The Fall of Apartheid - A Brief Overview

Nelson and Winnie Mandela when Nelson was released from prison

Originally published in the Spring/Summer 2018 of Retrospect Journal, 'Justice and Persecution'. This version contains slight edits to expand on certain points.

By the late-1960s Apartheid seemed to be consolidated in South Africa. Following the Rivonia Trial from 1962 to 1964 leading anti-Apartheid activists, including Nelson Mandela and Ahmed Kathrada, had been sentenced to lifelong imprisonment; leading anti-Apartheid groups like the African National Congress (ANC), Pan Africanist Congress (PAC), and South African Communist Party (SACP) were made illegal; and the economy was seemingly booming. In 1970 the Apartheid regime felt so confident that they passed the Homelands Act granting ‘independence’ to larger tribes in order to allow the state to strip urban black Africans of their citizenship. Apartheid had become official state policy after the 1948 electoral victory of D.F. Malan’s National Party amplifying the segregationist and racist laws dating from the end of the nineteenth century. In 1994 formal Apartheid came to an end with Nelson Mandela’s electoral victory in South Africa’s first multiracial elections. After such a success in the 1960s and 1970s Apartheid came crashing down but the main question is why? Christopher Saunders has argued that economic decline, domestic grassroots opposition, and foreign hostility helped end Apartheid.

A SASO protest

     Writing in the 1970s an Afrikaner critic of Apartheid said ‘Opposing Apartheid is worse than murder to some Afrikaners…You endanger the nation by refusing to conform’ but this is when the seeds of Apartheid’s collapse began. Despite throttling the free press and banning anti-Apartheid organisations resistance to Apartheid remained. Banned groups continued underground and the ANC’s armed wing, Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK), continued its armed resistance. Meanwhile, new grassroots organisations rose to fill the vacuum left by the ANC and PAC, such as the South African Students’ Organisation (SASO), under charismatic figures like Steve Biko and Winnie Mandela. Even the extrajudicial killing of Biko in 1977 did not stem the growing resistance. Guerrilla activity also increased in South West Africa, (modern Namibia), under the South West African People’s Organisation (SWAPO) which wanted independence from South Africa. Terence Moll has also presented evidence showing that the economic growth of the 1960s was more mediocre than initially thought so the world recession of the 1970s dented the economy. Furthermore, technological change in factories started requiring semi-skilled permanent workers instead of menial labourers which threatened the segregated system set up by the Nationalists.

One of the few photos of Mandela on Robben Island

     Meanwhile, the international situation in the 1970s had started to turn against South Africa. The Apartheid regime was intensely anti-communist and used the 1950 Suppression of Communism Act to silence the PAC, ANC, and Freedom Charter – Mandela even reported that in prison he could not read Little Red Riding Hood due to ‘red’ being in the title. As a result South Africa had garnered much support from the US and UK. South Africa was also surrounded by the ‘White Dominoes’ – according to Martin Meredith – that were the Portuguese colonies and the white minority state of Rhodesia. All this started to change in the 1970s. As early as 1959 the Anti-Apartheid Movement had been active in the UK and after the Rivonia Trial the ANC under Oliver Tambo had been garnering support from both the West and East. From 1977 MK guerrillas began a sabotage campaign after exile in Botswana, Swaziland and Lesotho while the UN put an arms embargo on South Africa. At the same time white rule in southern Africa was starting to collapse. Since the 1960s Portugal had been waging war against leftist guerrillas wanting independence for Angola and Mozambique, and after the Carnation Revolution in Portugal in 1974 independence came the following year. While this was happening a guerrilla war against white rule in Rhodesia fired up in the 1970s led by black African nationalists including Robert Mugabe. Throughout this period South Africa had been sending military and economic aid, as well as soldiers, to white minority states, or anti-communist groups in post-colonial states, to ensure neighbours existed who would not aid anti-Apartheid activists.

     In 1978 P.W. Botha became prime minister; he was an ardent white supremacist but he was pragmatic. He said ‘We are moving in a changing world. We must adapt otherwise we shall die’. Botha planned to grant limited reform to undermine opposition; use the police to break opposition; and increase intervention in Angola, Mozambique and Rhodesia. Botha viewed the 1979 OPEC oil embargo, the ANC, and the black guerrilla movements as being organised by the USSR in order to achieve global dominance. He was adamant to preserve white rule by any means necessary. His limited reforms and emphasis on the homelands were seen by anti-Apartheid activists as a clear attempt to preserve white rule; in 1983 his ‘trimeral constitution’ granting Indian and ‘coloured’ (mixed race) citizens their own chambers in parliament was boycotted. Opponents of Apartheid saw through the policy, it was fairly clear that by granting some form of emancipation to Indians and mixed-race communities it would stop them from trying to help tackle Apartheid. Meanwhile, the right-wing of the Nationalists was angered by Botha’s limited reforms and broke off in 1982 to form the Conservative Party.

