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Third World countries, led by black African states, had wanted a total economic boycott. The U.S., Britain and France joined in the veto of such a proposal in the Security Council two weeks ago. But even an economic boycott would not have had much immediate effect. For example, South Africa reportedly has stockpiled a three-year supply of oil, it has the technology to produce more oil from its virtually unlimited cache of coal, and a friendly nation, Iran, is co-owner of South Africa's major refinery. An economic embargo would surely hurt some of South Africa's vulnerable trading partners, however, including Britain and a number of African states. South Africa now trades directly with twelve African nations and covertly with a dozen others.
Is there anything that can be done to influence South Africa? U.S. policy on southern Africa has changed sharply under the Carter Administration. Henry Kissinger almost completely ignored Africa for seven of his eight years in the Nixon-Ford Administrations. Then, after the Cuban military involvement in Angola, Kissinger went twice to Africa and seemed for a time to be on the verge of securing a settlement in Rhodesia. His strategy was to solicit Vorster's help on Rhodesia and Namibia and defer the question of South Africa's apartheid. Kissinger believed majority rule in Rhodesia and independence for Namibia were attainable through diplomatic pressure; he also believed Vorster would help him achieve it in order to take world pressure off South Africa.
The Carter Administration decided that the problems of Rhodesia, Namibia and South Africa should be taken up simultaneously. In May, Vice President Walter Mondale met Vorster head-on in Vienna and told him that Washington was interested in "a progressive transformation of South African society." When the press asked him later what he meant by "full political participation by all South Africans," Mondale replied, inaccurately, that it was the same as one man, one vote. This was a misstep by Mondale that Washington has been gently attempting to correct ever since. Not even the U.S., with the rights of states built into its bicameral system, has a franchise based purely on one man, one vote. But the damage was done. Vorster the South African leader was enraged; Vorster the politician must have been delighted.
George Ball, who served as Under Secretary of State in the Kennedy and Johnson Administrations, takes the Carer Administration to task for scattering its shots in southern Africa. Given the complexity of the problem, Ball argued in a recent issue of the Atlantic, the U.S. should press toward fixed, attainable goals: an end to petty apartheid, equal pay for nonwhites, steps toward multiracialism. After that could come the granting of South African citizenship for those in the homelands and an expanding franchise for blacks within South Africa. Eventually, Ball suggested, as have others, there might be some form of partition—an extension, perhaps, of the homelands policy—with greatly enlarged black states retaining some sort of confederal relationship with Pretoria. Demanding that South Africa move immediately toward one man, one vote, Ball points out, is futile; in the present context, the South Africans could not be induced to accept it, fearing that they would be swamped by a tide of black nationalism.