Food lures Zambia towards Pretoria’s web

Press, 3 July 1979, Page 16

Food lures Zambia towards Pretoria’s web

Zambia, host for the Commonwealth Conference early next month, cannot feed its people. JAMES McMANUS, of the “Guardian.” London, reports from Johannesburg that Zambia is increasingly dependent on South Africa and Zimbabwe Rhodesia.

Like a spider in a web of steel South Africa is using her network of rail links to Central Africa to lure potentially hostile countries into a state of economic depen-

dency. The creation of economic satellites round the republic as a buffer against radical African nationalism is a long standing strategy in Pretoria, but never before has the policy become so visible. The current recipient of South Africa’s invitation to the spider’s parlour is Zambia where a tightening trade noose has confronted President Kenneth Kaunda with a stark choice of further economic reliance on the white South or national collapse.

The Zambian Government is still considering whether to ease its chronic trade congestion by opening a second trade route through Zimbabwe Rhodesia and thus increasing its dependence on South African rail and port facilities. Transport officials in Lusaka are convinced that such a decision will have to be made if the backlog of some of 89,000 tons of Zambian imports is to be cleared from South African warehouses. There are no luxuries in the logjam but the basic stuff of survival, 50,000 tons of South African yellow' maize, 25,000 tons of American and Australian wheat, 10,000 tons of fertiliser and 4000 tons of

lubricants and mixed merchandise. Officials estimate that these consignments must begin moving north before a further 16,000 tons of Australian aid-granted wheat for Zambia arrives in South African ports in mid-July. This could well be only the beginning of another nightmare for Lusaka since in August massive tonnages of fertiliser required for the October maize planting season will begin to arrive at Durban and East London.

Fertiliser shipments precipitated Zambia’s transport crisis last year when 90,000 tons of the stuff poured into Mozambiquan ports which were unable to cope. In desperation President Kaunda then turned south for help and reopened his border with Rhodesia to accept rail traffic across the Victoria Falls bridge. This year the Zambian leader may be forced to go a step further and open a road route through what has become Zimbabwe Rhodesia to keep his landlocked nation supplied with essential commodities.

The inevitable consequence would be another request to Mr Joshua Nkomo’s Zambiabased guerrillas not to attack such a route, thus giving the Salisbury regime a propaganda bonus and a useful security corridor.

President Kaunda is said to be well aware that such a

move might well tip the delicate balance between his own army and the more numerous forces under Mr Nkomo’s control in the country. He is therefore trying to resist the temptation of a second southern route.

One alternative for Kaunda is the Benguela railway linking the Angolan port of Lobito with the Zambian copperbelt via an 800 mile stretch of insecure rail which passes through Zaire’s Shaba province before branching south. Despite a recent agreement between Angola’s President Neto and President Kaunda to make use of this route, the fact is that U.N.I.T.A. guerrillas in Angola have kept the line closed for almost four years and will continue to do "so at Pretoria’s behest. A second route south through Botswana via the Kazungula ferry across the Zambesi River has also been denied to Zambia. Of the two ferries in action early this year one was swept away by floods and the other "was blown up by Rhodesian troops on the grounds that

the craft was being used to carry war materials for Nkomo insurgents. Since Kazungula is the only place on earth where four international boundaries meet (those of Rhodesia, Zambia, Namibia and Botswana) soldiers from any of the concerned countries can halt ferry crossings with ease. Zambia’s third route, the 1162 mile Tazara rail link to the Tanzanian port of Dar es Salaam has proved a disappointment since its inception in 1974. The line has yet to recover from line wash’aways and a strike of some 3000 workers early this year. This leaves road and fail links through Malawi to the Mozambique ports of Beira and Nacala. The Mozambique Government is working hard to improve the handling capacity of both harbours, but even goods destined solely for Malawi are piling up at the Indian Ocean terminals. Since Rhodesian special forces have destroyed a road and rail bridge close to the Mozambique mining town of Moatize a direct road-

rail link from Lusaka to Beira has also been cut off. There is little doubt that such sabotage is aimed at forcing President Kaunda to fall back on southern routes through Zimbabwe Rhodesia to South Africa. Yet the Lusaka Government still hopes to clear its trade backlog via the vulnerable rail route across the Victoria Falls. Last month Zambia reversed a ludicrous policy of not allowing its locomotives or train crews to enter Zimbabwe Rhodesia in order to speed up traffic across the bridge. Railway officials here estimate that this has doubled the former input of 1000 tons of Zambian imports a day across Victoria Falls. The 23,000 tons of Zambian goods stranded in Zimbabwe Rhodesia have mostly been cleared because of this new policy, but even so the improved rail traffic across the Zambesi will not meet Zambia’s pressing requirement for food, fertiliser and mining materials. The obvious answer is to use the road which runs parallel to the railway across the Victoria Falls bridge. The difficulty is that South African truckers are not keen to risk 30 ton rigs valued at $130,000 each on the long haul from Johannesburg to Victoria Falls via Bulawayo and the Wankie coalfield unless complete agreement is reached that the vehicles, uninsurable in a war zone, will be free from ambush by Mr Nkomo’s guerrillas. The alternative road-rail routes via Zimbabwe Rhodesia to Zambia involve

either a crossing of the Kariba Dam wall or use of the sensitive Chirundu road bridge to the north-east. Both involve travel through territory heavily infiltrated by guerrillas. Short of a deus ex machina, and Zambia's run of bad luck in recent years does not point to any such heavenly intervention, President Kaunda will have to declare his hand very soon. The problems of supplying a nation of 5.4 million people have been complicated by the requirements of the Commonwealth Conference which is still due to take place in Lusaka in the first week of August. Short of a deus ex be on hand to make good any shortfall in luxury food, drink, transport and communications facilities required for such a gathering. A thrice weekly regular cargo air service between Lusaka and Johannesburg has already been proposed and temporarily shelved by the Zambian Cabinet. Since South Africa is already heavily involved in freighting supplies by air and rail to Zaire, Botswana. Mozambique and Malawi there is nothing that the Pretoria strategists would like more than to place Zambia firmly in the economic orbit of southern and central African nations reliant upon a country wedded to the apartheid policy. There is a firm belief that President Kaunda will reluctantly accept further trade links with Salisbury and Pretoria, if only because his political survival now depends upon food and fertiliser rather than ideology.