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South Africa: Why Constructive Engagement Failed

Sanford J. Ungar and Peter Vale
Winter 1985/86
Summary -- 

Ronald Reagan's imposition of limited economic sanctions against the South African regime in September was a tacit admission that his policy of "constructive engagement"--encouraging change in the apartheid system through a quiet dialogue with that country's white minority leaders--had failed. Having been offered many carrots by the United States over a period of four-and-a-half years as incentives to institute meaningful reforms, the South African authorities had simply made a carrot stew and eaten it. Under the combined pressures of the seemingly cataclysmic events in South Africa since September 1984 and the dramatic surge of anti-apartheid protest and political activism in the United States, the Reagan Administration was finally embarrassed into brandishing some small sticks as an element of American policy.

Sanford J. Ungar, former Managing Editor of Foreign Policy, was until recently a Senior Associate of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. He is the author of Africa: The People and Politics of an Emerging Continent. Peter Vale is Research Professor and Director of the Institute of Social and Economic Research at Rhodes University in Grahamstown, South Africa. Copyright © 1985 by Sanford J. Ungar and Peter Vale.

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