Conflicts between white-ruled South Africa and its black-ruled neighbors have claimed at least 1.5 million lives and cost the region more than $60 billion in damage and lost production in the past nine years, a United Nations study released Friday said.
The study by the Economic Commission for Africa, based in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, said the enormous cost in human lives and money was a direct outcome of South Africa's "ultimate goal of destabilization" in the region to force black nations to accept apartheid.The study also dismissed South African President Frederick de Klerk's recent talks with black clergymen and leaders of the anti-apartheid movement as a forced necessity resulting from the severe economic costs of South African military expeditions into neighboring states.
De Klerk met Wednesday with Anglican Archbishop Desmond Tutu in Pretoria. It was De Klerk's first meeting with black leaders of the anti-apartheid movement aimed at discussing specific steps to solve racial problems in the white-ruled country.
The report named the black-ruled states involved in conflicts with South Africa as Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Botswana, Namibia, Angola, Zambia and Tanzania - the so-called Frontline States. Of those countries, only Tanzania does not share a border with South Africa or its administered territory of Namibia.
"South Africa's military aggression and destabilization of its neighbors cost the region $10 billion in 1988, and over $60 billion and 1.5 million lives in the first nine years of this decade," and economic output of the region would have been 40 percent higher had it not been for the South Africa inspired conflicts. It said half of the human lives lost were children under 5.
The study said Angola and Mozambique bore the brunt of guerrilla wars in the past decade. Angola lost $30 billion and Mozambique $15 billion to civil wars with South African-backed rebels.