Impact of Economic and Political Sanctions on Apartheid
When the Afrikaner-backed National Party Came to
power in South Africa in 1948, it implemented its campaign promises in
the form of high apartheid. This contrasted with the segregationist
policies of the pre-war government. While much of that legislation was
designed to restructure the organization of economic opportunity in
South Africa, apartheid legislation lacked the trademark of systematic
exploitation of native Africans (Butler 19). The English speaking whites
who had held power before the war were sidelined as the white
constituency was consolidated under the National Party, a Afrikaner
dominated political group. This allowed the National Party to enact such
legislation as the Population Registration Act, which enforced
classification into four racial categories: white, Coloured, Asiatic, or
native. The next high apartheid landmark was the Group Areas Act of
1950. This act enforced the separate areas of residence by race across
the country. It would be this act that eventually led to Promotion of
Bantu Self-Government Act of 1959 that transferred Africans’ political
rights to these quasi-states, which allowed the South African government
to treat natives as foreigners and allow them no political
representation in the South African government (Butler 19-23).
Apartheid, the Afrikaans’ word for segregation,
brought white supremacy to a whole new level as the rest of the
continent was decolonizing following World War II. The National Party
government treated non-whites as second class citizens and in the case
of Africans, non-citizens. By confining Africans to the ‘homelands’ of
Bantustans, the National Party was able to justify stripping away any
basic rights Africans had in the country of South Africa. The
international community refused to recognize these homelands, and
pressure eventually began to build from all sides to allow equal rights
for all residents of South Africa. Pressure came in the form of economic
sanctions, expulsions from international organizations, and the
divestment of foreign companies (Craig et al 1002 & Vandenbosch
1-11).
In response to this oppression by the white
minority government, the anti-apartheid struggle by South Africans began
soon after the implementation of apartheid in 1948. The movement went
global and was heavily influenced by the organizations and networks of
South Africans that operated inside and outside the nation (Thorn 50).
Did the international anti-apartheid movement against South Africa
during the apartheid era play a significant role in causing the National
Party government to end apartheid? In attempting to discern the actual
effects of the pressure put on South Africa by the international
community, two different schools of thought will be addressed in
relation to the actual effectiveness of international sanctions placed
on South Africa. Nelson Mandela, the first president in post-apartheid
South Africa, believes the results from the anti-apartheid movement,
sanctions, were effective. On the side that believes the anti-apartheid
movement had no discernable impact on the dismantling of apartheid is
the former South African President, F.W. de Klerk. When announcing the
end of apartheid in his 1990 address to Parliament, de Klerk mentions
the conflict and violence that had pervaded South Africa as his
considerations for the ending of apartheid. With the end of Communism in
Europe, de Klerk felt that that the removal of the African National
Congress from the banned organization list was now reasonable, as they
would no longer have any financial support from Moscow to continue their
fight against the apartheid government. Eventually a negotiated peace
was agreed upon and the first elections for all South Africans took
place in 1994, resulting an electoral victory for the ANC. De Klerk
continued to deny the importance of sanctions in his acceptance of the
Nobel Prize for Peace in 1993 in Oslo (de Villiers 197).
The term ‘sanctions’ in contemporary international
law is viewed as “a punitive action by one state against another,
designed to force a change of policy without resorting to overt
aggression” (Brewer 36). Thus sanctions require actors, a target group,
punitive instruments of a non-military fashion, and political objectives
that determine the range and limitations of sanctions. In the case of
South Africa, the actors are church groups and public opinion, not the
traditional actors: national governments and international bodies.
Typically the target group of sanctions are other governments and their
constituency. In South Africa however, while the Afrikaner backed
National Party is the target of the sanctions, the possible greater
affects on the black majority rather than the white minority had to be
taken into account. Thus while the intentions were to force the National
Party to change its attitudes and behavior, the side effects of the
sanctions had to be considered before choosing the best course of action
(Brewer 36-37).
The punitive instruments of sanctions range from
prohibitive to revocative means. The economic means of sanctions are
usually deemed the most effective, short of violence. Economic sanctions
can come in two different forms: trade and financial restrictions.
