The potential impact of imposing sanctions against South Africa

US Department of State Bulletin, August, 1988

Statement before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on June 22, 1988. Mr. Whitehead is Deputy Secretary of State..sup.1

Thank you for this opportunity to present the Administration's views on Senate Bill 2378, the amendments to the Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act of 1986. If enacted, this legislation could have important consequences for the future of American diplomacy in South Africa and in the southern Africa region. For reasons I hope to make clear in my testimony, the Administration strongly opposes Senate Bill 2378. American interests are not served by legislation which requires that we experiment in the economic destabilization of South Africa without genuine prospects of contributing to the solution of that country's problems.

Despite our strong objections to this bill, we are quick to recognize the feelings which motivated it. South Africa's apartheid system is repugnant to all Americans. While many governments tolerate or even surreptitiously encourage discrimination on the basis of ethnicity, only in South Africa is racial discrimination a civic duty and the failure to practice it a punishable offense. Among nations which profess to identify with Western, democratic values, only South Africa classifies individuals, herds them into groups, and strips them of their individual political rights according to racial and ethnic criteria. This monstrous injustice affronts us all and cries out for redress.

Our aversion deepens when we are confronted by the stubborn resistance of the South African Government to appeals for peaceful change. Successive generations of black activists-during the defiance campaigns of the early 1950s and early 1960s, during the Soweto uprising of the 1970s, and in the latest wave of township protest from 1984 to 1986-have been shattered by progressively harsher and more sophisticated forms of official repression. Despite repeated, worldwide censure and the imposition of severe sanctions-some of them dating back more than 20 years-South Africa's governing elite remains steadfast in its determination to retain its monopoly on political power.

Injustice and inequality are entrenched in South Africa, but not all the trends are negative. Over the past 10 years, the nature of apartheid has changed markedly. Numerous petty apartheid provisions have fallen by the wayside, the Pass Laws have been scrapped, central business districts have been opened to blacks, and black labor unions have been legalized and have made impressive organizational strides. These changes testify to a growing awareness among many South African whites that apartheid in its purest sense is impractical and uneconomic, if not actually immoral. Consistent with this trend is the finding of the Dutch Reformed Church 2 years ago that no scriptural justification exists for the practice of apartheid. Another institutional pillar of the Afrikaner establishment, the Broederbond, also broke with apartheid orthodoxy at that time. Regrettably, this willingness to dispense with some forms of racial discrimination has not yet developed into a consensus in favor of addressing the truly critical issue confronting South Africa, which is the issue of permitting all South Africans to participate in deciding how and by whom they are governed.

A clear and dispassionate analysis of the crisis gripping South Africa is required if the United States hopes to play a constructive role there. Our interests demand that we avoid the pitfalls of desperate activism on tbe one side and resignation and disengagement on the other. We must accept that the transition to a nonracial democracy in South Africa will inevitably take longer than all of us would like. We must also understand that South Africans themselves, black and white, will be the agents of their own liberation, with outsiders, including the United States, playing only a secondary role at best.

Above all, we need to acknowledge that such limited influence as we currently possess derives from our continuing presence on the ground in South Africa. A progressive U.S. business presence, an official aid program reaching out to tens of thousands of black South Africans, our persistence in urging South Africans to confront the imperatives of dialogue and compromise and to consider what they are for as well as what they are against-these are the most important assets we have for challenging apartheid. We can condemn, censure, and sanction-as this legislation requires-and hope against logic and experience that we can achieve some beneficial result. Or we can take a longer view which refuses to dis-' engage, preserves our lines of communication, our contacts, and our limited resources within South Africa and positions the United States to intervene positively at the moment when our limited leverage can accomplish the most good.

The Fallacy of Sanctions

Three years ago, at the height of the violent unrest in black townships across South Africa, it was fashionable to argue that apartheid had entered its final crisis. Activists in South Africa, exiled black leaders, and many observers in Europe and the United States predicted that only a final push was needed to topple the system. Comprehensive and mandatory international sanctions were thought by some to be precisely the push required.