South Africa

Jo-Ansie van Wyk

Chapter 43 in Elgar Encyclopedia of International Sanctions, 2025, pp 149-152 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: The international community imposed one of the more comprehensive sanctions regimes against apartheid South Africa. Intended to serve as punitive measures, these sanctions aimed to compel the apartheid regime to terminate its racially based policies and engage in talks with the country's liberation movements to establish democracy in the country. Sanctions were imposed by individual countries and intergovernmental organisations such as the United Nations, the Commonwealth and the European Economic Community (EEC, predecessor of the European Union). However, instances of the circumvention of sanctions by South Africa and its diplomatic allies occurred. This entrenched the apartheid regime's survival, but over time it eroded the regime's ideological, moral, sociocultural and economic foundations, and diplomatic ties, compelling regime and social change in the country. Whereas post-apartheid South Africa could rejoin the diplomatic community as a paragon of conflict resolution and reconciliation, the same cannot be said about its international economic rehabilitation. Due to these sanctions, South Africa lost most of its largest and historical trade partners, and its public and private industrial base collapsed, opening, especially after the end of apartheid, the door for emerging geo-political actors such as China, globally renowned for its poor human rights record. In post-apartheid South Africa, these international sanctions are regarded as one of the outcomes of the ANC's internationalisation of the anti-apartheid struggle and a contributing factor to the end of apartheid, despite their lasting economic impact on the country, despite its lasting economic impact on the country as South Africa lost investment and export opportunities during the sanctions period.

Keywords: Apartheid; South Africa; Regime survival; Sanctions (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
ISBN: 9781035339525
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