Two Endings: semi-historiographical musings

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Notes

^1. Peter Vale, `The Cold War and South Africa: Repetitions and Revisions on a Prolegomenon’, in Peter Vale and Gary Baines, eds., Beyond the Border War: New Perspectives on Southern Africa’s Late Cold War Conflicts (Pretoria: Unisa Press, 2008). For Vale, ` the ending of the Cold War compelled South Africa’s embattled minority government to recognise that the great game was up’: ibid, 37.

^2. Just to give one example: Vladislav Zubok, et al, `A Cold War endgame or an opportunity missed? Analysing the Soviet collapse Thirty years later’, Cold War History, 2021, 21 (4), 541-599. Zubok implicitly rejects any suggestion that the cost involved for the Soviets in arming Angola to defend itself against South Africa, together with the cost of occupying Afghanistan, had helped persuade Gorbachev to abandon the Soviet Union’s confrontation with the United States. It was not `Soviet overextension that doomed the Soviet economy and state’: ibid, 547.

^3. Graham Evans, `The Great Simplifier: the Cold War and South Africa’, in Alan Dobson, Shahin Malik and Graham Evans, eds., Deconstructing and Reconstructing the Cold War (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1999), 146; Vale, `The Cold War and South Africa’, 37.

^4. Adrian Guelke, `The Impact of the End of the Cold War on the South African Transition’, Journal of Contemporary African Studies, 14 (1) 1996, 87-100. One of the first historians to touch on this topic was Norman Etherington: `Is it too Soon to Start Devising Historical Explanations for the End of Apartheid? in Paul B. Rich, ed., The Dynamics of Change in Southern Africa (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1994), 101-119.

^5. Cf Sue Onslow, `Republic of South Africa Archives’, Cold War History, 2005, 5 (3), 369-75; Mattie C. Webb, `Research Note: Mayibuye Archives and the Cold War in Southern Africa, Cold War History, 2022, 22 (3), 369-73. Among the archives that remain closed are those of the former Soviet Union, of the Angolan government and military, and of individuals such as F.W. de Klerk. A valuable Soviet memoir, Anatoly Adamishin’s The White Sun of Angola, became available in English: https://www.wilsoncenter.org/sites/default/files/media/documents/publication/adamishin_-_white_sun_of_angola.pdf.

^6. E.g., David Welsh, The Rise and Fall of Apartheid (Johannesburg: Jonathan Ball, 2009).

^7. President FW De Klerk, address at the state opening of Parliament, 2 February 1990, https://www.politicsweb.co.za/documents/fw-de-klerks-address-of-february-2-1990

^8. Had the Namibian process not proceeded relatively peacefully, and promised a liberal democratic outcome, it is unlikely that De Klerk would have embarked on negotiations, and the moderation of the SWAPO government in Namibia then had an important demonstration effect on those negotiations.

^9. Piero Gleijeses, Visions of Freedom: Havana, Washington, Pretoria, and the Struggle for Southern Africa, 1976-1991 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2013).

^10. Chris Saunders and Sue Onslow, `The Cold War and Southern Africa, 1976-1990’ in The Cambridge History of the Cold War, volume 3 (Cambridge; Cambridge University Press, 2010), 222-243.

^11. Chris Saunders, `The Angola/Namibia Crisis of 1988 and its Resolution’ in Sue Onslow, ed., Cold War in Southern Africa. White Power, Black Liberation (London: Routledge, 2009), 225-240. For Onslow, `the fate of apartheid’ was `associated with, but not defined by, the Cold War confrontation and its demise’: ibid, 29.

^12. Chris Saunders, `The Ending of the Cold War and Southern Africa’ in Artemy M. Kalinovsky and Sergey Radchenko, eds., The End of the Cold War and the Third World. New Perspectives on Regional Conflict (London: Routledge, 2011), 260-276. My later relevant work includes `”1989” and Southern Africa’ in Matthias Middell, Ulf Engel and Frank Hadler, eds., 1989 in a Global Perspective (Leipzig; Leipziger Universitätsverlag, 2015); `External Influences on Southern African Transformations: ‘1989’ in Perspective’, in Matthias Middell, ed., Africa’s Global 1989, Comparativ, 29 (5) 2019, 62-73; and `The Fall of the Berlin Wall and Namibian Independence’, New Global Studies, 13 (3) 2019. https://doi.org/10.1515/ngs-2019-0033.

^13. I persuaded Andre Jaquet of the Department of Foreign Affairs to have the documents transferred from the Union Buildings to the National Archives. Some of them were subsequently digitised by the Aluka digital project.

^14. See, e.g., Vladimir Shubin, ANC A View from Moscow (Bellville: Mayibuye Books, 1999), 302-40; ‘Unsung Heroes: The Soviet Military and the Liberation of Southern Africa’, Cold War History, 7:2 (2007), 251-262; The Hot “Cold” War. The USSR in Southern Africa (London: Pluto Press, 2008); ` Beyond the Fairy Tales: The Reality of Soviet Involvement in the Liberation of Southern Africa’ in Matusevich, ed., Africa in Russia, 331-52; `Were the Soviets “selling out”? in Artemy M. Kalinovsky and Sergey Radchenko, eds., The End of the Cold War and the Third World. New Perspectives on Regional Conflict (London: Routledge, 2011); Irina Filatova and Apollon Davidson, The Hidden Thread. Russia and South Africa in the Soviet Era (Roggebaai: Jonathan Ball, 2013), esp. 491-94; Irina Filatova,`Gorbachev’s “Perestroika” and the South African Negotiated Settlement’ in [translation from Russian] Peace and Peace-making in Africa: a collection of articles for the 90th birthday of Academician Apollon Borisovitsch Davidson, ed. A. S. Balezin, S. V. Mazov and I. I. Filatova (Moscow: Izdat “Ves’ Mir”, 2019), 248-77.

^15. Piero Gleijesis, Visions of Freedom. See my review in H-Diplo Roundtable Review, XV (41), 2014, 21-24.

^16. Flavia Gasbarri, US Foreign Policy and the End of the Cold War in Africa: A Bridge between Global Conflict and the New World Order, 1988-1994 (Abingdon: Routledge, 2020), chapter 3. See my review in South African Historical Journal, 74 (3) 2022, 564-67.

^17. Chris Saunders, `Eastern Europe, the Soviet Union and the Ending of Apartheid in Southern Africa Reconsidered’ in Chris Saunders, Helder Adegar Fonseca and Lena Dallywater, eds., Eastern Europe, the Soviet Union and Africa. New Perspectives on the Era of Decolonization 1950s to 1990s (Berlin: De Gruyter Oldenbourg, 2023), 221-38.

^18. Isaac Saney, Cuba, Africa, and Apartheid’s End. Africa’s Children Return (Lanham: Lexington Books, 2023).

^19. Esp. Filatova, `Gorbachev’s “Perestroika”’. While Gorbachev’s `new thinking’ included reducing military and financial support for the ANC in the late 1980s, Shubin claims Soviet military support for the ANC continued until 1990 see, e.g., his `The Soviet Union and the Liberation of Southern Africa’ in Arnold J. Temu and Joel das N. Tembe, eds., Southern African Liberation Struggles. Contemporaneous Documents 1960-1994. Dar es Salaam: Mkuki Na Nyota, 9 (2014), 41-112.

^20. Onslow, `Conclusion’, in Cold War in Southern Africa, 244.

^21. Cf., e.g., Anthea Jeffery, Countdown to Socialism. The National Democratic Revolution in South Africa Since 1994 (Johannesburg: Jonathan Ball, 2023).