Posted on 12/10/2013 6:55:43 AM PST by Kaslin
"Apartheid is an affront to human rights and human dignity. Normal and friendly relations cannot exist between the United States and South Africa until it becomes a dead policy. Americans are of one mind and one heart on this issue."
So said Ronald Reagan in his 1986 message to Congress vetoing the "sweeping and punitive sanctions" Congress was seeking to impose.
Reagan equated the sanctions to "declaring economic warfare on the people of South Africa."
His Treasury Secretary James Baker said Sunday that Reagan likely regretted this veto. But having worked with the president on his veto message and address on South Africa, I never heard a word of regret.
Nor should there have been any.
For in declaring, "we must stay and build not cut and run" from South Africa, Reagan, whose first duty was the defense of his nation in the Cold War with the Soviet empire, saw not only the moral issue but the strategic imperative.
In 1986, there were 40,000 Cuban troops in Angola, where South Africa was a fighting ally and backer of anti-Communist Jonas Savimbi.
In Zimbabwe, Robert "Comrade Bob" Mugabe, having butchered thousands of Ndebele of rival Joshua Nkomo, was communizing his country. Southwest Africa and Mozambique hung in the balance.
Reagan was determined to block Moscow's drive to the Cape of Good Hope. And in that struggle State President P. W. Botha was an ally.
Second, as Reagan declared, the sanctions ban on sugar imports would imperil 23,000 black farmers, and cutting off Western purchases of natural resources would imperil the jobs of 500,000 black miners.
"The Prime Minister of Great Britain has denounced punitive sanctions as immoral and utterly repugnant," said Reagan in July of 1986, "Mrs. Thatcher is right."
"Are we truly helping the black people of South Africa -- the lifelong victims of apartheid," said Reagan in his veto, "when we throw them out of work and leave them and their families jobless and hungry in those segregated townships? Or are we simply assuming a moral posture at the expense of the people in whose name we presume to act?"
Zulu Chief Mangosuthu Buthelezi had come to see Reagan to implore him to block sanctions, as they would harm his people.
Alan Paton, author of "Cry the Beloved Country," the conscience of South Africa, wrote:
"I am totally opposed to disinvestment ... primarily for a moral reason. Those who will pay most grievously for disinvestment will be the black workers of South Africa. I take very seriously the teachings of the Gospels, in particular the parables about giving drink to the thirsty and the food to the hungry. I will not help to cause any such suffering to any black person."
"Nor will we," declared Reagan.
He cited an African leader who described South Africa as a zebra: "If the white parts are injured, the black parts will die, too."
The greatest forces for equal opportunity, higher wages and better working conditions in South Africa, said Reagan, are the U.S., British, French, Dutch and German businesses. Sanctions will force them to divest, depart and sell out to Afrikaners at fire-sale prices.
How does this help the black majority?
Calling capitalism "the natural enemy of such feudal institutions as apartheid," Reagan noted it was not in the Great Depression but in the prosperity of the 1960s that segregation collapsed in the USA.
While decrying the Pretoria regime's repression, Reagan also attacked "the calculated terror by elements of the African National Congress -- the mining of roads, the bombing of public places" and the "most common method of terror ... the so-called necklace.
"In this barbaric way of reprisal, a tire is filled with kerosene and gasoline, placed around the neck of an alleged collaborator and ignited. The victim may be a black policeman, a teacher, a soldier, a civil servant -- it makes no difference, the atrocity is designed to terrorize blacks into ending all racial cooperation and to polarize South Africa as a prelude to a final climactic struggle for power."
In his speech Reagan called specifically for Nelson Mandela's release, and the release of all political prisoners.
Not for four years would Mandela be let go. But when he was, he, like Reagan, recognized that just as Xhosa and Zulu built South Africa, so, too, had 5 million Boers and Brits. And peace between them -- reconciliation, not reprisals, not revenge -- was essential if the promise of the country was to be realized.
Undeniably, the American right was suspicious of Mandela and an ANC that condoned and practiced terrorism in the struggle for power, and aligned with enemies like Moammar Gadhafi and Fidel Castro.
