S. Africa Must Be Pressured, Not Coaxed

A year ago the government of South Africa imposed draconian security laws, including media censorship of unprecedented scope, in an attempt to silence all who dare question apartheid. Consequently, there has been scant reporting of the sort that aroused public opinion in earlier years, but anti-apartheid momentum has not slowed. In fact, it is gaining, and now the time is right for a major, concerted effort to smash apartheid once and for all.

Tens of thousands of people have been detained (including thousands of children) and hundreds have been killed during South Africa’s “state of emergency,” or martial law. While every aspect of daily life has been affected, the black labor movement has suffered particularly intense state repression--including the shooting of strikers, police raids on union buildings and the detention of union leaders.

Last fall the U.S. Congress, responding to public outrage, overwhelmingly rejected the Reagan Administration’s policy of “constructive engagement,” which accommodated the South African government. Overriding President Reagan’s veto, Congress voted limited sanctions against South Africa. Black South Africans hailed the action as an important first step in isolating the white government and pressuring it to the bargaining table with leaders of the black community.

Much has happened since then, some good and some bad, that has sent mixed signals to Pretoria. On the positive side, the Reagan Administration’s own advisory committee on South Africa released its findings in January after more than a year’s study, calling “constructive engagement” a failure and urging sanctions. Around the same time, the State Department issued a report establishing “a major deterioration of human rights” in South Africa during the previous year.

Earlier this month the Rev. Leon Sullivan abandoned his code of conduct that some American firms in South Africa followed. Acknowledging that the “Sullivan Principles” had been ineffective, he urged the American firms to quit South Africa. “Every moral, economic and political force must be brought to bear to influence the South African government to move toward dismantling the apartheid system while there is still time,” he said.

On the negative side, the Administration repeatedly vetoed sanctions against South Africa in the U.N. Security Council, including sanctions identical to those approved by Congress, sending a clear signal to Pretoria that it still has a friend in the White House.

In March, Western banks rescheduled $13 billion of South Africa’s outstanding debt, giving Pretoria some economic elbow room. That plus the rise in the price of gold allowed the government to recently announce a 50% rise in the police budget and a 33% rise in military spending. Additionally, while scores of U.S. and European corporations have sold their South African assets, most have maintained critical technology and franchise ties.

In last month’s whites-only parliamentary elections, voters retained President Pieter W. Botha’s Nationalist Party and gave a significant boost to the far-right Conservative Party.

Taken together, this series of events means that Pretoria cannot be coaxed into abandoning its racist policies; it must be pressured.

South African journalist Allister Sparks has commented that the white-minority government is on a course “that will have the same inevitable ending” as the belligerent course pursued by Ian Smith in Rhodesia. “It will succeed for a while,” Sparks wrote, “but will produce the same cycle of violent repression, with increasing international isolation, that will slowly bleed it to debilitation and defeat after causing much human grief and bitterness.” Only a combination of international sanctions and a 15-year civil war brought Smith to the bargaining table with black leaders to negotiate majority rule for Zimbabwe.

Events of the past year also confirm that U.S. and European banks and corporations will continue to profit from and prop up apartheid unless forced to do otherwise by boycotts and sanctions.

All this brings us to the conclusion that it is time for Congress to take actions that mandate an end to all bank lending to South Africa and full and complete corporate divestiture. Partial sanctions have only partial results. (The willingness of some countries to break U.N. sanctions against Rhodesia, particularly U.S. imports of Rhodesian chrome and the oil multinationals’ continued supplying of the Smith government, was a significant factor in prolonging that country’s civil war.)

Comprehensive sanctions, including penalties on other trading partners seeking to profit from our embargo, would have a chance to work. If rigorously enforced, they could put significant pressure on Pretoria to negotiate an end to apartheid with recognized black leaders.

Sanctions are a nonviolent alternative to doing nothing as South Africa inches toward civil war. The American people need not sit around and wait for politicians to act. It is only through grass-roots actions, like the ongoing international boycott of Royal Dutch/Shell and divestiture campaigns, that Congress will be moved to take stronger action, and that corporations, motivated by lost profits, will be moved to stop investing in apartheid.

Sanctions alone cannot eradicate apartheid; that task is ultimately left to the people of South Africa themselves. But economic pressure and political isolation of the South African government can hasten the day when justice and freedom reign in that troubled land.