Sanctions and Negotiations for Political Change in South Africa¶
Paul B. Rich (1990). Sanctions and Negotiations for Political Change in South Africa. African Affairs, Vol. 89, No. 356. Oxford University Press on behalf of The Royal African Society.
| Type | journal article |
| Scope | Wider apartheid literature |
| Method | synthesis review |
| Period studied | 1980–1990 |
| Regions | South Africa, Southern Africa, Mozambique, Namibia |
| Themes | sanctions divestment, politics ideology elections, transition post apartheid, business and state, comparative theory |
| Citation key | rich1990 |
Argument¶
Rich reviews four Commonwealth/WCC sanctions reports and the Giliomee-Schlemmer volume on negotiations. He argues that the sanctions literature rests on moral commitment, not on analysis of how South African decision-making works, and that it assumes economic immiseration will by itself force the state to abandon apartheid. He suggests the threat of sanctions, and the climate it created for black mobilisation, may matter more than actual sanctions. With the unbanning of the ANC and the release of Mandela, he holds that the sanctions debate is becoming dated and that negotiation is the central issue. He criticises Giliomee's 'bicommunalism' as a white-liberal device that preserves privilege.
Evidence and method¶
Review of five books: the Commonwealth Sanctions Report, the Destabilization Report (Johnson and Martin), the Financial Sanctions Report, the WCC Eminent Church Persons Group report, and Giliomee and Schlemmer's Negotiating South Africa's Future. Also cites secondary literature: Dollery, Lipton, Dubow, the SAIRR Sanctions and the Alternatives papers, and Kaempfer and Lowenberg. No original data.
Place in the debates¶
- Capitalism and apartheid (radical vs liberal) (see Liberal vs revisionist: was apartheid functional or dysfunctional for capitalist growth?). Sides with Lipton and Dollery against the 1970s radical view that capitalism sustained apartheid. He sees the links between market economy and apartheid as tangential and the mining industry as opportunist and parasitical in adapting to the prevailing politics.
- Sanctions effectiveness (see Sanctions, disinvestment and the anti-apartheid movement). Sceptical of the reviewed texts. They offer no graduated link between pressure and specific policy changes, and may provoke entrenchment. He leans towards the view that the threat of sanctions, or the climate it created, mattered more than the sanctions themselves.
- Sanctions vs growth and investment (liberal critique) (see Sanctions, disinvestment and the anti-apartheid movement). Reports the SAIRR liberal view that recession and lack of investment could leave a crippled economy for an ANC government to inherit, and notes that the reviewed texts do not engage with it.
- Constitutional models for transition (consociational or bicommunal) (see Why apartheid ended: reform, transition and elite bargaining). Rejects Giliomee's 'third way' as unlikely to win ANC support and as a recipe for balkanisation. He allows it might serve temporarily to sell a settlement to the Afrikaner platteland.
- Coherence of South African destabilisation policy. Doubts that destabilisation was a unified state strategy. He sees military elements acting opportunistically, with pragmatic Foreign Affairs forces later resurgent.
Findings¶
-
The liberal critique warns that sanctions-induced recession and investment drought could cripple the economy a future ANC government inherits. (p. 3)
could well drive it permanently into third world status leaving a crippled system for an African National Congress government to inherit.
-
The Sanctions Report aims at cutting South African income, not at a graduated scheme tied to legislative reform. (p. 4)
The Sanctions Report has as its main objective the reduction of South African income rather than anything resembling a sliding level of sanctions measures
-
The reviewed works assume economic hardship alone will force abandonment of apartheid, without analysing state decision-making or possible hardening of resistance. (p. 4)
The assumption of all the texts under review is that economic immiseration will in itself force the South African state into simply abandoning apartheid.
-
The threat of sanctions may have mattered more than sanctions themselves, by shaping the climate for black mobilisation and raising the costs of defending apartheid. (p. 5)
it may be the actual threat of sanctions rather than the actual sanctions themselves which may induce the government to initiate change.
-
After unbanning the ANC and releasing Mandela, the sanctions debate is losing salience relative to negotiations. (p. 5)
this reform process may well be uncontrollable such that the debate on sanctions is beginning to take on a deja vu quality.
