How Long Can They Last?

“Apartheid, as you came to know it in the United States, is dying and dead.”—Pieter Koornhof.

“If apartheid is dead, then urgent funeral arrangements need to be made because the body’s still around and it is making a terrible smell.”—Percy Qoboza.

“Apartheid is all or nothing; you can’t keep the core of white supremacy alive if you start liberalizing around the edges.”—Andries Treurnicht.

“We in South Africa are very fortunate that we do not suffer from the colour complexes from which the rest of the world suffers.”—Balthasar Vorster.

The contrast between the arguments of the first two books listed above is less strong than you might think from the titles. The South Africa that will, according to Gann and Duignan’s title, survive, will have to be different in very important ways from the South Africa we know today. As for the report of the Study Commission, a more candid title would have to run: “South Africa: Time Running Out—Well, Maybe not Exactly Running.”

At a first glance, you might take Why South Africa Will Survive for a piece of silly propaganda. The cover shows a smiling black South African soldier shaking hands—or apparently doing so, you don’t actually see the hands—with an elderly white civilian, presumably some Afrikaner politician. The white man is holding his hat in his hand and is gazing at the black man, possibly in admiration. To me, that picture brought back nostalgic memories. Pictures like that used to be churned out by the public relations arm of the Union Minière in Katanga twenty years ago, to “illustrate” cette belle amitie entre blanc et noir which was supposed to have prevailed in the Belgian Congo before the barbarous incursion of the United Nations.

The cover picture is misleading, not only with regard to South African realities, but about the book itself. There is nothing silly about Why South Africa Will Survive. It is a cool and generally intelligent presentation of the argument that, through the play of market forces and the mediation of the verligte strain among the Afrikaners, South Africa can modify its institutions in such ways and to such an extent as will prelude violent revolution, though not sporadic episodes of violence. (Verligte is the word for the “enlightened” or reform-minded tendency which is now reflected in some of the policies of Prime Minister Botha.) The argument does not convince me but it is one that deserves to be carefully considered, not only by the kind of people who will be attracted by that cover picture, but also by serious opponents of the South African regime.

Despite appearances, Why South Africa Will Survive is not an apologia for that regime. In their chapter “The Africans,” Gann and Duignan have this to say:

Regarding collective attitudes, there is evidence of wide discontent. African townsmen, like their brothers on the land, are caught in a vast network of racial discrimination. Its structure and effects will be discussed at greater length in the sections on economics and politics. Suffice it to say at this point that discrimination affects every area of society, that it is based on the notion of social planning, that it is enforced by a vast and expensive bureaucracy, and that the objectives of social planning consistently diverge from social facts.

The angle from which this critique is directed should be carefully noted. What Gann and Duignan find unacceptable in contemporary South Africa is not so much the racist attitudes of South Africa’s rulers (though they do not condone these) as the scale of government intervention necessary to satisfy these attitudes. “The National Party,” they say, “keeps reiterating its faith in private enterprise. But the doctrine of separate development in many ways conflicts with the requirements of private enterprise.” By “separate development,” of course, they mean the government plan to push much of the black population into agricultural reservations such as the Transkei, allowing only a restricted number of black workers into “prescribed” urban areas.

They make this point again and again. “In a certain sense South Africa is a semi-socialist country….” “South Africa continued to stand out as a classic example of a semi-bureaucratized economy, and in this respect resembled most other African countries….” “The system of justice and administration embodies a costly, elaborate, and oppressive system of racial discrimination that interferes both with the personal freedom of South Africans and with the freedom of the market….” “South Africa, as we see it, will not be able to use its enormous resources to the full until it has established a free market for land, a free market for labour and a free market for capital, cost-conscious and colour-blind.” Gann and Duignan are here developing and extending an argument advanced by the powerful and influential Afrikaner banker and financier Andreas Wassenaar in 1977.

Yes, but will these things happen? Is South Africa about to become “cost-conscious and colour-blind”? Gann and Duignan don’t convince me that it is, and they don’t really seem convinced of it themselves. They argue, however, that if the United States encourages the verligte tendency in the National Party things ought to move in the general direction desired. This seems to me a nonsequitur. Cases of color blindness among verligte nationalists are, I think, quite rare. Practically all Afrikaner nationalists are agreed on the need to preserve Afrikaner dominance.

