Economic sanctions against South Africa during the eighties

Abstract

Import sanctions were used to a very limited extent against South Africa in the early sixties and latter half of the seventies to clearly signal the international community's disapproval of the country's apartheid policy. In the middle eighties South Africa was further exposed to a two year wave of export and financial sanctions. This was after the government had already committed itself to move away from apartheid as a policy that was no longer deemed feasible. All these sanctions were lifted in the early nineties after the abolition of apartheid but before negotiations for a new constitutional dispensation had firmly got under way. Contrary to some popular impressions, the 1985-87 sanctions were also severe1y limited in scope and nature, with the result that their economic impact was only marginal at best. They were introduced at a time when the country unexpectedly had to face a foreign debt crisis and had to drastically adjust the economy downward, not unlike that experienced by many other developing countries. The severe recession and greater socio-political unrest that followed did not lead to an escalation of sanctions, but nevertheless threatened to make large parts of the country ungovernable. The evidence is that sanctions only played a minor role in bringing about this poor and deteriorating state of affairs. The political aims of abolishing apartheid and preparing the way for negotiations was achieved mainly as a result of certain internal political developments, together with the political implications of such major other outside developments as the economic collapse of Sub-Saharan Africa and the Soviet Union. South Africa's experience with sanctions confirms that as elsewhere their economic impact as an instrument of foreign policy was invariably exaggerated, whereas their contribution in explaining the subsequent course of political events was at best uncertain.