South Africa Lashing Out At the West $

By Ed Magnuson

"If we are forced until our backs are against the wall, we will have no alternative but to stand up in self-respect and say to the world: You won't force South Africans to commit national suicide. Leave South Africa to the South Africans." Just as South Africa's black Anglican Archbishop-elect, Desmond Tutu, had told the West to "go to hell" the week before, now it was South Africa's white President, P.W. Botha, saying virtually the same thing. The defiant stands on both sides of the embattled nation's apartheid clash focused on the same subject: sanctions. While Tutu had reacted angrily to Ronald Reagan's attack on the whole notion of employing punitive measures against the Pretoria government, Botha was striking out at the mounting international determination to step up pressure against South Africa.

Botha's outburst was directed at British Foreign Secretary Sir Geoffrey Howe, even though his government has been a holdout against the use of sanctions. Howe was winding up a futile week-long attempt to open a dialogue with the key players in South Africa's racial conflict. Despite his good intentions, he had been rudely rebuffed by both sides. As Howe was leaving Pretoria, Botha held his bitter press conference. He dismissed all such mediating efforts as "direct interference in our internal affairs" and part of "this hysterical outcry of certain Western countries against South Africa."

Outwardly unshaken by the failure of Howe's mission, British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher intended to hold her lonely line against meaningful sanctions at a three-day meeting of leaders of six Commonwealth members (Australia, Canada, India, the Bahamas, Zambia and Zimbabwe). Arguing that sanctions will not work unless the industrial powers join in applying them, she hoped to buy time until at least mid-September, when foreign ministers of the European Community nations complete deliberations on the subject in Luxembourg. If Britain remains out of step on sanctions then, Thatcher's Cabinet seems likely to split sharply on the matter.

The Reagan Administration sent Chester Crocker, Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs, to London to assess the European movement on sanctions. Stunned by the adverse reaction to Reagan's speech, which failed to suggest any change in policy toward South Africa, the White House seemed ready to yield to the pressure for sanctions while trying to hold them to a minimum. It hopes to persuade Congress that mild sanctions taken in concert with other nations would be more effective than harsher measures taken unilaterally by the U.S.

Voting on straight party lines, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee rejected an attempt by Democrats to approve a sweeping, near total trade embargo on South Africa as passed by the House. But Republican Senators Charles Mathias of Maryland and Daniel Evans of Washington succeeded in persuading the committee and its chairman, Indiana Republican Richard Lugar, to ask the Senate to take tougher steps than even Lugar had proposed. By a vote of 15 to 2, the committee approved a bill that would ban all new investments in South Africa by U.S. companies and prevent any U.S. banks from making new loans to any private companies operating there. It would also stop airline service between the U.S. and South Africa and outlaw imports of coal and uranium from that nation.

The proposed Senate sanctions would be lifted if South Africa agreed to release Nelson Mandela, the imprisoned black leader, and take at least three out of four other steps: lift the state of emergency, end the banning of political parties, repeal the "group areas" act, which keeps blacks out of certain residential areas, and start negotiations between white and black leaders in the country. The committee measure would require Reagan to report within six months on the extent of any violations of the existing international embargo on the sale of arms to South Africa. If evasions of the ban continued, U.S. military assistance to the offending nations could be stopped in twelve months. If there was no progress on dismantling apartheid in a year, the U.S. could extend its trade embargo to such South African exports as diamonds, steel, food and textiles.

Instead of going along with any trend toward banning textiles, the Administration shot its South Africa policy in the foot again last week by announcing that it had reached an agreement with Pretoria to increase U.S. imports of South African textiles by 4% a year. The unfortunate timing managed to outrage the advocates of protectionist legislation in the depressed U.S. textile industry even as it angered supporters of sanctions. The mild-mannered Lugar called the textile deal "hard to believe." Pennsylvania Congressman William Gray termed it "lunacy." Protested Democratic Congressman Butler Derrick, of textile-producing South Carolina: "We're wrapping ourselves in % the misery of that country's black majority. It's downright idiotic."

That majority had new cause to complain about government promises of reform. Blacks learned that Botha's act on July 1 abolishing the pass laws that restrict the movement of blacks within the country did not end restrictions on the 4 million blacks in South Africa who are technically residents of four tribal homelands that chose to become so-called independent states: Transkei, Ciskei, Bophuthatswana and Venda. Despite government pledges that they could be granted citizenship in both their homelands and South Africa, they are now treated as aliens who must apply for residence and work permits whenever they move. Although the government promised not to enforce these alien requirements while negotiations over dual citizenship continue, it could do so at any time. The white-owned newspaper Business Day protested this pullback from reform, declaring, "Those gullible folk who took President Botha at his word and gave reform a chance have been tricked."

With reporting by Michael Duffy/Washington and Bruce W. Nelan/Johannesburg