The exceptional case of South Africa

This is the last paper I have written for my major, very long but at the same time very interesting. (Submitted in 2016)

The democratization of South Africa and the abandonment of apartheid regime’s institutions were consolidated in 1994 by the holding of general elections by universal suffrage . The return of South Africa in the concert of nations, after a long period of isolation, is one important event not only for the country itself but for the international community which has seen its efforts recompensed. This announced the passage from a climate of conflict , hostility and oppression to a climate of peace , political stability and economic cooperation. However, for things to reach this stage, South Africa had a long way to go and international sanctions played an important role in ending apartheid and establishing a ‘fairer’ political system heading towards democracy. Therefore, we will ask the question: are sanctions an effective tool to promote regime change? I will argue that the different type of sanctions we have such as the comprehensive and targeted sanctions are more or less harmful and are less likely to provoke any regime change, but that the South African case is demonstrative of the fact that sanctions might be a useful tool of coercion when accompanied by a domestic push.

I will first show that sanctions used by the international community in the past have failed to solve the original problems only worsening it by reinforcing existing power structures or decimating the population. Then, I will focus on South Africa from the 1940’s to the late 1980’s to highlight the different factors that might have played an important role in South Africa liberation. All of this in order to show that sanctions’ effects are contingent and vary depending on the country political, social and economic situation in order to show that sanctions might be a useful and appropriate tool of coercion in some cases. Although, we should note that South Africa case is ‘unique’ as they did not have anybody to rely on given the fact that they were isolated, but also because their revolution was organized by both external and internal forces that worked cooperatively in a quite peaceful way, in other words sanctions by themselves did not provoke the regime change South Africa has experienced. The question of whether or not South Africa’s case should be considered as an example on which to rely on to provoke regime change gives a negative answer given the uniqueness of this case.

Sanctions are classified into different categories: the comprehensive sanctions and the targeted sanctions. Comprehensive sanctions are broader as they affect the whole country. Therefore, they are more damaging because of “the collateral damage to the civilian population in the target country and to third countries” (Hovi, Robert and Detlef 3) they cause. Given the huge costs and damages caused by comprehensive sanctions, the International community came up with a ‘more diplomatic’ way of dealing with authoritarian regimes which are called “smart sanctions” (Drezner 96). Targeted or smart sanctions are more precise and are “designed to hurt elite supporters of the targeted regime, while imposing minimal hardship on the mass public” (Drezner 96). They are based on the idea that “by altering the material incentives of powerful supporters, the argument runs, these supporters will eventually pressure the targeted government into making concessions” (Drezner 96). Targeted sanctions vary from travel bans, asset freezes, arms embargoes to foreign aid reductions, trade restrictions and capital restraints (UN security council12).

Yet, both types of sanctions have failed to fix countries’ situations in the past but have succeeded in worsening the situation causing more damage than there was. This is illustrated through Iraq and Russia cases. Indeed, United States’ imposed sanctions on Iraq in 1991 were justified by the need to overthrow the dictatorship of Saddam Hussein. Policymakers thought that the constraining effects of sanctions would make a change and that “Saddam Hussein would be the victim of a coup in short order” (Drezner 98).

Nonetheless, it did not happen and led United States’ sanctions on Iraq to be considered as “the most comprehensive in history” (Drezner 97) in terms of cost for the following reasons. First, “the comprehensive trade embargo imposed was truly crippling in its economic and humanitarian effects (…) it is estimated that Iraq lost between $175 billion and $250 billion in possible oil revenues from the sanctions” (Drezner 97). Second, “Iraq’s GDP was cut roughly in half” (Drezner 98). Third, inflation followed as “the price for a family’s food supply for a month increased 250-fold over the first five years of the sanctions regime” (Drezner 97). Then, it is estimated that “the sanctions caused a minimum of 100,000 and up to 227,000 excess deaths among young children from August 1991 to March 1998” (Drezner 97).

