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The rift has complicated the debate in the U.S., South Africa's largest trading partner, about the wisdom of launching a so-called disinvestment campaign in which U.S. firms doing business in South Africa would withdraw their investments and terminate all dealings with the country. Last week the Senate Foreign Relations Committee voted 14 to 0 in favor of phased economic sanctions against Pretoria. The main argument against disinvestment, made even by some of the enemies of apartheid, is that such a punitive measure would hit hardest those whom it is designed to help: the 23 million voteless blacks. To that, many South African blacks reply that they are already so powerless that they have nothing left to lose. Nonetheless, the fact remains that economic sanctions not only might leave the South African economy fundamentally undamaged but might actually prompt the government to clamp down with greater severity than ever. Disinvestment, President Botha has warned, would lead to "poverty and a bloodbath." Foreign Minister Roelof ("Pik") Botha has proved to be even more combative. "We reject demands and prescriptions," he thundered in Parliament last month. "We beat the arms embargo, we beat the oil embargo, and with the help of the country, we'll beat this threat."
As the government has stubbornly clung to its power, the blacks, politically shackled and economically cornered, find themselves trapped. "I am a ) stranger in my own land," said Thomazile Mpetla, 24, a resident of Langa township, near Uitenhage. "If you have no work, you are not a man. I am not a man. I lost my job last year. So we exist. My father went to Port Elizabeth to look for work five years ago, and we never heard of him again. At night now we stay indoors and we hear the noise of gunfire. It gets so you don't notice it anymore."
Yet the gunshots will prove more and more difficult to ignore. The government's violent reaction to protest and the counterviolence that inevitably erupts have convinced many South Africans, black and white, that the vicious circle will continue--and grow worse. The fear was most hauntingly expressed by a cartoon in the Johannesburg Star. The drawing showed three gravestones. The first said "Sharpeville. 1960." The second read "Uitenhage. 1985." The third tombstone said "Watch This Space."