TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/caps/86/86capts.11

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                                                                                August 4, 1986

NATION

Falling Short


Speaking all too softly, Reagan raises a South African ruckus


The speech went through half a dozen drafts. Twice that many
hands tinkered with it, inserting paragraphs here, deleting
phrases there. Anecdotes were added, then dropped. Republican
Senators trooped into the Oval Office to argue that it should
be toughened; others telephoned White House aides to have it
weakened. A committee of competing factions swapped sentences
and traded adjectives. On the day the address was to be given,
a former aide to George Shultz was called in to verify whether
some marginal notes were from the hand of the Secretary of
State; they were not and thus were ignored.

The haggling over President Reagan's long-awaited speech on
U.S. policy toward South Africa reflected the deep uncertainty
that exists on that issue even within the Administration. Many
White House aides thought it was politically self-destructive
and ought not be given at all. At one point a decision was made
to cancel it. In the end, though, it had one particularly firm
and powerful advocate inside the White House: Ronald Reagan,
who had never given a major address on South Africa in his 6 1/2
years as President, wanted to set the record straight.

His 25-minute speech, given not in the glare of prime time but
to at afternoon gathering of foreign-policy groups, offered
nothing new in the way of putting pressure on the intransigent
Afrikaner-led South African government. Although it was meant
to calm the debate over sanctions, it brought the issue to such
a head that by week's end Reagan's aides were scurrying to hint
that his policy could change. The Senate, led by rebellious
Republicans, proceeded to draw up a bill to apply further
sanctions. Desmond Tutu, the Anglican Archbishop-elect of South
Africa, called the speech "nauseating" and added that "the West,
for my part, can go to hell." As New York Times Columnist James
Reston put it, "Reagan tried unsuccessfully to persuade the
extremists on both sides and lost the moderates in the process."

Although billed as the culmination of a two-month "reassessment"
of U.S. policy, the speech was actually a reassertion of the
President's policy of constructive engagement, a call for
continuing efforts to persuade rather than pressure Pretoria to
abandon apartheid and speed efforts to prepare for power sharing
with South Africa's black majority. By turns defiant and
defensive, Reagan seesawed between condemnations of apartheid
as "morally wrong and politically unacceptable" and qualified
praise of South Africa leaders for bring about "dramatic
change." He denounced the "Soviet-armed guerrillas of the
African National Congress," the banned but influential black
political party led by Oliver Tambo and the imprisoned Nelson
Mandela.

The President argued against what he called the "emotional
clamor for punitive sanctions." Such a "historic act of folly,"
he insisted would wreck the economies of neighboring African
nations, undermine the forces for reform in South Africa and
endanger America's strategic interests. "Victims of an economic
boycott of South Africa would be the very people we seek to
help," he said. "We need not a Western withdrawal but deeper
involvement by the Western business community, as agents of
change and progress and growth."

While suggesting that he was seeking a middle course on South
Africa, Reagan cast the problem in terms of polar alternatives.
"We must stay and work," he said, "not cut and run." If
Congress imposes sanctions, Reagan said, "it would destroy
America's flexibility, discard our diplomatic leverage and
deepen the crisis."

The speech did make certain demands on the South African
government: the President called for Pretoria to announce a
timetable for the elimination of apartheid laws; to release all
political prisoners, including Nelson Mandela; to lift the ban
on "black political movements," presumably including the African
National Congress. He asked that the white government begin a
dialogue with its opponents to create a system "that rests on
the consent of the governed." None of these, however, was a
departure form previous Administration policy.

If the speech seemed to lack a raison d'etre, there was a reason
for it. The President's address was in part designed to
showcase a symbolic centerpiece: the announcement that the U.S.
was sending a black Ambassador to South Africa. The name of the
nominee had already seeped out: Robert Brown, a North Carolina
businessman and former Nixon staffer. But in further checking,
the Administration became concerned about Brown's business
association in the past with Alhaji Umaru Dikko, an exiled
Nigerian leader who has been charged with embezzling millions
of dollars. Brown was hastily persuaded by the White House to
withdraw his name.

Missing from the speech was any sense that the Administration's
touted reassessment of its South African policy had produced
much of anything. That process began at a National Security
Council meeting in June, after South Africa declared its current
state of emergency, cracking down on dissent and the press. The
President vented his frustration with the Administration's
inability to articulate its South African policy. "I know what
we're against," he said. "Can we state exactly what we're for
down there?" But from the outset, there was the unshakable
conviction that sanctions would only hurt those they were
designed to help, which is why the search for symbolic measures
came down to finding a black Ambassador.

