Economic Relations between South Africa and Black Africa

ECONOMIC RELATIONS BETWEEN___ SOUTH AFRICA AND BLACK AFRICA John H. Chetile Indeed, black Africa depends on South Africa. Without it, national economies in the southern third of the continent wouldfall like dominoes. —David Lamb, The Africans kJouTHERN Africa is an area of tension in a more profound sense than it is usually considered to be. There is, of course, the racial tension that-—being both newsworthy and easily understood—tends to dominate the headlines. There are, however, subtler tensions: those between rhetoric and reality; between national pride and national weakness; between colonial sensitivities and postcolonial pragmatism; between political antagonism and economic dependence; between the open advocacy of sanctions against South Africa and the private reliance on its resources; between the expectation that South Africa is ultimately bound to be plunged into conflict and the belief that economic interdependence is the best way to avert such a conflict; and between the suspicion on the part of some of its neighbors that South Africa is bent on establishing its hegemony in the region, and the countering belief that, without economic development in association with South Africa, such hegemony is inevitable. Some of these tensions are endemic in international relations, a field which, as the late Dean Acheson and Charles Burton Marshall memorably observed, is one bedevilled with abstractions, circumlocutions, euphemisms, exaggerations, and feigning, which exudes from state papers, diplomatic correspondence, United Nations polemics, hearings and pronouncements at the Capitol, reporting, John H. Chettle is director of North and South America for the South Africa Foundation. His work has appeared in Foreign Policy, Orbis, and the National Review. Mr. Chettle would like to thank John Nixon Montgomery of the South Africa Foundation for his invaluable research assistance. 121 122 SAIS REVIEW editorials, articles and books. The whole literature speaks in a style designed to obscure rather than clarify thought and reality. A wise man soon learns to pick his way through it with a caginess of seasoned troops crossing a mine field.1 But the situation is further complicated by the fact that little information is available, and that few of the actors have any incentive to provide it. Let us consider first the subject of South Africa's trade with black Africa. South Africa, to avoid embarrassing those African countries that trade with it, publishes only the total figure for trade with black Africa, and does not break that figure down by individual countries. Similarly, most African states, since they are on record as calling for sanctions against South Africa, understandably do not choose to publicize the trade that actually exists. Most of the statistics actually published are out of date, and one authority has noted that "those published ... by the International Monetary Fund are totally unreliable and no more than guestimates with the decimal point sometimes in the wrong place."2 Many statistics are simply not collected, particularly inside the Southern African Customs Union. Another problem is that the published figures do not reflect trade through third countries, and that a good deal of the trade is characterized by double invoices and by false certificates of origin. Some observers claim that the true figures may be twice as high as the published ones.3 It is therefore important to determine the nature and extent of the economic relationship between South Africa and black Africa. Without such a determination, policy cannot begin to be formulated with any confidence. This study will consider the economic strength of South Africa in the region; the institutions that have been established to strengthen regional cooperation, and those established to diminish South Africa's influence; the trade between South Africa and black Africa, the number of countries involved, the types of goods traded, and the trading patterns that have been established; the transportation links that facilitate trade; and, finally, it will hazard some guesses as to future developments. The sheer economic dominance of South Africa in the region is not always fully appreciated. South Africa's gross national product is more than ten times that of Zimbabwe, the next-largest economy in the region. It accounts for more than three quarters of the gross national product of 1.Dean Acheson and Charles Burton Marshall, "Applying Dr. Johnson...