The argument between the verligtes and the verkramptes—the “narrow” or hard-line Afrikaners who think reform has gone too far—concerns the means of doing this. The verligtes favor flexibility, the elimination of provocative inessentials, the development of forms of Afrikaner rule that will be as nonracial in appearance as possible. They know “separate development” is nonsense and the “homelands policy” a failure in its ostensible objectives of providing blacks with legally separate and workable places in which to live, away from the modern, industrialized, and prosperous parts of South Africa. Yet they look for remedies in still more ingenious elaborations of the essential “homelands” notion that the black majority is somehow not really there in South Africa, or is there only in the sense that Turkish guest workers are in West Germany.

If you can, conceptually and legally, reduce the blacks in South Africa to a minority, then you can afford to make liberal gestures to that minority—such as legalizing black trade unions, for the “legitimate” minority only—which have the doubly desirable effect of splitting the blacks and disarming international criticism. The verligtes are not working toward the grand Gann-Duignan vision of capitalist revolution. They are trying in quite pettifogging ways to avert any really basic change, and to keep the National Party permanently in power with a more reassuring international image.

Gann and Duignan draw comfort from a poll, taken early in 1980 by the Sunday Times (of Johannesburg), which showed that 85.5 percent of registered National Party members supported Prime Minister P.W. Botha; only 6.4 percent backed Andries Treurnicht, the right-wing leader of the party’s Transvaal section. Gann and Duignan think this means that “the reformers are gaining strength over the conservatives.” Perhaps (although, by the end of the book, Gann and Duignan are not as euphoric about this idea). A more parsimonious interpretation would be that Nationalists recognize that Botha’s policies, including the verligte elements, serve the interests of the Afrikaner people and the power of the National Party. If Afrikaners really thought that Botha was beginning to go color blind, Botha would not be the leader of the National Party for long.

Gann and Duignan are understandably contemptuous of what they call “the Jericho complex” of those who have been so long predicting the imminent collapse of the South African regime. “South African cities,” they say, “are not powder-kegs about to explode, cauldrons about to boil over, or boilers about to burst.” They have no difficulty in showing that revolution is not now imminent in South Africa. The white minority of about 4.5 million is well-equipped and trained and armed, resolute and ruthless—under Botha’s verligte leadership. The black majority of nearly 20 million is unorganized, weak, and divided. Gann and Duignan assume that these conditions will continue for some considerable time. They are probably right. They hope that during this period the verligtes will carry out such far-reaching reforms as to remove the threat of revolution. The title of their book appears to be based on the assumed realization of this hope, although the book itself—which has a rather down-beat ending—stops considerably short of prediction. The book is less confident—and so better—than its title (let alone its dust jacket).

A major weakness of Why South Africa Will Survive is an imaginative failure. The writers are very busy using opinion surveys to show that most black South Africans are not in a revolutionary mood. (The same surveys could be interpreted as meaning that they are in a pre-revolutionary mood.) But they don’t seem to understand how it is that young, intelligent black South Africans feel forced to become revolutionaries, in word or in deed, in order not to accept being things. In the course of a discussion of “misconceptions reinforced by literary images current in modern black writing,” Gann and Duignan quote as follows from Sipho Sempala’s poem “Measure for Measure”:

go measure the distance from cape town to pretoria
and tell me the prescribed area I can work in
count the number of days in a year
and say how many of them I can be contracted around
calculate the size of house you think good for me
and ensure the shape suits tribal tastes
measure the amount of light into the window
known to guarantee my traditional ways
count me enough wages to make certain that i
grovel in the mud for more food
teach me just so much of the world that i
can fit into certain types of labour
show me only those kinds of love
which will make me aware of my place at all times
and when all that is done
let me tell you this
you’ll never know how far i stand from you.

Where is the misconception in all that, you may ask? Gann and Duignan tell us, confidently:

The imagery is powerful. But the social facts do not sustain the assumptions on which the images are built. There is indeed much poverty in Soweto. But there is no misery of the kind found, say, in Addis Ababa, Kinshasa or Karachi.

But Sempala does not claim to be enduring misery of that kind. He has nothing to say about Addis Ababa, Kinshasa, or Karachi. He does not live in any of those places (and neither do Messrs. Gann and Duignan). The social facts among which he lives—as Messrs. Gann and Duignan do not—are his theme. He is not talking about misery, in the sense of extreme, abject poverty. He is talking about the particular misery of his own place, time, and situation: the misery of humiliation systematically measured out to him by the white men who are his absolute masters.