Yet, in the last analysis, Ian Smith, the World War II Spitfire pilot and last ruler of Rhodesia, got it right:
"I was right about Mugabe, but wrong about Mandela."
As for Reagan's veto, issued in the face of a certain override during a major epidemic of moral posturing, it was both courageous and correct. No regrets needed.
Reagan was 100% right to veto that crap.
Screw Jim Baker and Newt Gingrich.
“Reagan was 100% right to veto that crap.”
Of course he was; he knew what the deal was.
“Screw Jim Baker and Newt Gingrich.”
Isn’t it time for both of them to make sure their Old Country Buffet discount cards are secure in their wallets?
But Ronald Reagan is no Barak Obama!/(BIG SARC!)
Reagan in the end allowed Mandela to become Mandela. If the South African economy was wrecked by sanctions, the ANC would have followed the road of Mugabe. However, because of Reagan, South Africa had a vibrant economy at the transition. Mandela and the ANC saw themselves becoming the hegemonic power in Africa because of South Africa’s economic and military power. They needed the whites to achieve this goal of dominating the continent. This desire to project their power outwards required cooperation at home. Reagan allowed Mandela to see himself as a world leader instead of a petty local tyrant.
Rarely do I add a gratuitous “Ditto” on threads (we really need a “Like” button here!!) but I feel your succinct summation and conclusion on the necessary political copulation of RINOs deserves recognition. Buchannan and Reagan knew the score and the deeper meaning of the veto for both SA and the wider geo-political tug-of-war. That’s why Reagan lived to see the Wall torn down as a result of his actions, this just being a little-noted side-action in the larger cause.
Gee we haven't heard anything about that in the news the last few days. Who would have condoned such barbaric behavior.
The ANC in my opinion will never live up to the ideals of freedom. Communists never do.
South Africa was the Left’s biggest victory on the world stage...And there is no way they are going to give that victory up by admitting that Reagan and Thatcher were right, and ultimately had more to do with Apartheid ending than they ever could have dreamed of.
So many tears...
Hypocrites.
This is the man who helped fight Apartheid who should be admired, Reagan met with him and was very impressed by him. His role in the end of Apartheid is criminally underrated.
Prince Mangosuthu Buthelezi
http://www.ifp.org.za/Info/biograph.htm
Absolutely right. As are the roles of many other black moderates who truly used peaceful means to be part of the solution.
Here is Buthelezi’s Tribute to Mandela......You read these words, and you can understand why Reagan admired him:
Joint Sitting of Parliament
Tribute to Our First Democratically Elected President
Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela
By Prince Mangosuthu Buthelezi MP
President of the Inkatha Freedom Party
9th December 2013
Today a nation mourns. The passing of Nelson Rohlihlahla Mandela closes a chapter in history that will be remembered as a time of struggle, of freedom and of great transformation. Yet this chapter was only the preface, pointing towards the story that is yet to come.
As we continue to ion for reconciliation, his capacity for forgiveness and his bold leadership. Let us also remember his honesty.
Mandela’s old-style honesty was a value that my generation admired. I respected him for an admission he made in April 2002. He said, “We have used every ammunition to destroy [Buthelezi] and we failed. He is still there. He is a formidable survivor. We cannot ignore him.”
That admission made many in his organisation unhappy. But that was the kind of brutal frankness that positioned Mandela as a leader among his peers.
Even as a Head of State, his honesty drove him to make admissions that few others at the helm of their country would dare. On 1 June 1995, President Mandela spoke in the National Assembly about the Shell House Massacre of 28 March 1994, in which eight civilians died when security at the ANC’s Headquarters opened fire.
In total, 60 lives were lost and 300 were injured. A year later, in the National Assembly, Mandela said, “’I gave instructions to our security that if they attacked the house, please you must protect that house - even if you have to kill people.”
This admission that he himself had given the order distressed Mandela’s comrades. But six days later he stood again in the National Assembly and reminded us all, “For reconciliation to have real meaning, the truth should be brought to light.”
As painful as it was for me to hear, President Mandela’s honesty about Shell House enhanced my admiration for him. He was a man of truth.
