Firms Leave S. Africa, but Hope Remains
Spring is well advanced. There has been enough rain to green the lawns of our northern suburbs. The beautiful blue of the jacarandas and the purple, red and orange of the bougainvilleas make a brilliant show. Here live the rich whites, who vote for the Progressive Federal Party and support black charities.
The Rosebank shopping complex, in the heart of all this, seems as busy as ever. The only visible sign of the bad times is the multiplication of the beggars. Even they do quite well. And then, yesterday, there were masses of pamphlets lying on the pavements. I picked one up. It bore a crude drawing of Uncle Sam, and the caption: “Yankee Go Home! IBM is bankrupt--GM is bankrupt--Politics is a good excuse for bankrupt companies--Yankee go home!”
It was neither original nor elegant, nor was it signed by any person or organization yet I fear, it represented the sort of xenophobia that is seizing many whites as international hostility to us grows. Its crudest expression is simply rage and hatred. At that level, to scream imprecations against the world confers a sort of cathartic benefit. Predictably, right-wing politicians have sensed that this is a popular posture to adopt. It was the Treaty of Versailles that created the fertile earth in which Nazism could grow. In one’s more melancholic moments one wonders whether the impact of sanctions might be to reverse the rather tentative process of reform in South Africa and hand power to the out and out racists of the loony right--who would probably be succeeded ultimately by Marxists.
Harald Pakendorf, a respected independent columnist, used his space the other day to write an open letter to Roger Smith, the chairman of General Motors Corp. Pakendorf suggests that in truth the withdrawal of General Motors from South Africa owes relatively little to politics and much to the massive losses incurred for several years past in our hopelessly overcrowded motor industry. He goes on to say something much more frightening. He suggests that GM, IBM and the rest may be the more willing to pull out of here because they know--as we do in our hearts--that black majority government is inevitable, and experience elsewhere in Africa teaches them that that is bad for business.
Last week, an internal U.S. Commerce Department document was leaked to our press. It described South Africa as “closer to becoming just another African state--a chronic debtor, import-starved, ridden with ethnic diversities, a repressive regime. . . .” Naturally, there has been a great fuss and, ironically, black African states generally are almost as seriously insulted as South Africans are. But it lent credence to Pakendorf’s suggestion.
GM has certainly lost a great deal of money here since 1981; IBM has not. Apart from having got caught in the foreign-exchange trap when the rand collapsed, the computer giant does well. But it’s leaving, too. Honeywell, Warner Communications, Baxter Travenol, Coca-Cola . . . the list is lengthening. And there have been clear signs of unease from some British companies. So far, however, the Germans and the Swiss are standing firm. The Japanese, of course, never did invest here directly, though their products are everywhere.
In the short term nothing will change much. Full-page advertisements in the press proclaim that IBM and GM products will still be available--and so will Coca-Cola. There are even chauvinistic patriots who say what a good thing it is that these businesses are coming into South African hands. There might be truth in that--if the economic fundamentals were right for us. The consciousness that reform is needed is widespread among whites and understanding of the full implication is growing, too. The government is increasingly committed to better social conditions and to the provision of equal education for all. But there are costs to be borne and our economy is stagnant for lack of foreign capital. As a businessman put it the other day: Political reform and economic progress are Siamese twins--each will die without the other.
It doesn’t take all that much foreign money to maintain the impetus of growth and new jobs. For decades after World War II, we financed about 90% of gross domestic fixed investment from local sources, 10% from abroad. And we grew by just over 5% per year--enough to take care of our population increase and leave a bit over for the improvement of our society. Now we have no foreign capital inflow, no growth, no improvement. Falling standards, rising unemployment, mounting conflict, growing political polarization--no chance that the government will fall to revolutionary forces in the short term but a real possibility of a white political backlash that will aggravate everything.
Yet hope is not dead. If we can find the courage, despite our isolation, to begin at the political end and truly eliminate discrimination, then perhaps the world will relent and send in the capital so that the Siamese twins can live on.
The struggle continues.
