Angry S. Africa Whites Say ‘Go Home Yanks!’ : Economic Sanctions, Company Pullouts Spark Hostility, Resistance to Foreign Pressures

As the new U.S. economic sanctions begin to bite and more Americans companies pull out, South Africa is being swept by a wave of angry, anti-American resentment--and an even stiffer determination by whites to resist foreign pressures for change.

“Go Home Yanks!” posters put up on Pretoria street corners declared a few days ago. “Hypocrisy is cheaper by the dollar!” say handbills distributed at shopping centers here and around Johannesburg.

And state-run Radio South Africa, in a commentary reflecting government thinking, said last week, “South Africans can no longer look upon the United States as a friendly country.”

Nowhere is this anger stronger and the resentment deeper than in the government of President Pieter W. Botha and his ruling National Party.

‘Absurd, Sanctimonious’

“The United States has already declared economic war against us for the most absurd and sanctimonious reasons,” Botha said in a bitter speech last week. “In doing so, they have yet again taken up the sword against us on behalf of the Soviet Union and its goals in this region.”

The United States “should be under no illusions,” he continued, referring to the American sanctions legislation, “that we will tolerate such blatant hostility and objectionable interference in our domestic affairs.”

Indeed, senior government officials and party leaders have warned in private conversations and public statements that among their white constituents, the prevalent feeling is to scrap the reforms of some racial policies, “tell the world to drop dead and just tough it out,” as one well-placed official here put it.

“Even among the strongest supporters of reforms, there is a strong conviction that if we proceed now, that we would be casting pearls before swine,” a Nationalist member of Parliament from the party’s liberal wing said after a recent caucus meeting.

“People are adamant that not only must we not yield to violence by the black radicals, but also that we must not give in to any foreign pressure. . . . The immediate effect of sanctions is to slow the pace of reform, just as we warned it would be.”

Kent Durr, the deputy minister of finance, trade and industry, told a conference in West Germany last month that the “white backlash against sanctions” is turning into “a strong groundswell against the whole reform initiative.”

“We have reached a stage where even our moderates, while no less committed to reform, are turning away from the voices they once listened to with respect,” Durr said. He rebuked Western politicians for putting too much pressure on South Africa and thus adding to the white resistance even to Botha’s limited, step-by-step reforms.

“Into the Laager, and to Hell With the Yanks!” the top-selling Afrikaans-language newspaper, Rapport, said last week in a banner headline, refering to the defensive circling of wagons by South Africa’s Afrikaner settlers that today symbolizes the nation’s readiness to fight any threats it sees to white “self-determination.”

The paper’s account, in addition to summarizing the country’s mood, also suggested that the Nationalists were profiting from, and perhaps encouraging, the anti-American and xenophobic sentiments for their own political gain.

“South Africa is on the road to an election with strong echoes from 1977 when (President) Jimmy Carter was the big bogey,” Rapport commented, recalling Prime Minister John Vorster’s election triumph a decade ago when resistance to American pressure was a major theme of the Nationalists.

Botha originally wanted to call a parliamentary election in November, according to National Party sources. They said he was dissuaded by other party leaders who said they needed more time to prepare if they were not to suffer major losses to the far-right Conservative and Herstigte Nasionale parties.

“In this country, there is no greater rallying cry than nationalism, among the English as well as the Afrikaners,” Colin Eglin, leader of the opposition Progressive Federal Party, said, speaking of the white electorate. He continued:

“P. W. Botha would like nothing better than to run against the uitlander , the foreigner, and sanctions are a ready-made issue for him, an issue that will let him duck the real questions facing the country.”

Despite the withdrawal of one foreign company after another and almost daily “sanctions shocks,” the government reportedly feels that recent public opinion surveys show it has won widespread support for its political strategy and that the foreign pressure is actually strengthening its position.

Afrikaners, the descendants of Dutch, French and German settlers who have controlled the government since 1948, have long resisted any foreign pressure. They have repeatedly demonstrated their willingness to make whatever sacrifices are required to retain control of their own destiny.

