The extent of threats to apartheid by 1978 and the international reaction

What the specification asks for

“Extent of threats to apartheid by 1978, including the international reaction” — examined through consequence. Incandio is aligned to specification 4HI1; it is not published by, endorsed by or affiliated with Pearson.

1 · Understand it

The balance sheet in 1978

It is worth being honest about the position. The ANC and PAC had been banned for eighteen years and their leadership was imprisoned or abroad. The Soweto rising had been suppressed with hundreds of deaths. Biko was dead and the Black Consciousness organisations had been banned in October 1977. The economy had grown strongly through the 1960s. The security apparatus was larger and better resourced than ever.

Any answer that presents apartheid as visibly collapsing by 1978 has misread the decade. The regime was, by most measures available at the time, secure — and the more interesting historical question is what was changing underneath that appearance.

What had changed

The first change was regional. Portuguese rule in Angola and Mozambique collapsed in 1974–75 after a revolution in Lisbon, and both became independent under governments hostile to Pretoria. Rhodesia's white government was fighting a war it would lose by 1980. The buffer of friendly white-ruled states on which South African strategy had depended disappeared within five years, and the ANC acquired bases much closer to the border.

The second was internal and demographic. The Soweto generation did not return to acquiescence: thousands of young people left the country to join the exiled movements, transforming their manpower, and a culture of school and township protest was established that never afterwards disappeared for long.

The third was economic. Growth slowed sharply after 1973 with the oil shock; the shortage of skilled labour, which apartheid's education and job-reservation policies had created, became a serious constraint on industry. Business began to say publicly that the system was economically unsustainable.

The international reaction and its limits

The United Nations had called for voluntary sanctions in 1962 and passed a voluntary arms embargo in 1963. Neither did much. In November 1977, after Biko's death, the Security Council made the arms embargo mandatory — the first time it had imposed such a measure on a member state.

The effect was not what the resolution intended. Denied imports, South Africa built its own armaments industry, which within a decade was producing artillery, aircraft modifications and vehicles, and which became a substantial exporter. A sanction aimed at limiting the regime's military capacity produced a domestic arms sector instead.

The honest assessment of 1978 is therefore that the international measures had changed the regime's economy and not its policy. What was accumulating was a set of pressures — regional isolation, a mobilised generation, an economy short of skills and increasingly short of capital — that would become decisive in the 1980s when private finance rather than governments applied them. The threats to apartheid by 1978 were real, and none of them was yet close to succeeding.

One further change belongs on the list and it is the least visible. The government's response to the crisis of 1976 and 1977 was to ban the Black Consciousness organisations in October 1977, which removed the only above-ground political movement in the country and left, once again, nothing lawful for anybody to join. That decision reproduced the mistake of April 1960: the state closed the legal channel and did not remove the grievance, and what filled the space in the 1980s was the trade unions, the churches and the civic associations, all of which were harder to ban and closer to the ground than anything it had suppressed.

2 · Learn it — the notes

The dates that earn marks

1962–63

The UN General Assembly calls for sanctions; a voluntary arms embargo follows. Why this date: It establishes the pattern of the following fifteen years: resolutions that expressed opinion and changed very little.

1974–75

Portuguese rule collapses in Angola and Mozambique. Why this date: It removes the buffer of friendly white-ruled states and gives the exiled movements bases far closer to South Africa.

November 1977

The UN Security Council makes the arms embargo mandatory. Why this date: It is the first mandatory sanction imposed on a member state, and it produced a domestic South African arms industry rather than a change of policy.

The figures, and how far to trust them

• 1963 and 1977 — The voluntary and mandatory arms embargoes — the distinction most often lost in answers.
• 1974–75 — The collapse of Portuguese colonial rule in Angola and Mozambique.
• Thousands — Young people who left South Africa after 1976 to join the exiled movements. (No reliable count exists; the transformation of the movements' manpower is well attested.)

