South Africa Sanctions: Watching Europe Waffle

When Sir Geoffrey Howe, the British foreign secretary, left for his mission of South African reconciliation in behalf of the European Community last week, the opposition was already in full cry. Most of the unkind comments had to do with time--wasting it, stalling for it, saving it, playing for it.

If indeed any symbol was needed of the futility of Sir Geoffrey’s trip, it was that he never went to South Africa. At his first stop, in Zambia, his host, President Kenneth D. Kaunda, told the Financial Times, before their meeting even took place, that the foreign minister’s mission was “completely unnecessary.” The Zambian president, one of Africa’s more accessible leaders, said he would continue to fight for tough economic sanctions against South Africa’s apartheid government despite the resolve of Sir Geoffrey’s boss, Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, to block them. “If the British prime minister sticks it out on this one, we have got other ways of tackling the matter,” Kaunda said. Sir Geoffrey bravely characterized the meeting as “friendly, candid and constructive” at about the same time Kaunda was equating South Africa with Nazi Germany.

To top it off, that same day Nigeria and Gambia became the first of African Commonwealth nations to pull out of the Commonwealth Games starting July 24 in Edinburgh. The reasons given were Thatcher’s adamant stand against meaningful sanctions and the citizenship status given by Britain to two South African athletes, the runner Zola Budd and the swimmer Annette Cowley. In an interview, Thatcher had gone so far as to regret that South Africa had withdrawn from the Commonwealth in 1961, because that removed the republic from persuasion.

Sir Geoffrey, and by extension the European Community, had been caught in conflicting tides of circumstance. While the community has never been known for directness or effectiveness in political affairs, some of the hostility greeting the British foreign minister was beyond the community’s control.

The first adverse circumstance was Britain’s accession to the rotating presidency of the community’s Council of Ministers on July 1, for a six-month term. This put Britain, perceived as the least responsive of the community of 12 to the demands of black Africa, in the position of leading the community’s South African initiative. Sir Geoffrey, who is known to be more favorable toward sanctions than Thatcher, was left to stand up for his government’s policy.

The European Community’s policy toward South Africa, typically waffling, had its latest formulation last month in the heads of government meeting at The Hague. There, with Britain’s the loudest voice, the European Community agreed to demand that South Africa release Nelson Mandela and re-establish the African National Congress and other black groups to legality. The community also asked for black-white dialogue. It agreed to postpone for three months any decision on tough economic sanctions such as an embargo on South African imports and a ban on further investment in the republic.

In his Zambia visit, after leading South Africans--black and white--refused to see him, Sir Geoffrey elaborated the European Community policy, stressing the desirability of prompt and peaceful negotiations. He said the Pretoria government should be given credit for “some steps toward the removal of apartheid,” but added that changes must be faster and more far-reaching. “Apartheid must give way to a non-racial, fully representative society,” he asserted.

Thatcher and Sir Geoffrey are also in the midst of preparations for next month’s meeting of the major commonwealth nations, where demands for action against South Africa will be strident. Australia, among others, has already indicated that it will demand measures that the Thatcher government has repeatedly rejected.

There are many who see the current round of meetings, negotiations and embarrassing rejections as yet another example of the politics of gesture. The soft summer period between the business of spring and the new resolve of autumn gives leaders a chance to posture and opponents a chance to try to occupy the higher moral ground. What will almost certainly happen at the commonwealth meeting--and in the European Community when the three-month grace period has expired--is the next stage of sanctions: bans on South African imports and investments in that country, a halt of South African Airways flights and a tightening of restrictions already put into effect by many Western countries in the last year.

In fact there was even some notice in Britain last week of the inevitable. The Department of Trade and Industry acknowledged that it was halting sales of platinum and chrome from the strategic stockpiles maintained by the government. Platinum and related metals are used extensively as catalysts in oil refining and chrome is the key ingredient of many steel alloys. South Africa is by far the leading producer of both commodities.