Dickens or Daumier would be needed to do justice to the tableau of these cool white gentlemen from Palo Alto explaining to this rather unreasonable black man why, instead of writing bitter poetry about South Africa, he ought instead to celebrate in song the theme of how vastly better off he is than other blacks these gentlemen have seen, starving to death in the many exotic capitals it has been their good fortune to visit from time to time on behalf of the Hoover Institution.

The report of the Study Commission—initiated by the Rockefeller Foundation—might be called an “establishment liberal” document, but it is rather more far-reaching in the direction unwanted by the South African government than might perhaps be expected. In its analysis, and (though less clearly) in its conception of a desirable future, the report does not differ very widely from Gann-Duignan. It does not believe in imminent revolution; it does believe in the possibility (no more than that) of peaceful transformation. But, unlike Gann and Duignan, the report is not content simply to cheer from the sidelines for the verligtes. It advocates specific, limited US pressure on South Africa to move toward reform. The measures it advocates are now well known. The US government should broaden the arms embargo to cover foreign subsidiaries of US companies; broaden the nuclear embargo; increase the number of blacks in the US embassy and consulate; continue expressions of opposition to apartheid; expand contacts with black South African leaders, and support humanitarian aid programs for black South Africans.

US corporations, for their part, while not withdrawing investment from South Africa now, should follow a policy of “No Expansion and no New Entry”; should set a high standard of social and community development for black South Africans, and should subscribe to the Sullivan Principles of fair employment practice, even where these may be contrary to South African law. All this to be part of an effort “to provide genuine political power sharing by systematically exerting influence on the South African government.”

These measures—while pitifully inadequate from the point of view of militant opponents of the regime—are rather more than the United States is likely to do, in the present climate and under this administration. Most Reagan people would probably think it quite enough to follow the Gann-Duignan prescription and give the occasional cheer for the verligtes (while secretly hoping these get clobbered by the verkramptes, who are obviously the good guys). Yet there are reasons why a conservative administration, with no serious humanitarian or moral objection to the South African regime, may yet find itself applying to that regime such pressures as are recommended by the Study Commission, and even greater ones.

The United States itself is under considerable and contradictory pressures of its own in relation to South Africa. As the Study Commision report points out, different resource-interests (for example) pull in different ways. The politics of oil suggest the wisdom of not being too closely identified with South Africa. As the report says: “Three African countries—Nigeria, Libya, and Algeria—supply the United States with almost 40 percent of its imported oil.” All three are, of course, committed enemies of South Africa.

The politics of certain strategic minerals, on the other hand, counsel against doing anything to alienate South Africa. As the report points out: “The United States imports from South Africa a number of relatively scarce minerals—including chromium, manganese, platinum, and vanadium.”

Chapter 14 of the report is devoted to the question of these strategic minerals. Among the “objectives set for US policy,” in the concluding section of the report, is Objective Five: “To reduce the impact of stoppages of imports of key minerals from South Africa.” It lists actions to be carried out under this head:

Actions for Objective Five.

1. Increase stockpiles of ferrochrome, ferromanganese, platinum, and vanadium.
2. Develop a national minerals policy and contingency plans.
3. Diversify sources of supply.

4. Develop transport sectors of the Nine.

5. Encourage allies to take parallel measures.

I think that if I were a South African government official reading this report, I would have begun to get worried at Chapter 14, and have felt a distinct chill at Objective Five and—especially—Actions for Objective Five. These passages suggest that influential people in the United States are not exactly preparing to ditch South Africa but are preparing the advance protection of particular US interests against a not unlikely future situation in which general US interests require South Africa to be ditched. If I were a South African official that thought would worry me a lot more than the intimations of more black American vice-consuls in Capetown, or more speeches about apartheid.

The Study Commission report notes the slow but steady shift going on inside South Africa, increasing the relative strength of black as against white. The opening statement of Chapter 2 on “The People” runs as follows:

The central fact about the population of South Africa is that the ruling faction is a small minority that year by year is growing smaller relative to the other groups. From the figures alone, it seems obvious that sometime, somehow, the status quo must change.

