Economic, Strategic Reasons : S. Africa Believes West Cannot Do Without It

PRETORIA, South Africa —  Despite the growing international criticism of apartheid, South African officials believe that the West needs their country for economic and strategic reasons and must therefore tolerate its policies.

Economic sanctions now under consideration in the United States and several European countries will prove ineffective, senior government officials maintain, simply because the West needs South Africa’s minerals far too much to stop trading with it.

Further diplomatic isolation similarly runs counter to the West’s interests, they argue, for this could destabilize the southern half of Africa, opening it further to the Soviet Union, and could even put at risk the important sea route around the Cape of Good Hope at the continent’s southern tip.

Such views may seem strange to those who believe that international pressure can force a quick end to apartheid, South Africa’s official system of racial separation, and they are widely disputed by Western diplomats and some political analysts here. Still, they are central to the thinking of the white minority regime here and are the basis for its recently renewed declaration that South Africa will continue to set its own course regardless of world opinion.

“The world needs South Africa,” said a senior government official here, speaking on condition that he not be identified. “It needs our gold and our platinum and our minerals. Without South Africa, the economies of the United States and of Western Europe would stop dead--no steel would be made, no oil refined.

“The West also needs our guardianship of the Cape sea route, and it needs us as a stabilizing force in the subcontinent (southern Africa). The West should realize our importance to its own interests . . . and that we share its culture, values and civilization.

‘We Are Not So Sure’

“What we would like is some understanding of our particular situation,” he said, “that things are different here and that we are embarked upon reform but this requires time. We thought we had this understanding from the United States, at least, with the Reagan Administration’s policy of ‘constructive engagement.’ Now, we are not so sure.”

Some South Africans carry this tough-mindedness further to argue that Pretoria should, as one newspaper commentator put it this month, “snap the whip over their heads,” with thinly disguised threats to use its “mineral weapon” against critics.

“Economic sanctions are a two-way street,” says Prof. Carl Noffke, director of the Institute for American Studies of Johannesburg’s Rand Afrikaans University, who has researched the implications of the current campaign for sanctions against South Africa.

“If we were denied vital industrial equipment, say, or if there were a total pullout of foreign companies that operate here, then there would be strong feelings that we should retaliate and withhold certain minerals and metals. Besides, there would probably be serious production problems in mining and processing these different ores.

“I doubt that we would go this far (to retaliatory sanctions) because we want to be a dependable supplier for the West and we are opposed to trade sanctions . . . . Still, we do have a mineral weapon, just as the Arabs have an oil weapon.”

There are major elements of truth in the South African argument, but how much real leverage they provide is greatly disputed here.

Rich in natural resources, South Africa is a major world supplier of not only gold and diamonds, its most famous exports, but also of minerals and metals essential in steel-making, oil refining, electronics manufacturing, weapons production and many high-technology industries.

Without manganese, for example, no steel can be made. And chromium is essential for stainless steel and many super-alloys used in nuclear reactors, jet engines and other high-technology industries. South Africa produces about 45% of the manganese and chromium used in the West, according to a U.S. Bureau of Mines estimate. It has about 93% of the West’s known manganese reserves.

Vanadium, widely used in steel, titanium and other alloys for hardness and strength, comes primarily--about 60% of Western supplies--from South Africa, which has the world’s largest vanadium reserves.

Platinum and five related metals are so widely used as catalytic agents in petroleum refining, in super-fast microelectronics connections and for hardness in various alloys that scientists find it difficult to imagine their replacements. About 85% of the West’s platinum now comes from South Africa, according to the U.S. Bureau of Mines, and an estimated 70% of the world’s platinum reserves are here.

The list of South Africa’s mineral and metal exports runs from the mundane coal, asbestos, nickel and lead to the more exotic uranium, cobalt, vanadium, titanium, antimony and zirconium.

For many of these, South Africa is the world’s largest producer and owner of the largest reserves, rivaled only by the Soviet Union; in most others, it ranks no lower than No. 3 or No. 4.

Moreover, South Africa’s role as the West’s major supplier of such metals and minerals is increasing, despite the West’s attempts to diversify its sources. South Africa’s market share of chrome and manganese ores doubled in the past decade, according to figures from the South African Chamber of Mines in Johannesburg. Its sales of platinum and vanadium have grown to the point that it virtually controls the world market in those metals, despite some supply from the Soviet Union.

Pretoria’s propagandists are making this dependence a major theme of their efforts to counter the campaign for economic sanctions.

