Economic sanctions against South Africa during the eighties

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