But it is not just a question of gross numbers. There are more educated blacks, and blacks in better jobs. Seventy-five percent of school-age African children were actually at school in 1975, as against 36 percent in 1954. A University of Pretoria publication, quoted in Chapter 6 of the report, shows why this development makes sense, from a white point of view. The publication points out that to maintain a high rate of economic growth, “a much larger number of non-whites and particularly Blacks will have to move into skilled occupations, simply because there are not and will not be enough whites available to achieve the potential rate of economic growth.”

To be fair, the university publication quoted, “Focus on Key Economic Issues,” favors high economic growth, not just for its own sake, but for the creation of employment opportunities and the narrowing of the race gap. This is of course a verligte position. Whether this development does narrow the race gap is, however, doubtful. The poet Sempala is probably expressing a view widespread among blacks educated in South Africa when he writes: “teach me just so much of the world that i can fit into certain types of labour.”

Whatever may happen to the racial gap, the balance of power between the races has to be shifted by these phenomena: many more blacks and many more blacks moving upward. That has all sorts of consequences, including a rise in black consumer power. One unexpected consequence of this—and of increased black literacy—is a rise in black influence over the English-language press. From a recent book by Richard Pollak on the press in South Africa I learn that while in 1962 only about 33 percent of the readership of this press was nonwhite, by 1977 the proportion had climbed to 45 percent. In that same period white readership rose by 30 percent, compared to an increase of 80 percent for Asians, 125 percent for Coloureds, and 250 percent for blacks. Blacks now outnumber white readers of Johannesburg’s four English-language dailies by two to one. “Though the antiapartheid message of the English-language press is undeniably genuine, the boost it gives circulation is not an uncalculated side effect.”¹ Quite so.

The Study Commission report (Chapter 9) lists six major trends in the growing black challenge to white authority, as follows:

1) Acceptance of revolutionary violence;

2) Growing interest in radical ideology;

3) Widening Coloured militancy;

4) Growing black unity;

5) Growing political importance of black workers;

6) Resurgence of the African National Congress.

The report makes clear that it is not a question of whether the institutions of white authority can survive. The questions are only: how long can they last, and how will they be brought to an end? I shall come back to those questions.

The Crisis in South Africa is a Marxist study. It therefore has to contend with the basic difficulty of analyzing, in class terms, a problem that is seen by all the protagonists in racial terms and involves the supremacy of whites of all classes over blacks of all classes. The authors acknowledge the difficulty, in their own way, but handsomely enough:

Of course, one must avoid taking too reductionist a position. It would be a bold observer indeed who suggested that racism and Afrikaner nationalism did not have some “autonomous” resonance of their own beyond the economic-cum-class determinations which shape and structure their impact. Clearly, the communal nature of the Afrikaner project has had real meaning for such actors as Nationalist prime ministers D.F. Malan and H.F. Verwoerd—as well as for many more humble adherents to the cause—and this has lent a drive and thrust to their undertakings which has made a tangible impact upon historical outcomes.

It was not mere manipulation which made issues like South Africa’s entry into World War II or republicanism such important talismen [sic] in South African politics. And it seems possible that ethnic interest—premised upon “Afrikaner identity”—may even today cut across class lines in ways that qualify the degree of flexibility open to the “crisis managers” of South African capitalism. Similarly, the ideology of white racism—though contingent rather than preordained in the nature of its links to capitalism and to the interests of that system’s various classes—may not yield entirely gracefully to any proposed dismissal of it which might be suggested by the emerging imperatives of latter-day capitalist development.

They get over a part of their difficulty by classifying the regime as “racialcapitalist.” Gann and Duignan see the same regime as “semi-socialist.” There is some truth in both descriptions, so neither is particularly helpful. However, the two books complement each other (inadvertently) and between them provide a useful commentary on contemporary South Africa.

Like Gann and Duignan, Saul and Gelb are interested in the inclination of some leading white South Africans (especially business leaders) toward liberalization, both economic and racial. They refuse to take the verligtes of the National Party seriously as any kind of real liberalizers. They also refuse, however, to dismiss verligte activity as “a mere shell game,” but regard this activity as indicating “the extreme contradictions which wrack the racialcapitalist system, and the desperate, if confused, search which is underway for the means of preempting the revolutionary import of those contradictions.” They note—no doubt with satisfaction, given their point of view—the failure of “the dominant classes” “to structure a political process compatible in the long run with the continued reproduction of South African capitalism.” At this point Saul and Gelb are analytically fairly close to Gann and Duignan—to the extent that all of them see capitalist development as requiring the liberalization of the whole system. Saul and Gelb think, however, that even if capitalist development does require this, it shall not happen because of those “contradictions”; i.e., because of Afrikaner nationalism and racism. I am not sure that that is orthodox Marxism, but I think it is true.

