Sanctioning Apartheid - KORA

266 Sanctioning Aparfheid
launched an anbitlous AFRICA Fund designed to "assist the
Frontline States to enforce sanctions against South Africa and to
cope with any retaliatory economic action by the racist regheens
In addition, a number of UN bodies embarked on contingency
enterprises of vaqing utility.
Western governments, individually and calktivelyI were
also hard at work on their sums. The consensus, based on these
calculations, clearly indicated that any attempt at active FLS
partidpation in sanctions would have calamitous domestic sodal
conseqwnces quite beyond the capacity of any of the states in the
region to contain. Nor was an internatiod rescue operation
deemed feasib1.e-logistidy, handy, or wen politically. As
Mrs. Thatcher remarked pointedly to Prime lvhister Mugabe at
Nassau, 'If you cut your own thoat, don't expect me to provide
a bandage." By the following year, bndon and Washington
were even more dous to deter the threatened disaster.
AccordhglyI they made it horn in no uncertain terms that any
frontline state acting precipitously must not look to the international
ca~~ununiQ for salvation. Thse stern warnings were
intended spdcally for Kaunda and Mugah as, by this time,
they were the only leaders seriousIy conlmplating taking the
plungeP
Zambia and Zimbabwe on the B W
On their return drom the Commonwealth m iniet in
London in August 1986, Kaunda and Mugabe clearly had every
intention of grasping the sandions nettle M y . Mugabe, in
partidar, was uncompromising in his public comments. In
warning his counb-pen of the costs of the coming confrontations
with Swth Africa, he declared defiantly,
Whe~
an economic war has been declared against you,
you do not go mawling lo those who are waging the
war against you You must fight back, and alt thought
about luxury arrd comfort must go. We must just be
detemined to bear the burden ow own way, to