SPECTATOR
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FREE MARKET FOR SOUTH AFRICA
few months ago an official visit by the South African President to the most important countries of Europe would have been unimaginable. It might have pro- voked a civil disturbance; and any politi- cian seen shaking his hand would have risked ruining his career. Now the Presi- dent is received with respect.
The government in Pretoria has reiter- ated that the removal of sanctions against South Africa is not the purpose of Mr de Klerk's circuit of the European Commun- ity and Switzerland. Nevertheless, the Issue must be uppermost in everyone's mind, and it is on this issue that Britain can best make a contribution.
The case for easing sanctions is very strong. A return to full apartheid in South Africa is no longer a possibility; internal economic and political pressures alone would prevent it. Even Mr Mandela thinks that Mr de Klerk is sincere in his wish for change; but Mr de Klerk has an electorate to face that is already turning in substantial numbers to his verkrampte opponents. If South Africa is treated the same whether it tries to reform or not, the verkrampte forces will gain yet further support; and this in turn will please only those who think that social progress is achieved by what Marxists used to call 'heightening the contradictions'.
. But sanctions should not have been imposed in the first place. Either they were ineffective, and therefore pointless; or they damaged the economy of South Africa to the great detriment of its future. Even unsophisticated African economies have Proved fragile in the face of social change; the deliberate destruction of the South African economy would be a catastrophe. The black population of South Africa is increasing by 3 per cent a year, and it would take only a few years of zero growth for its per capita income to halve. Many hundreds of American companies have disinvested from South Africa, and it is most unlikely that the majority of them will ever return. There will be better investment opportunities for them else- where in the world than a South Africa in turmoil; and no one who has ever tried to change a $50 traveller's cheque in a nationalised African bank will be under any illusions as to the problems facing investors in a South Africa with national- ised banks. Once companies leave, they leave for good.
At the heart of the argument for sanc- tions is a fundamental misconception about wealth: that it is something static rather than dynamic, that its fons et origo is exploitation, and that therefore its dis- tribution is more problematic than its creation. That the impoverished inhabi- tants of South Africa's townships should think Mr Oppenheimer is sitting on a casket of gold doubloons, from which, once equitably divided, everyone will live happily ever after, is understandable, though regrettable; that they should be echoed so insistently in Europe and the rest of the world is truly alarming.
One does not have to be a socialist or a revolutionary to understand that South African history has been full of oppression and injustice. But one would have to be a fool, after all that has happened in the 20th century, to imagine that a free and prosperous society can be built on a foundation of economic ruination. To en- courage the flight of capital, and the emigration of the very people on whom wealth depends for its creation, is of course to bring a denouement a little nearer. But not every story has a happy ending.
Who will suffer if the South African economy is destroyed, if it undergoes the same kind of regression that has made Africa the only region of the globe where per capita food production has declined since 1945? The whites will lose their swimming-pools, perhaps, but emigration will provide them with an escape route. Possibly the Indians also will find new homes abroad. But the blacks have no- where else to go, and in 20 years they will number 50 million.
Thus Britain can perform two services. It can continue to call the attention of its allies, forcefully but without shrillness, to the obvious weaknesses in the arguments for sanctions; and it can encourage Presi- dent de Klerk to dismantle the remaining obstacles to a free-market economy, erected that the Afrikaners might achieve economic parity with South Africans of British and Jewish origin. The blacks of South Africa need only opportunity and freedom, not unchecked power.
All over Africa, nationalists believed that if the political kingdom was granted then all else would follow. This proved worse than merely illusory; and those who pander to similar illusion in South Africa, however genuine their sympathy for the poor and downtrodden, are false friends. It is worth recalling Tocqueville's dictum that those who seek in liberty anything other than liberty itself are destined for slavery. Economic freedom is a necessary, though not sufficient, condition of other freedoms; and it is a good in itself, as the failure of planned economies everywhere eloquently testifies.
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