Saul and Gelb believe that revolution in South Africa is on the way, with help from the communist bloc to speed it on. Like the Study Commission report, they note the phenomenon of the resurgence of the African National Congress. Then they make the following comment (which will certainly by now be on file at the Hoover Institution): “Why should the ANC have this kind of ‘gravitational pull’ on the South African revolution? One important reason is its military capacity, which is now increasingly relevant, and seen to be so by those gravitating toward it. The ANC has prepared for this necessary level of struggle and is also equipped for it like no other group; here the absolutely crucial nature of the links established with the Eastern bloc reveals itself, whatever the attendant costs.” Since it is obvious that the unaided efforts of blacks in South Africa will, for many years, not be enough to produce revolutionary change, and that the black African states are not strong enough to bring the date much nearer, the questions arise: to what extent will black revolutionaries look for help from the communist bloc, to what extent will that help be forthcoming, and how effective is it likely to be?

All three books under review touch this range of questions without directly answering them. None of the authors doubts that the help is being sought, and will be to some extent forthcoming. Saul and Gelb believe that it will be effective; Gann and Duignan that it will be ineffective (in producing revolution). The Study Commission report leaves that question open. Gann and Duignan, having dismissed the idea of an invasion of South Africa, take the idea of a naval blockade a little more seriously.

A naval blockade of South Africa might be considered a less bloody way of forcing the country to its knees. Conceivably, the UN might—at some future date—call upon the Soviet Union and its allies to blockade South African ports until South Africa agreed to dismantle its political system. The Soviet Union might perhaps accept such an assignment, given the right political atmosphere. The Soviets might even offer to work in collaboration with US naval forces as part of an international campaign against “racism”—a campaign that would revert to the principles of the Popular Front on a global basis.

Something like that may come about, but not quite in that way. The UN Security Council—on which Britain, France, and the United States have veto power—is not likely to take such action. But the time may not be very far away when these powers, having regard to their interests in the rest of Africa, and the third world generally, will find it inexpedient to veto mandatory economic sanctions against South Africa which would consequently pass the Security Council and be binding in international law. Sanctions would, of course, be entirely ineffective without a blockade, and the Western powers would be likely to veto a blockade. But the General Assembly, with its huge third world majority, could then bypass the veto by calling on member nations to cooperate in enforcement measures.

Such a call may be of doubtful legality under the Charter, but there is one important precedent which would make it exceedingly awkward for the Western powers to contest the validity of this procedure. The United States and its allies made precisely this use of the General Assembly during the Korean War. The Assembly’s “Uniting for Peace” resolution was deemed (by the West) to nullify the Soviet veto on the Security Council, and to provide a legal and moral basis for the United States/United Nations police action in Korea.

What’s sauce for the Soviet goose may be sauce for the South African gander.

Now a General Assembly resolution would not just call on the communist countries to provide forces for such an enterprise. It would call on all member countries to do so. It is very much in the cards that the Soviet Union, Cuba, and East Germany might join a number of African countries in answering such a call. If that happens, the United States will find itself facing about as unappetizing a set of choices as it is possible to imagine. It could sit tight, ignominiously, and let the Soviet navy appear as champion of the United Nations, enforcing the General Assembly’s blockade of the South African coast. Or it could decide to run in the teeth of the opinion of the rest of the world—and of its own previous versions of international law—and appear as champion of the blockade runners, confronting the Soviet Union in the most unpopular of all international causes: the cause of white South Africa. Or finally it could help to enforce the blockade. That might seem the least bad of the three nasty options, and the navies of the two superpowers could find themselves engaged in a joint blockade of the South African coast.

Gann and Duignan point out, rightly, that such a blockade could not in itself bring down the South African regime. It could not, but it could provide a mighty turn of the screw in that direction, mainly by the encouragement it would provide to the internal enemies of that regime.

