Sanctioning Apartheid - KORA

Sanctioning Apartheid
wages average one seventh those of the white miners, and the
majority are paid far below the poverty line. The gold mining
companies, bastions of South African "free market enterprise,"
have, with government assistance, constntctd mechankm and
laws to prevent any competition for labor. Above all, practically
every black mheworker and his family must suffer fhe untold
miseries of the migrant labor system,
The reaction to a century of this kind of injustice in the lust
for gold and the failure to diversify from a gold-based economy
has now made South Africa extremely vulnerable to a gold
sanction (see Appendix 1).
Swth Africa is unquestionably important as a gold produc-
er, providing over a third of world supply. But only 5% of all
new gold appearing on the market each year is put to any
practical industrial use; Wer, almost all the gold ever pro-
duced in the history of the world (equivalent to 50 years of
p-t output) is available to the market. Gold is so central to
the South Afrlmn economy that it alone can provide sufficient
profits fox the sustained oppression of the country's black
majority. Hence, effective sanctions in this area would have
more effect than other measures short of military action. If all
gold sales from South M ca ceased tomorrow, it would have no
impact on industrial activity in the rest of the world. On the
other hand, the South African economy would be catastrophically
da==aged
The authors of this chapter are convinced that powerful
trade sandions against Swth Africa are a necessary part of the
struggle to get rid of apartheid with the least possible b leed
and damage to the industrial infrastructure of that country. It is
not, however, the purpose of this chapter to prove that point or
even to argue for it
Them is no doubt that an effective gold sanction would be
an extremely powerful measure. It is the practical problem of
implementing such a sanction, in order to make it e&xtive, that
this chapter tries to address. Just ten JUHLbO jets would be
required to export all of South A6ica's gold pToduction each year
and there is likely to emerge considerable scope for smu- of
that gold on to world markets. Furthermore, the scope of such
smuggling would be enlwnced as the gold pice rose with every