South Africa Playing for Time

By Jill Smolowe

In terms of style, Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher and P.W. Botha have little in common. Yet through the years, the amiable U.S. President, the iron-willed British Prime Minister and the pugnacious South African State President have each demonstrated an uncanny ability to tough their way through political adversity, often using the sheer force of personality to get their way. As the international calls for economic sanctions against South Africa grow, however, all three leaders resemble conductors who are fast losing control of their orchestras.

This week the three will be forced to continue playing for time. Reagan is scheduled to make a major speech outlining his Administration's policy toward South Africa. In addition, Secretary of State George Shultz will go before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to defend the Administration's program of relying on quiet diplomacy to nudge Pretoria toward making changes in its apartheid system.

Meanwhile, Thatcher will pursue her last-ditch diplomatic initiative in an attempt to tame insistent calls for sanctions within the 49-member Commonwealth. Foreign Secretary Sir Geoffrey Howe will head to Pretoria with a two-pronged message for Botha: release imprisoned Black Leader Nelson Mandela and lift the ban on the African National Congress. Though Botha has agreed to meet with Howe, the flurry of diplomacy is not expected to change the State President's position. Warned Botha last week: "We are a strong, proud nation with the faith and ability to ensure our future. We are not a nation of jellyfish."

Reagan will need to use all his famous political skill to push back the increasing sentiment for strong sanctions that is sweeping Capitol Hill. Last month the House of Representatives voted overwhelmingly to clamp a total trade embargo on South Africa and force U.S. companies to withdraw their investments. Last week the Senate headed down a similar path as it considered three draft bills calling for sanctions. "The policy of the Administration is a disgrace and an embarrassment," charged Massachusetts Senator Edward Kennedy. "The Congress must act now to put the U.S. back on the right side of history."

Almost a year has passed since Reagan deftly outflanked a congressional sanctions bill by imposing limited trade restrictions on South Africa. Yet little has happened to indicate that the Administration's trade restraints and quiet diplomacy have met with any success. Botha's halfhearted gestures at reform have been upstaged by the state of emergency, now in its seventh week. The intransigence of his Nationalist government has only hardened antiapartheid sentiment among U.S. politicians and voters. More and more legislators feel that 1) the American public wants sanctions, and 2) economic measures are the only remaining leverage for change in South Africa. The sanctions movement got another hefty boost last week when California Governor George Deukmejian proposed total divestiture of state funds -- to the tune of some $9 billion -- from companies doing business with South Africa.

President Reagan has been trying to head off congressional action on sanctions by showing that there is at least some motion in his policy toward South Africa. Shortly after the House vote, the Administration initiated a policy "reassessment" aimed at finding measures strong enough to satisfy congressional demands without violating Reagan's commitment not to impose economic sanctions. It was anticipated in Washington last week that Reagan would soon call for direct negotiations between the Pretoria government and the black opposition, and possibly for Mandela's release.

The President has considered the appointment of Robert Brown, a black public relations consultant from North Carolina, to succeed Herman Nickel as the U.S. Ambassador to South Africa. Brown received generally high marks from liberals and conservatives alike, but questions have been raised about his past business deals. Brown has done political consulting work for Alhaji Umaru Dikko, a former Nigerian Cabinet minister who fled Nigeria for Britain when the military government of Major General Mohammed Buhari came to power in 1983. Nigerian officials have accused Dikko of multimillion-dollar theft and corruption. In addition, U.S. labor leaders charged that Brown's consulting firm, B&C Associates, has engaged in "union-busting" activities. And it became known that in 1973, shortly after Brown left a $36,000-a-year post as special assistant in the Nixon White House, a firm in which he was a partner was awarded a government contract under a program designed to help economically disadvantaged minority businessmen. Although a Senate committee questioned the propriety of the contract four years later, Brown was never accused of any wrongdoing. The contretemps apparently was enough for the administration to hesitate regarding Brown's nomination as envoy, though there is wide agreement that the presence of a black ambassador in Pretoria would send a strong message to South African officials. But several Congressmen and black leaders have already warned that the gesture would not be enough to prod South Africa toward substantial reforms. "We don't need a new ambassador," said Republican Senator Lowell Weicker. "We need a new policy."