The people to place

• B. J. Vorster — Prime Minister until 1978; presided over the security response to Soweto and the regional crisis.
• Desmond Tutu — Increasingly prominent as an internal voice arguing internationally for pressure on the regime.

How historians disagree

Attributed interpretations, never voiced — the AO4 seam.

• The 'sanctions worked' reading: International measures isolated South Africa progressively from 1962, denied it arms and capital, and created the conditions in which the regime eventually had to negotiate. Contested by The reading that the measures before the mid-1980s were almost entirely symbolic, that the arms embargo produced a domestic weapons industry, and that what mattered was private financial pressure applied a decade later for commercial rather than political reasons..

What students say — and what is actually the case

Not this: Apartheid was collapsing by the late 1970s.

This: The regime had suppressed Soweto, banned the Black Consciousness organisations and built a larger security apparatus than ever. The changes underneath were real and none of them was yet close to succeeding.

Not this: The UN arms embargo crippled the South African military.

This: It caused South Africa to build its own armaments industry, which became substantial and exported weapons. The sanction changed the economy rather than the policy.

Two things students merge

Blurred: Voluntary and mandatory sanctions.

The distinction: The 1963 arms embargo was a recommendation; the 1977 embargo was binding on member states under the Security Council's authority. It is the difference between an opinion and an obligation, and it is worth a mark whenever sanctions are discussed.

Blurred: Governments and banks.

The distinction: Government sanctions before 1985 were limited and often evaded. The decisive pressure came from private banks refusing to refinance short-term debt, for commercial reasons, in 1985. Distinguishing the two is essential to any judgement about international pressure.

What a Grade 9 answer holds here

A Grade 9 answer resists the temptation to read 1978 backwards from 1990. On every measure available at the time the regime was winning: the movements were banned, the rising was suppressed, the leadership was on Robben Island. What had changed was structural and largely invisible — a lost buffer of friendly neighbours, a mobilised generation, an economy short of the skills its own education policy had refused to produce — and none of it was yet a threat anybody in Pretoria was losing sleep over.

3 · How it is examined

This strand is genuinely set through: Paper 1 (a) (6 marks — “What impression does the author give about …? You must use Extract A to explain your answer.”); Paper 1 (b) (8 marks — “Explain two effects of … on ….”); Paper 1 (c)(i) or (c)(ii) (16 marks — “'[A statement about the period.]' You may use the following in your answer: • [prompt] • [prompt]. You must also use information of your own. How far do you agree? Explain your answer.”).

What earns marks: The arms embargo's perverse consequence, stated with both dates. It demonstrates that a candidate can assess a measure by its effects rather than by its intentions.

4 · Prove it — the questions

Answered inside Incandio, where a marker checks what a correct answer must contain and tells you which half was missing. The marking stays in the app; the questions are here.

1. What impression does the author give about the strength of the apartheid regime by 1978? [6 marks · Paper 1 (a)]
2. Explain two effects of the mandatory UN arms embargo of 1977. [8 marks · Paper 1 (b)]
3. Explain two effects of the collapse of Portuguese rule in Angola and Mozambique on South Africa. [8 marks · Paper 1 (b)]
4. 'International pressure had achieved very little against apartheid by 1978.' How far do you agree? [16 marks · Paper 1 (c)(i) or (c)(ii)]
5. 'By 1978 the apartheid regime was stronger than ever.' How far do you agree? [16 marks · Paper 1 (c)(i) or (c)(ii)]

Carry on through the option

• Previous lesson: Biko, Black Consciousness and Soweto
• Next lesson, in key topic 4: The United Democratic Front and township unrest
• Also in this key topic: Anti-pass demonstrations and Sharpeville · Spear of the Nation and the Treason and Rivonia trials
• Key topic 3 · Resisting apartheid, 1955–78 · South Africa: from union to the end of apartheid, 1948–94 · the option's timeline · Incandio History
• The other key topics of South Africa: Setting up apartheid, 1948–54 · The growth of apartheid, 1955–59 · PW Botha – response to resistance, 1978–90 · Dismantling Apartheid, 1990–94