Sanctioning Apartheid - KORA

his &camfort. Accordingly, on 21 July 1987, immediately upon
his refurPl from meeting Kamda at Victoria Falls on the air ban
issue, he secured cabin& agreement for the imposition of limited
trade satzctiom. Armed with this authority, the Minister of Trade
and Commerce promptly added South Ahim to the list of
cumtries horn which imports would no longer be approved, and
SQ informed officials of the Conlederation of Zimbabwe hdustrig
and the Zimbabwe National Chamber of Commerce in an
urgent private brle6ng- With an hour, Pretoria had learned of
the decision, and swiftly responded with a threat to cut off all
trade with immediate effect. Confronted with this ominous
ultimatum and the anxious representations of an alarmed
business community, the cabinet reconvened in emergency
session on 28 July. In the enstling debate, divisions among
members proved too great to resolve, This led Mugabe, then in
Addis Ababa att~ding an aAU summit, to cut short his visit and
rush home to deal with the &is. By this time, the contingency
planning committee of the cabinet had managed to marshall
cestain basic data. In particular, it reported that existing stocks
of essential commodities were hopelessly inadequate for a siege
economy and that the Beira route had only a limited capacity to
handle additional tradEic beyond the 30% of Zimbabwe trade it
was already carrying. In the drcumstances, ministers decided
simply to scrap the proposed scheme and revert to the sfafics qua.
At the same time, the government denounced the foreign press
for alhghg that there had ever been a decision to ban Imports.
Even if this were khnidy true, it completely ignored the
feverish debate and high drama of the previous ten dapP6
Although there are currently no legal restrictions on trade with
or through South Africa, appeals to businessmen to reduce their
ties with the South have continued. Moreover, Mu@ has
made it clear that he for one has by no means abandoned his
csmmihent to sanctions.66
Scope for Sanctions
The dilemma the Ronthe States find themselva in has
been galling. Much as they wodd wish to set an example to the