It would not be a stretch to consider that Gleijeses would be drawing from his book, Visions of Freedom: Havana, Washington, Pretoria, and the Struggle for Southern Africa, 1976-1991 for the discussion. Although this author has admittedly not read the book, one reviewer at Amazon praises Gleijeses’ work for exposing “…apartheid’s greatest ally, the corrupt Reagan regime of the US,” and lauds the book for revealing that “Cubans kicked white man tail.”

One of the “narratives” in the book, as described in a peer review by Jamie Miller of Quinnipiac University is “…Ronald Reagan Administration’s insistence on ‘constructive engagement’ with Pretoria as the lodestar for its regional policy and, by extension, America’s relationship to apartheid generally.”

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The lecture invitation itself gives an indication of where this discussion will take the audience by declaring in part:

“In 1986, anti-apartheid leader Archbishop Desmond Tutu announced that Ronald Reagan would be ‘judged harshly by history’ for vetoing economic sanctions against the apartheid regime in South Africa. Despite significant pressure from American citizens to act strongly against the racist regime, Reagan’s administration insisted on a policy of ‘constructive engagement.'”

Last year, Ronald Reagan’s son Michael wrote a piece for Townhall referencing what he referred to as “politically and historically challenged liberals” who used the occasion of Nelson Mandela’s death to take “cheap potshots” at Ronald Reagan. Portrayals such as this one at Salon and as pointed out at the Media Research Center, for example, represent what Newt Gingrich referred to as a “slanderous mischaracterization of the Reagan policy.”

In July, 1986, former President Ronald Reagan gave a speech on apartheid in South Africa, as reported at the New York Times. Under extreme political pressure to impose sanctions on South Africa, Reagan explained during his speech that the “primary victims of an economic boycott of South Africa would be the very people we seek to help.” He continued to assert that sanctions would “cripple the economy upon which they [black South Africans] and their families depend for survival.”

Bishop Desmond M. Tutu angrily denounced Reagan’s speech, saying that he “sits there like the great, big white chief of old can tell us black people that we don’t know what is good for us…” But Chief Gatsha Buthelezi, one of the “most prominent black leaders in South Africa” reinforced Reagan’s opposition to proposed sanctions, saying that they “would compound the economic distress suffered by blacks,” as reported at the New York Times.

While Ronald Reagan opposed apartheid in South Africa, referring to it as “a malevolent and archaic system totally alien to our ideals,” he vetoed legislation calling for harsh economic sanctions, favoring other methods of pressure on South Africa’s government, such as an Executive Order he signed which restricted “dealings with the Pretoria government.” Regardless, his veto was overridden in 1986. In a statement, Reagan said in part, “[M]y hope is that these punitive sanctions do not lead to more violence and more repression.”

The sanctions were fully lifted in 1993, and there was disagreement at the time among government officials and scholars about their effectiveness.

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The Center for Presidential History at SMU has recently held other public events, such as “The Four Freedoms: FDR’s Legacy of Liberty for the United States and the World,” “Days of Fire: Bush and Cheney in the White House” and “George Washington and the Problem of Slavery.”