Reagan's constructive engagement policy and South African apartheid

PRESIDENT REAGAN'S HUMAN RIGHTS RECORD

Was Ronald Reagan a Good President?

President Reagan's International Human Rights Record

President Reagan's International Human Rights Record

The Cold War and Apartheid

On September 26, 1986, President Ronald Reagan (1986) sent a message to the House of Representatives that he would not sign into law H.R. 4868 because it imposed punitive economic sanctions against South Africa as a whole. His stated rationale was that the people most affected by the sanctions would be the Black workers, not the ruling White elite. Reagan agreed that apartheid needed to end, but not at the expense of those already suffering the most under White rule. On the surface this logic seems admirable, even honorable, but others have questioned Reagan's motives. Although Reagan did not use the exact phrase "constructive engagement," this term would come to represent his policy stance towards apartheid. Reagan's message to the House followed an earlier imposition of sanctions by his administration against the South African government, which Bishop Tutu called a "flea bite" (Bush, 1985, p. ii). H.R. 4868 eventually received enough votes to override Reagan's veto.

The then editor of The New Black Vote and staff member of the Institute for the Study of Labor and Economic Crisis (San Francisco), Rob Bush (1985), wrote that the underlying motivation for Reagan's position on apartheid in South Africa had more to do with conservative Cold War politics than any genuine concern for the welfare of oppressed South Africans. From Bush's perspective, Reagan's policy towards apartheid was simply one more manifestation of increasing militarism by the United States to ensure a Cold War advantage against communism; therefore, maintaining friendly ties with the South African government would help prevent the emergence of a Marxist regime in Southern Africa. Between 1981 and 1985 the Reagan administration, according to Bush (1985), spent over $2 billion dollars shoring up dictatorships the world over for the same reason

Bush (1985) draws a parallel between the New Right's agenda in the United States and that of the South African government, with the former's goal of restoring "… the U.S. To its "rightful" position as leader of the "free world" & #8230;" (1985, p. v) and the latter's goal of stripping South Africans of their civil rights and relocating them to land otherwise considered uninhabitable. Both Reagan and the President of South Africa, P.W. Botha, claimed that their policy positions were a direct result of the need to keep the Soviet threat at bay.

Although statistics revealing the level of violence committed by the South African security forces against South Africans are non-existent or notoriously inaccurate, best estimates suggest that 1985 and 1986 were the years when the largest numbers were killed by the police during the Apartheid Era (Bruce, 2005, p. 150-152). The shock and outrage being felt by many Americans as the brutal scenes of oppression flashed across their television screens seemed to have little impact on the New Right, including Reagan' policy of constructive engagement.

Discussion

If Reagan was anything, he was consistent. The two examples presented here seem to reveal a U.S. president who claimed to value human rights, but failed miserably when Congress asked him to come to the aid of oppressed South Africans. With this in mind, his speech in front of the Brandenburg Gate seems more like a victory lap than a human rights President taking a stand against the 'Evil Empire.' The take home message seems to be when international human rights conflict with the New Right agenda, Reagan chose the latter. For this reason, President Reagan should not be considered a good president.