In Good Faith: Canadian Churches Against Apartheid

T.D. Regehr is a professor of history at the University of Saskatchewan.
He is the author of Mennonites in Canada, 1939–1970: A People
Transformed, The Beauharnois Scandal: A Story of Canadian
Entrepreneurship and Politics, and Remembering Saskatchewan:

In Good Faith tells the story of the Taskforce on Churches and Corporate
Responsibility, which was established in 1975 by representatives of
various Roman Catholic and mainline Protestant Canadian churches,
religious orders, and organizations. The primary objective of the task
force was the destruction of the apartheid regime in South Africa
through the imposition of comprehensive economic sanctions. Renate
Pratt, the author, served as the task force’s first coordinator.

Members of the task force had a disarmingly simplistic confidence in
the salutary effects of comprehensive economic sanctions. Those who
questioned the efficacy of sanctions, or who tried to work toward reform
of the regime, were dismissed as supporters of Apartheid, or at least as
people who tolerated it. Readers who share these views will find
vindication in this book. Others may find the interpretations
troublesome.

The Canadian government, with the apparent support of public opinion,
has not been an enthusiastic supporter of economic sanctions against
countries like Cuba and China, and had serious doubts about their
beneficial effects in South Africa. Trade, Canadians have argued, opens
channels of communication and influence through which pressure for
democratic change and greater respect for human rights can be exerted.
Pratt dismisses this view as self-serving, misguided, and evil.
Similarly, the argument that economic sanctions often result in severe
hardship for the most vulnerable people in the affected country is
dismissed simply, and without benefit of any serious economic analysis,
as “the most shopworn of all the arguments against sanctions.” And
Pratt has nothing but contempt for the argument that severe economic
hardships following the imposition of a comprehensive policy of economic
sanctions by Western industrialized countries might drive those affected
into the camps of the Communists. That argument is introduced only to
explain, and severely criticize, the Mulroney government’s retreat
from promises made by the prime minister to impose sweeping sanctions.

Pratt explains that the task force members were particularly offended
by Dutch Reformed Church claims that South Africa’s apartheid policies
were rooted in Christian theology. She is convinced that economic
sanctions contributed substantially to the dismantling of apartheid, but
does not effectively address the concerns of those who doubt the wisdom
or efficacy of economic sanctions. In Good Faith is a book for
believers; skeptics will find the tone and rhetoric irritating.