This is a delicate moment for Bush, who has worked to recover from backing the losing side in the last sanctions debate. As vice president, he strongly opposed the Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act of 1986, enacted over President Reagan’s veto. Since then, Bush has been at pains to seek consensus on South Africa policy, privately consulting anti-apartheid leaders in Congress.
Bush conceded last week that “some good things” resulted from sanctions, but he clearly wishes he had more wiggle room. “I want to find a way to show our appreciation to de Klerk, and yet I don’t want to pull the rug out from under Mr. Mandela,” he added. Critics charge that the Reagan and Bush administrations interpret the law so loosely that trade barely declined between 1985 and 1989. But hewing to the law’s demands for specific reforms in South Africa has given Bush political cover. Mandela’s tough stance may threaten that strategy. “We don’t want to change the goal posts now,” said a senior Baker adviser.
When Mandela visits the White House early this week, Bush will urge him to consider a transitional period in which the African National Congress would welcome a slow return of U.S. investment even before white-minority rule has ended. “We want Mandela to look ahead and think about how he and his country are going to cope with the consequences of success,” said a senior U.S. official. And Bush will move cautiously if, as expected, Pretoria soon releases all political prisoners and lifts a four-yearold state of emergency that is still in effect in violence-plagued Natal province. That would fulfill four of five conditions set out in the sanctions law, permitting its relaxation. Bush might remove a ban on South African Airways flights to the United States, but leave in place the more punishing bans on new corporate investment, oil exports, computer sales and the import of South African raw materials and manufactured goods. Anything more “just wouldn’t fly,” said Rep. Dan Burton, a sanctions opponent. And even that limited move would be politically risky. The administration was “misreading the law” if it thought it might soon be free to lift sanctions, said Rep. Howard Wolpe, warning that Bush’s bipartisan strategy would collapse if he tried.
An air link isn’t much, but it would be welcomed by de Klerk, who is feeling the heat from the white right wing. When he took office in September, he promised whites that he would use reform to break the country’s international isolation. But he so far has little to show for a series of dramatic moves,includingadecisionlast week to abolish laws protecting racially segregated public facilities. His point man on reform, constitutional development minister Gerrit Viljoen, accused the ANC of foot draggingon a plan for releasing political prisoners that could help get the country out from under American sanctions. “The whole question of sanctions is part of a past agenda,” Viljoen said, because the government now was “part of the anti-apartheid movement. "
That claim drew an incredulous laugh from Mandela when he was asked about it on TV. In his analysis, the government’s moves have addressed only the most egregious historical wrongs; the real business of political reform lies ahead. As Mandela pointed out, he will address Congress but he remains barred from South Africa’s Parliament. Basking in the warmth of his triumphal journey to the United States, Mandela coolly refused to lessen his demands–and kept the pressure on.
