12.8: Third Wave Democratization - Africa

Apartheid in South Africa

In the early 1900s, South Africa was established as an independent country from Britain. However, the white minority population had control over the government and the economy. The Black majority made up eighty percent of the population but lacked basic rights. When the white supremacist National Party won control of the legislature in 1948, they pledged to put in place a system known as apartheid which mandated racial segregation in all spheres of society. This system completely separated the Black majority from the white rulers and deprived them of political and civil rights.  Africans were forced to live in small reservations and were prohibited from owning land outside of these reservations.  An estimated 3.5 million Africans were forced to leave the ‘white’ areas. These reservations lacked basic services and were extremely overcrowded. Since there was a need for cheap labor, a small number of Africans worked for extremely low wages for the white minority and lived in the urban slums.

The African National Congress (ANC) was formed in 1912 and fought for racial equality and universal suffrage. South Africa also had a communist party that worked with the ANC to further the demands of the Black majority. The government sought to legitimize its oppression to protests by labeling any group that sought racial equality as communist. A major leader for racial equality and democratization was Nelson Mandela (1918-2013). He was a member of a royal native family of the Xhosa people who became a lawyer in Johannesburg and was active in politics after the white government began instituting apartheid policies in the 1940s. Mandela became president of the African National Congress. After a major demonstration in Sharpeville was violently crushed by the government in 1960, Mandela and other ANC leaders began leading acts of sabotage against government properties. Mandela was then convicted in 1962 and sentenced to life in prison.   The ANC was banned and operated underground but received support from the USSR and many Western countries. However, the USA and Great Britain viewed the ANC as a Soviet puppet.

The End of the Cold War and Democracy in South Africa 

Nevertheless, apartheid increasingly lost legitimacy within South Africa and on the world stage beginning in the late 1960s as a global movement for racial equality intensified. The impetus for this movement was the US Civil Rights movement and the anti-imperialist wars being waged in Asia and Africa.  Furthermore, economic growth in South Africa created a significant educated Black middle class, and school enrollment among Blacks grew dramatically. From 1970 to 1975, African high school enrollment jumped by 160 percent. An increasing number of Blacks were reading about Black liberation and calls for racial equality.  Additionally, South Africans became more united, because they also embraced Black Pride. More and more Black South Africans saw themselves as members of a common race with other Africans that transcended ethnicity and tribal loyalties.

Beginning in the 1970s, white supremacy in South Africa was undermined. More and more countries turned against South Africa as human rights was seen as an important issue.  The UN General Assembly denounced apartheid in 1973 and the UN Security Council unanimously approved of an arms embargo on South Africa.  By the late 1970s, South Africa appeared as an anomaly, because most of Africa had Black rule and independence. The ANC had its own army and operated in the newly independent African nations that bordered South Africa. Although the South African economy experienced substantial growth until the 1950s and 1960s, there were serious problems by the late 1970s. South Africa remained dependent on exporting minerals such as gold. Similar to Brazil and much of Latin America, its manufactured goods were not competitive globally. In the 1980, the price of gold dropped, and this sent the economy into a downward dive. Unemployment and poverty soared.  Eighty percent of the population in the African reservations were living in poverty by 1983.

The ANC sensed an opportunity to push for democratization and declared a “People’s War” in the early 1980s. A civil war erupted as black opponents of apartheid fought successfully to make apartheid unworkable and South Africa ungovernable. This “People’s War” entailed labor strikes and boycotts as well as the bombing of municipal buildings, post offices, police stations, courthouses, and other government offices. The ANC was actively working out from its bases in Zimbabwe, Botswana, and Zambia.  The ANC used its paramilitary wing, known as the Spear of the Nation, to paralyze South Africa. The number of strikes increased by 200% between 1982 and 1983. Students refused to attend school. In 1984, thirty-nine thousand South African soldiers were used to put down the protesters. The government basically collapsed at the local level in African neighborhoods.  By early 1986, opponents of the government claimed that the ANC was in command in twenty-seven cities throughout South Africa. There was an estimated 228 guerilla attacks that year as well.  As a result, a national state of emergency was declared and eight thousand people were detained. 

