Black Jobs Equal Black Progress : Gains Require a South Africa Free of Crippling Sanctions

The House of Representatives recently passed a radical comprehensive sanctions bill. Should the bill become law, it would virtually end all economic relations between South Africa and the United States.

In passing the bill the House failed to consider the voice of the majority of black South Africans on sanctions.

The fact is that the majority of black people of South Africa oppose economic action that might lead to employment losses for them. This is the central element in the sanctions debate, and Americans should not be misled by disinformation on this crucial fact.

The Washington-based Investor Responsibility Research Center recently analyzed six opinion surveys on South African urban-black attitudes toward sanctions and divestiture. The center’s conclusion: “When respondents were asked to measure their support for the political goals of sanctions against the possible costs of unemployment, no more than 26% in any poll expressed support for sanctions.”

In its report the research center also analyzed the survey of a South African organization, the Community Agency for Social Enquiry, which found in its poll that more than 60% of blacks opposed sanctions if such measures would result in job losses.

During 1986-87 Lawrence Schlemmer of the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg undertook 14 studies on black attitudes toward sanctions. In only two studies did blacks favor sanctions. The support dropped rapidly if respondents were informed that sanctions might leadto a loss in employment opportunities.

A recent survey of black coal miners by the Deutsche Afrika Stiftung, a West German organization, found the views of the miners unequivocal: 70% rejected sanctions.

John Kane-Berman of the South African Institute of Race Relations recently said in London that black support for sanctions had shrunk from one in four to one in seven during the past two years.

Kane-Berman warned that the unemployment rate in South Africa is already 20% and is rising rapidly. He said that sanctions could add 2 million people to the jobless figure by the year 2000, resulting in a situation in which 10 million people officially would be without work. He said that most of the unemployed would be black.

Last month Chief Mangosuthu Gatsha Buthelezi, the leader of 7 million Zulus (quoted in the South African newspaper Die Burger), warned in a speech to West German politicians that sanctions have already resulted in a loss of employment for 210,000 blacks. He said that, on the average, every black worker supports up to 12 family members--meaning that up to 2.5 million black South Africans have already been devastated by sanctions.

All recent surveys in which questions were posed in simple descriptive language have concluded that the majority of black South Africans are not willing to endorse comprehensive punitive economic sanctions.

The fact is that if black South Africans really wanted sanctions and divestiture, they could bring about both by themselves. Three out of every four workers are black, and they are strategically placed in the economic system. By withholding their unionized labor in the mining sector, harbor or railway infrastructure or in the export-oriented industries, they could severely disrupt foreign trade. They vote with their feet by arriving daily for work.

Black trade unions were legalized in 1979. Since then there has never been a strike called for the purpose of demanding divestiture. But there have been strikes by workers fearing that they will lose out because of foreign companies divesting themselves of their interests in South Africa.

The central element in the evolution of black political progress is black economic advancement. Rising aspirations and economic achievements of black South Africans actively involved in the country’s free-enterprise system should be encouraged. Black South Africans deserve economic viability to produce economic and political leaders for the future.

Economic growth has proved to be the most powerful catalyst for change in South Africa. Growth has forced the abandonment of job-reservation laws based on ethnicity, resulted in the abolition of the pass laws, led to the scrapping or amending of 35 laws affecting the free movement of people, made the labor movement a significant force, chipped away at the Group Areas Act and fueled the urgency of finding a real political voice for the millions of blacks in the cities.

In their belief that South Africa and its whites are expendable, the sanctioneers forget that 85% of the people of the country are black. They forget that when you starve a fat man he gets thin. But when you starve a thin man, he dies.