Slowly, almost imperceptibly, American policy toward South Africa has begun to change.
Instead of insisting on a mostly private, quiet critique of the most offensive elements of apartheid, as it did for 4 1/2 years, the Reagan administration is speaking out more openly against the actions of South Africa`s white minority regime, especially its recent declaration of a state of emergency in parts of the country and the resultant widespread killings and detentions.
Whereas the White House criticized the Senate in mid-July for passing a bill imposing limited sanctions on South Africa, by the end of the month presidential aides were letting it be known that the President might not veto such a bill. And with the House also passing a sanctions bill, there have even been hints that the administration, following a similar action by the French government, might impose some sanctions on its own, without waiting for a legislative mandate.
Officially, although it is undergoing what a State Department spokesman calls ”continuing reassessment,” the controversial policy of ”constructive engagement” with South Africa is still in place. Unofficially, there is nothing left of it. The man who was in charge of implementing the policy, U.S. Ambassador Herman Nickel, having been recalled from South Africa in mid-June, has gone on vacation. His South African counterpart has been called back to Pretoria for ”consultations.” The South African and American governments are scarcely communicating.
U.S. officials, until recently cocksure about the American contribution to ”progress” in South Africa, are now constrained to admit that the situation has badly deteriorated there, notwithstanding administration support for South African President Pieter Botha`s policy of gradual reform.
To be sure, the reluctant shift in policy has a great deal to do with the tragic events in South Africa. But it has more to do with the dramatic and widespread protests over the administration`s previous adherence to
”constructive engagement,” and with the growing pressure–both domestic and foreign–for the United States to play a different role in South Africa.
Indeed, the recent uproar in this country over South Africa demonstrates once again that when a substantial part of the American public is dissatisfied with the way the political system is handling a foreign policy issue, it can force a change, if necessary by taking to the streets. In that sense, albeit on a smaller scale, the South African issue benefits (or, depending on your point of view, suffers) from the lessons of Vietnam.
No administration, Democratic or Republican, likes to admit that it can be influenced by protest rallies or street demonstrations. Richard Nixon insisted that he would not be swayed by any amount of anti-Vietnam War marches. But he was, just as any modern-day American leader has to be when his policies become unpopular. Public protest is a fundamental part of the American way.
The demonstrators who have appeared outside the South African Embassy in Washington every weekday since last Thanksgiving have probably had little effect on or in South Africa. But they have had a profound impact in the U.S. Along with university students who have decided to make a cause of South Africa, the embassy protesters have taken an issue that seemed marginal a year ago and helped put it at the center of American politics. They have guaranteed South Africa a place on the front pages of American newspapers and in the nightly television news, and they have influenced the dialogue in Congress.
Conservative Republicans in the House and Senate, previously supportive of ”constructive engagement” (or, if anything, critical of the policy for not being kinder to the South African regime), have emerged as leading skeptics on apartheid and hecklers of the administration on this issue. Whether they have truly been stirred to moral outrage or are acting on the basis of political expediency–seeing an opportunity to make a pitch for black votes in the congressional elections next year–it is too soon to say; but their rhetoric has changed, and that, in turn, increases the pressure on the White House.
At the same time, the South African issue has revived an old coalition of civil rights, labor and other liberal organizations, in the process possibly doing something for the Democratic Party that its presidential candidate and other leaders could not manage to do in 1984.
Ironically, all of this validates one of the primary reactions of the South African government to the anti-apartheid protests in this country: that they have more to do with domestic politics than with foreign policy. The South Africans would be wrong to underestimate the depth of feeling in this country about the kind of institutional and constitutional racial supremacy that they practice, but they are probably correct in believing that the dynamic behind the demonstrations is more domestic than international.
In fact, the international pressure on the Reagan administration concerning the South African issue is only beginning to be felt. The West German government of Chancellor Helmut Kohl has held firm with its own version of ”constructive engagement,” and British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher has shown no inclination to get out in front of the U.S., despite very strong feelings about South Africa in her country. But French President Francois Mitterrand, by banning all new French investment in South Africa, has, in a sense, thrown down the gauntlet before other members of the Western Alliance. And although they have so far refused to impose sanctions, 11 other European nations, including West Germany and Great Britain, did recall their ambassadors from Pretoria.
It is in black-ruled Africa, where the U.S. has many friends it purports to care about, that the pressure is becoming especially strong. Admittedly, some nations in southern Africa have mixed feelings about any American or other economic sanctions against South Africa, because they, too, risk being profoundly affected; but there is a groundswell of concern around the continent that unless South Africa feels some negative consequences of its recent actions, it will become more and more repressive toward its black population.
African governments and commentators, like some black leaders in South Africa, have been accusing the U.S. of hypocrisy on the issue of economic sanctions. They want to know why the Reagan administration insists that sanctions would not work in South Africa, when it has made ample use of them in Poland and Nicaragua.
”Washington is selective about the application of its logic, as much as it is about the application of its economic sanctions,” wrote Hilary Ng`weno, the American-educated and staunchly pro-Western editor of Kenya`s Weekly Review, recently. ”Constructive engagement is all right when applied to the human rights violations of the South African regime, but not when those violations come from left-wing regimes. This selective application of international morality unfortunately plays into the hands of those who would have us believe that left-wing dictatorship is better than right-wing dictatorship. . . . Such a view is, of course, mistaken, but what are Africans to make of the kind of double think and double talk which emanates from Washington these days on the South African situation?”
The hints of policy change now emerging from the White House and the State Department may be intended to deal with that kind of question, too.
