Hand in Hand

Since the race riots last March, apartheid-minded South Africa has learned that politics sometimes goes hand in hand with economics. Fearful of more violence to come, foreign investors have held back their funds. An increasing number of countries are refusing entry to the goods of South Africa and closing their ports to its ships.

In early June Trinidad dockworkers refused to unload a $20,000 consignment of South African hardboard, forcing its return to the manufacturers; three weeks ago a shipment of tires met the same fate. The Sudan instituted a formal boycott, forcing cancellation of $250,000 worth of contracts for South African asbestos piping and glass products. Last week Malaya's Prime Minister Abdul Rahman banned all trading with South Africa as of Aug. 1, declared "economic war" on South Africa until she handles her racial problems in "a humane way."

"I am facing ruin," said a major South African exporter of peanut oil, as the ban on his products threatened to spread from the West Indies to several Asian nations. In Europe, Sweden stopped buying South African fruit, and Lectrolite Products Ltd., big South African exporter of auto spare parts, fortnight ago advised the government export-promotion board that its products are now taboo in nine nations. Three weeks ago the delegates to the conference of African independent states at Addis Ababa voted unanimously to urge all emerging black governments to ban South African goods. The Nigerian government has already served notice that beginning next Oct. 1--its day of independence--no South African Airways planes will be permitted to land at Nigeria's big international airport at Kano.

"South Africa is now alone," warned Minister of Transport Barend Schoeman. Though the government is finally releasing 1,200 political prisoners detained since the riots without charges, South Africa's men of apartheid show no intention of changing their course. In fact, as soon as the Congo riots broke out last week, the Nationalist press briskly drew the lesson: this is what happens when the white man treats the black as an equal.

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