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Sanctions Against South Africa: Myths, Debates, and Consequences

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Boycotts Past and Present

Part of the book series: Palgrave Critical Studies of Antisemitism and Racism ((PCSAR))

Abstract

Students of the fall of apartheid tend to agree that the international campaign for boycott and divestment sanctions against minority rule in South Africa had only a limited effect on eventual democratization there. However, the prevailing view among the wider public has been very different. The network of international organizations and activists involved in that campaign have understandably enough tended to overstate their contribution and its effects. Yet, as this chapter suggests, this image was promoted for instrumental reasons, especially by Thabo Mbeki, in the context of a foreign policy based on exporting the South African miracle. This was at the expense of giving due recognition to the internal processes and activism in 1980s South Africa, as well as to the armed struggle.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Thabo Mbeki, African Renaissance: The New Struggle (Capetown, 1999); see also: Fantu Cheru, African Renaissance: Roadmaps to the Challenges of Globalization (London, 2002); for a critical analysis of Mbeki’s ideology of the African Renaissance see: Peter Vale and Sipho Maseko, ‘Thabo Mbeki, South Africa and the idea of an African Renaissance’, in: Thabo Mbeki’s World: The Politics and Ideology of the South African President, eds. Sean Jacobs and Richard Calland, (London, 2013); for the African Renaissance in the context of the African Union see: Mammo Muchie, Phindil Lukhele-Olorunju, and Oghenerobor Akpor (eds.), The African Union Ten Years After. Solving African Problems with Pan-Africanism and the African Renaissance (Capetown, 2013).

  2. 2.

    Johnson Richard W. South Africa’s brave new world: the beloved country since the end of apartheid (New York, 2009).

  3. 3.

    Suhas Chakma Susha, ‘The Issue of Compensation for Colonialism and Slavery at the World Conference Against Racism’. in: Human Rights in Development Yearbook 2001: Reparations Redressing Past Wrongs, eds. George Ulrich and Louise Krabbe Boserup, (New York, 2003); Rhoda Howard-Hassmann, Reparations to Africa (Philadelphia, 2008).

  4. 4.

    Deepa Reddy, ‘The Ethnicity of Caste’, Anthropological Quarterly, vol. 78, no. 3, (2005), 543–584.

  5. 5.

    Ran Greenstein. ‘Israel/Palestine and the Aparteid Analogy: Critics, Apologists and the Strategic Lessons’, in: The Case for Sanctions Against Israel, ed. Audrea Lim, (London, 2012), 149–158.

  6. 6.

    Na’eem Na’eem. Pretending Democracy: Israel, an Ethnocratic State (Johannesburg, 2014).

  7. 7.

    Bayefsky Anne. ‘The UN World Conference Against Racism A Racist Anti-racism Conference’, Proceedings of the Annual Meeting (American Society of International Law), vol. 96, (2002), 65–74.

  8. 8.

    Roland Burke, Decolonization and the Evolution of International Human Rights (Philadelphia, 2010). Between 18 and 24 April 1955 in Bandung, Indonesia, 29 mostly Asian and a few African newly independent states convened. The conference’s stated aims were to promote Afro-Asian economic and cultural cooperation and to oppose colonialism. The conference was an important step toward the Non-Aligned Movement. Between 22 April and 13 May 1968 in Teheran, Iran, a UN conference commemorating the twentieth anniversary of the universal declaration of Human Rights incorporated many of the principles and values of the Bandung conference into the UN’s Human Rights agenda, further consolidating the so called anti-imperialist bloc in international affairs.

  9. 9.

    Tom Lantos, ‘The Durban Debacle: An Insider’s View of the UN World Conference Against Racism’. The Fletcher Forum of World Affairs, vol. 31, (2002).

  10. 10.

    Herbert London and Jed Babbin. The BDS War against Israel (London, 2014).

  11. 11.

    http://www.bdsmovement.net/call. The call was also reproduced in Audrea Lim, The Case for Sanctions against Israel (London, 2012).

