Sanctioning Apartheid - KORA

The Cultuml Bqm# of Soufh Afrim EIE 387
'We are convinced that the South African Governmemrt is
concerned about the adoption of effective economic measures
against it," the Commonwealth Report concludes. "If it comes to
the conclusion that it would always remain protected from such
measures, the proms of change in South Africa is unlikely to
increase in momentum md the descent into violence would be
accelerated. In these circunsbces, the cost in lives may have to
be counted in on^."^ The ~sofution of the conflict by
peaceful means must lie, to some extent, with the imposition of
dhml boycott, along with other boycott measures, by the
international communiSy.
The liberation movement has, indeed, "already come to the
view that diplamatic persuasion has not and will not move the
Sauth AfrScan Government sufficiently. If it also comes to
believe that the world community will never exercise sufficient
effective pressure through other measures in support of their
cause, they will have only one option remaining: that of ever
increasing violence. Once decisions involving greater violence
are made on both sides, they carry an inevitability of their own
and are difBcult, if not impossible, to reverse, except as a result
of exhaustion through prolonged conflict."8 The argument is
frightfully compelling and must be viewed seriously by people
committed to peaceful change in South Africa.
'The question . . . is not whether such measures will corn*
change; it is aIready the case that their absence and Pretoria's
belief that they need not be feared, defers change*" We may well
ask, along with the Commonwealth Eminent Persons Group,
whether the international community will "stand by and allow
the cycle of violem? to spiral? Or will it take concerted action of
an &kclive kind? Such action may offer the last opportunity to
avert what could be the worst bloodbath since the Second World
War."9
The cultural boycott undermines the unquaEed support
right wing Western regimes accord South Africa, by pointing to
the abnodty of the situation and the brutality of the apartheid
regime.
'%forms" envisaged by South Africa fall far short of
reasonable black expeckations and are a ploy to buy time in a bid
ter update apartheid by co-opting "moderates"-in reality