Subject:
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Re: Bummer of the Week: LEGO Made in China
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.off-topic.debate
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Date:
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Fri, 7 Sep 2001 08:14:04 GMT
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Viewed:
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1441 times
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When I mentioned South Africa, I was talking more about how individuals
could keep the struggle in the public consciousness by avoid the products of
companies who did invest in South Africa. As far as trade sanction are
concerned, I think at the very least they let those in South Africa know
that the world was watching them. I shall remind you when Nelson Mandela
said in 1990:
==+==
We have tried, very briefly, to indicate some of our perspectives concerning
what we are struggling to achieve in our country. What we have spoken of in
terms of the political and economic system is still in the future. Today`s
reality is that the apartheid system, in all its principal elements, is
still in place. We are still ruled by a white minority Government. Millions
of our people are still confined in bantustans and other group areas. In
other words, fundamental change has not yet taken place. The struggle must
therefore continue. In this respect, we wish to emphasise that it is our
firm belief that sanctions must be maintained. Sanctions were imposed as a
peaceful means to end apartheid. Given the fact that apartheid has not
ended, it is only logical that we should continue to use this weapon of
struggle.
As we have indicated, we are of course very conscious of the need to develop
the South African economy so that it is able to provide for the needs of all
our people. This is going to require massive international intervention if
we are to move forward at a pace that recognises the urgency of the needs of
our people. What this emphasises is that there is every need to move as
rapidly as possible to end the system of apartheid, so that the need for
sanctions falls away.
Last December, a special session of the United Nations General Assembly
decided unanimously that sanctions would not be lifted until profound and
irreversible changes had taken place, leading to the transformation of South
Africa into a non-racial democracy.
No such changes have as yet taken place. It is therefore important that the
international community maintain its positions on the issue of sanctions.
==+==
From:
http://homestead.juno.com/rknight1/files/newfield.htm
==+==
Sanctions are Nelson Mandela's biggest chip in the end-game negotiations in
Pretoria. Twelve European countries and Canada have announced they will
retain sanctions, but President Bush is undecided.
President F.W. de Klerk wants some kind of weighted voting, while Mandela
said in New York: "The whole issue is one-person, one-vote. This is the
issue people paid for with their lives. It is an issue over which there can
be no compromise.
There is little doubt that sanctions and corporate divestment have been an
effective tactic. South Africa's economy has felt global economic pressure
ever since America's banks refused to roll over Pretoria's loans in 1985. In
1986 Congress passed the Anti-Apartheid Act which prohibited new investment
and banned the importation of South African goods.
Sanctions and divestment did cause black unemployment to rise in South
Africa but the ANC and black labor unions said they would endure this
short-term pain for a longer term gain. That was a stoic signal to the world
how much blacks inside South Africa desired external economic sanctions.
==+==
From:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/africa/newsid_1514000/1514976.stm
==+==
A teenage Afghani girl living in a refugee camp in Pakistan sent in a video
question: What about children in Afghanistan, she asked, who are dying of
hunger because of economic sanctions?
Yes, said Mr Mandela, sanctions can be useful when it is necessary to put
pressure on a government which fails to observe basic human rights
(sanctions, did after all, play a part in the pro-democracy struggle here in
South Africa), but not sanctions which harm children.
==+==
Scott A
In lugnet.off-topic.debate, Lindsay Frederick Braun writes:
> In lugnet.off-topic.debate, Ka-On Lee writes:
> > In lugnet.off-topic.debate, Scott Arthur writes:
> > >
> > > Do you think we should trade with the very worst
> > > of governments in the hope that the revenues empower workers in some small
> > > way? Or do you think trade sanctions do have a place in the modern world?
> >
> > What a loaded topic I got into. Like you mentioned trade sanctions worked in
> > South Africa, but it haven't worked for Iraq and Cuba.
>
> This is questionable. Citing trade sanctions as effective allowed
> the apartheid regime to save face--it was OK for the conservatives
> to admit defeat at the hands of the rest of the industrialized First
> World, but to admit that violence and unrest had reached critical
> levels and had made the apartheid state imminently untenable would
> have no doubt added support to the far-right nationalist movement.
> There were a lot of folks who were predicting great bloodshed before
> apartheid would end, and in a sense the sanctions led the way out.
> I know of no South Africans--at least not white ones--who suffered
> because of the trade sanctions, and I've talked to a few about it.
> The *social* shunning, on the other hand, was far more effective
> because many South African politicos had been used to moving in
> international circles. But a lot of the academics didn't suffer
> any sanction at all, because many of them were quite liberal all
> the way through. Having a government monitor breathing down your
> neck at every lecture can force you to confront the system's
> excesses rather immediately. :)
>
> Just my two cents--but I really don't think sanctions were at
> all critical to bringing down the apartheid regime. From the
> start of sanctions (UK, then US, then Europe) to the final admission
> of defeat in 1989, we're talking 15-20 years. I don't know whose
> argument that will support, but it's a valid point to make--that
> it was African action that put the regime in immediate peril, not
> economic sanctions. Sanctions, as so often pointed out before in
> .debate, tend to hurt those without power first. De Beers was
> *still* making money hand over fist from the blue earth around
> the Witwatersrand all through the "sanctions" period--I don't doubt
> that without militant liberation movements and active resistance,
> we might still have an apartheid South Africa in place.
>
> One could, of course, make the case that sanctions made the lot of
> the black and coloured population bad enough that they rebelled
> openly, but that would be very hard to prove or sustain.
>
> > It is doubtful that
> > trade sanctions would bring major positive changes in China. The communist
> > still have tight control of their military, and they can easily pull the
> > 'nationalism' flag to blind the people and blame the 'foreign imperialist' for
> > every bad things.
>
> I agree 100%. This was definitely the case in South Africa, at
> least for the bulk of the white population.
>
> best
>
> LFB
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Message is in Reply To:
 | | Re: Bummer of the Week: LEGO Made in China
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| (...) This is questionable. Citing trade sanctions as effective allowed the apartheid regime to save face--it was OK for the conservatives to admit defeat at the hands of the rest of the industrialized First World, but to admit that violence and (...) (23 years ago, 6-Sep-01, to lugnet.off-topic.debate)
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