  12. 12.

    http://www.wiesenthal.com/atf/cf/%7B54d385e6-f1b9-4e9f-8e94-890c3e6dd277%7D/REPORT_313.PDF

  13. 13.

    http://www.ngo-monitor.org/article/ngo_leadership_in_boycott_and_divestment_campaigns

  14. 14.

    Hakan Thorn, Anti-Apartheid and the Emergence of a Global Civil Society (London, 2006).

  15. 15.

    David Rieff. A Bed for the Night: Humanitarianism at Crisis (New York, 2002).

  16. 16.

    Stephen Hopgood. The End Times of Human Rights (Ithaca, 2013).

  17. 17.

    Samuel Moyn, The Last Utopia (Cambridge, MA, 2010).

  18. 18.

    Geoff Simons, Imposing Economic Sanctions (London, 1999).

  19. 19.

    David Welsh, The Rise and Fall of Apartheid (Charlottesville, 2009); Herman Giliomee, The Afrikaners (Capetown, 2003); Herman Giliomee, The Last Afrikaner Leaders (Capetown, 2012); Guelke Adrien, Rethinking the Rise and Fall of Apartheid South Africa (London, 2006).

  20. 20.

    Herman Giliomee, The Afrikaners (Capetown, 2003).

  21. 21.

    De Klerk Wilhelm, The Last Trek – A New Beginning (London, 1999), 70.

  22. 22.

    About Joe Slovo, Slovo: The Unfinished Autobiography of ANC Leader Joe Slovo (Cape Town, 1997); see also the biographical sketch in http://www.sahistory.org.za/people/joe-slovo

  23. 23.

    P. Davis Stephen, ‘Economic Pressure on South Africa: Does It Work?’, in: Effective Sanctions on South Africa: The Cutting Edge of Economic Intervention, ed. George Shepherd (Westport, 1991), 66.

  24. 24.

    David Welsh, The Rise and Fall of Apartheid (Charlottesville, 2009), 273.

  25. 25.

    Quoted in Jack B. Bloom, Black South Africa and the Disinvestment Dilemma (Johannesburg, 1986), 88–89.

  26. 26.

    Merle Lipton, Capitalism and Apartheid (London, 1985).

  27. 27.

    Merle Lipton, Liberals, Marxists and Nationalists: Competing Interpretations of South African History (London, 2007).

  28. 28.

    Merle Lipton, Sanctions and South Africa: The Dynamics of Economic Isolation (London, 1988), 122.

  29. 29.

    Jack B. Bloom, Black South Africa and the Disinvestment Dilemma (Johannesburg, 1986), 58–73; David Welsh, The Rise and Fall of Apartheid (Charlottesville, 2009), 257–258.

  30. 30.

    Jack B. Bloom, Black South Africa and the Disinvestment Dilemma (Johannesburg, 1986), 82.

  31. 31.

    Johan Galtung, “On the effects of international Economic Sanctions”, World Politics, vol. 19, no. 3, (1967), 389.

  32. 32.

    Neta C. Crawford, ‘How arms Embargoes work’, in: How Sanctions Work: Lessons from South Africa, eds. Neta C. Crawford and Audie Klotz, (London, 1999); Neta C. Crawford, ‘Oil Sanctions against Apartheid’, in: How Sanctions Work: Lessons from South Africa, eds. Neta C. Crawford and Audie Klotz, (London, 1999); G. Simpson, ‘The Politics and Economics of the Armaments Industry in South Africa’, in: War and Society, eds. J. Cock and L. Nathan, (Cape Town and Johannesburg, 1989).

  33. 33.

    Neta C. Crawford and Audie Klotz (eds.), How Sanctions Work: Lessons from South Africa (London, 1999).

  34. 34.

    Johan Galtung. ‘On the effects of international Economic Sanctions’, World Politics, vol. 19, no. 3 (1967).

  35. 35.