-
The destabilisation peak is tied to the early-1980s reading of US 'Constructive Engagement' by the South African military. (p. 4)
the South African military opportunistically interpreted the United States policy of 'Constructive Engagement' as providing a green light for a more interventionist policy in the region.
-
Giliomee's bicommunalism is criticised as institutionalising ethnic division and preserving white privilege. (p. 5)
to institutionalize this is only going to be seen as artificially preserving white political privileges or else providing a recipe for the balkanization of South African society
Evidence ledger¶
Sources used¶
| Source | Kind | Period | How used |
|---|---|---|---|
| South Africa: the Sanctions Report, prepared for the Commonwealth Committee of Foreign Ministers on Southern Africa (1989) | commission or official report | 1989 | One of the reviewed books; it is cited for its aim of reducing South African income and for its quotation of Frank Chikane on sanctions. |
| South Africa: The Sanctions Mission: Report of the Eminent Church Persons Group (World Council of Churches / Zed Books, 1989) | commission or official report | 1989 | The reviewed report is quoted for the motivation of the church group's tour of western capitals and for the positions of the Swiss and West German churches. |
| Apartheid Terrorism: The Destabilization Report, by Phyllis Johnson and David Martin (Commonwealth Secretariat, 1989) | commission or official report | 1980s, to 1989 | The reviewed report supplies casualty figures for MNR attacks (Homoine, Zimbabwe deaths) and an argument for a coherent South African destabilization strategy. |
| Banking on Apartheid: The Financial Sanctions Report (Commonwealth Secretariat, 1989) | commission or official report | 1989 | Listed as one of the four sanctions books under review; no data from it are discussed. |
| Sanctions and the Alternatives (Mogoba, Kane-Berman, Bethlehem), South African Institute of Race Relations, 1988 | secondary literature compilation | 1988 | Cited as representing the domestic liberal argument about the long-term effects of recession and the absence of investment capital. |
| Negotiating South Africa's Future, by Hermann Giliomee and Lawrence Schlemmer (Macmillan, 1989) | secondary literature compilation | 1989 | The reviewed volume is the basis for the review's discussion of 'bicommunalism' and a 'third way' for negotiations. |
Inference¶
Quantification: None.
Review essay: the reviewer assesses five books by argument and reasoning, with occasional reference to other scholars (Dollery, Lipton, Dubow, Kaempfer and Lowenberg) and to events (the unbanning of the ANC). It contains no systematic data analysis.
Key claims¶
| Claim | Basis | Strength |
|---|---|---|
| The sanctions books assume that economic immiseration alone will force the state to abandon apartheid, and they neither analyse South African decision-making nor link sanctions to specific policy changes. (p. 453) | The reviewer's reading of the four reviewed reports. | Illustrative or anecdotal |
| The threat of sanctions may matter more than actual sanctions, by encouraging black political mobilization and raising the costs of defending apartheid. (p. 454) | Relies on the Kaempfer and Lowenberg model (Kyklos, 1986) and unnamed analysts. | Asserted |
| The destabilization study does not demonstrate a coherent South African state strategy, since the military was divided and acted independently of civilian politicians. (p. 453) | The reviewer's critique of the Johnson and Martin report, with no sources of his own. | Asserted |
| Giliomee's 'bicommunalism' is unlikely to be acceptable to the ANC and is unlikely to become a permanent constitutional basis, though it might serve as a short-term arrangement. (p. 455) | The reviewer's judgement, with a comparison to the Lancaster House agreement on Zimbabwe. | Asserted |
Gaps in the evidence¶
The review makes empirical claims about the effects of sanctions and about mining capital's relationship to apartheid without citing trade, investment, or GDP data, or company and Chamber of Mines records. Testing them would require time-series data on capital flows, disinvestment, and growth, plus archival records on state decision-making; much of this existed in 1990 and is now more available. The claims on destabilization strategy would need State Security Council and Defence Force documents, which were closed then but have since been partly opened.
Replicability: Not applicable.