South Africa Eyeball to Eyeball

By William E. Smith

By the time President Reagan finally vetoed a congressional bill that would have imposed strong new economic sanctions against South Africa, the event seemed almost as anticlimactic as the Administration had probably hoped it would be. Last Friday at 8 p.m., scarcely four hours before the bill would have become law without the President's signature, the White House announced that, as expected, Reagan had vetoed it. Portions of the measure, said the President, would "seriously impede the prospects for a peaceful end to apartheid and the establishment of a free and open society for all in South Africa." The U.S., he added, "must stay and build, not cut and run."

Congressional reaction was immediate -- and strong. While some Republicans supported the President's action, most Democrats were outraged. Even before the White House announcement, Representative Mickey Leland of Texas, chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus, told a rally that Reagan had been waiting "like a thief in the night to veto legislation that clearly has the support of the American people." California Congressman Norman Mineta maintained that neither Congress nor the public would tolerate "this indecent act." Senator Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts declared, "It is sad that the President persists in locking himself into a failed and lonely policy that has put America on the side of racism in South Africa." In effect acknowledging the criticism, Senate Majority Leader Robert Dole remarked, "It might have been a bit easier politically if the President had just swallowed hard and signed it, but he couldn't do that in good conscience."

This week, more than three months after the House of Representatives first passed a sanctions bill by a voice vote and later overwhelmingly approved a revised version by a vote of 308 to 77, the final disposition of the measure may be settled at last. Attention will focus on the Senate, which passed the bill in August by a vote of 84 to 14. To reach the 34 votes necessary to prevent the Senate from overriding Reagan's veto, the White House needed to persuade 20 Senators to change their minds and support the President. At week's end congressional observers thought the President had the support of no more than 28 Senators total, half a dozen short of the number needed to keep the bill from becoming law.

Last year the President adroitly headed off a similar defeat by announcing an Executive Order that imposed some of the sanctions included in a bill then pending in Congress. Among them: a restriction on loans by Americans to South African government agencies and a ban on the export of most nuclear technology and materials. But the current legislation, passed during an election year and at a time when American outrage against South Africa is on the rise, goes much farther. It bans all new American investment in and bank loans to South Africa, as well as air traffic between the two countries. It also prohibits the import of South African uranium, coal, steel, textiles, military vehicles and agricultural products.

Administration officials spent much of last week trying to put together a strategy for averting a veto override in the Senate. They considered but rejected another pre-emptive Executive Order, largely because the President remains as philosophically opposed as ever to sanctions against South Africa. The White House was also ready to name Edward J. Perkins, a career diplomat now serving in Liberia, as the first black U.S. Ambassador to South Africa. Reagan and his advisers decided not to make the announcement last week, on the ground that it might appear to be a blatant political maneuver and, more to the point, probably would not change any Senate votes anyway.

For a while the Administration talked about a special $500 million aid package for black African countries whose economies have been damaged or jeopardized by the political unrest in South Africa. That idea was dropped when it ran into congressional opposition. Finally the Administration debated the previously discussed plan of sending Secretary of State George Shultz to Africa, where he would have the task of trying to explain Administration policy to both black and white African rulers.

No matter what happens on the sanctions vote this week, two of the steps discussed last week are expected to be carried out. Perkins will be named as the new Ambassador to Pretoria, and Secretary Shultz, a reluctant traveler at best, will be dispatched to several African countries later in October.

During a Friday afternoon meeting in White House Chief of Staff Donald Regan's office, the Administration decided to make one final effort to head off defeat. After the veto, the President offered to talk further with congressional leaders and to coordinate action against South Africa more closely with the European Community. Though the White House hoped to avoid specific commitments, it implied that it was willing to go as far as the Europeans on sanctions. At a meeting last month in Brussels, the Community put an embargo on South African iron and steel, among other things, but stopped short of the more drastic step of banning the import of South African coal.

The Administration's original plan for dealing with the veto threat began to unravel two weeks ago when Chief of Staff Regan met with Senator Richard Lugar, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. The Indiana Republican had spent much of the past two months helping draft a bill that he thought Reagan could live with. Lugar, who had originally favored a milder set of sanctions, hoped that Reagan might be persuaded to change his mind and lead the Western alliance in a united action against apartheid.

Three days later stories began to circulate in Washington that Lugar, who generally supports the President, was getting out of line. Said one Administration aide: "We've sent him signals that if he has to buck the White House, he should do it in a quieter manner." Lugar, growing angrier, told the press that a veto would jeopardize U.S. relations with black Africa. "We really need to be on the right side of history on this case," he said. "We are going to have to deal with African countries for many years to come."

Reagan's veto was supported by some American allies but criticized by others. Like West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl, British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher was sympathetic to the President's action because she too disapproves of sanctions. The British were enthusiastic about sending Shultz to southern Africa and urged that he meet with Oliver Tambo, president of the outlawed African National Congress, South Africa's leading black political movement. Chester Crocker, the U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs, met with Tambo two weeks ago in London. Other countries, in the meantime, were stepping up their support of sanctions. Canada announced that it would henceforth ban South African farm products, uranium, coal, iron and steel in keeping with a Commonwealth agreement reached last month.

In Pretoria the government had been getting ready for bad news from Washington for more than a week. Foreign Minister Roelof ("Pik") Botha repeated the conventional argument that if the congressional bill survives the Reagan veto, "it will have a damaging effect on the jobs of many people, black and white. It will harm us, but it will not kill us."

Racially motivated violence, in the meantime, showed no sign of ending, as evidenced by a bombing in a Johannesburg hotel and continued unrest in the townships. Two memorial services were held for the 177 miners who died in the Kinross gold-mine disaster a fortnight ago. On a soccer field near the scene of the accident, where 3,000 miners had assembled for the ceremony, several hundred black protesters surrounded the pulpit. One man, a steward of the black National Union of Mineworkers, shouted through a handheld loudspeaker, "We are not going to pray with whites today. We've never been allowed to pray with whites. We'll have our own rites." Soon the field was filled with marching miners, who were joined by hundreds of people from the stands. The ministers leading the service ignored the disturbance and went on with their prayers until the brief ceremony was over. At that point demonstrators charged the refreshment tables and knocked over the flower-draped pulpit. To no avail, a union steward shouted, "Comrades, stop! Please, comrades!"

Two days later 5,000 miners assembled in a stadium a few miles away for a ; second service. Cyril Ramaphosa, general secretary of the big miners' union, explained that it was a response to the earlier ceremony, which had been organized by people "who murdered 177 of our comrades." A great cry of "Viva Winnie Mandela!" echoed through the stadium as the wife of Nelson Mandela, the long-imprisoned black leader, arrived. "We accept that the time for talking has come to an end," she told the workers. "The moment you stop digging (Pretoria's) gold and diamonds, we will be free." Union leaders have asked miners to stay away from the pits this Wednesday as a gesture of protest and mourning.

With reporting by David Beckwith and Michael Duffy/Washington