COLUMN ONE : Door Open for Business in S. Africa : As the shadow of sanctions lifts, the nation struggles to revive its global trade. Ostrich farmers are among the first to benefit, their big birds bringing big profits in foreign markets.

Just over a mountain range from the sea, on a dusty plain beneath rouge-tinted hills, a few hundred white South Africans have long nurtured the world’s largest ostrich farms--and chafed under years of sanctions that barred them from the American market.

But now, their ostrich-skin cowboy boots, with price tags of $1,000 and up, are available across the United States. So are billfolds, golf bags and pocketbooks made from the exotic, pockmarked skin of South Africa’s gawky, contrary bird.

Trade barriers between the United States and South Africa not only are falling; they are days from disappearing altogether. And ostrich farmers already are rolling in plumage, charting a 30% leap in revenue over the past two years.

“Under the sanctions, we couldn’t do business with America. They had our name on their blacklist,” said Chris Coetzee, 62, a tanned farmer leaning back in an ostrich-leather chair next to an ostrich-leather briefcase. “But now the whole world has opened to us.”

International economic sanctions against South Africa, which by the mid-1980s were among the strictest ever imposed in peacetime, began to lose their luster in 1990 after President Frederik W. de Klerk legalized the African National Congress and other black political opponents.

A few firms from Europe, Japan and even the United States have slowly begun to return. But others have honored the ANC’s request to wait, hoping to keep the political pressure on De Klerk.

“The current sanctions still stand as far as we’re concerned,” said Tito Mboweni, deputy head of the ANC’s economic planning department.

But Mboweni added that the ANC is poised to call on Americans and other foreigners to remove all remaining sanctions later this month, if black and white negotiators, as is expected, formally approve a 1994 election date and create a transitional executive council to guide the nation through the election campaign.

Growing numbers of American companies already are beginning to explore business opportunities. A few, such as Microsoft Corp., the software giant, and Digital Equipment Corp., the world’s third-largest computer company, recently have opened branches here. Brands such as Compaq computers and M & M candies are legally available for the first time, albeit at premium prices.

During 1992, South Africa imported $2.4 billion in American goods, a 14% increase, and the number of American firms doing business here rose for the first time in almost a decade, from 106 to 119.

Then-President George Bush removed most federal sanctions against Pretoria two years ago, opening the way for South African produce to again enter American ports. Besides ostrich leather, Americans can buy South African canned vegetables, wine and other goods. Business leaders are crisscrossing the ocean to attend trade shows in both countries.

The only remaining congressional economic sanctions effectively prohibit South Africa from obtaining development loans from the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. And some universities and pension funds still prohibit investments in firms with business in South Africa.

But the most damaging sanctions are those on the books of more than 70 American states, cities and counties. Most of those statutes prohibit government contracts with firms operating here.

ANC economists, however, are quietly making plans to lobby cities, such as Los Angeles, and states, such as California, to repeal those sanctions. When the date for the nation’s first multiracial elections is set, “It will be incumbent on us to take a proactive role--to begin the process of not only repealing sanctions but also encouraging investment,” the ANC’s Mboweni said.

However, the ANC and other black opposition forces, who pressured 168 American firms to leave or sell their operations in South Africa in the late 1980s, already are finding that the task of rekindling investor interest is difficult.

Derek Keys, a former top industrialist and now the government’s finance minister, blames “a kind of inertia. There’s no great force behind the removal of sanctions in the United States. Nothing comparable to what got them on the statute books in the first place.”

The government and the ANC agree that lifting sanctions once and for all will not trigger a tidal wave of investment. Many foreign firms are frightened by the level of violence in the country, which is further complicated by political uncertainty.

“The ANC no longer controls the sanctions campaign,” said Thami Mazwai, editor of Enterprise, a magazine for black entrepreneurs. “Investment is controlled by the market. And what’s keeping investment away is violence.

“Everyone worries that South Africa will become another Mozambique or Bosnia,” Mazwai added. “And not even Nelson Mandela can bring those investors back into the country now.”

Regional Cook, a Los Angeles businessman and chairman of the New South African Trade Organization, has been advising a dozen American firms that are contemplating a plunge into the South African market.

“Nobody argues with the market potential here,” he said, pointing to the vast industrial base and a population of 39 million with one of the highest per-capita incomes in sub-Saharan Africa.

But getting wary Americans to invest is another matter. “You have to get them in the ‘comfort zone,’ ” he said. And, so far at least, the companies aren’t comfortable.

Violence is one reason. South Africa has one of the highest murder rates of any country in the industrialized world. And, as recent rioting after the slaying of ANC leader Chris Hani shows, civil strife remains part of the landscape.

