Article from ROAPE Volume 11 Number 29
Analysis of Sthn African Region: Issues raised by SA Strategy

Pretoria's Total Strategy has turned the southern African region into a battleground. Two broad interrelated struggles have ranged the mass of the population of the region against the apartheid regime. The first is the advancing national liberation struggle inside SA (ANC) and Namibia (SWAPO) which are assisted in the region by attempts to co-ordinate the policies of the frontline states. The second involves attempts to advance different processes of development, free of control by SA capital, through SADCC (Southern African Development Co-ordination Conference). This attempt is challenged by efforts to promote the alternative SA dominated CONSAS (Constellation of Southern African States) through the Total Strategy. It is argued that the Total Strategy represents both a continuation of apartheid oppression and exploitation and also a shift of strategy on the part of the SA ruling class, and that it is unlikely that the balance of forces will permit an open realignment of any SADCC member into CONSAS. Nevertheless, the strategy makes possible the reduction of the SADCC programme to one compatible with, rather than opposed to, CONSAS. More generally, it gives renewed importance to the class character of the liberation struggle and to class struggles within the nine SADCC members.