Opposition to Apartheid

Blisterman

In the 70's and 80's there was huge public opposition throughout the world to South african Apartheid. Mass Boycotts of South African products, public demonstrations, countries refusing to play South Africa in sports.

Obviously, apartheid is inherantly wrong, but how come there was so much public opposition to that, compared to other human rights abuses throughout the world?
China and Cambodia for example were killing millions. Saudi Arabia to this very day treat women as badly as blacks were treated in SA. And these are unfortunately just some of the many human rights abuses.

Why did apartheid arouse so much passion in people compared to the other examples? Also, America had similar restrictions in place for black people until the 60's. Was there much international opposition to this?

Eliot Rosewater

It's an interesting question. You could say the same thing today with regards to many conflicts. Some, like the Israel-Palestine conflict, get a disproportionate amount of attention compared to others. It probably has a lot to do with the media and advocacy groups spreading interest in it. On the politics forum, some people were saying that the links between Irish groups such as Sinn Fein with Palestinian organizations were a factor, but I can't vouch for that.

Perhaps it has to do with peoples presumed standards. As a supposedly first world country, people hold Israel to a much higher standard than they would, say, Iran. Maybe people expected better of South Africa.

Interestingly, Paul Simon was criticised in the 80s for breaching the "cultural boycott" when making his album Graceland. Supporters of his correctly pointed out that he was only spreading and helping black African culture. The problem with boycotts is that those who need to be punished usually pass the hardship onto the normal citizens. In any case, it's a fabulous album!!

brianthebard

I think there's two aspects to the Apartheid problem. Firstly the British Empire was moving away from an authoritarian past to a more soft power policy in Africa and the Empire, and Apartheid went against that.
The other part is that although SA produces many minerals, diamonds etc I don't think they are of the same level of the Congo, Israel, China, etc. It doesn't have the same central role in the world economy as other states, which allowed governments to get behind the anti-Apartheid movement without too much loss of income or trade.

CDfm

I think it was something people could readily identify with.

People saw civil rights in a way they were aware of the Black White problem in the USA.

The other part was that white south african's were people like us.

In Nothern Ireland you had institutionalised discrimination on sectarian grounds which was fairly similar to apartheid.

Another reason was that the campaigns were orchastrated via political groups. During the late 1980s I was a young student and at the college UL an Ethiopian Student gave a seminar to the Class Reps on Ethiopia,he wasnt a student at all but a young army officer from the communist regime.Some of the campaigns were very well funded by Russia vefire the fall of communism.