Endgame

By the end of that year the militant wing of the ANC Umkhonto we Sizwe (The Spear of the Nation) started with acts of sabotage and the UN had called upon its members to institute economic sanctions against South Africa. Mandela and other leaders of the resistance groups were arrested and sentenced to life imprisonment on Robben Island.

In 1961, the NP Government declared South Africa a republic after winning a whites-only referendum on the issue and left the Commonwealth in the face of demands for an end to apartheid.

In the 1960s South Africa had economic growth second only to that of Japan as trade with Western countries grew, and investors from the United States, France and Britain rushed in to get a piece of the action. Resistance among black people had been crushed and it appeared that South Africa's security forces could handle any resistance to apartheid. But in the seventies this rosy picture for South Africa's white people began to fade.

In 1962, the UN General Assembly requested that its members break off diplomatic relations with South Africa, to cease trading with South Africa (arms exports in particular), and to deny passage to South African ships and aircraft. From 1964, the US and Britain discontinued their arms trade with South Africa. In 1968, it proposed ending all cultural, educational and sporting connections as well. Economic sanctions, however, were not made mandatory, because of opposition from South Africa's main trading partners.

The year 1976 marked the beginning of a sustained anti-apartheid revolt. In June, school pupils of Soweto rose up against apartheid education, followed by youth uprisings all around the country. Despite the harsh repression that followed, students continued to organise.

In 1978 and 1983 the United Nations started pressuring investors to disinvest from South African companies or companies that did business with South Africa.

In the 1980s, both the Reagan and Thatcher administrations in the USA and UK followed a 'constructive engagement' policy with the apartheid government, vetoing the imposition of UN economic sanctions on South Africa, justified by a belief in free trade and a vision of South Africa as a bastion against Marxist forces in Southern Africa. Thatcher declared the ANC a terrorist organisation and in 1987 her spokesman, Bernard Ingham, famously said that anyone who believed that the ANC would ever form the government of South Africa was "living in cloud cuckoo land".

After much debate, by the late 1980s the United States, the United Kingdom, and 23 other nations passed laws placing various trade sanctions on South Africa. Cities and provinces around the world implemented laws and local regulations forbidding registered corporations under their jurisdiction from doing business with South African firms, factories or banks.

FW de Klerk, who replaced PW Botha as state president in 1989, announced at the opening of Parliament in February 1990 the unbanning of the liberation movements and release of political prisoners, among them, Nelson Mandela. A number of factors led to this step. International financial, trade, sport and cultural sanctions were clearly biting.

Above all, several years of emergency rule and ruthless repression had clearly neither destroyed the structures of organised resistance, nor helped establish legitimacy for the apartheid regime or its collaborators. Instead, popular resistance, including mass and armed action, was intensifying.

The ANC, enjoying popular recognition and legitimacy as the foremost liberation organisation, was increasingly regarded as a government-in-waiting. A number of business, student and academic Afrikaners held meetings publicly and privately with the ANC in exile. Secret talks were held between the imprisoned Mandela and government ministers about a new dispensation for South Africa, with black people forming a major part of it.

Reforms to apartheid in the 1980s failed to quell the mounting opposition, and in 1990 President Frederik Willem de Klerk began negotiations to end apartheid, culminating in multi-racial democratic elections in 1994, which were won by the African National Congress under Nelson Mandela.