The White Redoubt, the Great Powers and the Struggle for Southern Africa, 1960–1980

Abstract

University and the University of Ulster respectively, explore the efforts by the white settler regimes of Portugal, Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), and South Africa to resist the wave of African independence movements during the 1960s and 1970s. They also examine how the international community responded to these efforts. Throughout the period from 1961 to 1974, Portugal, Rhodesia, and South Africa collaborated in their endeavours to maintain white settler minority rule in their respective territories. Despite facing challenges from several newly independent African states and major world powers, these countries provided mutual economic, political, and military support to one another during this period. Moreover, through these actions, they succeeded in transforming Southern Africa into a significant diplomatic concern during the Cold War. De Meneses and McNamara delve into the origins of this collaboration, analyse the reactions of the international community, and focus on the evolving security situations in each country -principally Portugal and Rhodesia, and by inference, Mozambique, and Angola. They show that the Portuguese Revolution in April 1974 started the process of dismantling the so-called "white redoubt" in Southern Africa, and that the subsequent diplomatic policy adopted by apartheid South Africa -more especially John Vorster's détente policy -resulted in the abandonment of Rhodesia in exchange for the illusion of securing lasting stability in the region. The book builds on some earlier works by De Meneses and McNamara, 582 and offers a transnational perspective on the complex defence, political, and security landscape of Southern Africa during the late colonial era.