International opposition, boycotts and sanctions

What the specification asks for

“International opposition to apartheid and the impact of boycotts and sanctions” — examined through significance and consequence. Incandio is aligned to specification 4HI1; it is not published by, endorsed by or affiliated with Pearson.

1 · Understand it

The forms international pressure took

The pressure came in four kinds and they had very different effects. There were United Nations measures: recommendations from 1962, a voluntary arms embargo in 1963, a mandatory one in 1977. There were sporting and cultural boycotts, beginning with exclusion from the Olympic movement in the 1960s and extending to a comprehensive isolation from international cricket and rugby, which mattered to white South Africans out of all proportion to its economic weight.

There were consumer boycotts and disinvestment campaigns, run by churches, students and trade unions in Britain, the United States and Scandinavia, which pressed companies and universities to withdraw investment. And there was, eventually, financial pressure from private banks.

The politics of the first three were complicated by the Cold War. The British and American governments under Thatcher and Reagan opposed comprehensive sanctions, arguing that constructive engagement would achieve more and that the ANC's communist alliances made it an unsuitable beneficiary. Both were substantially isolated on the question by the mid-1980s.

The one that worked

In July 1985 Chase Manhattan declined to roll over its short-term loans to South Africa. Other banks followed within weeks, and after the Rubicon speech the position became a run. South African borrowing had been heavily short-term, so the country faced repayment of very large sums it did not have; the government closed the exchanges and declared a debt standstill in September 1985.

The decision was commercial rather than political. Bankers looking at a country under a state of emergency, with townships in revolt and a president who had just refused to change, concluded that the risk was unacceptable. But the effect was political and enormous: it converted apartheid from an arrangement that was expensive to run into one that could not be financed, and it happened in three months.

Government sanctions followed rather than led. The United States Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act was passed in 1986 over a presidential veto, and the Commonwealth and the European Community adopted packages in the same period. They reinforced the isolation and are commonly given more causal weight than the sequence supports.

How to weigh it against internal pressure

The strongest answers refuse the choice and explain the interaction. The banks withdrew because the townships were in revolt and the state was governing by emergency decree; the revolt was sustainable partly because the economy was failing to deliver; and both together produced a business community that began meeting the ANC in Zambia in 1985 and telling the government that a political settlement was now a commercial necessity.

It is also worth noting who the pressure did not move. Sanctions did not change Botha's position on the franchise at any point, and the emergency was renewed every year until 1990. What financial pressure changed was the calculation of the people around him — business, the security establishment, and eventually the successor who negotiated.

The cultural and sporting boycotts deserve their own sentence because they are easy to dismiss and were not dismissed at the time. Exclusion from international sport was experienced by white South Africans as a statement that they had been placed outside the community of normal countries, and a great deal of contemporary evidence suggests it did more to shift white opinion than any UN resolution.

2 · Learn it — the notes

The dates that earn marks

1962–63

UN calls for sanctions; voluntary arms embargo. Why this date: It establishes twenty years of measures that expressed disapproval and altered very little.

July 1985

Chase Manhattan refuses to roll over South African loans. Why this date: A commercial decision by a private bank did more in three months than two decades of intergovernmental measures.

September 1985

The government closes the exchanges and declares a standstill on short-term debt. Why this date: It is the moment apartheid becomes unfinanceable rather than merely expensive.

1986

The US Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act passes over a presidential veto. Why this date: It shows government sanctions following the financial crisis rather than causing it, which is the sequence answers usually reverse.

The figures, and how far to trust them

• 1977 — The mandatory arms embargo — binding, unlike everything before it, and answered by a domestic arms industry.
• July–September 1985 — The three months in which the debt crisis developed from one bank's decision to a national standstill.
• 1986 — The American Act, passed over a veto, which followed the financial crisis by a year.

The people to place

• Desmond Tutu — Argued publicly and internationally for sanctions, at some personal risk, against the position of his own government.
• Margaret Thatcher — Opposed comprehensive sanctions, arguing for engagement and against the ANC's alliances.
• Ronald Reagan — Vetoed the American sanctions Act of 1986; the veto was overridden by Congress.

How historians disagree

Attributed interpretations, never voiced — the AO4 seam.

• The 'financial pressure was decisive' reading: Apartheid ended when it became unfinanceable. The bank withdrawal of 1985 did in three months what twenty years of resolutions had not, and it converted South African business into an advocate of negotiation. Contested by The reading that the banks acted because of the township revolt and the emergency, so financial pressure was the transmission mechanism of internal resistance rather than an independent cause, and that sanctions never moved Botha on the franchise at all..

What students say — and what is actually the case

Not this: International sanctions by governments brought down apartheid.

This: Government sanctions were limited, evaded and largely followed the financial crisis. The decisive pressure came from private banks in 1985, acting commercially.

Not this: The sporting boycott was symbolic and unimportant.

This: Contemporary evidence suggests exclusion from international rugby and cricket did more to change white South African opinion about the country's isolation than any UN measure.

Two things students merge

Blurred: Sanctions and disinvestment.

The distinction: Sanctions are restrictions imposed by governments on trade or contact. Disinvestment is the withdrawal of private capital and company operations. The second was decisive in 1985 and the first mostly followed it.

Blurred: Pressure on the government and pressure on its supporters.

The distinction: Nothing moved Botha on the franchise. What the financial crisis moved was business, the security establishment and white opinion, and the settlement came from the people around him rather than from him.

What a Grade 9 answer holds here

A Grade 9 answer refuses to separate the external and internal pressures, because the banks were reading the townships. Chase Manhattan did not object to apartheid; it objected to lending money to a country under emergency rule whose administration had collapsed in the areas where most of its workers lived — so the decisive act of international pressure was a commercial judgement about the effectiveness of South African resistance.

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 sequence: bank withdrawal in July 1985, debt standstill in September, American Act in 1986. Getting the order right is what allows a candidate to argue about causation rather than to list measures.

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 impact of international sanctions on South Africa? [6 marks · Paper 1 (a)]
2. Explain two effects of the withdrawal of foreign bank lending in 1985. [8 marks · Paper 1 (b)]
3. Explain two effects of the sporting and cultural boycotts on South Africa. [8 marks · Paper 1 (b)]
4. 'International pressure was the main reason for the end of apartheid.' How far do you agree? [16 marks · Paper 1 (c)(i) or (c)(ii)]
5. 'Sanctions imposed by governments achieved very little.' How far do you agree? [16 marks · Paper 1 (c)(i) or (c)(ii)]

Decide it

This lesson feeds a Decide History judgement — a position you commit to, an objection you answer, a criterion you name: What ended apartheid?.

Carry on through the option

• Previous lesson: Botha's reforms, Afrikaner resistance and the State of Emergency
• Next lesson, in key topic 5: De Klerk's reforms and the repeal of apartheid
• Also in this key topic: The United Democratic Front and township unrest
• Key topic 4 · PW Botha – response to resistance, 1978–90 · 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 · Resisting apartheid, 1955–78 · Dismantling Apartheid, 1990–94