U.S. Curbs on S. African Products Reported Only Partially Enforced

Nearly three years after they were imposed by Congress, punitive trade sanctions against South Africa have been only partially enforced because the State Department failed to provide the U.S. Customs Service with a list of South African products barred from entering the country, the General Accounting Office said in a report released Saturday.

Instead, the congressional watchdog agency said, “The State Department issued (to Customs) a list of South African government agencies and state-owned corporations” whose products are banned under the Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act of 1986.

Because the State Department list “did not identify the products produced, marketed or exported” by these entities, known as parastatals, “Customs does not know which South African products could have come from parastatals . . . and so cannot devote special enforcement attention to them,” the GAO said.

According to news reports, the trade sanctions have cut only a third of South Africa’s exports to the United States.

Congress imposed the sanctions in 1986, over President Ronald Reagan’s veto, to try to force dismantling of apartheid.