Another concern for American business is the mixed signals from Mandela’s ANC, which has publicly demanded that sanctions remain in place--while quietly encouraging foreign firms to begin exploring the possibility of future investments.

The ANC wants to keep international economic pressure on the government, which still controls the levers of power. But ANC officials know that sanctions are damaging the country they hope to soon inherit.

Despite a recent surge in the price of gold, South Africa is in a severe slump, mired in three straight years of recession. The black jobless rate in some areas is as high as 45%. Millions are homeless. And growing numbers of white business executives, engineers, doctors and other skilled professionals are pessimistic about the future and want to leave the country.

Those trends can only mean trouble for the next government of South Africa, whether it is led by blacks or whites.

The American cities and states that have retained sanctions are waiting for a signal from the ANC that consensus has been reached with De Klerk’s government and the myriad other parties, both black and white.

A political consensus, and ANC approval, also is needed before South Africa can qualify for World Bank and IMF loans, desperately needed to meet the country’s development needs.

American and European governments say they stand ready to pump development money into South Africa when the tentative April 27, 1994, election date is formally adopted.

“The United States will help, and we expect the other industrial democracies to help as well,” Secretary of State Warren Christopher said recently. He added that a successful transition to multiracial rule in South Africa is important to Africa, as well as the United States and the rest of the world.

But investment decisions are made by business people, not governments. And many businesses also are worried about what a government controlled by the ANC would do.

Although the ANC says it supports a market economy, it retains a strong alliance with the South African Communist Party. The ANC also will be under pressure to use its new political power to redistribute the wealth that has been held almost exclusively by a white minority for 350 years.

Sanctions have been the most divisive issue in South Africa for more than a decade. Have they worked? The ANC says they did, pointing to De Klerk’s own admission that he launched his apartheid reform program to save the country from unremitting violence, economic isolation and financial ruin.

But government officials disagree. They contend that sanctions forced white business to become more economically self-sufficient while at the same time hurting blacks--the very people they were designed to help.

There is an element of truth in both assertions.

The government was so worried about sanctions in the 1980s that it threatened any South African calling for sanctions with a $4,000 fine and 10 years in jail. And international isolation was a key factor in De Klerk’s decision to change the nation’s course and in whites’ willingness to support him.

While sanctions have impoverished some blacks, they also have bitten deeply into white-run businesses, especially those that exported goods to the United States, Europe and the Far East.

South African exporters have begun to recover. Wine exports have picked up. And few industries have benefited more than the ostrich farmers of Oudtshoorn, in Cape province, who control more than 95% of the world’s market for the bird’s skins, feathers and meat.

Until 1991, American federal sanctions had prohibited the import of anything grown in South Africa. But farmers managed to sidestep the rules by processing birds at their own tannery in neighboring Botswana, an independent, black-ruled nation. Some skins were then exported to the United States with a “made in Botswana” label.

Now a plant near Oudtshoorn does the tanning. And last year, more than 17% of the annual ostrich production was U.S.-bound. On his last trip to the United States, farmer Chris Coetzee was warmly welcomed by cowboy boot makers in cities across Texas. “The demand in the United States is much greater than we can fill,” Coetzee said.

The ostrich industry’s future has not been this bright since the 1920s, when the large white feathers of nature’s biggest bird were much in demand in the cabaret clubs of Paris. Ostrich farmers still sell the large plumes, mostly for fashion shows, but the growing market is in body feathers for dusters, skins and meat.

The United States still bars ostrich meat from South Africa because of the threat of disease. The meat, which looks and tastes like beef but is low in cholesterol and has the local heart association’s seal of approval, sells well here and in Europe.

Many countries have tried to raise ostriches, especially after sanctions cut deeply into South African exports, but few have been successful. Oudtshoorn, a small, tidy farming town, has remained the world capital of ostriches. Its curio stores sell an array of ostrich products, including painted egg shells and shell earrings, to a modest number of tourists.

About 350 farmers raise ostriches in this region on ranches averaging 2,000 acres each. Most have flocks of 2,000 to 5,000 birds with 100 or more breeding pairs. Although each farm employs about two dozen black or mixed-race laborers, the farmers, like most big landowners in South Africa, are white. Coetzee’s son is the fourth generation of ostrich farmers in his family.

The farmers, who slaughtered 150,000 ostriches last year and earned more than $50 million, have managed to control the world market--and keep demand high--through their own private association, which varies prices and exports depending on the destination.

About 80% of South Africa’s ostrich production is exported, and the world market is growing steadily. But farmers are not ready to meet the demand because they fear that flooding the market will send prices crashing.

“We try to keep a steady demand for our skins in all parts of the world,” Coetzee said. “The United States is willing to pay the highest prices. But if all of us exported to there, then there’d be nothing for other parts of the world.”