Hello, I hope this is the correct place for this.
I'm researching events surrounding the repeal of Apartheid in South Africa from a US foreign policy perspective, and I read that when US Congress passed the Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act in 1986, it was a rare event for congress itself to impose sanctions rather than leave that to administration officials. I know that congress has done so more recently against Iran, but I'm having difficultly locating older historical examples to compare the CAAA to, or any kind of database of congressional uses of sanctions. This website is probably the best I've found, with links to full text of relevant acts passed and enough context I could do a thorough search, but really only deals with Iran and briefly Libya, not even going back to the CAAA.
Ultimately, if there is suitable evidence, questions I would like try to answer is "why are/were these uses of sanctions rare, are they significant to achieving their goals (efficacy), is there a theory that explains why the CAAA was passed (predictability), is that theory more relevant to domestic or international inputs, can the theory potentially predict situations were a legislative sanction is likely to be used again (and because I have data for this, I can test for this), if so when is another use likely, if not what changed?"
(On a side note, the US foreign policy towards South Africa from the Kennedy administration on is pretty funny, in its complete ineffectiveness, two faced goals and disregard of the blatant human rights violations. Part of the reason CAAA was passed was because of how poorly the situation had been handled, and I really want to know if the foreign policy contexts are always as poorly managed.)
If anyone knows more about this admittedly narrow topic, or has read anything related, or can otherwise point me in the right direction (or just wants to talk about my research) I would appreciate it. As it stands the CAAA isn't particularly important in my discussion, so I won't be heartbroken if its a dead end, but for some reason an off-hand remark I couldn't verify about the rarity of a questionably unimportant legislative event sparked my interest. Now I want to learn more about it.
Also, if you do know more about the situation at large feel free to bring up other interesting related topics of history or politics. I'll be honest that I don't fully understand the contemporary South African domestic issues (outside of the obvious), or how much of a role Cold War tensions played (outside of Angola). I'm sure there are many factors I have not yet considered, and discussion always helps me decide how much to hone or widen an argument.
I guess I should also say this is for a class, so I'm not looking for easy answers, but more avenues of research. Perhaps there's a key term I haven't found that would find the correct results, as so often happens when researching weirdly specific things. I also hope it is okay I'm asking on this sub in an academic context. I couldn't think of anywhere else that would be able to help with problem like this, and normally in this situation I'd just ignore the question, but I really don't want to let this one go yet. If there is a better place to ask this, or if I need to change the format to conform with subreddit standards, please let me know.
I could talk about this all day (apologies for the text wall), so if anyone wants to know more about the topic or the works I've read thus far, shoot.
tl;dr: Important stuff in bold.
As you might guess from the flair, my speciality is labour history, so I can only offer you limited assistance with finding material that will help develop your thesis. Nonetheless, I have done quite a lot of work on South Africa, so I'm going to try and help point you in the direction of some useful resources.
It seems to me that the most obvious historical example of sanctions being imposed by the United States on another nation before the CAAA would be those imposed on Cuba in the 1960s; I'm not familiar with the legislative framework surrounding the Cuba embargo but I'd be surprised if it wasn't worth chasing up. You may want to take a look through Appendix I of the Foreign Assistance Act (pp1,015 - 1,035), which you can find here and which runs right back to the Trading with the Enemy Act of 1917, though it is not a comprehensive list of sanction-related legislation (the CAAA isn't in there for one). The Department of the Treasury website has a summary of ongoing sanctions enacted by the United States.
Another obvious point of comparison and one extremely relevant to your inquiry would be the sanctions imposed on Rhodesia - or Southern Rhodesia as it is sometimes referred to after its British colonial name, present-day Zimbabwe - after it declared independence from the United Kingdom. As I understand it, sanctions on Rhodesia were imposed by the President rather than Congress but became a battlefield in the 1970s, after Harry Byrd Jr. succeeded in tabling an amendment to another bill allowing imports of chrome from Rhodesia. CQ Alamanac have a contemporary article outlining the legislative battle that you might find useful. I think the Rhodesia debate could be very useful for you.
In terms of finding primary source material, I'm going to assume that you're based in the United States rather than South Africa - if I'm wrong, do correct me! I think the best resource you can use for primary sources is going to be JSTOR's Struggles for Freedom collection (formerly known as the Aluka Project), which you can access here. It is filled with useful source material, and I know there are definitely congressional reports and documents in there relating to US foreign policy in southern Africa, including sanctions.
