Not a Black and White Issue

By Amy Wilentz

Despite the Administration's steadfast opposition, the vote was not even close. With 56 Republicans joining virtually all of the Democrats, the House last week passed, 295 to 127, a bill to impose economic sanctions on South Africa. It would ban new American loans and investment there, halt computer sales to the government and end the importation of Krugerrands unless South Africa begins to take explicit measures to reform its apartheid system. The day before, the Republican-controlled Senate Foreign Relations Committee had voted 16 to 1 to approve a similar, though less harsh, proposal.

Last week's votes highlighted the increasing opposition to the Reagan Administration's policy of "constructive engagement" with South Africa, which is designed to coax the country toward reform through strengthened diplomatic and economic ties. The antiapartheid movement, which feels that such cooperation has produced few discernible results, has argued instead for a forced disengagement from all American economic involvement, on the theory that this would put pressure on Pretoria to reconsider its racial policies. South Africa is so dependent on U.S. investments (now at about $15 billion), the argument goes, that the threat of losing them would be enough to bring about some internal changes. In addition, divestment advocates say that sanctions by the U.S., once South Africa's largest trading partner, send a clear statement to the global community condemning Pretoria's apartheid policies. "It is time for us as a nation to put our beliefs into action," said Democrat William Gray of Pennsylvania, chief sponsor of the House measure.

The support of South African Bishop Desmond Tutu, who won the 1984 Nobel Peace Prize, has helped spark a recent flurry of state and local divestment legislation in the U.S. Tutu scoffs at Americans who say they are concerned about how economic cutoffs might affect blacks in South Africa. "People ought ( to stop using us as alibis for not doing what they know they ought to do," he says. Many other black leaders agree. "Any movement toward the isolation of apartheid is a welcome development," says Neo Mnumazana, observer at the U.N. from the African National Congress, a black coalition party outlawed in South Africa.

Yet many people, in both the U.S. and South Africa, who abhor apartheid question whether economic sanctions would work. "Unilateral American sanctions are totally ineffective," says Republican Newt Gingrich of Georgia. Gingrich was one of 35 Congressmen who recently asked President Reagan for stronger condemnation of South Africa, a move many saw as an attempt to nip last week's measures in the bud. Gingrich believes that the House bill would simply allow other countries to step in and fill the gap. There is evidence that France, Japan and Israel, which are already involved in the South African economy, would step in to fill gaps in nuclear, computer and weapons technology, respectively.

One of Pretoria's allies in the battle against divestment has been Gatsha Buthelezi, the hereditary leader of the country's 6 million Zulu tribespeople. "If there is any further downturn in the economy as a result of sanctions, it is the black people who will suffer," says Buthelezi, who strongly opposes apartheid. "They are the poorest of the poor, and they are going to pay the price." Sanctions, says a top Western diplomat in South Africa, sound like "a plan to starve the blacks until the whites surrender."

American executives say that a ban on new investment will force them to pull out of South Africa, leaving their black employees jobless. One concerned official is George Schroll, who heads the education task force of the group of American corporations that adhere to the Sullivan principles, a set of guidelines developed for U.S. firms in 1977 to ameliorate working conditions for blacks in South Africa. Schroll says he is worried that if U.S. interests pull out, they will be replaced by companies from nations "less committed to racial equality." Companies adhering to the Sullivan principles, named after their author, Philadelphia Minister Leon Sullivan, employ about 65,000 workers, close to 1% of South Africa's labor force.

Chester Crocker, Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs, argues that sanctions are "likely to become a show of impotence and to erode our influence with those we seek to persuade." The Johannesburg Star, an independent, moderate paper that has called for gradual reform of apartheid policies, editorialized last week that the threat of sanctions "gives the government undeserved domestic support and creates a chauvinistic attitude inelegantly known as 'up yours.' " The usually staid editors of the pro- government paper, the Citizen, put it more bluntly: "We have news for Congress. It will not force South Africa to do America's bidding. It will not force the government into introducing policies that it does not regard as acceptable or desirable."

Pretoria has warned that divestment may have dire consequences for all of southern Africa. If unemployment results, warned Deputy Foreign Minister Louis Nel last week, the 1 million illegal foreign blacks who work in South Africa may be expelled. South Africa, said Nel, "makes a major contribution to the economic stability and development of its black neighboring states." Many leaders of the black-ruled nations of southern Africa admit that their own potential for growth would be hurt if there are economic problems in South Africa, which is the productive dynamo that much of the continent depends upon.

For advocates of divestment and sanctions, the bottom line is a simple one: apartheid is a clear moral evil, and the U.S. should in no way provide any support for such a racist system. The Administration and its supporters generally share this abhorrence of apartheid, but as Crocker notes, "Indignation and strong convictions do not constitute a foreign policy." They do, however, help get legislation passed. Democrat Christopher Dodd of Connecticut expects the Senate, like the House, to approve sanctions overwhelmingly when it votes in early summer. Reagan will then be confronted with an unenviable choice: to veto the bill and buck the growing wave of American sentiment, or bow to a crusade that he feels would do more harm than good.

With reporting by Sam Allis and William Stewart/Washington