“Babes in the Woods”

Abstract

Chapter 4 discusses the cooperation between the US and South Africa. While US efforts to “co-opt” South Africa can be traced back to late 1994, the cooperation really started only after a meeting between then vice president of South Africa, Thabo Mbeki, and US vice president Al Gore in late February 1995. Mbeki was instrumental in reversing the position of South Africa, which until then favored a green-light rolling extension. Mbeki also overruled his own party, which favored a one-off, short-term extension. By breaking from both his diplomats and his party, Mbeki created a situation that helped to break the anti-extension block within the Non-Aligned Movement and pave the position toward extension. In this chapter, I scrutinize the domestic process within South Africa in late 1994 and early 1995 as well as the cooperation with the US and the interactions between Mbeki and Gore.