Secretary of State George Shultz told openly skeptical Africans Saturday that the U.S. policy of constructive engagement toward South Africa calls for contacts with black nationalist groups as well as that country's white-led minority government.
At a press conference after his talks with Kenya's President Daniel arap Moi, Shultz was challenged to say if "constructive engagement is still your policy."
Shultz did not flinch, although most U.S. officials try to avoid the term, coined to describe the Reagan administration's attempt to influence the South African government through diplomacy instead of confrontation.
"The way to implement policies is, you are there. You don't just throw up your hands, you stay there," he said. "You are, if I may use the term, engaged. We try to be engaged with everybody."
Shultz, who plans to meet later this month in Washington with Oliver Tambo, leader of the African National Congress, said the United States hopes to be engaged with black nationalist groups such as the ANC, mixed-race Coloreds and Indians. Almost as an afterthought, he concluded his list with "the whites there who, after all, are African."
Senior administration officials have conceded that the South African government stopped paying much attention to U.S. diplomacy after Congress enacted tough economic sanctions over President Reagan's veto. Analysts say the sanctions marked the end of the "constructive engagement" policy which had been all but abandoned earlier.
Shultz said, however, that the United States is determined to make clear its opposition to apartheid and to try to encourage creation of "a different kind of system that allows all the human beings there to take part in governing the country."
Shultz is halfway through his six-nation African tour. He included only countries with a pro-Western foreign policy for his trip, which began with stops in Senegal and Cameroon before arriving in Kenya. He plans to go to Nigeria, Ivory Coast and Liberia.