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High Noon in Southern Africa: Making Peace in a Rough Neighborhood
Product Group: Book
Publisher: W W Norton & Co Inc (1993-01)
ISBN: 0393034321
EAN: 9780393034325
Dewy Decimal #: 327.68073
Hardcover: 534 pages
Edition: 1st
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Editorial Reviews
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Product Description
During the 1980s, a wave of strife threatened to engulf the nations of Southern Africa. Chester Crocker embarked on an eight-year diplomatic marathon to bring peace to the truculent neighbours. Despite all the obstacles to resolving the complex conflict, the Crocker strategy worked. This narrative tells how peace (almost) came to Angola and why South Africa let Namibia have its independence. This book is aimed at professional diplomats and lay readers alike.
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Customer Reviews
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Proof that a strategy can actually work.
Rating  (5)
Date: 1999-06-08
4 out of 4 customers found this reveiw helpful
Dr. Crocker's lucid account of his eight-plus years as U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs offers valuable insight into the complex world of foreign policymaking and diplomacy. His central achievement--and the focus of this book--is the Namibia-Angola peace process, an arduous series of events involving pariah states (Cuba and apartheid-era South Africa), guerrilla movements, ideologues and political opportunism. Crocker swam among these sharks for nearly a decade in order to produce the December 1988 agreements signed by Angola, Cuba and South Africa that resulted in the creation of an independent Namibia and the withdrawal of foreign forces from Namibia and Angola.Crocker's memoir is a rich history of a transformative era in southern Africa, but it also contains two valuable lessons for today's policymakers. First, a well-designed long-run strategy can work if pursued consistently and vigorously. Crocker outlined the bargain behind the 1988 agreements as early as 1981: Cuban troops exit Angola, South Africans end support for Angolan rebels, independent Namibia created. Although this strategy took nearly a decade to come to fruition, its logic and the diplomacy behind it never wavered. With today's policymakers treating six months as long-term, this persistence was amazing. The second lesson that Crocker brings out is the particular importance of regional dynamics in Africa. Perhaps more than any area outside of the Balkans, African conflicts readily spill over borders and inflame neighboring countries. One need look no further than today's Congo to see that this is still the case. Crocker demonstrated that it is possible to get all the relevant players involved without losing control of the process, if the strategy is sound and well-implemented. This regional dynamic can also work in a positive direction, as the increased stability in Angola, Namibia and Mozambique provided South Africa with a less-threatening external environment in which to dismantle apartheid. Crocker makes all of these points in his compelling and readable book. Highly recommended.
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Reagans Man in Africa tells part of his story.
Rating  (3)
Date: 1997-06-18
4 out of 5 customers found this reveiw helpful
In the Reagan years there were only two things about South Africa that radicals, liberals and conservatives would all agree upon without immediately hurling insults and solid objects at each other. First - Apartheid is a disgusting ideology, second - Undersecretary of state for Africa, Chester Crocker, is doing the wrong thing. The remarkable fact remains that this man stayed in office for eight years, he was with Reagan from start to finish.
What exactly did he do to enrage the american public from left to right and get away with it for eight years? How come Reagan didn't part with him though Crocker was far from a die-hard Reaganaut? Part of the answer is to be found in this book.
As undersecretary of state for Africa Chester Arthur Crocker was Reagans man in Africa from 1981-1989. Focusing on his late succes in negotiating a peace settlement in Namibia Dr. Crocker stubbornly refuses to reflect upon the failure of his brainchild, the concept of Constructive Engagement - a complex programme for US actions towards the Southern African region as a whole, aimed at speeding up the process of abolishing apartheid in South Africa. This makes the book most interesting for the things not included, that again means that you have to have an idea about what Crocker has excluded before the book becomes interesting, and this little chain of deductions leads us forward to the conclusion: This book is a must and not at all dull reading for students of US-African relations in the 80's. For everyone else it'll be a complete waste of time and money.
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Amazon.com's Price:$48.23
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