Trade sanctions are aimed at the restriction or cessation of imports and
exports between state actors and the target nation. Financial sanctions
seek to control or manipulate the flow of private foreign capital into
the country targeted by sanctions. Financial sanctions appear in South
Africa as disinvestment and divestment. Disinvestment is the reduction
or withdrawal of all forms of foreign capital that is invested in the
country, as well as banks not making any new investments. Divestment is
the breaking of financial and economic relations with companies that
profit from business done with South Africa (Brewer 37).
Apart from the economic side of sanctions,
political and diplomatic sanctions in the form of breaking off or
reducing diplomatic ties or refusal of entry can be used against the
target nation. Military and scientific sanctions can prohibit the
exchange of technology and know-how between nations, which can be in the
form of an arms embargo (Brewer 38).
Talk in the 1960s of the use of sanctions to force a
policy change were looked at with skepticism based on their predicted
effectiveness. In fact one writer believed that only a world wide
sanctions movement, coupled with a naval blockade would have the
intended effect. For this to happen the UN would have to be willing to
send in an invasion force to reinstall stability in the country after it
had fallen into disarray following a world-wide boycott. The belief was
that if South Africa was able to promote an appearance of stability
then the Western powers would not have the resolve or justification for
economic sanctions. Proponents of the sanctions movement in the 1960s
believed that white South Africans would abandon the National Party in
great numbers because many South Africans only supported white supremacy
because of the high standard of living that the National Party gave
them. This does not recognize that many whites were in fact Nationalists
and would prove inflexible to outside pressure (Spence 63-65).
With the passing of Resolution 418 by the UN
Security Council in 1977, international efforts to hurt the apartheid
government turned to the form of an arms embargo (Klotz 50). This
resolution stemmed from the international attention created by the 1976
Soweto movement. This was revolt in a Johannesburg suburb that erupted
against the apartheid government over a plan to hold instruction of
maths and sciences in public schools in Afrikaans (Levy 416). The South
African government in turn began to develop and produce more of their
arms in country, but sophisticated systems such as high-performance
aircraft, helicopters, and naval vessels were not so easily produced at
home. However, self-sufficiency did come in the production of
ammunition, military vehicles and communications equipment. The cost of
Research and Development accompanied with the smaller production runs
did equate to higher prices for even ‘home-made’ arms. The arms embargo
can claim success in at least South Africa’s outward policy. The
inability to replace the loss of ageing fighter-bombers in the conflict
with Angola (and their better equipped Cuban allies) began to toll and
brought the South African government to the peace table for a negotiated
settlement. The greater expense came in regard to South African society
and economy. South Africa’s resources were diverted from other pressing
policy matters towards keeping a well-equipped and prepared military.
Funds that could have been spent on public utilities, education, or
health care, were instead put towards military readiness.
Dissatisfaction with the continued deprivation inside the country began
to grow. At the same time, the limited amount of educated manpower in
the country was required to serve in the armed forces. Additionally, due
to the isolation from the rest of the world more money, citizens, and
time were forced to be spent on research new military technologies
because of the inability to purchase Western weapons systems. Finally,
the profound effect of the arms embargo was on South Africa’s
relationship with the international community. If an arms embargo had
not been put in place, the West would not have been able to directly
challenge the regime in power. Thus the embargo as a whole not only
served to raise awareness and politicize the struggle against the
apartheid movement in the West, it boosted the opposition against the
South African state (Grundy 109-111).
In the early 1980s the furthering unrest in the
country began to worry many of the foreign investor’s in South Africa.
While many of these private business were feeling the pressure in their
home country to disinvest, the political instability of the country was
the primary concern for many of the foreign companies. It was only after
this withdrawal of funds and business from the country in the mid-1980s
did South Africa begin to feel the squeeze put on by their foreign
debts. In 1985, the European Community put a limited scope of trade
sanctions on South Africa, yet still the most expansive to date. This
was followed by more significant sanctions in 1986 from the EC, coupled
with the Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act passed by the US Congress over
a presidential veto in the same year. While South Africa did its best
to circumvent governmental sanctions, the loss of private capital was
inescapable (Levy 417).
