Peace for Southern Africa?

Chester Crocker, assistant secretary of state for Africa, has negotiated an important agreement on a preliminary peace plan for Southern Africa. Under its terms, Cuban troops will be withdrawn from Angola, and Namibia, at long last, will be permitted to move to independence under terms of a United Nations resolution.

Final approval of the plan by the governments of South Africa, Cuba and Angola is now awaited. They are not likely to back out at this point. Just about everyone has come to understand how wanton is the waste of prolonging a status quo that has served only to increase the toll of deaths and destruction in both Angola and Namibia.

The agreement may still be subject to attack by a small group of U.S. senators who have been holding out for an agreement that would ensure a political role in the future of Angola for the UNITA guerrilla forces led by Jonas Savimbi. American interference would be a great mistake.

South Africa was given trusteeship over Namibia, then called South-West Africa, by the League of Nations at the end of World War I. It had been a German colony. After World War II the trust status was continued under the authority of the United Nations, and South Africa subsequently refused to relinquish control when so ordered by the United Nations. Hopes of implementing the U.N. independence plan were dashed in January, 1981, when South Africa, sensing sympathy from the new Reagan Administration in Washington, blocked the effort.

The agreement tentatively reached in Geneva appears part of a constructive effort by South Africa to establish normal relations with neighboring nations. President Pieter W. Botha has journeyed to Mozambique, Zaire and the Ivory Coast on recent missions of conciliation. His hope may be to blunt international sanctions aimed at ending the remnants of apartheid in South Africa itself. In that he has failed. There can be no substitute for substantive reforms within South Africa. But he will certainly have helped the global image of Pretoria if he is seriously terminating the costly and counterproductive campaign of his government to destabilize neighboring black nations.