Moreover, sanctions are the main reason why there has been an expansion of corruption and of the black market in Iraq. Indeed, “by punishing ordinary market activity, sanctions give entrepreneurs a strong incentive to take the criminal route” (Drezner 98) but also “encourage the creation of organized crime syndicates and transnational smuggling networks” (Drezner 98). Hence, it seems like “sanctions and black market activity therefore go together” (Drezner 98). Lastly, “comprehensive sanctions are likely to increase repression in authoritarian countries” (Drezner 102) as they “weaken the rule of law both in the target country and bordering countries” (Drezner 98). Consequently, being the main “cause of the deaths of more people in Iraq than the so-called weapons of mass destruction throughout history’’ (Drezner 97), it is clear that comprehensive sanctions made the situation worse for Iraq without fixing anything but contributing to Saddam Hussein’s defiance and resistance.

The same scenario goes for targeted sanctions which, although true that they are a less harmful way to deal with authoritarian regimes, have a minor success and are not really effective. In fact, they are less “promising in coercing the target government into making concessions” (Drezner 102). Russia’s case is revelatory of this failure. In 2014, when “Russia seized Crimea from Ukraine in March 2014” (Ashford 114), the United States imposed targeted sanctions on Russian elites. They “placed asset freezes and travel bans on more than one hundred people, mostly cronies of Russian President Vladimir Putin” while “the EU targeted almost a hundred more” (Ashford 114). These sanctions allowed to freeze almost “$572 million frozen” (Ashford 114) and to restrain “financing and technology transfers to Russian oil and gas companies, which supply over half of state revenues” (Ashford 114). This led to “the fall in the value of the ruble by 76 percent since the restrictions” (Ashford 114), but also to the “inflation for consumer goods” (Ashford 114). All of this was made in order to “hit the kremlin where it hurts” (Ashford 114).

On the contrary, “the sanctions do not seem to have inflicted much pain on Russia's elites” (115) and appear as a failure, since not only “Russia has not backed down in Ukraine” (Ashford 115), but also “the sanctions are harming U.S. economic and geopolitical interest” (Ashford115). The sanctions rather than diminishing elites’ power have reinforced it. In fact, “the Kremlin's aggression only grew: Russia formally absorbed Crimea and upped its financial and military support for pro-Russian rebels in eastern Ukraine” (Ashford 116) and “Putin's approval rating increased from 63 per- cent during the invasion of Crimea to 88 percent by October 2015” (Ashford 120). Additionally, sanctions “have made it easier for Putin to sell his anti-Western narrative” (Ashford 120) through state-propaganda that leads people to believe that “the primary goal of the sanctions was to weaken and humiliate Russia” (Ashford 120). This emphasizes the “rally round the flag effect” (Ashford 120) of sanctions, which in Russia’s case boosted national cohesion.

Moreover, these sanctions expected to be of little damage for the population were costly for them. Indeed, they “inflicted widespread punishment on the Russian economy and population” (Ashford 116) as “the sanctions have compounded the fall in oil prices, requiring Moscow to slash spending on health care, infrastructure, and government salaries, which has created economic hardship for ordinary Russians” (Ashford 116). Furthermore, “the crash of the ruble has not only destroyed savings but also increased the monthly payments of those who hold mortgages denominated in foreign currencies” (Ashford 16). Finally, Iraq and Russia cases underlines how sanctions, whether comprehensive or targeted, despite their laudable goal to promote democracy and establish a certain political stability are ineffective, counter-productive and costly; they worsen the situation, transforming autocracies in even harder regimes and causing more harm than good.

Nevertheless, even though these cases and many others are illustrative of the failures of sanctions and of their uselessness, we have to keep in mind that sanctions’ effects are contingent and that there are some exceptions to the rules as South Africa’s case demonstrates. The failure of sanctions mentioned in countries’ cases mentioned above is explained by the fact that they had means to circumvent sanctions and pursue their policies: Iraq’s leader, Saddam Hussein refused to acquiesce to Security Council demands on weapons inspections and threw up one obstruction after another to make life difficult for UN weapons ( Drezner 98); “Russia created its own financial institutions” (Ashford 120), but also “signed a 30-year gas deal with China” (Ashford 117) demonstrating that they had alternatives to European gas markets (Ashford 117). This was not the case of South Africa isolated and rejected by the rest of the world as we will see in the second part.

