South Africa Mixed Signals on Sanctions

"I don't think in all honesty that the Administration has a very good idea where it is headed in South Africa." So said Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Richard Lugar as the U.S., and indeed much of the world, waited to see whether President Reagan would veto a bill mandating strong new economic sanctions against South Africa.

Among the provisions in the bill, which was passed by large majorities in both houses of Congress, are a ban on new public or private loans, investments or extensions of credit and an embargo on the import of South African uranium, coal, textiles, iron and steel, arms, ammunition, military vehicles, agricultural products and Krugerrand gold coins. The legislation would also prohibit the export to South Africa of crude oil, petroleum products, munitions, nuclear-energy equipment and computers, and cut off direct air travel between the two countries.

For the Reagan Administration, the dilemma was as much a matter of averting a political defeat as of sustaining its tattered policy of "constructive engagement." The White House was searching frantically last week for ways of winning enough Republican votes to sustain a presidential veto. One plan was to announce immediately the appointment of Edward Perkins, a black career diplomat, as the new U.S. Ambassador to South Africa. At the same time, the President would issue an Executive Order, much like the one announced last year, imposing limited new sanctions against South Africa. Also in the planning stage was an African trip by Secretary of State George Shultz. Thus, through various efforts, the White House hoped to prevent the Senate from overriding the President's veto. Reagan is as opposed as ever to any kind of sanctions against South Africa. If pressed, he would accept some innocuous additional measures, like restrictions on new investment in companies that do not follow principles of racial equality. In its determination not to upset the Pretoria government unduly, the Administration even let it be known that it disagreed with a decision by the Coca-Cola Co., once one of the largest American employers in South Africa, to sell its remaining holdings in that country as an expression of the company's opposition to apartheid.

While the Administration was pondering tactics, the Europeans and Japanese finally took action against South Africa after months of discussion. The twelve foreign ministers of the European Community, meeting last week in Brussels, voted to ban new investments and halt the import of South African iron and steel and Krugerrands, as proposed at a summit in the Hague three months ago. But the foreign ministers rejected the most serious proposal of all, a ban on the import of South African coal, as a result of strenuous opposition from the West German government of Chancellor Helmut Kohl. That decision effectively reduced by two-thirds the impact of measures considered at the meeting.

After the vote, Sir Geoffrey Howe, the British Foreign Secretary and current president of the organization, told the ministers, "I fear that we'll have to sustain our pressure for much longer than many of us would have wished." At week's end Howe and Chester Crocker, the U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs, held separate meetings in London with Oliver Tambo, president of the militant African National Congress.

Two days after the Brussels meeting the Japanese announced a ban on South African steel and iron. But they did not cut off the import of coal and various strategic metals.

The reaction in South Africa to last week's actions was one of general relief. Foreign Minister Roelof ("Pik") Botha issued a perfunctory statement deploring all sanctions, and State President P.W. Botha declared in a speech in Johannesburg that those who propose sanctions, "with their stupid march of folly against my country, are playing into the hands of revolutionary forces and power-drunk cliques." But the Johannesburg stock exchange index hit a new high, as did the gold stocks index, and coal stocks jumped 10% to 20% following the news from Brussels. Many South Africans seemed ready to agree with the newspaper Business Day that "the fear of imminent disaster has now ) receded." That assessment could change, however, if the present will of the U.S. Congress prevails.