Reagan's chief of staff, Donald Regan, added to the Administration's troubles with a comment intended to dramatize the adverse impact sanctions would have on the U.S. While itemizing the various imports Americans would have to do without, including chrome, platinum and diamonds, he asked, "Are the women of America prepared to give up all their jewelry?" That question touched off a furor among women and opponents of the Administration's policy. Several black leaders pointed out that the lives of 24 million black South Africans were more important than the diamond trade.

The outcry over Regan's remark was mild compared with the heat Thatcher is taking. She faces challenges not only from most member-states of the Commonwealth but from Buckingham Palace as well. During the past month Queen Elizabeth II has quietly expressed her concern that Britain's continuing resistance to sanctions might imperil Commonwealth unity. Following the Queen's weekly session with Thatcher last Tuesday evening, London buzzed with rumors that Her Majesty's displeasure with the Prime Minister's position had stiffened. The Queen has postponed her annual summer departure for Scotland's Balmoral Castle so that she can discuss South Africa with the leaders of six Commonwealth nations when they meet in London next month. Such open activity in politics by the monarch is almost unheard of in recent British affairs.

Thatcher faces even greater embarrassment when the Commonwealth Games open in Edinburgh this Thursday. What was intended to be a friendly competition among 3,210 athletes has turned into a political nightmare. At week's end 14 Commonwealth countries had pulled out to press their demand for sanctions, and others were threatening to follow suit. Nigeria's Foreign Minister, Bolaji Akinyemi, warned that the Commonwealth was "in very real danger." Moreover, the Commonwealth Games Federation ruled that two South African-born athletes, one of them Long Distance Runner Zola Budd, who two years ago became a British citizen, were ineligible to compete for England. After that, even South Africa's staunchest defenders sounded the death knell. "The games have become a farce," declared Tory M.P. John Carlisle. "They should be canceled."

Thatcher seemed to have found an ally in Prime Minister Brian Mulroney, who announced last Tuesday that Canada would participate in the games. But Mulroney is at odds with Thatcher when it comes to economic sanctions. Two days earlier, during a 90-minute meeting between the two at Mirabel Airport outside Montreal, he warned Thatcher that he was ready to risk Commonwealth unity and act on sanctions if Britain did not take the lead. The various criticisms apparently had an effect. At midweek, with Thatcher sitting at his side, Foreign Secretary Howe told the House of Commons that if his mission to Pretoria "does not procure tangible, substantial progress, I would regard agreement on some further measures as likely to be necessary."

With events proceeding at such a fast clip in London and Washington, it was almost possible to forget developments in South Africa, where violence continued unabated. Eleven burned corpses were found in the black homeland of KwaNdebele, north of Pretoria. In Soweto, security forces began handing out eviction notices to residents who had failed to pay their rent. A crowd of 500 people who protested the action were greeted with a barrage of tear gas.

Meanwhile, the judiciary in South Africa was showing its independence. A three-judge Supreme Court panel in Durban, responding to a black union petition to declare the state of emergency illegal, ruled that any of the estimated 3,500 detainees may have access to lawyers. The judges also annulled parts of the emergency regulations, holding that the government's definitions of "subversive statements" were "unintelligible" and "a lot of nonsense." While the government can appeal the ruling, it was a timely triumph for the unions. Just two days earlier, a union call for a "day of action" to protest the arrest of labor leaders met with only spotty compliance.

An action by black students proved more effective. When black schools reopened last Monday, thousands of schoolchildren stayed away to protest special emergency regulations that require them to carry identity cards and empower educators to bar or expel students. In many townships, the stay-away was honored by 20% to 70% of the youths, and in Duduza, east of Johannesburg, not a single student turned up at the township's eleven schools. In another slap at Pretoria, the National African Federated Chamber of Commerce, a group of successful black businessmen that has long been an ally of the government in opposing sanctions, announced that it is reconsidering its stand. Said President Sam Motsuenyane: "We have become tougher because of the slowness of change."

Botha's reaction to the continuing fury at home and abroad was typically hard-line. At midweek he proudly unveiled a locally made jet fighter, the Cheetah, which military officials boasted could match the Soviet MiG-23. All sales of arms and military technology to South Africa have been banned by the United Nations since 1977, and Botha did not hesitate to drive home his point: "We will not allow ourselves to be humiliated and undermined in order to escape sanctions." A dogfight seems inevitable between Pretoria and the gathering squadron of sanctions supporters.

With reporting by David Aikman/Washington and Peter Hawthorne/Johannesburg