South Africa from the 1940’s to the 1990’s is not the ‘rainbow nation’ that we nowadays know. In fact, South Africa has for long suffered from an apartheid regime that used race as the “fundamental base of hierarchical differentiation that shape the ordering of social relations as well as the allocation of life chances” (Bobo and Cybelle 319). Apartheid is translated as ‘apartness’ or ‘separateness’ in Afrikaans (Dubow 10) and describes the South African policy of racial segregation installed by the National Party in power from 1948 to 1994 (Larosse). The national party defended its racial policy saying that the “apartheid is a policy based on respect for population groups of the country, guaranteeing each of them, thanks to the spatial and institutional separation, a development consistent with its own identity” (Larosse). Moreover, they presented it as nothing provocative as:

“Apartheid is in essence the traditional racial policy practiced since the beginnings of European settlement over 300 years. It expressed ‘the deep-rooted colour consciousness of the white South Africans’. This consciousness was itself the ‘physical manifestation of the contrast between two irreconcilable ways of life, between barbarism and civilization, between heathenism and Christianity” (Dubow 13)

Thus, not only being a positive policy designed to “give the various races the opportunity of uplifting themselves on the basis of what is their own” (Dubow 10), it was also a non-repressive policy “based on the Afrikaner’s divine calling and his privilege to convert the heathen to Christianity without obliterating his national identity” (Dubow 13). Apartheid was for the National Party “a more rigorous, methodical, and fair application of age-old principles of racial segregation and the most effective manner of guaranteeing the security of white, Christian civilization” (Dubow 13).

This policy that ensured ‘white privilege’ over the rest of the population was made official in 1948 just as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was issued by the United Nations (Dubow 47). The black population was oppressed and deprived of fundamental rights whereas the white minority enjoyed important privileges and a kind of ‘democracy’. In 1913, the Native Land Act which restricted land ownership and attributed only 7.2% of the land to blacks while giving ownership to the remaining land to the whites (Jefferson 54) is enacted. Later on, in 1952 the Pass Laws Act is enacted and restricted the movements of blacks in the country (Jefferson 54). This situation marked South Africa as “an international pariah” (Dubow 47) and “prompted a worldwide condemnation that marked the beginning of sanctions against the country” (Coulibaly 456).

The situation alarmed international institutions such as the United Nation which adopted an arms embargo in the early 1960’s followed by OPEC nations’ oil embargo in 1973 (Levy 416). Then, 1961 is the beginning of South Africa difficulties as the United Nations called upon all states to end diplomatic relations with South Africa (Christopher 440). Later in 1963, “African leaders agreed to break off all diplomatic and consular relations with South Africa” (Christopher 440). The apartheid situation was so outrageous that “many countries adopted trade and financial sanctions and a significant amount of foreign investment was withdrawn from South Africa” (Levy 415). This resulted in a drastic decline of net

capital inflows (Coulibaly 454). Besides these sanctions, the trade sanctions from 1985 to 1987 were the most important as they undermined the apartheid economy (Levy 416). These sanctions included “trade sanctions through bans on exports to South Africa, discriminatory export restrictions on technological goods, military goods or strategic goods like oil or boycotts of south African exports” (Kaempfer and Lowenberg 390). By the end of 1988 “23 states, 19 countries, and 79 cities” had adopted economic measures distancing themselves from South Africa (Coulibaly 458).

“The persistence of apartheid, coupled with South Africa's apparent economic vulnerability, prompted a round of multilateral economic sanctions” (Levy 417). These sanctions were illustrated by the September 1985’s European Community limited trade and financial sanctions on South Africa followed by the Commonwealth’s adoption of similar measures later on in October (Levy 417). Foreign banks followed the sanctions’ trend: in the first half of 1985, U.S. banks withdrew $1 billion and in the Fall of 1986, Barclays Bank the largest British investor in the country also disinvested (Coulibaly 459). As the government failed to cooperate with its creditors, both political and financial crises continued and increased (Levy 417). “In February 1986, an interim agreement with creditors was reached, and in March the state of emergency was lifted” (Levy 417).

Despite these economic measures, the situation was not moving forward. Then, “in the fall of 1986, the second and more significant round of sanctions ensued” (Levy 417). In September, “the EC banned imports of South African iron, steel, and gold coins, as well as new investments in South Africa” (Levy 417). Thereafter, Japan passed the same sanctions (Levy 417). In the United States, Congress passed the Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act (CAAA) which “severely restricted lending to South Africa and imposed import bans on iron, steel, coal, uranium, textiles, and agricultural goods” (Levy 417). There were also “non-economic sanctions, such as the prohibition against South African participation in international rugby and cricket competitions” (Levy 418).

