Growing Militancy and Isolation under P.W. Botha since 1978

Abstract

The election of P.W. Botha to the premiership on 28 September 1978 brought no abrupt or dramatic shift in South African foreign policy. This is not surprising. For one thing, Botha’s foreign policy options were limited by the same severe constraints that had restricted the actions of his predecessors. In his inaugural addresses in Pretoria and Cape Town the new Prime Minister spoke indirectly of Western demands on his government, and suggested that the price of improved relations with the West was too high: concessions in Namibia and in domestic race policy that were politically unacceptable. South Africa would remain in Namibia ‘as long as the indigenous peoples required it to do so’, he said. Nor would his government hand over South Africa itself ‘to the forces of chaos’. After the obligatory assertion that change ‘will not be forced on us from outside’, Botha advised the rest of the world: ‘sweep in front of your own door before you do so in front of ours’. In his only other references to foreign affairs Botha reiterated his conviction that South Africa’s mineral wealth ‘made her indispensable to many Free World countries’, and he pledged to assist South Africa’s neighbours.¹