Tutu Calls for Continued Sanctions against South Africa
Episcopal News Service. June 21, 1990 [90155]
Ariel Miller, Correspondent for Interchange, the newspaper of the Diocese of Southern Ohio
CINCINNATI -- Virtually the first thing Archbishop Desmond Tutu did on arriving in Cincinnati was to thank everyone who had taken part in the world-wide effort to end apartheid -- and to alert them that their work had just begun.
"Sanctions must be maintained at the present level," Tutu said in his first news conference here on the evening of May 25. "Although we are almost euphoric at the breakthroughs of this spring, apartheid is still in place."
In sermons, speeches, and meetings with small groups throughout his visit, Tutu stressed that economic sanctions have been the most important factor forcing the South African government to begin to end its campaign of violence and oppression against black people in South Africa and beyond.
"South Africa would still be fighting in Angola if she could afford it," Tutu said in the Taft Memorial Lecture at Christ Church, Cincinnnati. "Namibia would not yet be free."
"The African National Congress [South Africa's oldest party committed to full civil rights for blacks] is unbanned because of sanctions," Tutu told a meeting of institutional investors from Cincinnati and Dayton on Memorial Day. "Nelson Mandela is out of jail because of sanctions. We are about to have negotiations for a free, democratic South Africa, because of sanctions."
But Tutu warned repeatedly about the danger of being misled by superficial changes such as the desegregation of public facilities. Only sustained international pressure would force the current minority regime to dismantle the intricate system of economic and physical oppression resulting from apartheid.
"Nelson," Tutu said, with stark simplicity, "went into prison 27 years ago, and couldn't vote. He comes out of prison 27 years later, and he still can't vote." Three-fourths of the people of South Africa remain disenfranchised and subjected to massive assault and exploitation without any legal recourse, all because of the color of their skin.
Other South Africans in Cincinnati -- white, "colored" [racially mixed], and black -- concurred with the archbishop's analysis that economic pressure, such as curbs on trade and the withdrawal of foreign investment, are the most decisive factors in the changes beginning to occur in Pretoria's policies.
"The disturbing thing is that the white regime was driven to this by the economy, and not by a change of heart," says Franklin Larey, a colored South African who is completing a doctorate at the University of Cincinnati. "The economy is close to collapse. They know that if it collapses, they are out of power anyway. The economy is what gives [State President F.W.] de Klerk the power to push his party towards negotiations with Mandela. I firmly believe that."
"When we left South Africa 10 years ago, the Rand was worth $1.31," said Robert Allan, a white South African who emigrated with his family in despair over the government's increasing repression of all who called for an end to the injustice. "Now it's worth 36 cents."
During his visit to Cincinnati, Tutu addressed all the familiar criticisms of economic sanctions: that they are ineffective, that they "hurt most the people they are meant to help," and that de Klerk should be "rewarded" for freeing Mandela by a lifting of sanctions.
"I have had three meetings with de Klerk, and each time he's asked us to lift sanctions," Tutu said at his meeting with investors on May 28. "The South African government has spent a huge amount of money in a campaign against sanctions. Why would they do that if sanctions didn't work?
"And then there's the one that takes the cake," Tutu exclaimed, "sanctions are going to hurt the blacks!" One of the clearest indications that those 'moral charges' were baloney of the first water is that I could still go into black townships. My people would be the first to repudiate me. Hardly anywhere have I been asked in townships, 'Archbishop, how can you support sanctions?' -- with two exceptions. The first was 'rent-a-crowd,' unemployed people hired by the government to hold up placards. They waved and winked at me as I went by. That hurt me very badly. That was dastardly, too, because I do have opponents. There was no need for 'rent-a-crowd.'
"The other exception is a group of black leaders like Chief Gatsha Buthelezi," Tutu concluded. Buthelezi has been a major participant in and beneficiary of the South African government's "Bantustan" policy of dividing the black population politically and geographically into scattered "tribal homelands," a key way in which black South Africans have been disenfranchised and subjugated under apartheid.
As Pretoria's suppression of opposition became increasingly violent and intransigent throughout the last 20 years, every avenue for peaceful change -- political representation, negotiation, nonviolent protest, even public worship -- was denied or ruled illegal by the white regime. Under Tutu's leadership in the mid-'70s, the South African Council of Churches finally called for economic sanctions. In his talks in Cincinnati, Tutu described the momentum that has been generated by the decision of thousands of people and institutions around the world to use their economic power to take a moral stand against the injustice.
"We have been helped a lot by groups trying to isolate the South African government," Tutu said. "Especially young people on their campuses showed that it was possible to change the moral climate of a country. Because ultimately, it was not a case of economics; it was a moral decision. In a sense, the question of economic effectiveness is secondary. It is crucial for the victims to know that the world is with them.
"But as it turned out, once the moral climate had changed to the point that the American Congress not only passed the Anti-Apartheid Law [1986], but also was able to muster enough votes to override a presidential veto, it was apparent within a matter of months that sanctions were working," Tutu insisted.
"We are standing on the threshold of extraordinary possibilities which seemed unlikely only a few months ago," Tutu told the clergy of the diocese, who assembled on May 26 at Cincinnati's Church of the Redeemer to meet, pray, and celebrate with him. "I bring you the greetings of your sisters and brothers in Southern Africa. I am an emissary bringing you their thanks for your love, your caring, your prayer and support, your commitment to our struggle for peace and justice. I have no doubt we are seeing extraordinary things happening in South Africa largely because of your help."
Yet, Tutu told the gathering that more prayer and more pressure are needed until the structures fundamental to apartheid are removed. The church in South Africa is also working for an amnesty for the thousands of exiles and political prisoners, and the abolition of all laws that make race a basis for excluding the vast majority of South Africans from basic human freedoms.
"Keep the sanctions in force," Tutu said firmly, "until you hear from us!"