The goal of international sanctions against South Africa was simple and undoubtedly laudable: “to induce a reduction in economic welfare and thereby diminish south Africa’s willingness to persist in maintaining apartheid” (Kaempfer and Lowenberg 380). In other words, to “drive white South Africa up against the wall” (Kaempfer and Lowenberg 319). This quite worked as following the sanctions, South Africa went through economic difficulties that led many domestic actors to realize “how the economic situation was untenable and required political change” (Levy 415).

Yet, despite the sanctions, “the repression of the black majority continued and at times intensified” (Levy 418). This divided scholars on the effectiveness of sanctions. Some argue that the direct economic impact of imposed sanctions was quite small (Levy 419) given the estimated cost of South Africa loss at $354 million annually, or 0.5 percent of GNP (Levy 418). Their argument is reinforced by the fact that South Africa’s story brings major internal actors on the scene called ‘non-state actors’. Those non-state actors are represented by South African citizens, organizations, parties and even newspapers. The African National Congress (Baxter 35), the anti-apartheid newspaper New Nation (Trabold 101), the South African Students’ Association (SASA) (Gurney 133), the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) (Maharaj 14) are some of the non-state actors that played an important part in South Africa’s regime change. In fact, these movements are the main reason why South Africa’s political situation was spread around the world. They were even the ones knowingly pushing for sanctions claiming that “it is a price that they are willing to pay for their freedom” (Boesak). They fought the Apartheid regime in different ways, despite the stressful and dangerous conditions.

First, there was the New Nation newspapers an anti-apartheid journal that contributed to the fight. They started publishing in January 1986 just after the government declared a state of emergency in July 1985 (Trabold 105). Despite the emergency regulation that prohibited journalists from publishing anything that “describes scenes of unrest, contains subversive statements, promotes revolution or uprisings in South Africa, stirs up feelings of hostility in the public towards a local authority” (Trabold 104), New Nation led by Zwelakhe Sisulu (Trabold 101) stood for what they believed in. Collectively working to challenge the apartheid movement (Trabold 105) they continued to publish and changed their publication frequency from every two weeks to a weekly publication in order to increase the information flux the population was receiving (Trabold 101). Their articles “exposed the numerous abuses of the apartheid regime and provided a voice to those individuals and groups the government was trying to silence” (Trabold 101). New Nation’s intentions and goals were not just to “report news affecting the black community” (Trabold 105), but to inspire and “mobilize the black community to take action against the apartheid government” (Trabold 105). They also worked with the African National congress, promoting “resistance consistent with the values and objectives of the ANC” (Trabold 105).

Second and maybe the most influential of the non-state actors was the African National Congress created in 1912 by “a tiny elite of African chiefs and educated professionals” (Butler 16). They were motivated to resist against “the white supremacist state” (Butler 16) and did their best to achieve their goal. They summarized their opposition to the authoritarian National Party as follow “The National Party is a mouse and they think they can fight an elephant. We, the African National Congress, are the elephant. If a mouse overfeeds itself, it will gain weight, but it is still a mouse” (Baxter 35). Their fight was mostly based on ‘the boycott strategy’ as they saw it as “one of the major political weapons in the country” (Gurney 125). This led them to instruct Congress to “campaign for a boycott of selected businesses in an attempt to force them to train and pay decent wages to Africans” during one of the ANC’s national conference in 1953 (Gurney 125). The following year, the ANC organized and led “a boycott of local shops where African customers were badly treated” (Gurney 125). The ANC also allied itself with other organizations such as the Committee of African Organizations (CAO) (Gurney 128), the Movement for Colonial Freedom (MCF), the National Council of Civil Liberties and so on. Together they organized other campaigns such as “the collection of demands for the Freedom Charter and organization of the Congress of the People, the campaign against the Bantu Education Act, and campaigns to stop the extension of passes to women” (Gurney 125).

