"South African government is not ready to and has no intention of negotiating in good faith". Thus Western sanctions are needed to prevent more violence. Specific steps are proposed, including (1) denying trade credits (2) freezing South African accounts overseas (3) banning imports of minerals and food. The usual arguments against sanctions are repudiated.
The Rt. Hon. Malcolm Fraser, proposed by the Australian Prime Minister for appointment to the Commonwealth Group of Eminent Persons, was Prime Minister of Australia 1975-83. General Olusegun Obasanjo, proposed jointly by the Zambian President and the Zimbabwean President, was the head of the Federal Military Government of Nigeria 1976-79. The findings of the Commonwealth group were published under the title, Mission to South Africa: The Commonwealth Report, Penguin, 1986.
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The Republic of South Africa is both engaging in a 'vicious and ugly' civil war and 'waging an undeclared war against its neighbours'. After reviewing RSA intervention in Mozambique and Angola, and arguing that the front-line states are opposed to apartheid, not to whites or to Western interests, calls for US policy-makers to match words with deeds, namely by backing a policy of economic sanctions. Then prime minister, now president of Zimbabwe.
Conflict between the administration and Congress exemplifies the disarray of US policy towards Southern Africa. Reviews the background to the passage of the Anti-Apartheid Act, the goals of which, however, are not achievable in terms of practical politics. The Reagan administration has concentrated on white opinion, when a strategy of "black empowerment", defined as dialogue with the black leadership, would be more fruitful. Notes the relationship between regional re-stabilization and the use (or threat) of sanctions. For the remainder of 1988 the administration should concentrate on Namibia and Angola.
The Reagan Administration, though surefooted domestically, is now absorbing the awkward truth about international relations which continues to surprise many youthful governments--that criticizing foreign policy is easier than making it, that making it is easier than carrying it out, and that political honeymoons are of short and not always blissful duration. Nowhere has this syndrome been more pronounced than in the Administration's attempt to construct a new relationship with South Africa.