You may also want to check out the African Activist archive, which is focused on the anti-apartheid movement and probably has some relevant documents that may assist you. For material on a South Africa perspective, the University of KwaZulu Natal's digital archive is an incredibly valuable resource for anyone unable to go to South Africa. Unfortunately, its search function is appallingly awful and UKZN's servers are about as modern as apartheid itself, so the website is frequently down. There may nonetheless be material in there relevant to your topic.
I'll be honest that I don't fully understand the contemporary South African domestic issues (outside of the obvious)
If you're looking for an overview of South African economic history, Sampie Terreblanche's A History of Inequality in South Africa, 1652 - 2002 is perhaps going to be the best single volume for a broad, sweeping look at the dynamics of racial and economic inequality. It's a very political work and its conclusions about the post-apartheid period are controversial (and, in my view, based on some deeply flawed assumptions about a few particular aspects of South African history - but about things quite peripheral to your topic), but it's certainly still a good book on the whole. It doesn't sound like you'll need to be talking in much depth about South Africa itself, and so might be useful for getting a broad understanding of the context without getting bogged down in historiography.
I hope that some of this is helpful for your research; hopefully someone else will be able to come along and offer other insights or advice. Do let me know if there's anything else you think I might be able to help with.
Here's an interesting issue: US nuclear sanctions on Iran actually caused the expansion of Iran's nuclear program further than planned, for example by forcing Iran to increase enrichment levels of uranium from 3.5% to close to 20%, necessary to make fuel for the Tehran Research Reactor (TRR) which is used to treat cancer patents, since the US had barred Iran from buying the fuel to operate the reactor, and the US also insisted that Iran not make the fuel itself either and that those 800,000 Iranian cancer victims should just go fuck themselves.
http://www.armscontrolwonk.com/archive/302492/a-primer-on-irans-medical-reactor/
This, despite the fact that the Tehran Research Reactor posed absolutely no weapons proliferation threat, since not only was it well known and monitored by the IAEA, but was far too small to make nukes anyway, and the US had originally given the reactor to Iran along with several kilos of weapons grade highly enriched (over 90%) Uranium to operate it (Iran converted it after the Islamic Revolution to run on fuel made from low enriched uranium with Argentina's help)
The Iranians regularly offered to cease 20% enrichment if Iran could just buy the fuel necessary to operate it as usual, but the US rejected that and many other Iranian compromise offers, instead hyped the "threat" posed by Iran's higher enrichment levels as proof of Iran's "intent to obtain the capability" to make nukes.
In fact Iran had long been making better compromise offers than the recently negotiated deal, since the US was using the exaggerated "Iranian nukes" threat as a pretext for an imposed regime-change agenda, just like "WMDS in Iraq"
The former IAEA head said
I have seen the Iranians ready to accept putting a cap on their enrichment [program] in terms of tens of centrifuges, and then in terms of hundreds of centrifuges. But nobody even tried to engage them on these offers. Now Iran has 5,000 centrifuges. http://www.newsweek.com/elbaradei-iranians-are-not-fanatics-80021
and
They weren't interested in a compromise with Iran but regime change by any means necessary http://news.antiwar.com/2011/04/20/elbaradei-us-europe-werent-interested-in-compromise-with-iran/
US ambassador Chas Freeman noted,
In 2005, Iran offered a deal. We rejected it, refused to talk to Iran directly, and doubled down on sanctions. Ten years later, we settled for much less than what was originally offered.
http://chasfreeman.net/lessons-from-americas-continuing-misadventures-in-the-middle-east/
All this, despite the facts that Iran's nuclear program was legal, and there was no evidence of a nuclear weapons program, ever.
Iran had consistently allowed MORE inspections than legally required.
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2011/jun/09/iran-nuclear-power-un-threat-peace
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/nov/29/ap-iran-nuclear-program-graph-explanation
http://www.reuters.com/article/2009/07/03/us-nuclear-iaea-iran-exclusive-idUSL312024420090703
http://www.reuters.com/article/2009/09/17/us-nuclear-iaea-iran-sb-idUSTRE58G60W20090917
http://www.reuters.com/article/2008/02/12/us-iran-nuclear-iaea-idUSL1283850220080212
http://www.reuters.com/article/2009/09/02/us-iran-nuclear-elbaradei-idUSTRE5811V120090902
http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=13286
http://www.sfgate.com/politics/article/Most-U-S-tips-fingering-Iran-false-envoys-2646358.php
http://www.theguardian.com/world/julian-borger-global-security-blog/2010/nov/30/iaea-wikileaks