I know that many still carry the wound of Shell House, and the multitude of wounds inflicted by the ANC’s People’s War. I too carry scars in my heart. But there is a saying that has defined my life, and one that Mandela used to repeat as well: “The definition of a saint is a sinner who dies trying”.
There is no one more deserving of forgiveness than Nelson Mandela, and few who epitomise forgiveness more. Now that the Lord has called him home, I urge those who carry wounds, to forgive him. It is true, after all, that Errare humanum est.
Following the rupture between Inkatha and the ANC in 1979, I endured vilification and pain. But even at the height of the campaign to destroy me, Mandela himself showed integrity.
In 1986 the Commonwealth Eminent Persons Group visited South Africa to assess the situation under apartheid, and met with Mandela on Robben Island. General Olusegun Obasanjo, the former Head of State of Nigeria, later recounted to me that they asked Mandela who I was, because they were hearing so much about me. Mandela answered, “Buthelezi is a freedom fighter in his own right.”
This was an expression of honesty as much as an expression of our friendship, which endured for as long I knew him. He expressed his confidence in me time and again as we served in a democratic Government, appointing me as Acting President in his absence. He was not obliged to do that.
My only regret, as we prepare to inter the remains of our beloved Madiba, is that his long-pursued vision of reconciliation is not complete. He charged those who came after him to take up the cause of reconciliation. Yet he enters eternity with this dream still unachieved.
The dishonoured agreement of 19 April 1994, signed by Mandela, de Klerk and myself, still haunts our efforts. There is an echo in the dishonoured agreement of 30 November 2000 which promised to uphold the powers and functions of traditional leaders. This had nothing to do with Mandela. But it forces us to consider whether we as a nation maintain the integrity of our first democratic leader.
In the twilight of his life, the need for reconciliation still weighed heavily on Mandela’s heart, as it does on mine. Unfortunately, he was prevented time and time again from acting on his convictions. He was a remarkable leader, but not a sovereign, and few within the leadership of the ANC shared his commitment to reconcile with past opponents.
Yet we cannot honour Madiba’s legacy without taking up his passion and adopting his mission. The liberation he fought for must encompass freedom from the wounds of the past, committed not only by minority against majority, but by brother against brother.
In memory of Nelson Mandela, I pray that that is where our story will lead.
As a starting point, in honour of our fallen hero, may consideration be given to releasing the political prisoners who still await their freedom twenty years on.
My condolences to the Mandela family, and to the many who grieve. May Nelson Mandela rest in peace.
That is a good tribute, and summary of the uneasy IFP/ANC relationship.
I met Chief Buthelezi once, and he is a gracious and humble man, more so than some of the white politicians I met. As you said, it is a gross injustice that his role and contribution is not more widely recognized. I guess it is because he is the South African version of an Uncle Tom, in the eyes of the liberal press and academia.
My parents voted for him in the general elections.
Shudder to think had it not been for Buthelezi, what Mandela’s rule would have been....Buthelezi forced Mandela to moderate.
But his veto was overridden and the sanctions went in anyway. On most of these Mandela threads the consensus seems to have been that it was the sanctions that ended apartheid and not Mandela, and that's probably accurate. So then if the veto had not been overridden and sanctions were not enacted then wouldn't that mean that either apartheid would still be in place or the ANC would have resorted to ever bloodier terrorist acts? Or both?
The die was pretty much cast by the time the sanctions went in, but had they gone in earlier, as the Left and their Soviet masters wished, the end result would have been much worse.
It is actually a good question as to what eventually lead to the end of apartheid. I wish I knew, but my thinking is that it was a combination of things. There was mass civil unrest and disobedience, sanctions, and progress of the process that started dismantling apartheid laws in the years before 1990, and I think that lead to a realization amongst most white South Africans that change was inevitable, thus their approval and participation.
I would venture that apartheid could have survived for 10 more years but it would have been more bloody and forced than at it’s height in the 70’s, and to be honest, I don’t think many had the stomach for walking back the progress that had been made. The ANC, on the other hand, had very little to offer in terms of a military threat, and while they could have continued with random acts of violence, I don’t think that would have changed the minds of the government, it would rather have had the opposite effect.
Thanks.
I agree with you on the like button. I’d probably also get my share of dislikes. ;d
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