American Opposition to South African Apartheid

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
David L. Hostetter
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
South Africa ◽  
Foreign Policy ◽  
African American ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
South African ◽  
Economic Sanctions ◽  
The United States ◽  
African National Congress ◽  
Apartheid Regime

American activists who challenged South African apartheid during the Cold War era extended their opposition to racial discrimination in the United States into world politics. US antiapartheid organizations worked in solidarity with forces struggling against the racist regime in South Africa and played a significant role in the global antiapartheid movement. More than four decades of organizing preceded the legislative showdown of 1986, when a bipartisan coalition in Congress overrode President Ronald Reagan’s veto, to enact economic sanctions against the apartheid regime in South Africa. Adoption of sanctions by the United States, along with transnational solidarity with the resistance to apartheid by South Africans, helped prompt the apartheid regime to relinquish power and allow the democratic elections that brought Nelson Mandela and the African National Congress to power in 1994. Drawing on the tactics, strategies and moral authority of the civil rights movement, antiapartheid campaigners mobilized public opinion while increasing African American influence in the formulation of US foreign policy. Long-lasting organizations such as the American Committee on Africa and TransAfrica called for boycotts and divestment while lobbying for economic sanctions. Utilizing tactics such as rallies, demonstrations, and nonviolent civil disobedience actions, antiapartheid activists made their voices heard on college campuses, corporate boardrooms, municipal and state governments, as well as the halls of Congress. Cultural expressions of criticism and resistance served to reinforce public sentiment against apartheid. Novels, plays, movies, and music provided a way for Americans to connect to the struggles of those suffering under apartheid. By extending the moral logic of the movement for African American civil rights, American anti-apartheid activists created a multicultural coalition that brought about institutional and governmental divestment from apartheid, prompted Congress to impose economic sanctions on South Africa, and increased the influence of African Americans regarding issues of race and American foreign policy.

scholarly journals South Africa-US Contest over Africa Policy Dominance: A Study with Emphasis on AFRICOM, BRICS and Libyan Issues

2021 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 48-73
Author(s):  
Martin Rupiya
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
South Africa ◽  
Foreign Policy ◽  
International Political Economy ◽  
Subsequent Development ◽  
The United States ◽  
African National Congress ◽  
Complex Case ◽  
Secondary Sources ◽  
The Us

Foreign policy is embodied in the pursuit of national interests by States in their interaction with other countries. The attainment of Nelson Mandela’s African National Congress (ANC) led majority rule statehood and its relationship with the midwife, the United States, provides us with one of the most complex case study examined between the late 1980s until the present. At the end of the Cold War, a period which coincided with the decolonisation of several countries in Southern Africa including Namibia and South Africa, following mediation by the US, Assistant Secretary of State for Africa Affairs, Chester Crocker United States, predicted on its new found relationship with the then United Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) and its presence in Angola, informed the decolonization of the sub-regional in which the US targeted South Africa’s apartheid regime towards abandoning its military destabilisation activities and providing security guarantees to the white minority community under the new African majority regime.The result was the withdrawal of Cuban forces in Angola, Namibia independence and finally, the ANC led by the long imprisoned Nelson Mandela at the head of the first coalition government. Consequently, this immediate post-independence arrangement constrained the freedom of action of the ANC during its first term in power. In the subsequent era, the evidence reveals tension and clashes of interests between Washington and Pretoria manifest in at least three areas: creating an African coalition during 2006 against US policy preferences such as the deployment of Africa Command (AFRICOM) on the continent; the 2010 entering into an international political economy of BRICS against Washington’s global dominance and finally, the 2011 coalition attempts under the auspices of the African Union (AU) challenge towards Western intervention in Libya and the deposition of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi on 23 October 2011.Based on secondary sources, newspaper, academic thesis and other official reports this article examines the tensions that developed between Washington and Tshwane/Pretoria over their intentions over Africa. This assesses three areas of foreign policy relationships depicting: contestation, belligerence and finally belated confrontation.These phases begin with the 2006 US intention to locate AFRICOM in Africa, a development openly opposed by President Thabo Mbeki through the AU. This is followed by South Africa joining the global economic competitors made up of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa (BRICS) at the invitation by China. This competitive relationship not only challenged the existing World Bank and IMF dominance but created an entry point for China in Africa. Finally, the article examines the US policy on Libya of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi in 2011 after adopting UN Resolution 1973 in a subsequent development that went against the AU and South Africa, culminating in the capture and assassination of Gaddaffi on 23 October 2011. Conclusively, the US-South Africa relationship over Africa has been characterised by phases of belligerence, collegial neutrality and uncooperative behaviour.

