SANCTIONS - SOUTH AFRICA

21 July 2022

These sanctions worked. A white minority government handed power to a forming black government as a result of a universal condemnation of apartheid.

 In 1968, the then SA president Vorster banned a UK cricket tour because the team contained a black player. Sanctions started in the sports industry, in particular cricket and rugby, mutch loved by all South Africans.

 And later, the ban extended to music with for example a concert by Elton John transferred to neighbouring Botswana.

 In 1985, foreign banks called in their loans.

 In 1976, civil unrest began amongst children in Soweto, which eventually made the country ungovernable.

 The collapse of communism in 1991 and changing world politics as the world became more inclusive following globalisation also played into the the worldwide anti-apartheid movement and global support for human rights. There was a popular world wide boycott of goods from South Africa. All this especially at a time when in the mid 1980s CND were marching through the streets of London, the conial power. 

 The US didn't have the same sporting and commercial links, but protests started there in churches and eventually forced big business to disinvest and the US government to impose financial sanctions.

 So we see that following decolonisation there was a worldwide revulsion at apartheid and this coupled with boycotts and sanctions lead to the transfer of power to a black majority government.

We could at the same time ask why sanctions were not applied against Israel another apartheid regime. And the answer lies in the very active support from the essentially American Jewish lobby and the history of pogroms and the Holocaust. 

So in this case, we might expect to see a flourishing, if contested, Zionist regime from the Jordan river to the Mediterranean.