House Expected to Approve Anti-Apartheid Bill

Anti-apartheid legislation that would ban some investment and trade with South Africa is considered certain to pass the House of Representatives today, but a companion bill is expected to have a rougher journey in the Senate.

The legislation represents a sharp break with President Reagan’s policy of “constructive engagement,” or friendly persuasion, to induce South Africa’s white minority government to abandon its apartheid system of racial segregation.

The move in Congress to step up pressure on Pretoria comes amid escalating violence in South Africa and widening anti-apartheid demonstrations across the United States.

Four Sanctions

The House will vote on four widely varying proposals, but the one that appears headed for easy approval would impose four economic sanctions.

Sponsored by Rep. William H. Gray III (D-Pa.) and enjoying extensive bipartisan support, the measure would immediately ban new bank loans and sales of computers to the South African government. It also would forbid new investment by U.S. firms doing business in South Africa and would bar U.S. purchases of South African Krugerrand gold coins--unless Pretoria makes more progress toward ending racial segregation.

The latter two sanctions could be waived for an initial period of one year and for successive periods of six months if the President and Congress agree that the South African government has taken at least one of eight steps.

Those steps include freeing all political prisoners, giving full South African citizenship to the more than 8 million blacks now considered citizens of tribal “homelands” and eliminating all restrictions on where South African residents can live because of their race or ethnic origin.

‘Carrot and Stick’

“It’s kind of a carrot-and-stick approach,” said an aide to Rep. Stephen J. Solarz (D-N.Y.), a prime mover of the bill.

Gray charged that “four years of the Reagan Administration’s policy of ‘constructive engagement’ have left the apartheid system further entrenched. The separate and unequal existence of South Africa’s . . . black persons has become only more repressive.”

A proposal by California Rep. Ronald V. Dellums (D-Berkeley) calls for much stronger sanctions, including divestiture. It would require the withdrawal of all U.S. assets from South Africa, a total of $14.6 billion in 1984; prohibit U.S. exports to South Africa and U.S. landing rights for South African planes, and bar the importation of Krugerrands.

In hearings on his bill, Dellums disputed claims that divestiture would only cause many blacks to lose their jobs, saying that “a U.S. pullout would affect less than 1% of the labor force.”

Three-Year Study

At the other end of the spectrum, Rep. Mark D. Siljander (R-Mich.) is sponsoring a proposal to impose no sanctions but establish a commission to make recommendations concerning sanctions after three years.

Siljander asserted that Gray’s bill would “make economic conditions for blacks worse and stimulate violent revolution.”

The fourth proposal, offered by Rep. Steve Gunderson (R-Wis.), purports to take the middle ground between immediate sanctions and more study. It would impose sanctions after two years if South Africa has not made “significant progress” in dismantling apartheid.

Both the Gunderson and Siljander bills also would provide economic aid to South African blacks and would require U.S. firms doing business in South Africa to implement fair labor practices known as the “Sullivan principles.”

The Senate Foreign Relations Committee will begin voting on a similar range of options June 4.

However, the Senate’s version of the Gray bill, sponsored by Senators Lowell P. Weicker Jr. (R-Conn.) and Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.), will face stiff competition from a “middle-ground” bill sponsored by committee Chairman Richard G. Lugar (R-Ind.), Majority Leader Bob Dole (R-Kan.) and Sen. Charles McC. Mathias Jr. (R-Md.), chairman of the committee’s subcommittee on international economic policy.