As the South African government violently repressed the protests of Africans, it was perceived more and more in a negative light by the mid 1980s. American public opinion turned against apartheid and the US Congress passed Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act which banned new investments and loans to South Africa. American companies could no longer sell computers or oil to South Africa. American investment fell by fifty percent between 1984 and 1988. Figure 12.8.1 shows Duke college students demanding an end to apartheid in Africa. Why would they be morally opposed to this system in Africa? Other governments took similar actions. For the most part, foreign bankers and investors became concerned that their investments were at risk. As a result, over ninety foreign companies pulled out of South Africa.  These sanctions crippled an already weak economy in South Africa. As a consequence, many in the South African government started to advocate major structural reforms including democratization. Additionally, in the 1980s religious leaders globally denounced apartheid.  The two main denominations in South Africa, the Anglicans, and Dutch Reformed Church, rejected apartheid. The South African Anglican Archbishop Desmond Tutu became a vocal critic and argued that opposition to apartheid was a moral duty.

Figure \(\PageIndex{1}\): Apartheid Demonstration, May 4, 1985, Duke University Archives, is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA. 

By 1989, the whole system in South Africa was experiencing a crisis. The government was broke due to massive debts. Foreign governments would not provide loans or purchase South African goods.  Furthermore, the military budget increased substantially to fight off the protests against apartheid. For this reason, taxes increased dramatically for the white population and more and more whites wanted reforms and negotiations.  South African businessmen put pressure on the government to implement reforms, because they were losing money and were unable to hire African workers.  Also, communism was collapsing in Europe in the early 1990s. Therefore, the government could no longer claim to justify oppression as a means to ward off a communist revolution.  The Spear of the Nation had been trained and armed by the USSR. However, the ANC appeared less threatening with the withdrawal of Soviet funds that had supported it. South Africans began to see the ANC as a more democratic force. In fact, the leader of the ANC, Nelson Mandela, supported a pluralistic democracy, not communism. Additionally, the white population was confident that it could share power with the black majority because they controlled the army, the civil service, and most of the businesses.

As a result, in early 1990, South African President F.W. De Klerk began the process of democratization.  De Klerk visited Nelson Mandela in prison a few months after becoming president and spoke with him for three hours. De Klerk then called for a new constitution, freed Mandela after twenty-seven years as a political prisoner, and lifted the ban on the ANC. South Africa’s first election with universal suffrage was held in 1994 and the ANC won almost two-thirds of the vote. Nelson Mandela was then sworn in as president. After losing the presidential election to him in 1994, De Klerk had power as one of Mandela’s Deputy Presidents from 1994-6. Mandela served as president for a single term and then stepped down. He focused on reconciliation while in office and in his retirement devoted himself to combating poverty and AIDS.  ​

Primary Sources: Nelson Mandela's Address to a Rally in Cape Town on His Release from Prison (February 11, 1990)

In this speech, Nelson Mandela is stating his fundamental aims after just being released from prison. He is seeking a broad front of supporters to create a new democratic South Africa.

Discussion Questions

• What kind of country does Nelson Mandela hope to see in South Africa?
• How is Mandela’s intended audience?

Friends, comrades, and fellow South Africans, I greet you all in the name of peace, democracy, and freedom for all. I stand here before you not as a prophet but as a humble servant of you, the people…Today, the majority of South Africans, black and white, recognize that apartheid has no future. It has to be ended by our own decisive mass action in order to build peace and security. The mass campaigns of defiance, and other actions of our organizations and people, can only culminate in the establishment of democracy.

The apartheid destruction on our subcontinent is incalculable. The fabric of family life of millions of my people has been shattered. Millions are homeless and unemployed. Our economy, our economy lies in ruins and our people are embroiled in political strife…

It is our task as leaders to place our views before our organization and to allow the democratic structures to decide on the way forward. On the question of democratic practice, I feel duty bound to make the point that a leader of the movement is the person who has been democratically elected at a national conference. This is the principle which must be upheld without any exception…Negotiations on the dismantling of apartheid will have to address the overwhelming demands of our people for a democratic, non-racial, and unitary South Africa.

There must be an end to white monopoly on political power, and a fundamental restructuring of our political and economic systems to ensure that the inequalities of apartheid are addressed and our society thoroughly democratized.

It must be added that Mr. De Klerk himself is a man of integrity, who is acutely aware of the dangers of a public figure not honoring his undertakings.

Nelson Mandela Foundation, in the Public Domain 

Review Questions

• What factors ended apartheid in South Africa?
• How was Nelson Mandela not seen as a threat to the Western world?