As the end of the 1980s approached, proponents of
the sanctions movement claimed success as they interpreted the fall of
the apartheid state as justification of a strong sanctions movement. If
nothing more, the economic sanctions were certainly the final straw in
the campaign against the apartheid government. While a handful of South
Africans began to draw links between the economic climate and political
change, many dismissed the effectiveness of sanctions. In retrospect
however, many see these comments as simply propaganda to dissuade more
sanctions against their country(Levy 418-419).
When measuring the success of sanctions, comparison
with past experiences are invariably drawn. For obvious reasons,
sanctions have a higher chance of success when placed against smaller
and less developed target states. The more specific objectives the
sending state sets the more easier it will be to assess the consequences
on the target state and will make sanctions more efficient in the long
run. Once these objectives have been set a combination of good timing
with rapid and merciless implementation must be enforced. If the screw
is tightened slowly, this gives the target state to develop
countermeasures to the sanctions while at the same time giving the
sender state time to develop second thoughts about their sanctions
(Brewer 39).
On the other side of sanctions lie the causes of
their downfall. First, the expression of not using a sledgehammer to
crack a nut is very appropriate here. Cultural and military add-on
measures can make the sending states lose sight of the initial
objectives. Secondly, the search for comprehensive boycotts and
sanctions does not necessarily produce a more effective sanctions
campaign. In many cases the search for general consensus among sender
states can be self-defeating in the end, causing there to be more leaks
in the campaign, rather than less.
While the exact effectiveness of the international
sanctions that arose from the anti-apartheid movement against the
National Party in South Africa on an economic scale can be debated, the
praise from black South African leaders for the anti-apartheid movement
must be taken into account as well. Both Bishop Desmond Tutu and Nelson
Mandela made statements to this extent. On his release from prison in
1990 Mandela stressed that to end sanctions at that moment would risk
allowing the National Party to abort the process towards ending
apartheid. Thus the psychological impact of international isolation
could be viewed as just as important as the economic impact. (Levy 418).
While some form of sanctions had been in place for
many decades, efforts intensified in the 1980s, notably from prominent
South African allies in the form of the United States and Europe. This
change could be attributed to causing the eventual political change of
the 1990s, meaning that those that point to the considerable time lag
between the implementation of sanctions and the fall of the National
Party as evidence of the ineffectiveness of sanctions, do not account
for the time that it takes for sanctions to effect the country as a
whole. Instant change was an unrealistic goal (Levy 418).
Empirical data has been collected during the time
of enforced sanctions that back up Mandela’s claim of effectives. An IMF
report put together by Tamim Bayoumi in 1990 concludes that the impact
economic sanctions had on the country is unmistakable. He concludes that
sanctions are leading to a large upturn in white unemployment and that
the nonwhite employment growth will rise while resulting in a decline in
white’s wages. His report would support previous statements that
suggested that the removal of private capital from the country, rather
than governmental sanctions against the National Party, achieved the
greatest success. His report finds that nonwhite employment had
increased in the intermediary while coinciding with the fall of real
white wages. This analysis would seem to conclude that economic
sanctions are having the exact opposite affect on the South African
economy that apartheid was meant to provide, which was the economic
exploitation of blacks by the whites (Bayoumi 1, 21).
The anti-apartheid movement from an outside
perspective obviously had an effect on South Africa. However, reports
from inside the country differ somewhat with the West’s assessment of
the effectiveness of sanctions. F.W. de Klerk, writing in his
autobiography, states “Obviously, sanctions also did serious damage to
the country.” (de Klerk 70). He goes on to corroborate the findings made
by the IMF, that South Africa’s growth rate suffered approximately 1.5
percent during the 1980s and early 1990s. However, he states that the
white minority was ready and willing to bear this cost because they
feared the alternative was a Soviet-backed African National Congress
regime ruling the country. This is more typical rhetoric from the South
African government about fighting Soviet expansion in Africa. South
Africa attempted to justify their foreign and domestic polices
throughout the 1960s and 1970s as combating communism. While in truth
the ANC was heavily funded by the Kremlin, Moscow certainly did not stir
up the initial causes for the ANC to come into being. Moreover, De
Klerk goes on to write that sanctions delayed change, rather than
promoted it in the government. Importantly, he believes that the
isolation South Africans felt by the West essentially nipped change in
the bud as it was beginning to rise in the country’s universities as
well as the intellectual and scientific elite. He believes that as a
truism, isolation, sanctions, and rampant criticism of a society rarely
encourage changes in the society. He is very reluctant to draw a link
between governmental policies and the sanctions movement that was put
forth by the worldwide anti-apartheid campaign (de Klerk 70-71).