Most whites, in fact, appear to see South Africa as an embattled and misunderstood nation whose survival is threatened. So far, the sanctions seem only to have convinced them that these fears are well founded.

“Americans should know that South Africans are proud, independent, quite capable of ordering their own affairs without U.S. interference,” the pro-government Johannesburg newspaper The Citizen said in an editorial last week, “and (they) will close ranks in face of sanctions and other attempts to crush them. As for (the Reagan Administration policy of) constructive engagement, it can drown in the Potomac River as far as we are concerned.

“The anti-Yank feeling here is growing, and ‘Go home, Yanks’ will become a more persistent cry unless the Yanks leave us alone to get on with reform in our own way, which is the only way that matters.”

The United States is the target of much of the current white anger, according to political analysts here, because whites view American anti-apartheid activists as having taken the lead in the international sanctions campaign. In addition, the U.S. measures, enacted by Congress in October over President Reagan’s veto, went much further than those adopted by South Africa’s other major economic partners.

“We also feel betrayed,” a senior Afrikaans journalist with close government ties commented, asking not to be quoted by name. “It was not just the Reagan Administration’s policy of constructive engagement, but the encouragement that we got from Americans across the political spectrum that, if we moved to end apartheid, we would be supported and helped in our reform efforts. . . .

“We have moved, particularly in the past three years, and our reforms go further than anything I imagined would be possible in so short a time. Yet, now we are told we have done too little, too late, that we must go further, faster; that only a black government, in fact, will satisfy the American public, as if this were their country.

“Well, sharing political power, not giving it up, is what we want, and if anyone tries to pry it from us we will hold on even more tightly. Resistance is replacing reform as the byword even among moderates.”

So strong are feelings against further reform now, according to Piet Muller, assistant editor of the Afrikaans newspaper Beeld, that “the whole reform process is now at risk.”

Any moves by South Africa will be “regarded as proof that it is acting under pressure,” Muller said, and “this accusation, in turn, lends greater credit to the view that the entire issue can be resolved only by applying even more pressure and more sanctions.”

Retreat Began Earlier

But many whites, English as well as Afrikaans-speaking, had months ago begun their retreat to the laager.

Rejecting proposals from a special Commonwealth commission that could have led to negotiations with the outlawed African National Congress, Botha set the country on a course six months ago that virtually ordained the imposition of international sanctions on South Africa. He said the sanctions are a cost that the country must bear, if necessary, to “retain control of our own destiny . . . and uphold our national dignity.”

At home, Botha has cracked down hard on the continuing civil unrest and other challenges to his government. He declared a national state of emergency that gives the police and the army virtual martial law powers and enables authorities to detain anyone without charge and to hold them indefinitely.

Further reforms, such as liberalization of laws that segregate the country’s residential neighborhoods, schools and medical facilities by race, appear to have been shelved.

South Africa’s tougher line is evident, as well, in its foreign relations over the last six months.

After coordinated air and ground attacks on alleged African National Congress guerrilla bases in Botswana, Zambia and Zimbabwe in mid-May, South Africa has warned its neighbors repeatedly that it will unhesitatingly use its political, economic and military power against them to protect its interests.

Accusing Mozambique of allowing African National Congress guerrillas to cross its borders into South Africa, Pretoria said that all 70,000 Mozambicans, mostly miners or farm hands, working in South Africa would have to return home, depriving their beleaguered government of one its most importance sources of foreign earnings.

Pretoria has also served notice that it will react strongly to foreign criticism.

Ignoring protests from the United States and Western Europe, it has resumed resettlement of blacks living in or near areas zoned for whites, barred foreign funding of the United Democratic Front, an alliance of South African anti- apartheid groups, and refused to allow many of its domestic critics to travel abroad.

It has also expelled four foreign journalists and sharply curtailed visas granted to foreign clergymen, academics, labor union leaders and even government officials whose visits it believes will add to criticism abroad.

This “South Africa first” policy, as government officials describe it, may be perceived as “unrestrained bellicosity,” in the words of a European ambassador, and thus bring further sanctions internationally, but Pretoria seems unperturbed.