Subject: (Editorial): Fruits of Containment
Date: Published: 12/18/90 (70 lines)
Source: Wall Street Journal. Copyright Dow Jones & Co. Inc.

    REVIEW & OUTLOOK (Editorial):
    Fruits of Containment

    A year after the collapse of Marxism in Eastern Europe,
 the winds of change have finally reached Africa.  The Reagan
 Doctrine, which combined support for anti-Communist rebels in
 southern Africa with diplomatic pressure on other African
 countries to liberalize, is paying impressive dividends.
    Jonas Savimbi announced last week that his UNITA rebel
 group reached a cease-fire agreement with the Soviet-backed
 government of Angola.  The details still have to be worked
 out, but the 15-year-old war looks about to end largely on
 Western terms.  During the negotiations, Soviet Foreign
 Minister Shevardnadze agreed that Angola would have free
 elections and a democratic system of government.  The Angolan
 government had demanded that Mr. Savimbi be exiled, but now
 he may be a presidential candidate.  Even before the latest
 talks, Cuban troops were leaving, Soviet aid levels were
 declining and the ideology at the heart of the Angolan regime
 was completely discredited.
    Similarly, in Mozambique the leftist regime and the RENAMO
 rebels have agreed to a partial end to hostilities.  Perhaps
 now something can be done to ease the plight of the forgotten
 one million refugees from Mozambique who have fled to
 neighboring countries, chiefly Malawi and South Africa.
 Mozambique will need more than a million tons of food aid
 next year to avert mass starvation.
    Other leaders throughout Africa also now understand that
 they must either move toward political pluralism and freer
 markets or risk being permanently sidelined by history.
 Madagascar, Zaire and Zambia all promise moves toward
 multiparty democracy and economic freedom.  South Africa is
 slowly but surely dismantling apartheid.
    With the exception of South Africa, the Communist and
 Marxist parties of Africa have become disillusioned with
 socialism.  Asked what advice he would give Nelson Mandela and
 his African National Congress, Mario Machungo, Mozambique's
 prime minister, recently said, "Do not try to impose central
 planning or socialism.  We have learned from bitter experience
 that they do not work."
    The liberals' explanation of these developments is that
 communism collapsed of its own dead weight.  Ours is that it
 would have stumbled on indefinitely, but that the Reagan
 policy of Western military resistance caused Mikhail
 Gorbachev to recognize that the costs overwhelmed the
 benefits.  Glasnost, perestroika and a grudging recognition
 that the right to self-determination had to be recognized
 were the result.
    Even if Africa ceases being a superpower battleground, its
 problems remain immense.  Excluding South Africa, the 41
 nations of sub-Saharan Africa with their 450 million people
 have a total gross domestic product that is less than that of
 Belgium's 11 million people.  The AIDS epemic is an enormous
 social and economic threat in several African countries.
    Western nations can play a major role in encouraging
 African free trade and economic development, but the West's
 most considerable achievement was simply the resolve to
 confront communism.  Now that Africa is liberated from this
 crippling political philosophy, its future should be much
 brighter than its past of political instability and economic
 folly.

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