South Africa Eyeball to Eyeball

By the time President Reagan finally vetoed a congressional bill that would have imposed strong new economic sanctions against South Africa, the event seemed almost as anticlimactic as the Administration had probably hoped it would be. Last Friday at 8 p.m., scarcely four hours before the bill would have become law without the President's signature, the White House announced that, as expected, Reagan had vetoed it. Portions of the measure, said the President, would "seriously impede the prospects for a peaceful end to apartheid and the establishment of a free and open society for all in South Africa." The U.S., he added, "must stay and build, not cut and run."

Congressional reaction was immediate -- and strong. While some Republicans supported the President's action, most Democrats were outraged. Even before the White House announcement, Representative Mickey Leland of Texas, chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus, told a rally that Reagan had been waiting "like a thief in the night to veto legislation that clearly has the support of the American people." California Congressman Norman Mineta maintained that neither Congress nor the public would tolerate "this indecent act." Senator Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts declared, "It is sad that the President persists in locking himself into a failed and lonely policy that has put America on the side of racism in South Africa." In effect acknowledging the criticism, Senate Majority Leader Robert Dole remarked, "It might have been a bit easier politically if the President had just swallowed hard and signed it, but he couldn't do that in good conscience."

This week, more than three months after the House of Representatives first passed a sanctions bill by a voice vote and later overwhelmingly approved a revised version by a vote of 308 to 77, the final disposition of the measure may be settled at last. Attention will focus on the Senate, which passed the bill in August by a vote of 84 to 14. To reach the 34 votes necessary to prevent the Senate from overriding Reagan's veto, the White House needed to persuade 20 Senators to change their minds and support the President. At week's end congressional observers thought the President had the support of no more than 28 Senators total, half a dozen short of the number needed to keep the bill from becoming law.

Last year the President adroitly headed off a similar defeat by announcing an Executive Order that imposed some of the sanctions included in a bill then pending in Congress. Among them: a restriction on loans by Americans to South African government agencies and a ban on the export of most nuclear technology and materials. But the current legislation, passed during an election year and at a time when American outrage against South Africa is on the rise, goes much farther. It bans all new American investment in and bank loans to South Africa, as well as air traffic between the two countries. It also prohibits the import of South African uranium, coal, steel, textiles, military vehicles and agricultural products.