The more the ANC was advancing, the more they noticed that they needed “support for the boycott from outside South Africa” (Gurney 125). This led to their participation at the Bandung Conference of Asian and African Countries in 1955 where they argued that:

"we are convinced that the Government of South Africa could be forced to reconsider its reactionary and inhuman policy if all the nations who do not approve ,particularly the Governments of the United States and Britain, would boldly take a firm stand against such practices” (Gurney 125)

Their efforts were recompensed by independent African countries’ agreement in 1958 to boycott South African goods (Gurney 126). This helped the ANC in organizing their “boycott month” which was held in March 1960. The slogan of the campaign was “Don't Buy Slavery, Don't Buy South African” (Gurney 134), which was quite effective as it affected business owners. A greengrocer even said “I have never encountered anything like this before (…) I haven't sold a grape and not one single tin of South African fruit has come off the shelf” (Gurney 141).

Similarly, to the ANC, South African black citizens were also motivated to stand against the white supremacist government. To do so, they also used the ‘boycott strategy’. One of the manifestations of the ‘boycott strategy’ is the South African mineworkers’ boycott of concessionary trading stores (Gurney 124). Another one is the refusal of Evaton and Alexandra residents, South African townships, to pay the bus fares increased by the government (Gurney 125). The residents decided for over a year to use “the solve and less convenient train service” (Gurney 125). These initiatives were not organized by the ANC, but by mostly black citizens of South African themselves. Although, we have to recognize that they have been motivated by the ANC great leaders such as Nelson Mandela who pushed for “the empowerment of the ordinary people of the world to freely determine their destiny, unhindered by tyrants and dictators” (Landsberg 108).

All of these actions raised international awareness but the turning point was the ‘Sharpeville massacre’ which happened during the ‘boycott month’. On March 21, “unarmed protesters taking part in a demonstration against passes were shot dead by police in Sharpeville (…) hundreds were injured” (Gurney 142). This was not the first time a ‘massacre’ happened in South Africa. However, this was the first time “reporters were at the scene and pictures of protesters shot in the back were immediately transmitted to the world's press” (Gurney 142). This provoked a violent reaction from the international community and led London’s committee to think that “apartheid could not be changed from within, it must be changed from outside” (Gurney 143).

In other words, even if something was done internally at the grass root level, something more was needed to drastically change South Africa’s political regime. The Sharpeville massacre led to realize that “the strategy of launching an international campaign of economic sanctions against South Africa with the aim of crippling the apartheid economy acquired a new urgency and potential” (Gurney 143). Therefore, given the fact that “the government’s decision to negotiate was influenced by economic pressures” (Giliomee 88), it appears that scholars’ arguments according to which sanctions were “the final straw that made economic conditions intolerable and forced political change” (Levy 419) might be true. This shows that beliefs that “broad sanctions—total financial and trade embargoes—do not have a good track record of changing target countries’ policies or of pushing them toward democracy” (Bahrami and Parsi 1), do not apply to the South Africa’s case since they were useful.

Finally sanctions whether comprehensive or targeted are criticized and classified as ineffective. Even though South Africa’s case would be considered as one of the rare ‘successful’ cases, it is important to underline that sanctions’ effectiveness depends on different factors such as the target country resources, social and political atmosphere and so on. Yet, sanctions are not a ‘magic cure’ to conflicts and political instability but appear as better alternatives than the ‘doing nothing’ solution and should remain used as coercive tools.

The question of whether or not sanctions are effective to promote regime change is difficult to answer focusing on South Africa’s case given the fact that sanctions did certainly worked, but in cooperation with South African organizations. Should we reproduce South Africa’s case elsewhere when it comes to sanctions’ application? Levy advices not and underlines the reasons why sanctions worked in South Africa: “the extensive labor-market distortions of apartheid proved increasingly costly and unacceptable, an effective political movement against the apartheid government, and the economic flaws of apartheid to make South African unattractive to foreign investors” (Levy 419). Some might ask if it is then possible to apply sanctions to a country in order to provoke regime change if the country has all the conditions South Africa presented on its way to regime change? To those, I would answer no as sanctions have to be specifically designed for the given country’s situation.

Khady-Emilia D, your future employee

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IMAGES

• Boycott Apartheid : getty images ; https://www.google.com/culturalinstitute/beta/exhibit/QQYzBjFH

• Boycott the products : Historywiz, http://www.historywiz.com/boycott.htm

• Paul Combs/Tribune Content Agency