The Penguin History of the World

Apartheid had some appeal – on even less excusable grounds than the primitive superstitions or supposed economic necessities of the Afrikaners – to white people elsewhere in Africa. The only country where a similar balance of black and white population to that of South Africa and a similar concentration of wealth existed was Southern Rhodesia, where the settlers, to the great embarrassment of the British government, seceded from the Commonwealth in 1965 in order to avoid full decolonization. The aim of the secessionists, it was feared, was to move towards a society more and more like South Africa’s. The British government dithered and missed its chance. There was nothing that the black African states could do immediately about Rhodesia, and not much that the United Nations could do either, though ‘sanctions’ were invoked in the form of an embargo on trade with the former colony; many black African states ignored them and the British government winked at the steps taken by major oil companies to ensure their product reached the rebels. In one of the most shameful episodes in the history of a feeble ministry, Great Britain’s stock sank in the eyes of Africans, who, understandably, did not see why a British government could not intervene militarily to suppress a colonial rebellion as flagrant as that of 1776. Many British reflected that it was precisely that remote precedent which made the outlook for intervention, by a remote and militarily weak imperial sovereign, discouraging.

Though South Africa (the richest and strongest state in Africa, and growing richer and stronger all the time) seemed secure, it was, together with Rhodesia and Portugal, the object of mounting black African anger as the 1970s began. The drawing of the racial battle lines was hardly offset by minor concessions to South Africa’s blacks and its growing economic ties with some black states. There was a danger, too, that other outside powers might soon be involved. In 1975, after the collapse of the Portuguese empire, a Marxist regime took power in Angola. When civil war followed, foreign Communist soldiers arrived from Cuba to support the government, while South African and American support was soon given to rebels against it.

The South African government had showed that it could take action. It sought to detach itself from the embarrassment of association with an unyielding independent Rhodesia (whose prospects had sharply worsened when Portuguese rule came to an end in Mozambique in 1974 and a guerrilla campaign was launched from that country against it). The American government contemplated the outcome if Rhodesia collapsed at the hands of black nationalists depending on Communist support. It applied pressure to the South Africans who, in turn, applied it to the Rhodesians. In September 1976 the Rhodesian prime minister dejectedly told his countrymen that they had to accept the principle of votes for all. The last attempt to found an African country dominated by whites had failed. It was also another landmark in the recession of European imperial power. Yet the guerrilla war continued, as white Rhodesians dragged their feet on implementing full majority rule. At last, in 1980, Rhodesia briefly returned to British rule before re-emerging into independence, this time as the new nation of Zimbabwe, with an African prime minister.

This left South Africa alone as the sole white-dominated state, the richest in the continent and the focus of increasing resentment around the world. Although world opinion had been split by the civil war in Angola, world leaders could usually find common ground against racial discrimination in South Africa. In 1974 the General Assembly of the United Nations forbade South Africa to attend its sessions because of apartheid. The Soviet Union and its allies became increasingly active in supporting the so-called ‘frontline states’ (against South Africa) with weapons, and Cuban troops remained in Angola. From Pretoria, the view northwards looked more and more menacing, and the inside situation was also deteriorating in security terms: more and more young South Africans were joining the opposition to apartheid. In 1976 176 people were shot dead in demonstrations against the government in Soweto, a black township in Johannesburg.