After a ten-page draft of the speech written by Communications
Director Pat Buchanan was circulated a week ago, State
Department bureaucrats argued that it should be canceled. So
did White House political operatives, and Chief of Staff Donald
Regan eventually agreed. National Security Adviser John
Poindexter, on the other hand, contended that even without
concrete measures, the speech would put more pressure on
Pretoria. A tentative decision had been made to scuttle the
speech before Shultz arrived for a meeting with the President.
The Secretary took Poindexter's side; he wanted a clear
statement of support for the policies he was due to defend on
Capitol Hill the following day. Also, the Administration did
not want the U.S. to get ahead of its Western allies on the
sanctions issue, and Reagan in particular wanted to show his
solidarity with his friend British Prime Minister Margaret
Thatcher, the Western leader most outspoken against sanctions.

The official Democratic response took the form of a pointed,
closely reasoned address by Pennsylvania Congressman William
Gray, chairman of the House Budget Committee, who branded the
U.S. and Britain the "co-guarantors of apartheid." The
President insisted that sanctions do not work, noted Gray, yet
he has imposed them on some 20 nations throughout the world,
including Poland and Libya, where they stood far less chance of
being effective. Because sanctions are what Pretoria fears
most, said Gray, they are they best bet for getting South Africa
to act. "Without economic sanctions," he said, "without
pressure, without increasing the cost of apartheid, there is no
reason for South Africa to dismantle apartheid."

Gray agreed with the President that the nations surrounding
South Africa might be hurt by sanctions, but he noted that they
had issued a joint statement supporting sanctions "even if it
means some hardship for their own nations and economies."
Ultimately, Gray saw the President as having a moral double
standard toward the oppressed: "The President has preached that
the Reagan doctrine is to fight for freedom. Why is the
doctrine being denied in Pretoria?"

Other reaction on Capitol Hill ranged along a narrow spectrum
from outrage to disappointment; virtually no one from either
party came to the President's side. Democrats generally saw
Reagan as the victim or moral myopia and of enlisting on the
wrong side of history. Said Democratic Senator Tom Harkin of
Iowa: "President Reagan abandoned any pretense of providing
moral leadership."

What worried the White House more was the revolt among moderate
Republicans, who saw the President as being out of step with
Congress and perhaps the voters. Republican Senator Richard
Lugar, a consistent ally of the President's and chairman of the
Senate Foreign Relations Committee, had urged Reagan to propose
a new tack. He was clearly discouraged by the result. "I think
the President needs to do more," he said afterward. "I had
hoped the President would take this occasion for an
extraordinary message to the world." Republican Senator Nancy
Kassebaum of Kansas, a respected voice on African policy, seemed
to speak for many fellow Republicans. "I was deeply
disappointed with the President's speech," she said. "It gave no
new direction." The day after the speech, in what could be
described as a ritual sacrifice, Shultz testified for four hours
in a crowded Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing room.
The Secretary went out of his way to suggest that the
Administration was not inflexible in its opposition to sanctions
and that he was interested in talking with the leaders of the
ANC, which he called "an important part of the South African
political equation." Despite this peace offering, he was
excoriated by a succession of Democratic Senators, topped off
by a histrionic display of outrage by Delaware Senator Joseph
Biden.

Biden ridiculed Shultz's prepared remarks, suggesting that the
Secretary's speech reminded him of the cries of "Go slow" that
tried to put the brakes on the U.S. civil rights movement in the
1960s. Shultz, reading between the lines, said he "hated to hear
a U.S. Senator call for violence." Biden erupted, his voice
reaching heights of calculated fury. Jabbing the manuscript of
Shultz's testimony with his index finger, he shouted, "I'm
ashamed of this country that puts out a policy like this that
says nothing, nothing! It says, 'Continue the same.'  We put no
timetable on it. We make no specific demands. We don't set it
down. I'm ashamed that's our policy. That's what I'm ashamed
of. I'm ashamed of the lack of moral backbone to this policy.
You may be ashamed!"

By going ahead with his speech when he had nothing new to say,
Reagan fed Congress's appetite for acting on its own. Indeed,
if the President is lagging behind the public parade on South
Africa, Congress is ut ahead. In June, the House passed by a
voice vote a sweeping bill that calls for the U.S. and most
American companies to withdraw their assets from South Africa.
The amendment, sponsored by California Democrat Ronald Dellums,
gives companies 180 days to pack up and leave, a withdrawal that
would involve $1.3 billion in direct investment. New loans
would be halted and future trade prohibited, except for
strategic minerals.

Senate Democrats, led by Ted Kennedy and Alan Cranston, have
offered a slightly less drastic measure that includes relief for
black South Africans and neighboring countries. Although it has
little chance of being passed intact, it has forced moderate
Senators to seek a compromise. Lugar, who pledged to work with
both Shultz and Senate Democrats, expected to spend part of the
weekend finishing a plan directed at putting maximum pressure
on the white ruling class while sparing the black majority
unnecessary economic repercussions. it expands on the limited
measure imposed by Reagan last September, which prohibited the
purchase of Krugerrands in the U.S. and the export of computers
to South Africa. Among Lugar's proposals: ending landing rights
in the U.S. for South African airlines, freezing U.S. bank
accounts of South African citizens, and prohibiting American
imports of steel and perhaps coal. Lugar will present his
measure to the Foreign Relations Committee next week.

