STRAIGHT TALK
MARK BARNES: Quiet, considered policy always wins over international big-boy spats
‘Superpowers cannot realistically impose sanctions on one another anymore'
We arrived at the farm on Friday night, to find our HDMI cable for the television was faulty. Usually only mildly irritating, this weekend was different — it was the Super 18 final. Panic ensued. South Africans are sport crazy — and so we should be as it is one of the few things we do with common purpose. More than 30 years ago, our big trading partners, the US, Europe and Japan, imposed economic sanctions on SA to topple the apartheid regime. It was a proactive disinvestment campaign enforced by federal legislation in the US. I was involved in a number of the forced-exit deals, which had a deadline of December 31 1986. The effect was serious, with more than R25bn leaving the country. Now, there will be an even greater outflow if Moody’s joins the other ratings agencies and downgrades SA’s debt to junk. This time, though, it will be our own fault. We don’t have an investible plan.There can be no debate that economic sanctions against SA hastened the demise of apartheid and brought u...
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