The American Consensus on South Africa

Worldview ◽  
1979 ◽  
Vol 22 (10) ◽  
pp. 12-16
Author(s):  
James E. Baker ◽  
John de St. Jorre ◽  
J. Daniel O'Flaherty
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
South Africa ◽  
Foreign Policy ◽  
South African ◽  
The United States ◽  
The South ◽  
Political Will ◽  
Policy Community

There is a clear consensus in the foreign policy community that the United States should exert pressure on the South African regime to change its domestic racial policies. This is striking because it coexists with a feeling that, in the wake of Vietnam, the United States possesses neither the domestic political will nor the practical ability to determine events in other countries. Why then should South Africa be viewed as an exception? What is at stake for the United States in South Africa that would warrant an effort to affect the course of events there?

English in South Africa: parallels with African American vernacular English

English Today ◽  
2002 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 31-36 ◽  
Author(s):  
Liesel Hibbert
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
South Africa ◽  
African American ◽  
African Americans ◽  
South African ◽  
The United States ◽  
African American Vernacular English ◽  
Vernacular English ◽  
American Vernacular ◽  
South African Politics

A comparison between Black English usage in South Africa and the United StatesThere has been a long tradition of resistance in South African politics, as there has been for African-Americans in the United States. The historical links between African Americans and their counterparts on the African continent prompt one to draw a comparison between the groups in terms of linguistic and social status. This comparison demonstrates that Black South African English (BSAfE) is a distinctive form with its own stable conventions, as representative in its own context as African American Vernacular English (AAVE) is in the United States.

The Revelation of Race: On Steve Biko

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vincent W. Lloyd
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
African American ◽  
South African ◽  
Black Power ◽  
The United States ◽  
Political Practice ◽  
The South ◽  
Political Language ◽  
Apartheid Regime ◽  
Mixed Communities

This chapter focuses on the dramatic change affected by the South African anti-apartheid leader Steve Biko. The apartheid regime had used racial labeling to divide Indian, African, and mixed communities, preventing them from seeing their shared interests. Rather than reading Biko as a secular militant in the black power tradition, this chapter argues that Biko is best understood as rejecting a pragmatic, secularist understanding of politics. Through a seemingly simple practice of re-labeling, grouping all non-whites under the label black, Biko was able to transform not only political language but also political practice and ultimately political possibilities. This transformation is best understood in theological terms, as revelation that solicits fidelity; understood thusly, whiteness is identified with heresy. The chapter concludes by comparing Biko’s work of revelation with the reactionary, secularist racial labeling in the United States context, where words are tied increasingly tightly to worldly referents (“Negro” to “black” to “African American”).

OUTSMARTING APARTHEID: An Oral History of United States–South Africa Cultural and Educational Exchange, 1960–1999

2015 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 95-107
Author(s):  
Dan Whitman
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
South Africa ◽  
New York ◽  
Oral History ◽  
South African ◽  
The United States ◽  
United States Government ◽  
Exchange Programs ◽  
History Of ◽  
Apartheid Regime

Outsmarting Apartheid is an oral history of educational and cultural exchange programs conducted by the United States Government with citizens of South Africa during the apartheid period.  The “OA” collection, published in one volume by the University Press of the State University of New York in April of 2014, conveys the stories of those who administered the programs, as well as those who benefitted, during three troubled decades of South African history.  The exchanges involved some 2-3000 participants during a dark period of social unrest and institutionalized injustices. Quietly in the background, U.S. diplomats and their South African colleagues bent rules and stretched limits imposed by the apartheid regime. Collectively they played cat-and-mouse games to outsmart the regime through conniving and bravado.  The author’s year as executive director of the Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training (Arlington, Virginia), 2006-07, provided a methodology and archiving structure forming the basis of the interviews, conducted over a two-year period in the United States and South Africa. There was little optimism at the time for South Africa’s political or social future during the 1960-1990 period.  After Nelson Mandela’s release from prison in 1990 and during his presidency of 1995-99, the country discovered rich cadres from within, of intellectuals, artists, journalists, scientists, and political leaders prepared to take on the task of constructing the New South Africa. In no small measure, these exchange programs contributed to the quick and sudden realization of suppressed wishes and aspirations for a majority of South Africa’s citizens -- of all ethnic and racial backgrounds. 

Constructive Engagement: Reactionary Pragmatism at its Best

1982 ◽  
Vol 12 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 11-18
Author(s):  
Deborah Toler
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
South Africa ◽  
Human Rights ◽  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Southern Africa ◽  
The United States ◽  
Willingness To Accept ◽  
Economic Assistance ◽  
Security Issues ◽  
Constructive Engagement

No one is happy with the Reagan Administration’s southern Africa foreign policy strategy known as constructive engagement. Liberals object to the tilt towards South Africa, to the linkage of Cuban troop withdrawal from Angola to the Namibian negotiations; to the resulting moribund state of those negotiations; and to the deemphasis of human rights and development issues in favor of increased emphasis on military and security issues. Conservatives object to economic assistance packages for African socialist and self-styled states; to the declining U.S. support of Jonas Savimbi’s ostensibly pro-Western UNITA forces in Angola; to Administration efforts to improve relations between the United States and the Marxist states of Angola and Mozambique; and to the Administration’s apparent willingness to accept a SWAPO (i.e., communist guerrilla) outcome in Namibia.

