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PASTOR GENERAL'S REPORT, MARCH 23, 1984
PAGE 9
Please pray for my friends and me.
I'll be praying for you and
your family.
Please don't forget my magazine.
I'm fifteen and
when I get a job I'll send a donation to your church.
ON THE WORLD SCENE
S.B. (Sheffield, AL)
--Richard Rice, Mail Processing Center
WINDS OF PEACE IN SOUTHERN AFRICA--HOW STRONG'?
A remarkable series of
events is underway in southern Africa--political developments thought
beyond the realm of possibility years ago. They bore their first fruit this
past Friday, March 16, with the signing of a nonaggression treaty between
South Africa and its Marxist neighbor to the northeast, Mozambique.
At the
same time, the groundwork has been laid for a cessation of hostilities
along
the
Angola-South
West
Africa
border,
leading to
the
possible
independence of SWA, commonly referred to these days as Namibia.
The complex SWA-Angola situation is still several critical steps away from
fruition--the main obstacle being the removal of the 25,000 Cuban troops in
Angola--but the new relationship between South Africa and Mozambique is al
ready a reality.
The new ties between the two countries, which had been
strained since Mozambique won its war of independence against Portugal in
1975, have developed very rapidly in the past few months, finally leading
up
to
the
historic
treaty-signing
ceremony
near the border town of
Komatispoort.
The exact location, along the banks of the brown and
sluggish Nkomati River, had been quickly hacked out of the bush in order to
accommodate the more than 1,000 guests, including 300 newsmen.
( Since
peace is not supposed to come through coo p eration with South Africa, news
coverage
to
the
United
States
of
this
breakthrough
was
pitifully
underplayed.)
Before retiring to a specially constructed pavilion for the signing for
malities, South Africa's Prime Minister P.W. Botha and Mozambique's Presi
dent Samora Machel conversed for over an hour inside a railway coach which
was parked on the railway line which connects the two countries so that it
exactly straddled the border. All in all, it was an historic occasion, cer
tainly deserving of more worldwide attention than it received.
The editor
of the SUNDAY TIMES of Johannesburg, Tertius Myburgh, conveyed the mood of
the occasion in an on-the-spot report in his paper's March 18 edition:
One had to be utterly cynical or misanthropic, or both, to be
unmoved by the extraordinary events of that day.
There was
Samora Moises Machel, dazzlingly uniformed Marxist Marshall and
President of the People's Republic of Mozambique, saluting as the
SAAF band played Die Stem
[South Africa's national anthemJ in a
blazingly hot piece of no man's land on the Lowveld border.
There was [Prime Minister ] Mr. P.W. Botha, quietly suited and
every bit the avuncular
[uncle-like] boerediplomaat, inspecting
Mozambique's
impressively
turned-out
national
guard
and
accepting a flower of peace from a small black child.
Only a few months ago our aircraft were flying east across that
same frontier to bomb ANC [ African National Congress] bases in
Maputo.
Only a few months (weeks'?) ago ANC cadres were sneaking
westwards across that border to prime their bombs in south
African cities....