HISTORY PAPER 1 GRADE 12 ADDENDUM - PAST PAPERS 2017 JUNE
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GRADE 12
NATIONAL SENIOR CERTIFICATE
ADDENDUM
JUNE 2017
QUESTION 1: HOW DID THE CUBAN MISSILE CRISIS CONTRIBUTE TO THE COLD WAR TENSIONS BETWEEN THE USA AND THE USSR?
SOURCE 1A
The source below consists of two extracts which focus on the Cuban Missile Crisis.
| EXTRACT 1: This is the view of Andrei Gromyko, the Soviet Union's foreign secretary, of the Cuban Missile Crisis. The United States over several years had established offensive military bases around the socialist countries and, primarily, near the USSR borders ... the placement of mediumrange effective Soviet missiles in Cuba was undertaken only after the United States’ ruling circles continually rejected proposals to remove American military bases, including missile sites, on foreign territory. [From: Through Russian Eyes: President Kennedy's 1 036 Days by A Gromyko] EXTRACT 2: In 1984 Fidel Castro was interviewed by an American journalist, Tad Szulc. The journalist asked Castro why he was willing to allow Soviet missiles to be placed in Cuba. It was necessary to make it clear to the United States that an invasion of Cuba would imply a war with the Soviet Union. It was then that they proposed the missiles ... We preferred the risks, whatever they were, of a great tension, a great crisis, to the risks of the impotence (inability) of having to await a United States invasion of Cuba. [From: The Cuban Missile Crisis – To the Brink of War by PJ Byrne] |
SOURCE 1B
This was the main headline of The Washington Post, 23 October 1962. It highlights the USA's blockade of Soviet missiles to Cuba.
SOURCE 1C
The source below consists of letters written by President Khrushchev and President Kennedy on their involvement in the Cuban Missile Crisis.
| VIEWPOINT 1: This is part of a letter that was written by President Khrushchev to President Kennedy on 24 October 1962. You, Mr President, are not declaring a quarantine (blockade), but rather are setting forth an ultimatum and threatening that if we do not give in to your demands you will use force ... No, Mr President, I cannot agree to this, and I think that in your own heart you recognise that I am correct. I am convinced that in my place you would act the same way. Therefore the Soviet Government cannot instruct the captains of Soviet vessels bound for Cuba to observe the orders of American naval forces blockading that island. Naturally we will not simply be bystanders with regard to piratical (robbing) acts by American ships on the high seas. We will then be forced on our part to take the measures we consider necessary and adequate in order to protect our rights. We have everything necessary to do so. VIEWPOINT 2: This is part of a letter in which President Kennedy responds to President Khrushchev, written on 25 October 1962. In this letter President Kennedy states that the crisis was due to Soviet interference in Cuba. In early September I indicated very plainly that the United States would regard any shipment of offensive weapons as presenting the gravest of issues. After that time, this Government received the most explicit (clear) assurances (guarantees) from your Government and its representatives ... that no offensive weapons were being sent to Cuba. I ask you to recognise clearly, Mr Chairman, that it was not I who issued the first challenge in this case, and that in the light of this record these activities in Cuba required the responses I have announced. [From Thirteen Days/Ninety Miles – The Cuban Missile Crisis by NH Finkelstein] |
SOURCE 1D
An extract from a book written by Robert Kennedy, President Kennedy’s brother, on the Missile Crisis.
| Even after it was all over [the president] made no statement attempting to take credit for himself or for his administration for what had occurred. He instructed all his staff that no interviews should be given, no statement made, which would claim any kind of victory. He respected Khrushchev for properly determining what was in his country’s interests and in the interests of humankind. If it was a triumph, it was a triumph for the next generation and not for any particular government or people. |
QUESTION 2: HOW DID ANGOLA BECOME THE FOCAL POINT OF THE COLD WAR IN THE 1970s AND 1980s?
