rebukes from the six "front line" states that support black nationalism in southern Africa. They see the proposal on Namibia as a stalling tactic designed to buy time for South Africa. Representatives of the six nations meeting in Luanda, Angola, jointly condemned "the U.S. intention to consolidate its relations with South Africa" and called for the immediate revival of the U.N. plan for Namibia "without delay, evasions, qualifications or modifications."

Obviously, the black leaders were not gratified by a concurrent development in South Africa last week. Two security policemen appeared at the Soweto home of outspoken black Anglican Bishop Desmond Tutu, one of the country's most influential civil rights advocates, and seized his passport. Tutu's apparent transgresssion: a recent tour of the U.S. and Europe during which he tried to bring foreign pressure to bear on the Botha government for an end to South Africa's apartheid policies. Said the unrepentant Tutu after politely handing over the travel document: "Nothing the government does will stop us from becoming free. Sooner or later--perhaps sooner than he thinks--the Prime Minister will be begging me to take back my passport and to intervene when things get rough."

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