Sanctions: What Spells Success?

By Bruce W. Nelan

Now that F.W. de Klerk has promised "an end to white domination" and "a new era" in South Africa, antiapartheid campaigners in the U.S. and Europe have begun to claim success for the economic sanctions they imposed during the 1980s. Such credit takers should beware of premature celebration; victory is not at hand, and foreign pressure on the land of apartheid has not had quite the effect that was predicted.

( All along there has been confusion about what would constitute success for sanctions. True, the U.S. ban on importing coal and agricultural products cost South Africa more than $400 million in lost trade (much of it replaced by increased sales to Asia), and the supension of most new investment from abroad has reduced the country's economic growth rate by about 30%, to the current 2.2%. But such statistics by themselves do not add up to success. There was never any doubt that punitive measures could damage the South African economy. The real question was whether hurting the economy could force the government to change its fundamental apartheid policies.

The answer is no, or at least not yet. Pretoria's calls for change are not a recent concession to foreign pressure. As early as 1979, long before economic sanctions were considered, President P.W. Botha told his Afrikaner volk to "adapt or die." In 1986 he described apartheid as "outdated and unacceptable." It was only later that year, to push for faster change, that the U.S. enacted its comprehensive sanctions bill. Those measures hit South Africa where it hurts: in the economy, and in the keen sense among whites that they are pariahs in the world's eyes and will remain so until apartheid is abolished. That may be the most telling impact of the sanctions. Today most whites are eager to end the pain and regain a place among civilized nations. Yet they are also angry and resentful, blaming Americans in particular for what they see as rank hypocrisy. Many insist that the U.S. has lost, not gained, leverage over South African policies.

And what is the government offering in exchange? De Klerk has released long- imprisoned black leaders and permitted black protest meetings, but these are relaxations of the security rules rather than political changes. In spite of sanctions and the new mood of optimism about negotiations for a new constitution, Pretoria remains essentially unyielding on the larger issue of one man, one vote. It insists that majority rule, the central demand of the African National Congress, is inherently "unjust" and would amount to black "domination" over the white minority.

Neither external nor domestic pressure has managed to budge Botha or De Klerk from this basic position. National Party ministers say they see no point in trying to appease overseas sanctioners because nothing will satisfy them except handing over power to a black government, which Pretoria says it will never do.

Well then, comes the natural response, more and tougher sanctions are needed. That too is open to question. A major slowdown in South Africa could halt the growth of the skilled black work force and the development of black economic power, which have already caused irreversible changes in the apartheid system -- legalization of black unions, abolition of the internal pass laws, legalization of some nonracial neighborhoods. These developments, more than sanctions, have helped change white thinking. And if broad new sanctions were to cut deeply into the South African economy, the government's probable response would be to abandon reform, crack down on black protest and make certain that whites got their slice of the shrinking pie first.