As Pretoria continues a crackdown, Reagan denounces apartheid
According to Ronald Reagan, it was a matter of conscience. Administration critics suspected that he had political considerations in mind. Whatever the reason, the President last week felt a need to retreat, at least briefly, from one of his Administration's most staunchly held foreign strategies. In an International Human Rights Day address, Reagan paused in a litany of familiar themes (the Soviets' "barbaric war" in Afghanistan, Iran's persecution of the Baha'i religious minority) to broach a surprise topic. "The U.S. has said on many occasions that we view racism with repugnance," he asserted. He then confessed "our grief over the human and spiritual cost of apartheid in South Africa."
Specifically, Reagan called for an end to two South African policies: 1) the forced relocation of several million of the country's 23 million blacks, most of them to remote, impoverished "homelands," and 2) the detention without trial of black leaders. The practices, said the President, "can comfort only those whose vision of South Africa's future is one of polarization, violence and the final extinction of any hope for a peaceful democratic government." Reagan asked the government in Pretoria to broaden "the constructive changes of recent years ... to address the aspirations of all South Africans."
The President's unusual public utterance was his first lengthy and specific statement on the subject of apartheid, South Africa's policy of racial separation, since he took office. The move was seen by many of Reagan's critics and supporters alike as a sharp change within the Administration's longstanding policy of "constructive engagement," in which open criticism of South Africa is deliberately suppressed in favor of behind-the-scenes encouragement of improvements in race relations. U.S. officials, however, quickly denied that anything had changed. The President's remarks, said State Department Spokesman Alan Romberg, were "fully consistent with what we have been saying, and will continue to say, both publicly and privately to the South African government. We are not changing the policy at all."
In fact, there was widespread suspicion in Washington that Reagan was bowing to a wave of anti-apartheid protest that continued to grow last week in the capital and at least 13 other U.S. cities. Two miles from the Old Executive Office Building, where the President spoke, a steady trickle of luminaries continued to join the picket line that sprang up in front of the South African embassy three weeks ago. In all, more than 50 people, including 13 members of Congress, have been arrested in the protest. Among those charged with trespassing or crossing a police line last week were Democratic Representatives Louis Stokes of Ohio and Mickey Leland of Texas, along with various civil rights leaders.