We are not, of course, near that point yet, and may not be for some years. The main reason why we are not is that African countries are reluctant—and the nearer they are to South Africa the more reluctant—to push toward real, as distinct from rhetorical, confrontation with the greatest power in Africa. The front-line states in particular—militarily exposed and economically involved with South Africa—have a lively horror of real confrontation. Of all the factors working in South Africa’s favor this is probably the most vital, yet it is South Africa itself which is wearing it away. The doctrine of “hot pursuit” which now takes South African forces into Angola is likely—as guerrilla activities inside South Africa and on its borders develop—to take them also into Mozambique and Zimbabwe. If so, international action against South Africa will be in the interests of these countries—as it now is not—and the stage will begin to be set for the kind of action we have been considering.

Gann and Duignan are, or sound, scornful of all such possibilities. Their chapter “South Africa: A Revolutionary Situation?” ends with the words:

Given the present conditions, hopes for a violent overthrow of the South African system—either by a foreign invasion or by internal or external guerrilla assaults—belong in the realm of military fantasy.

The dismissal is not as sweeping in substance as its tone might suggest. How long are we to suppose that “present conditions” are going to be “given”? Internally—as Gann and Duignan are aware—those conditions are changing, in a manner unfavorable to continuing white power. “A violent overthrow of the South African system” is certainly not imminent, but the time in which it can still be regarded as “fantasy” may be limited. On the whole, I’m afraid, I regard it as less fantastic than the notion of the removal of white supremacy by verligte reforms. I wish this were not so but I think it is.

The report of the Study Commission, no doubt because of its official and establishment character, is more cautious in its formulations than the other two books. Since the report is open to attack from those sympathetic to the regime—because of its recommended pressures on South Africa—and because such sympathizers argue that pressures will increase the risk of Soviet involvement in the region, the report is perhaps a little inclined to play down the possibilities of such an involvement. It cites the “matter-of-fact” question of a political scientist, Robert Price: “If the Soviet Union was prepared for a war with the West, why would it want its navy in South African waters?” A shrewd question, but not perhaps the most pertinent one. The rulers of the Soviet Union, so long as they remain sane, cannot want war with the West. But they may want advantageous confrontation with the West. And if that is what they want, South African waters may well seem a very attractive location for a part of their navy. They can hardly lose, after all, for even if they back down under US pressure, the US is left with the vast odium of being the shield of apartheid. As the Study Commission report says:

There are, unfortunately, no painless alternatives in South Africa. The choice is not even between a slow process of “peaceful change” and a quick process of “violent change.” Instead, the situation is one in which a slow, uneven, sporadically violent pattern of events including bargaining, compromises, and agreements could preempt the other alternative, an equally slow but much more violent descent into civil war. Both paths, of course, could lead to genuine power sharing.

The report (Chapter 18) sets out these alternative “scenarios” in some detail. Considering the facts set out and analyzed in these three books—and also other books—notably Richard William Johnson’s valuable How Long Will South Africa Survive?²—and considering also the course of events since all these books appeared—I think the most drastic alternative, “descent into civil war,” unfortunately the most probable. Whatever tactics they may adopt, and whatever language they may use, the whites of South Africa are unlikely to give up white supremacy until they are convinced after a long and bloody fight that they have lost.

That is, I fear, the most probable outcome. It is not, however, certain, and therefore it is important that everything possible should be tried to induce radical change in South Africa without the horrors of interracial civil war. It is in this context that the measures proposed by the Study Commission are of value, not so much intrinsically as because of the signal their execution would imply. That signal would be that South Africa could not depend on US support should its policies lead it into armed confrontation, in which its adversaries would have the active support of the Soviet Union. That message is of such grave import, from South Africa’s point of view, that it is just possible—no more—that if it ever gets delivered, the rulers of South Africa could be brought by it to see the necessity of changing their institutions to an extent, and at a pace, adequate to avert civil war.

Whatever the effects inside South Africa of acting on these recommendations, the effects in terms of the United States itself would clearly be salutary. They would help the United States to begin to cut its entanglements with the ship of apartheid as it very slowly begins to sink. In that respect the commission’s most relevant recommendation concerns the lessening of US dependence on South African strategic minerals. It would be prudent for any US government, irrespective of its political sympathies in Africa, to act on that recommendation, beginning now.

Unfortunately such prudence seems unlikely just yet. Despite the fact that Chester Crocker, now assistant secretary of state for African Affairs, was one of the consultants to the Study Commission, it seems highly unlikely that this administration will follow either the letter or the spirit of the commission’s recommendations.