Administration to Double Foreign Aid to South Africa : Policy: Money will come after all-race elections. Other African nations will see their allotments cut.

The Clinton Administration plans to double foreign aid to South Africa, from $80 million to $160 million a year, after elections next month that will be open to all races for the first time, the Agency for International Development said Friday.

AID officials said that $73 million of the increase will be offset by across-the-board cuts in development assistance for the rest of the countries in Africa south of the Sahara.

The detailed AID spending plan, sent to Congress weeks after the rest of the government’s budget was made public, indicates the magnitude of the Administration’s program to help the country’s first majority-rule government overcome the economic troubles that threaten to destroy democracy before it can take root.

Administration officials said earlier that Washington will attempt to increase the impact of its aid program by urging businesses to reinvest funds that they pulled out of South Africa under pressure of U.S. government-imposed anti-apartheid sanctions in the 1980s.

Direct U.S. investment in South Africa declined from about $2.7 billion in 1980 to about $700 million a decade later.

“If the South African private sector is able to respond with the capacity that we think is there, and if, indeed, the interest that has already been manifested on the part of the American private sector and the private sectors in other countries around the world (produces investments), I think that there will be rather considerable economic activity,” said George Moose, assistant secretary of state for Africa.

But he added that the South African economy “has been distorted by policies of apartheid over the last 40 years, and it’s going to require significant restructuring.”

The $80-million aid appropriation for South Africa for the current fiscal year that runs through Sept. 30 is the largest for any African country. But unlike other countries, the money is funneled through various non-governmental organizations to avoid direct subsidies to the white-minority government, which is to be displaced by a majority regime after the April 26-28 balloting.

AID officials said the U.S. government is committed to maintaining the $160-million assistance level for at least two years, starting with the fiscal year that begins Oct. 1.

They said the South Africa program pushed the development assistance budget for all of Africa to $791 million for the next fiscal year, up from $784 million in the current year. But aid to all other African countries falls from $704 million this year to $631 million next year, a decline of about 10%.

A substantial aid program for South Africa could help repair President Clinton’s relations with the black community, a substantial part of his winning electoral coalition in 1992. But the cut in aid to the rest of the continent may dilute the impact.

Randall Robinson, executive director of TransAfrica, an African American foreign policy think tank, said the Administration program for South Africa is much too small to overcome the legacy of years of racial oppression.