Sanctions Had a Worldwide Reach : Economics: Majority of nations participated. Basic goods were affected.

Among major economic powers and Third World nations, sanctions against South Africa took on global importance during the late 1980s and affected some of the most basic consumer purchases in the white-ruled country, experts say.

At the height of the movement, the vast majority of the world’s nations enforced at least some sanctions against Pretoria, led by Australia, Denmark, Britain, Nigeria, Sweden and the United States, said William Moses of the Investor Responsibility Research Center Inc., a nonprofit Washington, D.C., organization that has tracked the campaign.

“It affected people everywhere,” Moses said. “Everybody, everywhere was doing something, it seemed.”

Because of emerging reforms, many countries have eased or lifted their trade restrictions in recent years, but the force of the boycott still has a substantial effect on some citizens of South Africa, Moses said. White South Africans have been unable to travel to Angola, Kenya, Tanzania or most other countries in Africa. Many commercial products have been largely unavailable, including Kodak film, which could be purchased only on the gray market.

South African photographers who managed to obtain Kodak film occasionally shipped it to other countries, such as Switzerland, Moses said. But in at least some cases, he said, “the film would be returned with a note that said, ‘We don’t develop South African film.’ ”

Still, South Africa managed to engage in significant world trade, much of it through Asia or through European countries such as France and Germany, where sanctions were relatively weak.

Taiwan and Japan have been among South Africa’s most active trading partners. So has Hong Kong.

“At the height of anti-South African government feelings worldwide, the (United Kingdom) took the initiative to impose sanctions against South Africa, and Hong Kong followed,” recalled Sidney Fung, assistant director of the Hong Kong General Chamber of Commerce’s international department.

But those measures, never strong, have eased as reforms have begun in South Africa. In 1989, Hong Kong sent a trade delegation to South Africa, Fung said. Since then, South Africa has exported substantial amounts of iron and steel, non-metallic mineral goods and paper to Hong Kong.

“Steel bars from Japan are still very expensive,” Fung said. “The South African steel bars are very price-competitive.”

Like other members of the European Community, Germany (then West Germany) imposed sanctions in the mid-1980s that included a ban on new investment and an import ban on iron and steel products and krugerrands, South African gold coins. However, for Germany, the measures were of relatively minor importance and had little impact on the overall trade relationship between the two countries.

Although Germany’s imports of South African fruit and krugerrands fell in volume before 1990--the last full year of the sanctions--other trade was largely unaffected. In fact, German exports to South Africa reached a decade-high peak in 1989 with a value of $3.6 billion. Total German-South African trade was also nearly 30% higher that year than in the years immediately preceding or following the sanctions.

Times researchers Petra Falkenberg and Christian Retzlaff in Berlin and Christine Courtney in Hong Kong contributed to this story.