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PAGE 18
PASTOR GENERAL'S REPORT, NOVEMBER 4, 1986
The South African business community is resigned to and preparing for
increased sanctions pressure. The outside world, they realize, will never
accept the changes that both the government and the business community
have made in recent years.
•Each time we try to score, they move the
goalposts,• claimed one frustrated Johannesburg businessman. The world
appears to be behind the African National Congress no matter what methods,
such as •necklaces• and landmines, it uses to try to force its way into
power.
In the short run, it could be not South Africa but the United States that
is hurt by the sanctions process. Big o.s. firms such as General Motors,
IBM and Coca-Cola have announced pull-outs. Buried in the context of the
Congressional measure is the provision that after a year, if the President
determines that no substantial progress has been made in dismantling
apartheid, he would be required to take additional steps. These include
barring South Africans from depositing money in o.s. banks, banning
i ii ortation of diamonds and strategic minerals from South Africa and
ha ting military aid to an-V-Country such as Israel that is believed to be
violating the O.N. embargo on arms shipments to Pretoria. Who, then, is
shooting whom in the foot?
And the sanctions bill could have great
bearing on the balance of power in the Middle East and Asia (Taiwan would
also come under the arms scrutiny provision).
Gibraltar Slipping Away Slowly
Another strategic and highly symbolic
seagate is under renewed but subtle pressure. The citizens of Gibraltar
are highly disturbed over an action initiated by the British government,
as detailed in the August 31 SONDAY TIMES of Britain:
Leaders in Gibraltar have begun the delicate task of composing
a memorandum chastising the British government for removing a
ceremonial guard from the border with Spain.... Gibraltar's
love affair with the mother country makes it difficult to utter
harsh words.
The Gibraltarians acknowledge that the crisis atmosphere in the
colony must be perplexing to anyone who does not live here.
After all, the only thing that has happened is that Britain bas
withdrawn the solitary sentry from a border with a friendly
country which is not only a fellow EEC member but a NA'l'O ally.
But one of those at a meeting last Priday, Robert Basquez of
the Gibraltar chamber of commerce, said:
·The guard may have
been an insignificant thing when it was there, but it became
significant when it was removed because people think it must
have been done for a far-reaching reason.•
Most of the 30,000 Gibraltarians who live on the 2-3/4 square
miles of rock, sand and pine view the action as proof that
Britain is intent on divesting herself of a politically
embarrassing and economically taxing vestige of imperialism.
Gibraltarians fear that� a consequence the
!2£!,
will lose its
separate ident�a�slowf"y merge with Spain� a process�
1
oamosia•--a wor wliich dominates ""conversations nere.
The
expression was first applied to Gibraltar's situation by
Fernando Moran, the then Spanish foreign minister, at the
signing of the 1984 Brussels agreement which opened the border.