    David Welsh, The Rise and Fall of Apartheid (Charlottesville, 2009), 256.

  36. 36.

    Neville M. Stulz, ‘Sanctions, models of change and South Africa’, South Africa International, vol. 13, no. 2, (1982); see also Audie Klotz, ‘Making sanctions work: comparative lessons’, in: How Sanctions Work: Lessons from South Africa, eds. Neta C. Crawford and Audie Klotz, (London, 1999); Gary C. Hufbauer, Jeffrey J. Schott, Kimberly Ann Elliot, and Barbara Oegg, Economic Sanctions Reconsidered (Washington, DC, 2007).

  37. 37.

    David Welsh, The Rise and Fall of Apartheid (Charlottesville, 2009), 252.

  38. 38.

    Herman Giliomee, The Last Afrikaner Leaders (Capetown, 2012), 297.

  39. 39.

    Herman Giliomee, The Last Afrikaner Leaders (Capetown, 2012), 343.

  40. 40.

    C. H. Feinstein, An Economic history of South Africa (Cambridge, 2005).

  41. 41.

    Stephen R. Lewis. The Economics of Apartheid (Washington, DC, 1990), 127.

  42. 42.

    David Welsh, The Rise and Fall of Apartheid (Charlottesville, 2009), 253.

  43. 43.

    Thomas Piketty. Capital in the 21st Century (Cambridge, 2014).

  44. 44.

    Xavier Carim, Audie Klotz, and Olivier Lebleu. ‘The Political Economy of Financial Sanctions’, in: How Sanctions Work: Lessons from South Africa, eds. Neta C. Crawford and Audie Klotz, (London, 1999), 163 and fn 16.

  45. 45.

    Don Ncube, The Influence of Apartheid and Capitalism on the Development of Black Trade Unions in South Africa (Johannesburg, 1985).

  46. 46.

    David Welsh, The Rise and Fall of Apartheid (Charlottesville, 2009), 261–262.

  47. 47.

    Mark Gevisser, A Legacy of Liberation: Thabo Mbeki and the Future of the South African Dream (New York, 2007); Mark Gevisser, Thabo Mbeki the Dream Deferred (Johannesburg, 2007).

  48. 48.

    Herman Giliomee, The Last Afrikaner Leaders (Capetown, 2012), 199–203.

  49. 49.

    The text of the speech: http://www.nelsonmandela.org/omalley/index.php/site/q/03lv01538/04lv01600/05lv01638/06lv01639.htm

  50. 50.

    ANC PRESS STATEMENT PRESENTED BY OLIVER TAMBO LUSAKA, AUGUST 16, 1985 http://www.anc.org.za/ancdocs/pr/1980s/pr850816.html

  51. 51.

    Herman Giliomee, The Last Afrikaner Leaders (Capetown, 2012), 229–33.

  52. 52.

    South African Communist Party, The Path to Power, program of the SACP adopted 1989: www.SACP.org.za

  53. 53.

    Gillian Hart. Rethinking the South African Crisis: Nationalism, Populism, Hegemony (Athens, 2013).

  54. 54.

    Adam Habib, South Africa’s Suspended Revolution: Hopes and Prospects (Athens, 2013).

  55. 55.

    Mitchel H. Allan, Globalization, Negotiation, and the Failure of Transformation in South Africa (London, 2006).

  56. 56.

    Patrick Bond. The Elite Transition: From Apartheid to Neoliberalism in South Africa (London, 2000).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Balsillie School of International Affairs, Wilfrid Laurier University, Waterloo, ON, Canada

    Yehonatan Alsheh

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  1. Department of History, Classics & Archaeology, Birkbeck College – University of London, London, UK

    David Feldman

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Alsheh, Y. (2019). Sanctions Against South Africa: Myths, Debates, and Consequences. In: Feldman, D. (eds) Boycotts Past and Present. Palgrave Critical Studies of Antisemitism and Racism. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-94872-0_10

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-94872-0_10

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  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-94871-3

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-94872-0

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