On the political side, de Klerk believes that the
National Party owed some of its electoral success to the sanctions. He
implies that had no sanctions been in place, the National Party would
not have been able to appeal to the resentment and siege mentality that
many white South Africans felt when confronted with the West’s
sanctions. Concluding, de Klerk feels that the real factor in
change was the economic growth of the country. Thus from his
perspective, had South Africa been allowed to grow unimpeded
economically, change would have come sooner than it actually did (de
Klerk 71).
Alternate views of the fall of the National Party’s
apartheid stem from outside forces that did not include sanctions. Most
often cited is the rise to power of Mikhail Gorbachev and the fall of
the Iron Curtain in Europe. Gorbachev realized that the Soviet Union
could no longer afford to fund proxy wars across the world and abruptly
ended all funding to socialist movements, thus depriving the ANC of most
of its resources. While the Afrikaners once saw the ANC as godless
communists, once the Soviet bloc fell, political dealings with the ANC
became publicly acceptable (Evans 3 May 2007 & Levy 418).
While the timing of the Soviet collapse certainly
played a role in the changes in South Africa, for de Klerk to say that
sanctions had no impact in policy making would be dismissing the
effectiveness of the anti-apartheid movement as a whole. Governments did
not enact most of these sanctions and embargoes because they felt South
Africa was a threat like present day Iran or North Korea. Much of the
support for forcing change in South Africa began with grassroots
movements across the United States and Europe.
De Klerk, in his own book, gives credence to the
overall international movement. He notes that never before in history
had a country had to deal with the “comprehensive international
campaign” against the country (de Klerk 114). Not only were the economic
stresses demanding, the restrictions on travel, notably on fly-over and
landing rights for South African airlines, and the cold-shoulder many
white South Africans received while traveling abroad in the 1980s all
contributed to the isolation. He then describes how the sanctions net
began to tighten in on the country. Later, he stressed the impact that
the loss of financial support was taking on the country as a whole and
that it became a “source of social unrest” (de Klerk 183). De Klerk then
describes the need for financial stability in order to keep everyone,
including the ANC, satisfied with the progress of the negotiations to
end apartheid. Perhaps de Klerk cannot see the lines between the causes
and effects, but it is most obvious that the reason South Africa is in
financial doldrums is because of the anti-apartheid movement coupled
with economic sanctions. Thus by his own reasoning, it would be safe to
assume that the world-wide movement against the National Party had an
undeniable and to some extent a very palpable link between the actual
removal of the National Party from power and sanctions that were
employed.
The view championed by Nelson Mandela has a
significant amount of empirical and scholarly evidence that would
support his view that the international anti-apartheid movement against
the National Party-led South African government was successful. Despite
the campaign against apartheid not always meeting the requirements
discussed earlier for successful sanctions, the political and overall
isolation felt by South Africans, which was manufactured by the global
anti-apartheid campaign, made up for the lapses in economic sanctions.
Eventually the ‘total onslaught’ that the government and white society
felt they were under, beginning in the 1960s, encompassed the riots
caused by students within the country and the ANC’s fight from exile.
The international sanction movement against the South African government
was the final push that brought the National Party to near bankruptcy
and brought them to the negotiating table with the ANC. While each
factor of ‘total onslaught’ played a role, the global anti-apartheid
movement was a significant dynamic in causing the turning the tide
against the white-minority government and eventually bringing to power a
true democracy on the southern tip of the African continent
