[308]

Addressing apartheid
Shortly after the 1984 election, Reagan met Desmond Tutu, who described Reagan's administration as "an unmitigated disaster for us blacks",[309] and Reagan himself as "a racist pure and simple".[310]
Opposition to apartheid strengthened during Reagan's first term in office as its component disinvestment from South Africa movement, which had been in existence for quite some years. The opposition also gained critical mass following in the United States, particularly on college campuses and among mainline Protestant denominations.[311][312] President Reagan was opposed to divestiture because, as he wrote in a letter to Sammy Davis Jr., it "would hurt the very people we are trying to help and would leave us no contact within South Africa to try and bring influence to bear on the government". He also noted the fact that the "American-owned industries there employ more than 80,000 blacks" and that their employment practices were "very different from the normal South African customs".[313] The anti-communist focus of Reagan's administration lent itself to closer ties with the apartheid regime of South Africa, particularly with regards to matters pertaining to nuclear weapons.