Volume XXIII – Number 2
Jeffrey M. Ebenstein
Abstract: This article evaluates the policies of South Africa and the Soviet Union in several key states in the region of Southern Africa from the mid 1970s to the late 1980s. During this time period, South Africa’s policies in the region were designed to destabilize neighboring regimes to create a sphere of influence that would maintain the authority of South Africa’s white minority regime and the oppression of blacks through the enforcement of apartheid. Opposing these efforts, the Soviet Union, which was in the midst of the Cold War with the United States, applied its geopolitical strategies to the region of Southern Africa in an effort to spread communist ideology to undermine pro-Western states such as South Africa. This article assesses the policies of both South Africa and the Soviet Union in Southern Africa by examining each state’s involvement in Malawi, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Angola, and the BLS region of Botswana, Lesotho and Swaziland independently. After careful analysis of the economic, military and diplomatic relations between each identified Southern African country and the Soviet Union and South Africa, the article concludes that South Africa has generated more influence in the region than the Soviet Union by forging economic connections and impeding the spread of the Soviet Union’s ideological agenda.
Keywords: Soviet Union, South Africa, conflict, cooperation, communism, geopolitics, apartheid, destabilization