Police using dogs on protesters who opposed an Apartheid politician being given 'freedom of the city' to Soweto, primarily a black African city, in 1980 

     South Africa’s economic situation began to collapse, affecting poor urban black Africans the most. Embargos on South African gold, diamonds, wine and other goods dented exports as imports of oil and arms dried up. Even when leaders supported South Africa, like Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, the populace did not and took it on themselves to avoid buying any South African goods not affected by sanctions. Tambo had turned Mandela into a figure to focus foreign anti-Apartheid activism on: The Specials releasing ‘Free Nelson Mandela’ being a particularly notable example of this. Rigorous policing and military spending decimated money reserves. Botha recruited vigilantes called kitskonstabel to harass activists or even attack squatter camps like in Cape Town in the May and June of 1986. Nigel Worden has even argued that Botha supported the Inkatha Freedom Party – a right-wing Zulu nationalist group – due to their opposition to the ANC and support for the homelands. Meanwhile, millions had been spent propping up Rhodesia and funding more compliant African nationalists in Angola and Mozambique. By 1985 20 percent of the budget was spent on military expenditure. In 1988 the military faced a crushing defeat at the hands of an expeditionary force made of Cuban volunteers and a Marxist Angolan group at Cuito Cuanavale which helped bring an end to the Angolan Civil War.

     Domestically opposition to Apartheid rapidly grew at a grassroots level. The ANC saw a resurgence with the party’s flag being draped over the coffins of activists and Mandela – as well as other imprisoned activists – gaining an almost mythic status. With a new generation a new wave of activism grew to prominence including the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) and the United Democratic Front (UDF) being two notable examples. Inspired by the Freedom Charter they wanted: an end to Apartheid; a multiracial democracy; and black advancement. A new wave of boycotts and protests against the Apartheid state attracting millions of supporters started seriously damaging the state economically and politically. While this was happening MK continued their armed campaign. Desperate, Botha in 1985 asked Mandela to renounce armed conflict in return for freedom – he refused in a speech read out by his daughter at a UDF rally. However, negotiations between Botha, Mandela, and other activists began in secret which brings us to the final chapter in Apartheid’s fall.

The AWB high command

     Following a stroke Botha resigned in 1989 and, to his surprise, his chosen successor, Barend du Plessis, lost to the far less hard-line F.W. de Klerk. De Klerk was eager to bring stability to South Africa so in February 1990 he lifted the ban on the ANC, PAC, and SACP to be followed a few weeks later by the release of political prisoners – including Mandela. Such was Mandela’s popularity that in his autobiography he stated that in the car from prison crowds of both white and black Africans crowded eagerly to see him. Mandela had a natural charisma to him and could, as argued by William Beinart, appear as a ‘communal patriarch, working-class hero, and liberal democrat’. He even started to put less emphasis on socialism and more on human rights to avoid frightening the white middle-class. However, Mandela’s release did not end Apartheid. For four years bitter struggles between de Klerk, Mandela and others began about the future. The 1989 election had allowed the Conservative Party to replace the moderate Democratic Party as the opposition and racist white opposition started to grow. The overtly fascist Afrikaner Weerstandbeweging (AWB) – a party which even adopted Nazi imagery – began attacks on government buildings and activists. Meanwhile, in Pietermaritsburg clashes between the ANC and Inkatha (with possible government support) killed 14,000 from 1991-1994. After the assassination of MK leader and SACP activist Chris Hani by two white supremacists – one a Polish anti-communist, the other an English-speaking Conservative MP – the country became horrified. With South Africa tired of violence the end was nigh.

Mandela voting in South Africa's first true democratic election

     Starting on 26 April 1994 South Africa’s first election based on universal suffrage took place; in some areas people queued for four days they were so eager to finally vote. Mandela swept the board with 62 percent of the vote becoming South Africa’s president. Legally, equality had come, but in reality equality was still far over the horizon, and in 2019 still seems to be. Mandela hoped to bring economic equality for black Africans, and to reconcile the formerly separated communities. He only succeeded in reconciliation. The Truth and Reconciliation Committee under Desmond Tutu began addressing the abuses committed by both state and anti-state activists, and Mandela publicly embraced the South African rugby team to bring black and white South Africans together. The Apartheid government had created a veneer of wealth tricking the ANC into believing that they had a large treasury to implement their social reforms. Instead they faced an empty treasury so an irate Mandela could not fully implement his reforms. His successors made this worse through corruption or outright ineptitude - while Mandela was slow to tackle AIDS thanks to a lack of money, his successor Thabo Mbeki chose to ignore it. The Reconciliation Committee faced intense controversy. White South Africans saw it as an attack, while anti-Apartheid activists found it insulting that their abuses were being treated the same as that of the state. If you voluntarily came before the committee you were exempt from prosecution, so several key figures in the Apartheid state avoided prosecution due to this. Steve Biko's murderers managed to avoid jailtime to domestic outrage thanks to this. These issues continue to persist to this day - black South Africans remain subject to police brutality, poverty and segregation. The forty years of Apartheid are certainly felt to this day.

The sources I have used are as follows:

-William Beinart, Twentieth-Century South Africa, Second Edition, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001)

-Saul Dubow, Apartheid: 1948-1994, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014)

-Nelson Mandela, Long Walk to Freedom, (London: Abacus, 1994)

-Martin Meredith, The State of Africa: A History of the Continent since Independence, (London: Simon & Schuster Ltd, 2005)

-Terence Moll, ‘Did the Apartheid Economy “Fail”?’, Journal of South African Studies, 17, (1991), 271-291

-Christopher Saunders, ‘Perspective on the Transition from Apartheid to Democracy in South Africa’, South African Historical Journal, 51:1, (2004), 159-166

-Nigel Worden, The Making of Modern South Africa: Conquest, Segregation and Apartheid, (Oxford: Blackwell, 1994)  

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