S. Africa Discounts Economic Effect of Possible U.S. Sanctions, Warns on Policy

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa —  The government Friday tried to shrug off the potential economic impact of American anti-apartheid sanctions and said that such measures would diminish rather than increase the ability of the United States to influence policies here.

A commentator on state radio, reflecting what officials confirmed are government views, said that imposition of limited economic sanctions, considered virtually certain here now that the U.S. Senate has passed a sanctions measure, “must cause some degree of cooling of relations and suspicions about motives and cooperative commitments.”

The implication is that Pretoria no longer has to worry about pleasing Washington in its domestic programs and in its relations with neighboring black countries and is thus freed from restraints that the Reagan Administration’s policy of “constructive engagement” has placed on it for the last 4 1/2 years.

Speaking of the Senate’s vote Thursday for sanctions, the commentator said that the proposed measures will have no political effect.

“Neither South Africa’s present policies nor the direction, tempo or manner in which the (government’s) reform program is being implemented will be influenced,” he said.

Economic Impact ‘Negligible’

The economic impact of the sanctions voted by the Senate would also be negligible, the commentator asserted, saying that bans on U.S. bank loans and computer sales to the South African government would merely open the market to the United States’ West European and Japanese competitors and that other measures would prove to be no more than a nuisance.

Yet the commentator added, “No hostile action, however mild, that is initiated by the most powerful country in the world can be completely shrugged off.”

South Africa expects that eventual sanctions legislation will be a compromise between the Senate bill and a tougher House version, and that President Reagan will sign it, although reluctantly.

Reagan Expected to Sign

“It’s finished,” said one of South Africa’s top specialists on American affairs. “The Senate bill is the minimum, and the compromise will be closer to the House version. Reagan will try to modify the proposals but will have to accept them in the end because of the strong bipartisan support and his natural unwillingness to appear to be defending apartheid.”

Foreign Minister Roelof F. (Pik) Botha nonetheless expressed his hope Friday that Americans would see “the mutually disadvantageous consequences” of the sanctions, and that the legislation would not be enacted.

But the South African Council of Churches, whose member churches represent more than 15 million black and white Christians, welcomed the probable U.S. sanctions as an effective means of putting pressure on the minority white regime to end its apartheid policies of racial segregation.

“We pray that this decision (in Congress) will bring our government to understand the abhorrence of the apartheid system in the eyes of all in the world and cause our authorities now at last to decide for real change,” said the Rev. C. F. Beyers Naude, the council’s general secretary.

Would Bar Loans

The Senate bill would prohibit new U.S. bank loans to the South African government and state corporations, ban U.S. computer sales to security forces and other agencies enforcing apartheid and bar nuclear cooperation and trade between the two countries. Tougher measures would be adopted if substantial progress were not made within 18 months to enable blacks to vote in national elections and move freely around the country.

A House measure passed earlier would impose stronger sanctions immediately, including a ban on new business investment in South Africa and an effective bar to sales in the United States of gold Krugerrand coins.

South Africa’s “Washington watchers,” as the small group of American specialists has become known, expect the compromise measure worked out by a Senate-House conference committee to pick up several of the tougher House sanctions but keep the 18-month probation period.

And although Reagan Administration spokesmen on Friday emphasized the White House’s determination to soften the legislation, the belief here is that the President will make no more than a pro forma effort.