"Tar Baby" was the name given by the United States State Department to Richard Nixon's policy during the late 1960s and 1970s of strengthening contacts with the white-minority governments in southern Africa — Portugal (in relation to Angola and Mozambique), Rhodesia and apartheid-era South Africa. The allusion was to the Uncle Remus story in which Brer Fox tries to capture Brer Rabbit by making a tar baby. Brer Rabbit strikes the tar "baby" with his hands, feet, and head and eventually becomes completely adhered to it. The policy option, described as a partial relaxation of economic action against Rhodesia, South Africa and Portugal, and derived from NSSM: 39, was based on the presumption that apartheid and colonial rule were an unpleasant but undeniable reality and that Washington should