In South Africa, where the moral justifications for
those policies had become too controversial, the
administration substituted a “constructive engage-
ment” policy to the apartheid regime.
Elsewhere in the continent, the Reagan adminis-
tration continued to embrace policies motivated by
strong national interest: selecting and favoring Afri-
can leaders or countries based largely upon their
commitment to the renunciation of communist ide-
als. That most of these leaders led draconian govern-
ments that brutalized their populations—a strong
contradiction of the larger democratic ideals that
the United States professes—made little or no differ-
ence.
Debt Crises, AIDS, and Dictatorships Africa’s abil-
ity to fashion a foreign policy toward the United
States has always been determined by its ability to
deal with some of its intractable domestic problems.
Africa’s problems in the 1980’s became com-
pounded by the spread of acquired immunodefi-
ciency syndrome (AIDS), the impasse over burgeon-
ing debts for foreign lenders, and the rise of
dictatorships or authoritarian regimes masquerad-
ing as democracies. Furthermore, Africa’s frag-
mented loyalties to its various colonial authorities
complicated or worsened its ability to deal with
any undesirable foreign policy. This fragmentation
would prove to make the term “undesirable” in the
experience of Africans almost inexplicable. From
most accounts, the three issues that linked Africa to
the United States were the apartheid policies of the
South African regime, the attitude toward the over-
whelming effects of AIDS, and, perhaps most impor-
tant, the debt crises that was strangulating most gov-
ernments of the continent.
Given the commitment to its social conservative
position, the U.S. stance on apartheid in South Af-
rica under the Reagan administration was almost
predictable. As it appeared that the apartheid re-
gime of South African president Pieter W. Botha was
resistant to communist ideology, it gained support
from the Reagan administration. To make matters
worse, the appeal to communism by the neighbor-
ing Angolan government of President Agostinho
Neto provided more justification for urgent U.S.
support for the apartheid South African regime. To
prevent the spread of socialist ideology in the re-
gion, the Reagan administration beefed up its sup-
port for the Swavimbi-led rebellion against the legiti-
mate government, in complete disregard for the
declaration of the Organization of African Unity
(OAU). The Reagan administration then preferred
to deal on a unilateral basis with individual govern-
ments and leaders despite their blatant record of hu-
man rights violations, political corruption, and out-
right disregard for the rule of law. Mobutu Sese Seko
of Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of Congo),
Ibrahim Babangida of Nigeria, Omar Bongo of Ga-
bon, and Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo of
Equatorial Guinea are a few examples.
Africa’s fledgling administrations had in the 1960’s
and 1970’s borrowed extensively from overseas lend-
ers based on the belief that they could spur their
economies toward development. Regrettably, both
the well-meaning and the dubious soon found out the
path to development was more daunting than mere26 Africa and the United States The Eighties in America
Famine in Ethiopia threatened millions of lives in the 1980’s, and
media images of the famine shaped American attitudes toward the
entire African continent during the decade.(AP/Wide World
Photos)