South Africa and Mozambique: Past and Future

Abstract

Since 1988, there has been some significant change in the content of South African policy towards Mozambique: economic and diplomatic action has come to feature more prominently in the mix of tactics deployed by Pretoria. Official rhetoric now proclaims the major objective of that policy to be to assume a prominent role in reconstructing peace in a country devastated by Pretoria’s own undeclared war of destabilisation. Several years earlier, in the months immediately following the signing of the March 1984 Nkomati accord of ‘non-aggression and good neighbourliness’, Pretoria made a similar major effort to capitalise on its professed desire to inaugurate a new era of peaceful co-operation with Mozambique. On that occasion, however, South African Defence Force (SADF) support for the so-called Mozambican National Resistance movement (MNR or Renamo) persisted, as documents captured at MNR headquarters in 1985 proved beyond any reasonable doubt.¹