About-turn in South Africa as business feels the squeeze

Press, 5 December 1985, Page 21

About-turn in South Africa as business feels the squeeze

From

ALLISTER SPARKS

in Johannesburg

The South African business community, which two years ago was in the van of the white landslide that endorsed President Botha’s neo-apartheid constitution at a referendum has undergone one of the most dramatic political conversions of recent years. Today, in the words of a delegate to a recent chamber of commerce congress in Cape Town: “It is as difficult to find a businessman who voted ’yes’ at the referendum as it is to find a German who voted for Hitler.”

A single factor has brought the change—economic pressure. The new constitution pitched the country into a period of unprecedented racial unrest That caused an economic slump and rising pressure for international sanctions. As, they have felt the economic squeeze, businessmen have been transformed from docile Botha yes-men into ardent campaigners against apartheid. For the first time since the Afrikaner National Party came to power 37 years ago, business is functioning as an active political lobby. At congresses and in their chairmen’s reports, businessmen everywhere are calling for political reform. Some have travelled to Zambia to meet the exiled African National Congress. The Association o£ Chambers of Commerce has commissioned a study* for a new

federal constitution which its executive has endorsed. With the Chamber of Industries and other major business organisations, it hopes to present the Government with a joint Businessmen’s Charter by the end of the year, setting out what they believe should be done to end the political crisis.

To the advocates of sanctions, the way economic pressure has activated the businessmen politically may seem conclusive evidence that they are on the right track. To prod the businessmen into prodding the Government may appear to be the mechanism by which the international community can bring about the political transformation of South Africa.

However, any assessment on these lines needs to take account of the fact that .in South Africa’s ethnically segmented society, business does not have the same degree of influence that it does in, say, Britain or the United States.

Although Afrikaners have moved strongly into business over the past decade, it remains essentially the preserve of the English establishment. To the Afrikaner nationalists who control the Government, that makes business part of the traditional opposition. It is true that South Africa is run by a tacit white coalition of Afrikaner government and English business. It is trae, toq, that Presi-

dent Botha has gone but of his way to strengthen that coalition. But when it comes to pressure and influence, the English businessmen are still outsiders. Afrikaner businessmen have more political clout, but they are more reticent about using it. Especially when the Government has its back to the wall, as it does now, they are aware that there is an element of ethnic disloyalty in joining in the public criticism.

“Afrikaner businessmen are also very worried,” says Professor Sample Terreblanche of Stellenbosch University, “but they feel that if they go public the Government will close up even more. They don’t want to antagonise it and make it even more stubborn.”

Michael Spicer, a political analyst who used to work for the respected Institute of International Affairs and is now public affairs adviser to Anglo-American chairman Gavin ReUy, thinks the gap is more than just ethnic. The ruling National Party is not only tribal and therefore exclusive, he says, it is also populist, with its roots among farmers and smalltown lawyers who felt exploited by big business. “Even now, when a great sociological change is taking place with many Afrikaners moving into the city, there is still no interchange between the Government and business,” says Spicer. Business does not finance political parties, and the Government does not draw on people from the business sector.