Does De Klerk Deserve a Break?

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At dinner parties in Johannesburg's California-style northern suburbs, liberal whites love to tell foreign guests that "sanctions don't work." The truth, if the stubborn hosts would admit it, is that sanctions certainly have worked, up to a point.

For one thing, the South African economy has lost up to $27 billion over the years as a result of the bans on loans and credits imposed by the U.S. and other Western nations. Without sanctions, there would have been more jobs for whites as well as blacks, not to mention more backyard tennis courts and BMWs for the residents of Johannesburg's mink-and-manure belt. It would be naive to believe that economic pressure, as well as the sporting and cultural boycotts that have turned white South Africans into pariahs, has played no part in convincing the ruling National Party that apartheid must end and blacks must get the vote.

But now that Nelson Mandela is not only out of prison but sitting across the negotiating table from President F.W. de Klerk and calling him a "man of integrity," another question has become more relevant: Given the series of reforms announced by De Klerk since his election nine months ago, should sanctions be lifted or eased?

To Mandela, the answer is an emphatic no. If the rationale for lifting sanctions is to reward De Klerk for good deeds, his logic is unassailable. Though De Klerk can point to a growing list of significant reforms, the changes he has brought about are long overdue.

But Mandela's no makes less sense if the aim of lifting sanctions is to give De Klerk a political boost that would help him withstand a right-wing backlash against further reforms. At a rally in Pretoria last month, 50,000 Afrikaners took a solemn pledge to regain what De Klerk had "unjustly given away." Two weeks ago in the Umlazi district of Natal, the right-wing Conservative Party jolted De Klerk by nearly upsetting the National Party candidate in a by- election in what had previously been a safe parliamentary seat. If the future looks uncertain when white South Africans next go to the polls in 1994, the main beneficiaries are likely to be apartheid-forever Conservatives who angrily protested Mandela's release.

The African National Congress wants sanctions as a stick with which to beat De Klerk and his colleagues during negotiations. "It will make them more amenable to talking to us, to conceding things to us," explains A.N.C. spokesman Ahmed Kathrada. But the A.N.C. has an even more powerful weapon at its disposal if it determines that De Klerk is negotiating in bad faith: not its "armed struggle," but rather the threat of mass protests and boycotts. More than sanctions, it was the mass uprising and bloodshed in the country's black townships between 1984 and '86 that made a lasting impression on white South Africans of the need to accommodate black demands.

For the A.N.C. to reconsider its stand in favor of sanctions would be to recognize that the antiapartheid struggle has reached a new stage of genuine negotiations. A dialogue is what Mandela wanted when he went to prison, and that is what he has now. Perhaps it is unrealistic to ask the A.N.C. to give up one of its key levers at such an early point in the negotiations. After all, full-scale talks have not yet begun.