South African Foreign Policy

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fritz Nganje ◽  
Odilile Ayodele
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Foreign Policy ◽  
South African ◽  
Foreign Relations ◽  
Lessons Learned ◽  
African National Congress ◽  
Liberal Democratic ◽  
The World ◽  
Role Conception ◽  
The Government

In its foreign policy posture and ambitions, post-apartheid South Africa is like no other country on the continent, having earned the reputation of punching above its weight. Upon rejoining the international community in the mid-1990s based on a new democratic and African identity, it laid out and invested considerable material and intellectual resources in pursuing a vision of the world that was consistent with the ideals and aspirations of the indigenous anti-apartheid movement. This translated into a commitment to foreground the ideals of human rights, democratic governance, and socioeconomic justice in its foreign relations, which had been reoriented away from their Western focus during the apartheid period, to give expression to post-apartheid South Africa’s new role conception as a champion of the marginalized interests for Africa and rest of the Global South. Since the start of the 21st century, this new foreign policy orientation and its underlying principles have passed through various gradations, reflecting not only the personal idiosyncrasies of successive presidents but also changes in the domestic environment as well as lessons learned by the new crop of leaders in Pretoria, as they sought to navigate a complex and fluid continental and global environment. From a rather naive attempt to domesticate international politics by projecting its constitutional values onto the world stage during the presidency of Nelson Mandela, South Africa would be socialized into, and embrace gradually, the logic of realpolitik, even as it continued to espouse an ethical foreign policy, much to the chagrin of the detractors of the government of the African National Congress within and outside the country. With the fading away of the global liberal democratic consensus into which post-apartheid South Africa was born, coupled with a crumbling of the material and moral base that had at some point inspired a sense of South African exceptionalism, Pretoria’s irreversible march into an unashamedly pragmatic and interest-driven foreign policy posture is near complete.

HUMAN RIGHTS AND THE ORIGIN OF MYTHS OF POST-APARTHEID SOUTH AFRICAN FOREIGN POLICY

2020 ◽  
Vol 39 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Pablo De Rezende Saturnino Braga
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Human Rights ◽  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Cold War ◽  
South African ◽  
World Order ◽  
African National Congress ◽  
Historical Background ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
Iconic Image

The foreign policy narrative of South Africa is strongly grounded in human rights issues, beginning with the transition from a racial segregation regime to a democracy. The worldwide notoriety of the apartheid South Africa case was one factor that overestimated the expectations of the role the country would play in the world after apartheid. Global circumstances also fostered this perception, due to the optimistic scenario of the post-Cold War world order. The release of Nelson Mandela and the collapse of apartheid became the perfect illustration of the victory of liberal ideas, democracy, and human rights. More than 20 years after the victory of Mandela and the first South African democratic elections, the criticism to the country's foreign policy on human rights is eminently informed by those origin myths, and it generates a variety of analytical distortions. The weight of expectations, coupled with the historical background that led the African National Congress (ANC) to power in South Africa, underestimated the traditional tensions of the relationship between sovereignty and human rights. Post-apartheid South Africa presented an iconic image of a new bastion for the defence of human rights in the post-Cold War world. The legacy of the miraculous transition in South Africa, though, seems to have a deeper influence on the role of the country as a mediator in African crises rather than in a liberal-oriented human rights approach. This is more evident in cases where the African agenda clashes with liberal conceptions of human rights, especially due to the politicisation of the international human rights regime. 

Introduction

2018 ◽  
pp. 3-10
Author(s):  
Elaine Allen Lechtreck
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
African American ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
The United States ◽  
Social Gospel ◽  
Southern States ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
Martin Luther King

The introduction includes Bible verses cited by ministers to defend segregation and verses to oppose segregation. There are slices of the history of the United States, the Civil Rights Movement, and African American history. The southern states, where white ministers confronted segregation, are identified. The term “minister” is explained as well as the variety of labels given these ministers ranging from “Liberal,” Progressive,” “Neo-Orthodox,” “Evangelical Liberal,” “open conservative,” ‘Last Hurrah of the Social Gospel Movement” to “Trouble Maker,” “Traitor, “ “Atheist,” “Communist,” “N_____ Lover.” Rachel Henderlite, the only woman minister mentioned in the book, is identified. Synopses of the book’s seven chapters are included. Comments by historians David Chappell, Charles Reagan Wilson, Martin Luther King, Jr., Ernest Campbell, and Thomas Pettigrew are cited.

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