“Ready or not, we are in a resource war . . . with the Soviet Union,” says one South African pamphlet aimed at Americans and West Europeans. The mineral crisis that is coming, South Africa argues, will be much more devastating than the energy crisis of a decade ago. The United States, it asserts, must “stop treating South Africa as a moral leper and look on her as a necessary ally.”

“Where would you rather buy--from South Africa or the Soviet Union?” another government official here asked pointedly. “On whom would you rather depend--us or the Russians? That is the only choice you have.”

However, other analysts, alarmed by the implications of such a choice, have begun taking a harder look at Western dependence on South Africa and finding some of Pretoria’s claims overstated and some of its evidence distorted.

Harvard University political scientist Michael Shafer, in a paper published by the South African Institute of International Affairs, said South Africa’s basic argument ignores a wide range of options available to North Atlantic Treaty Organization nations.

“The United States and its NATO allies can and will respond with mineral security policies that will quickly marginalize South Africa’s strategic importance,” Shafer said.

These options include greater stockpiling, recycling, alternative sources, new technologies to make their own low-grade ores useful, the development of substitutes and the opening of U.S. federal lands to mining.

“The promise of mineral power is a false promise,” Shafer warned, “and a (foreign) policy built upon it will come to naught . . . . Mineral supplies offer no real leverage, and if that leverage is attempted, the lever will bend.”

A study by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee had earlier concluded that “factories and war machines would stop from lack of fuel before they suffered from the lack of chrome,” although it urged the United States to reduce its dependence on South Africa for strategic materials.

“South Africa’s argument is based on a bluff that can be easily called,” a senior Western diplomat said here. “Their logic is that if economic sanctions are imposed, then South Africa will retaliate with its own sanctions. But it is difficult to assume that in such a situation South Africa would deliberately shut down the most profitable and productive segment of its economy to deny us those minerals and metals.

“There is a political consideration as well. By taking such action, whatever the provocation, South Africa would forfeit any claim of being an unrecognized but loyal ally of the West, of being a dependable supplier and trading partner, really of being a better source for these raw materials than the Soviet Union. It is running this risk even now with all this talk of a mineral weapon. It is scoring a few propaganda points, but it is encouraging NATO to develop an effective minerals policy.”

South Africa’s other principal claim of a role vital to the West--that of guarding the sea route around the Cape of Good Hope and in stabilizing southern Africa--gets even shorter shrift from Western diplomats here.

Egypt’s reopening of the Suez Canal a decade ago sharply reduced the number of ships, particularly oil tankers from the Persian Gulf, that round the Cape of Good Hope. About 10 or 12 major vessels now head around the cape into the Atlantic Ocean each day, and slightly fewer pass in the opposite direction. Still, about 7,000 ships round the cape each year, making it a major maritime route. And any trouble in the Middle East that would close the Suez Canal would again make the cape route Europe’s lifeline.

‘What-if’ Argument

South Africa advances on this basis what one diplomat here calls “a classic ‘what-if’ argument.”

“What if the Soviets tried to choke off this trade?” the diplomat said. “We are supposed to have nightmares.

“In fact, if that ever happened, we would probably have gone to war and maybe to a nuclear exchange days before. On paper, the cape route is extremely important, but it is neither a priority theater in the event of a war nor a spot where the Russians are going to try to test us.

“Conclusion: As long as South Africa is not a Soviet ally--and that is improbable--this is not something we will worry much about. And the implication from that is the cape sea route has no major policy impact on our relations with South Africa.”

South Africa nevertheless repeatedly calls attention to the port facilities that the Soviet navy now has in neighboring Angola and Mozambique, which both have Marxist governments.

South Africa’s small navy can do little but cover the patrol zone of 200 miles out to sea that it has set for itself and to monitor Soviet ships rounding the Cape of Good Hope.

The assertion that South Africa is an important force for regional stability draws ironic comment from most Western diplomats here.

“For 10 years, they have probably been the single greatest force for regional instability,” a European ambassador said. “Now that they are trying to come to terms with their neighbors, are we supposed to applaud them as a force for stability? That is a negative gain. Am I humane because I stop beating you?”

Other Western diplomats read as quiet threats South Africa’s assertion that it is a regional stabilizer now.

“With the best armed forces on the continent, they definitely have the ability to project their powers northward, deep into the center of Africa,” another senior Western diplomat said. “And they can use this for good or bad.

“If they are now going to use it for good, for stability and so forth, excellent--but are they implying that if we continue to press them on apartheid that they will become a disruptive force, threatening their neighbors? Allies of this kind we do not want, and it would probably strengthen our resolve to press for an end to apartheid.”