Even some of Reagan's supporters feel he made a basic political
misjudgment by jumping into the debate over sanctions with
nothing new to offer at a time when something more was needed.
He seemed also to misread the depth of sentiment on the issue.
While just about everyone is repelled by the oppression in
South Africa and thinks something should be done about it, there
is no clear consensus on what. Reagan, by heightening the
visibility of the subject without offering a solution, succeeded
only in exposing his own policies to closer inspection and
greater criticism.

Black leaders saw Reagan's do-little approach as yet another
example of his lack of sensitivity on racial matters and human
rights, noting that throughout his career he has been late in
acknowledging black causes. "This is the time for new actions
and new methods," said Jesse Jackson, "not old methods with new
rhetoric."

British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, who is undergoing
travails at home over South Africa similar to those faced by
Reagan, was gratified that her American friend stood with her.
Her long-standing refusal to consider sanctions, which she has
termed "utterly repugnant," has infuriated her parliamentary
opponents, divided the Commonwealth and distressed moderates
within her Tory ranks. Last week her Foreign Secretary, Sir
Geoffrey Howe, embarked on a mission to South Africa in an
attempt to find some thin reed on which to base hopes for future
negotiations.

He failed. Indeed, he humiliated. Howe, who was representing
the nations of the European Community, sought to meet with both
government and black opposition leaders. The rather retiring
diplomat was greeted frostily by the former and shunned by the
latter. In his round of talks with President P.W. Botha, Howe
was bluntly informed that South Africans, not uitlanders (a
derogatory term for outsiders), would deal with the country's
problems. South African officials lectured Howe on the extent
of suffering that sanctions could inflict on surrounding black
states.

The black opposition leaders treated Howe as if he were a
despised enemy. Nelson Mandela refused to see him, as did
Mandela's wife Winnie. She dismissed the Foreign Minister as
"that clown." Bishop Tutu rejected a meeting with Howe as "a
waste of time." The United Democratic Front, the major umbrella
organization for antiapartheid groups, declared Howe persona non
grata and forbade any representative of the U.D.F. to see him.

Howe's rebuffs did not end when he left South Africa. Zambian
President Kenneth Kaunda agreed to meet with him in Lusaka, and
then delivered a public dressing down. Kaunda, regarded as a
moderate African leader, accused Britain and the U.S. of being
in a "kind of conspiracy" to preserve apartheid, and admonished
the British emissary, "Sir Geoffrey, you people will not be
forgiven by history, because South Africa is about to explode.
And that you should encourage it to me is incomprehensible."

Howe will report back to other European Community Foreign
Ministers sometime in the next few months. They will then
consider the question of a joint policy on sanctions; a decision
is expected by the end of September. The possibility of unified
action with the allies would allow Reagan, and perhaps Thatcher,
to modify past opposition to sanctions.

One document the European nations will rely on it is the report
of the Eminent Persons Group, a committee that does in fact
consist of prominent Commonwealth figures. Some of the group's
members recommend sanctions as the only way to promote change
in South Africa, a course that was rejected last month by
Thatcher. The co- chairman of the group, Malcolm Fraser, a
former Prime Minister of Australia, attacked Reagan in a
Washington Post article last week. "If the United States and the
United Kingdom persist in policies that have patently failed
over the past five or six years, the black South Africans will
take irreversible decisions to fight for political participation
and freedom," he wrote. "The emerging government would be
pro-Soviet and anti-West."

One place where the President's speech was well received was
white South Africa. Foreign Minister Botha welcomed what he
termed Reagan's conviction that it was impossible to negotiate
with Marxist terrorists and the President's exposition on the
suffering that sanctions would cause black Africa. Although
Botha criticized a few things, it was a matter of praising with
faint damns. "It is regrettable," he noted, "that President
Reagan condemned the measures taken by the South African
government to protect black citizens against violence and
intimidation.

Reagan, by putting the issue of sanctions at center state, may
have handed the Democrats an emotional issue for the fall.
While polls show that the sanctions question does not concern
a large number of voters, the topic rouses strong support among
activists who consider forceful opposition to South African
apartheid a moral imperative.

Another political consequence of Reagan's speech is that it
helped inflame the public rhetoric he sought to dampen.
Although virtually no one supports the current system in South
Africa, it could be dangerous if American foreign policy is once
again driven by a moral rampage against an unpopular pro-Western
state. The long-term interests of both the U.S. and South
Africans, black and white, will require a tortuous and careful
sorting out of extremely complex factors rather than a headlong
rush toward confrontation.

