Constructive Engagement - Presidential Veto Overridden

Presidential Veto Overridden

The build-up to what was to become the Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act of 1986 can be traced to Archbishop Desmond Tutu who visited the United States in 1984. This visit occurred after President Reagan’s comfortable re-election. Speaking on Capitol Hill Tutu delivered a speech, declaring “constructive engagement is an abomination, an unmitigated disaster.”… “In my view, the Reagan administration’s support and collaboration with it is equally immoral, evil, and totally un-Christian.” This speech was the turning point for the Reagan administration, and also the beginning of the end of “Constructive Engagement”. In April 1985 President Reagan came under attack from within the Republican Party itself. The Republican majority in the Senate voted 89-4 on a resolution condemning Apartheid.

In October 1986, the United States Congress overrode President Reagan's veto of the Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act (the Senate vote was 78 to 21, the House vote was 313 to 83), despite objections by conservative Representatives such as Dick Cheney, who noted that Nelson Mandela was the head of an organization that the State Department had deemed "terrorist". In the week leading up to the vote, President Reagan appealed to members of the Republican Party for support, but as Senator Lowell P. Weicker, Jr. would state, "For this moment, at least, the President has become an irrelevancy to the ideals, heartfelt and spoken, of America." The legislation, which banned all new U.S. trade and investment in South Africa, also refused South African Airways flights from landing at U.S. airports. This legislation was seen as a catalyst for similar sanctions in Europe and Japan, and signalled the end of the constructive engagement policy.