Nelson Mandela, Ronald Reagan, and the Cold War

Causation is the most elusive of things in history, but just as U.S. relations with South Africa between 1975 and 1986 cannot be evaluated outside the context of the Cold War, the end of apartheid and the release of Nelson Mandela from prison in February 1990 and his rise from political prisoner to be elected South Africa’s head of state in May 1994 cannot be evaluated outside the context of the end of the Cold War (symbolized by the 1989 fall of the Berlin Wall and 1990 reunification of Germany) and the collapse of Soviet Communism, culminating in the 1991 dissolution of the Soviet Union itself. The timing of these events was not coincidental.

The crucial event was the signing on December 22, 1988 in New York of the Tripartite Accords, a peace treaty between South Africa, Cuba and Angola brokered by the outgoing Reagan Administration after seven years of diplomacy by Reagan’s long-time Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs, Chester Crocker (the point man for Reagan’s policies in South Africa, Namibia and Angola from 1981-88). The superpower groundwork for the Tripartite Accords was laid at a June 1988 Reagan-Gorbachev summit in Moscow. All parties involved recognized that declining Soviet ambitions in the region meant an end to funding for future Cuban and Angolan adventures; the South Africans recognized as well that this meant less American interest in supporting UNITA. It was time to make the best peace that could be had, and it ensured independence for Namibia and an end to both Cuban and South African military involvement in Angola and Namibia.