The Administration also faces strategic questions about its
current course. Reagan is right in asserting that South Africa
plays an important role in the global balance; it would be a
considerable blow to the West if the government were replaced
by one aligned with Moscow. Yet the current system in Pretoria
is inevitably going to be replaced, perhaps in five years,
perhaps in 25, as even all but the most adamant whites in South
Africa admit. That is why Tutu's outburst that the West "can
go to hell" is so chilling and that is one reason speeches that
please Pretoria's whites and enrage Soweto's blacks are
misguided.

As with the Philippines and Haiti, the Administration is fast
approaching the time when it will have to make a decision: Is
it prudent any longer to stick by an old and often loyal regime,
or is it time to support the forces that will replace it?  If,
as Reagan says, a new society is destined to be born in South
Africa, the U.S. seems to be on the side of the ancien regime.
The time may soon slip away, if it has not already, when a
Desmond Tutu or an Oliver Tambo will consider the U.S. a
potential ally. The Administration is understandably troubled
that some members of the African National Congress are
Communists, but to alienate those who are not is to risk
enlarging the Communist ranks.

Finally, Reagan's approach raises some real moral concerns, even
if these can be clouded by the demagoguery or naivete of some
who have adopted the cause. Sanctions may not be effective.
They can even be counterproductive. Yet there may come a point
when a political system is so abhorrent that other nations must
proclaim simply and clearly that they will treat it as an
outcast. That rationale, more than any hope of modifying his
behavior,was the President's most compelling justification for
sanctions against Libya's Muammar Gaddafi.

The danger in advocating a moralist stance against South Africa
is that it can slight the very real complexities of the
situation. As Shultz had pointed out, the transition to
majority rule must be accompanied by guarantees of the rights
of minority groups, namely the whites. Yet continued U.S.
reluctance to take a moral stance against the Pretoria
government, one that is backed by tangible actions rather than
righteous rhetoric, prompts some fundamental questions: If not
now, when?  If not sanctions, what?

Reagan and Shultz are concerned, and rightly so, about finding
the best way to achieve a transition to a postapartheid
leadership in South Africa and how that will affect southern
Africa as a whole. As Shultz points out, the economy of South
Africa, the largest and healthiest on the continent, may
collapse if it is put under sustained pressure by the West.
That would have catastrophic consequences for not only the
whites but also the blacks of South Africa and the entire
region.

The Administration's goal is to find measures that will
selectively increase pressure on Pretoria. In his testimony
last week, Shultz attempted to make a distinction between
"punitive" sanctions, which would perhaps worsen the situation
for all South Africans, and "other measures," which could be
targeted at the ruling whites in a position to bring about
change. The distinction is a somewhat tortured one: What is the
point, after all, of sanctions that are not punitive? The real
purpose of the semantic difference may be to allow the
Administration to impose sanctions under a slightly more benign
name.

The vehemence of the reaction to the standstill policies
contained in Reagan's speech caused some hasty attempts by
Administration officials to emphasize that they are still
considering ways of toughening their South African policy. As
Reagan hopped through the South on a series of political
fund-raising appearances, his advisers huddled in conferences
in the middle cabin of Air Force One, searching for ways to
placate critics and find some middle ground for the President.
Presidential Spokesman Larry Speakes told reporters that
everything was "under review."

Speakes suggested that one example of "nonpunitive" sanctions
would be the closing of consular services, which is currently
included in the bill that Lugar is drafting. The Administration
hope to work with Lugar in refining other possible measures with
the aim of putting together a package acceptable to both Capitol
Hill and the White House. Since it is almost certain that
Congress will pass some sanctions bill by the end of the summer,
the only other option the President has is his veto. That would
make last week's political brouhaha seem like a picnic by
comparison.

In addition, the White House is hoping to defuse the issue with
the same gesture it had originally intended to make as part of
the President's speech: the appointment of a black Ambassador
to Pretoria. One contender is Terence Todman, a career Foreign
Service officer with high credentials who is now Ambassador to
Denmark; another is Edward J. Perkins, the current U.S.
Ambassador to Liberia. The clumsy stumble over the planned
appointment of Robert Brown has taken away some of the impact
that would come from such a choice and make it even more
transparently symbolic. But it will be a signal nevertheless.

Having insisted on making a bravura entrance into the South
African debate, Reagan seemed anxious to tiptoe away from it all
during his swing through the South last week. For the most
part, he deflected or ignored questions hurled at him whenever
he was in earshot of reporters.  When given the chance, he
seemed to set the stage for a shift in policy in the wake of the
reaction he had provoked. When a reporter shouted a query in
Columbia, S.C., about whether new sanctions were out of the
question, the President stopped to answer. "We haven't closed
any doors yet," he said.

--By Richard Stengel. Reported by David Aikman, David Beckwith
and Michael Duffy/Washington.