SOURCE 2A
This source comprises of two extracts explaining the involvement of the USA and USSR in Angola during the Cold War.
| EXTRACT 1: This is an extract from speech made by Fidel Castro in 2005 on the 30th anniversary of the Cuban military mission in Angola In the case of Angola, the largest and richest of the Portuguese colonies, the situation was totally different. Washington launched a covert plan to rob the Angolan people of its legitimate rights and install a puppet government. Its main lever was its alliance with South Africa, involving joint training and equipping of the organisations set up by Portuguese colonialism to thwart (prevent) Angolan independence. [From: Ruz(02-12-2005).htm. Accessed on 16 March 2014.] EXTRACT 2: Extract on USSR’s role in Angola taken from New Generation History By the end of 1975 the Soviet Union supplied around 200 million dollars in arms to the MPLA. They used Angola as a new power base from which to spread the ideology of communism throughout Africa. [From: New Generation History Grade 12 by G Pillay et al] |
SOURCE 2B
This is an extract by Bernice Labuschagne on South Africa’s intervention in Angola.
| For some observers South Africa’s intervention in Angola was an effort to establish a friendly government in Angola that would ease the transition (change) in South West Africa (SWA). Nevertheless, the Soviet and Cuban support for the MPLA increased so rapidly and surpassed the South Africans expectations completely. Granted South Africa’s own interests were one of the main reasons for getting involved in Angola in 1975, one should not forget that international pressure also had a huge influence on this decision. The strong anti-communist stance of the West’s superpower, the USA, made South Africa’s involvement inevitable as it was prepared to support South Africa’s intervention regardless of the fact that South Africa’s domestic policies were seriously frowned upon internationally. [From: South Africa’s Intervention in Angola by B. Labuschagne] |
SOURCE 2C
This source focuses on the involvement of the USA, Russia, South Africa and Cuba in the Angolan conflict in the 1980s.
| Throughout the 1980s Angola remained a pawn in the Cold War, a theatre in which the United States and the Soviet Union used proxy forces to compete for ascendancy (supremacy/domination/control). While the Russians and the Cubans continued to prop up the MPLA’s Marxist regime in Luanda, the Americans, along with the South Africans, sustained (keep) Jonas Savimbi’s rebel Unita movement. Angola featured as part of President Reagan’s strategy of ‘bleeding’ Soviet resources by fuelling insurgencies (revolt) in countries he regarded as Soviet ‘client states’. During his term in office, Reagan, thwarted by the 1976 ‘Clark Amendment’ banning direct US assistance to Unita, used third parties to arm Savimbi. During his second term he succeeded in overturning the Clark Amendment, enabling him to provide direct covert (secret) military aid to Unita. Year by year the amount increased. American officials dealing with Savimbi gave him high marks for leadership. ‘It was difficult not to be impressed by this Angolan, who combined the qualities of warlord, paramount (important) chief, demagogue (leader) and statesman,’ wrote Chester Crocker, a former American Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs, in his 1992 book, High Noon in Southern Africa. Noting that Savimbi was fluent in three African languages and four European ones, Crocker considered him to possess ‘a world-class strategic mind’. In 1986 Savimbi was invited to the White House and presented to the American public as a ‘champion of democracy’. With American as well as South African support, Savimbi’s forces gained control of much of southern and central Angola and spread northwards to the border with Zaire, overrunning the diamond fields of the Luanda region that provided three-quarters of Angola’s diamond production. With the collusion (secret agreement) of Mobutu, Savimbi used Zaire as a base for guerrilla activity in northern Angola. To fend off the Unita threat, the MPLA government relied on 50 000 Cuban troops and spent heavily on Soviet arms, drawing on revenues from the offshore oil fields being developed by American companies. [From: The State of Africa by M Meredith] |
SOURCE 2D
The following is a cartoon by the British cartoonist, Leslie Gilbert. It depicts the Soviet Union as Santa Claus on his sleigh delivering presents in the form of weapons to the MPLA. These weapons were used in the civil war by UNITA and the FNLA. The cartoon was entitled ‘Slay Bells’. Slay means to kill.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
Visual sources and other historical evidence were taken from:
Byrne, P.J. 2006. The Cuban Missile Crisis – To the Brink of War (Compass Point Books)
Finkelstein, N.H. 2001. Thirteen Days/Ninety Miles – The Cuban Missile Crisis (Universe)
http://www.cartoons.ac.uk/search/cartoon-item/angola
Gromyko, A. 1973. Through Russian Eyes: President Kennedy’s 1 036 Days (International Library)
Pillay G, et al. 2013. New Generation History Grade 12 (New Generation Publishers)
Frederiks, J. Beggar. Your Neighbours: Apartheid Power in Southern Africa
Meredith, M. 2005. State of Africa: History of Fifty Years of Independence, (J Ball: London)
The Washington Post, 23 October 1962