A partner in Africa? Canada and post‐apartheid South Africa
Before the apartheid‐induced imposition of sanctions beginning in the 1960s, Canada's ties with South Africa were closer and more complex than with any other nation on the African continent. William Dobell looks at the renewal of relations in the post‐apartheid era to determine whether South Africa has once again come to occupy the position of Canada's primary partner on the continent. The resumption of political, economic and cultural interchange has indeed fostered closer links between the two countries than those between Canada and other African nations, he notes, but this may have more to do with the weakness of Canadian ties to Africa than with the strength and vitality of its burgeoning relations with the new regime. Dobell examines the factors which may hinder or enhance the development of the ties that do exist and what benefits there may be for both nations in the pursuit of closer relations.
Conflict in Southern Africa: Whither Collective Security?
Professor Willie Breytenbach, of the Department of Political Science at the University of Stellenbosch, considers the issue of collective security in Southern Africa in this adapted version of his paper presented at the Eighth Conference on Peace and Security, Centre for Foreign Relations (Dar es Salaam), Arusha, February 1994.
The Impact of Sanctions on South Africa and its Periphery
The debate concerning whether the West should impose sanctions against the Republic of South Africa has been mostly political in nature. Moreover, much of the discussion has concerned the morality of sanctions; less, especially by advocates of sanctions, has dealt with the effectiveness of proposed measures. The economics literature has been particularly sparse, and most detailed analyses are inaccessible other than to professional economists. This paper attempts to fill the gap. The discussion is non-mathematical, although the propositions put forth can be derived from formal models. The arguments are generally straightforward and intuitive, though, so that the absence of technical details obscures little. In particular, this paper will seek to outline which sorts of sanctions will be most effective in achieving the dismantling of the economic (and possibly political) aspects of apartheid, and which are likely to harm southern Africa's black population least. The analysis suggests two central points. First, effective sanctions may exist that do not greatly hurt poor South African blacks. Second, effective sanctions must be accompanied by a generous policy of infrastructural aid to South Africa's neighbors if these countries are to remain stable. The next section briefly describes current sanctions, while the following section outlines salient features of the southern African economies. The paper then discusses the impact of specific trade and investment sanctions. The final section summarizes desirable sanction strategies, considers the apartheid government's ability to shift the consequences of such measures, and presents a positive strategy for developing the rest of southern Africa that will be useful even in the absence of effective sanctions.