Morals have no role to play in the drive for trade, report Marion Edmunds and Carien du Plessis
SOUTH AFRICA’S international trade is being buoyed by soaring business with some of the world’s leading violators of human rights.
Latest figures show South Africa is enjoying much of its strongest growth in exports and imports from trade with the likes of Indonesia, Malaysia, China, Saudi Arabia and Iran – all renowned for repressive policies.
The figures, released this week by the Department of Trade and Industry, underline the government’s dilemma in trying to define foreign and trade policies which square South Africa’s new-found human rights drive with economic reality. “Human rights are worked into the thinking,” a department spokesman says. “But it is sometimes difficult to reconcile these with the needs of South African citizens.”
The Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Foreign Affairs has raised the issue with the Foreign Affairs Department. It is still awaiting a response.
Foreign Affairs officials were unavailable this week, and no one was available from the offices of President Nelson Mandela, Deputy President Thabo Mbeki and Deputy Foreign Affairs Minister Aziz Pahad – the three key players behind South Africa’s foreign affairs policy.
The figures show South Africa’s top trading partners in volume remain countries such as the United States, the United Kingdom, Japan and Germany.
But in terms of year-on-year growth, trade with more oppressive nations is ballooning.
South Africa’s total trade with Iran last year was R5,7-billion, compared to less than R23-million in 1993. The growth can be partially pinned on the reclassification of oil imports, following the lifting of apartheid-linked trade barriers – imports from Iran were R5,3-billion last year.
But the growth is not all oil-related. South Africa’s exports there jumped nearly 200% from the 1995 level to R422,5-million. In 1993 the figure was less than R6- million.
Iran’s human rights record includes detaining thousands of political prisoners, and punishing offenders by flogging, amputation or execution.
Saudi Arabia, which operates a similarly harsh penal system, is also proving a lucrative trading partner for South Africa. It bought South African goods worth R364- million last year, while its exports here were R942,8-million. Total trade in 1993 was less than R360-million.
Malaysia, rapidly emerging as one of the top investors in South Africa, lifted sales here nearly 25% last year to R1,3-billion, and bought South African goods worth R750,3-million. Trade last year was more than three times the level in 1993. Malaysia is known for its harsh judicial and penal system.
South Korea, named this week by the International Labour Organisation as one of the world’s leading infringers of labour rights, has seen trade with South Africa jump from a little over R2-billion in 1993 to more than R5,6-billion last year.
Trade with China was R3,6-billion last year, compared to R1,6-billion in 1993. Business with China is expected to boom further, given South Africa’s decision to break off full relations with Taiwan. China’s human rights violations include detaining thousands of political prisoners and torture.
Trade with India, where the police are known to have a heavy hand, has doubled in the past three years, while trade between South Africa and Indonesia last year was four times its 1993 value.
South African trade is also soaring with Syria, Nigeria, Sudan and Kenya.
Parliamentary portfolio committee chairman Raymond Suttner says the issue is “deeply complex … In regard to Nigeria, I would support a trade boycott but we need to ask ourselves how effective this is since we do not appear to have the support of most other states of Africa. That raises the problem of wanting to do something and needing to do it multilaterally in a continental situation that is not favourably disposed to taking up human rights situations.”
South Africa should do its own study of the human rights abuses in China before taking decisions that might impact on relations, he added.
Other observers say it is clear South Africa’s economic needs are taking priority over the problems of the repressed.
“We have a government now that gives a commitment to human rights, but we are ignoring what the countries we trade with do to their own people,” Human Rights Committee chairman Jeremy Sarkin says.