Racism in South Africa in the Cold War Era - Essay Example

Section Racism in South Africa in the Cold War Era Throughout the Cold War and decolonization period, white-dominated South Africa was the foundation of American policy toward the region. Even though their strategies differed, each presidential regime attempted to fight off communist expansion and to safeguard U.S. investments, trade, and right to use the valuable minerals of South Africa. By the 1980s, the U.S. had exceeded Britain as the biggest trading partner of South Africa.1 American companies had substantially increased their direct investments in South Africa. American companies dominated the most important segments of the South African economy, such as the computer and petroleum products market. They were greatly involved in the machinery production, chemical, and automobile industries. More importantly, the transmission of American knowledge, skills, and technology contributed to the development of South Africa’s military and nuclear systems, including other segments of the economy.2 Huge sums of money in American bank loans enabled South Africa to pay for important infrastructure plans, hoard oil, and develop its military. In the global stage, the U.S. strengthened the economy with diplomatic backing.3 At the United Nations (UN), U.S. representatives constantly rejected economic actions against South Africa, in spite of demands from anti-apartheid groups, such as the African National Congress (ANC). The United States was not the only one that supported the apartheid rule. Britain was a major investor and trading partner, whereas Israel, West Germany, and France were vital providers of nuclear and military technologies.4 Along such support is the promotion of Apartheid rule, or, racial discrimination against black people in South Africa. This essay discusses racism in South Africa during the Cold War period. South African Apartheid: Racism in the Flesh Apartheid, which was an established structure of racial segregation, eventually ended in the 1990s in a succession of events that resulted in the establishment of a democratic regime in 1994. Period of vicious internal insurgency, declining white determination, global cultural and economic sanctions, economic problems, and the conclusion of the Cold War abolished white supremacy in Pretoria.5 American policy toward the government went through a slow, but total change that fulfilled a vital contradictory part in Apartheid’s continued existence and ultimate collapse. Even though numerous of the segregationist rules were made during the first half of the 20th century, it was the 1948 election of the Nationalist Party that signaled the arrival of the legitimated, most inhuman aspects of racism known as apartheid.6 The Cold War at the time was in its initial phases. The primary objective of the foreign policy of U.S. President Harry Truman was to hinder the expansion and influence of the Soviet Union. In spite of endorsing a civil rights program to enhance black people’s rights in the U.S., the Truman government opt not to oppose the anti-communist Apartheid rule of South Africa’s government in an attempt to keep a partner against the USSR in that region.7 This formed the foundation for succeeding governments to silently endorse the Apartheid system as a strong partner against communist expansion. Within South Africa, protests and rebellions by the black people of South Africa against white supremacy had taken place since the beginning of sovereign white regime in 1910. Protests heightened when the Nationalist Party successfully stopped all peaceful and lawful methods of political uprising by nonwhite people.8 The Pan Africanist Congress (PAC) and the African National Congress (ANC), which pictured a much distinct system of governance rooted in majority rule, were banned in 1960 and numerous of its leaders arrested and detained. 9Nelson Mandela, the widely known head of the ANC and also a prisoner, had become an icon of the anti-Apartheid movement. Although Mandela and numerous political detainees were still imprisoned in South Africa, other leaders of the anti-Apartheid campaign escaped from South Africa and established control centers in a chain of sympathetic, sovereign African nations, counting Zambia, Tanzania, Guinea, and nearby Mozambique where they carried on the struggle to abolish Apartheid.10 Nevertheless, it was not until the 1980s that this disorder finally hurt South Africa in terms of considerable damages in global standing, security, and revenue. International organizations had started to realize the cruelty of the Apartheid rule after white police officers in South Africa gunned down black activists in 1960, taking the lives of 69 individuals.11 The United Nations headed the demand for punishments against the South African regime. Anxious about losing allies in Africa as the process of decolonization changed the region, influential constituents of the Security Council, such as the U.S., France, and Britain, was successful in moderating the demands. Nevertheless, by the latter part of the 1970s, popular movements in the U.S. and Europe triumphed in forcing their governments to enforce cultural and economic punishments on Pretoria.12 Once the Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act was ratified by the U.S. Congress in 1986, numerous major multinational corporations pulled out from South Africa. The economy of South Africa, by the latter part of the 1980s, was besieged with the impact of the protests and rebellions and the weight of its military duty in taking over Namibia.13 Supporters of the Apartheid rule, both within South Africa and abroad, had endorsed it as a wall against communist expansion. Nevertheless, the conclusion of the Cold War made such vision irrelevant and outdated. South Africa had unlawfully invaded nearby Namibia at the close of the Second World War, and from the 1970s, Pretoria had exploited it as an outpost against Angolan communist forces.14 The United States had backed up the operations of the South African Defense Force in Angola. Strong anti-communists in the U.S. kept on supporting ties with the Apartheid regime in spite of economic penalties imposed by the American Congress.15 Yet, the alleviation of Cold War conflicts resulted in discussions to resolve the Cold War issue in Angola. The economic problems of Pretoria provided the heads of Apartheid sound motivation to get involved. In 1988, when South Africa came to a multilateral treaty to terminate its invasion of Namibia as compensation for the pulling out of Cuban forces from Angola, even the strongest anti-communists in the U.S. dropped their defense for promotion of the Apartheid rule.16 The impact of international criticism and internal turmoil resulted in massive reforms starting in 1989. P.W. Botha, the South African prime minister, stepped down after realizing that he had been stripped off of the support of the National Party (NP) for his inability to stabilize the nation.17 The next Prime Minister, F.W. de Klerk, in a decision that stunned spectators, proclaimed in his introductory speech in Parliament in 1990 that he was terminating the prohibition on black liberation groups, such as the ANC, freeing political prisoners, including Nelson Mandela, and permitting freedom of the press.18 The effect of Mandela’s freedom echoed all over South Africa and across the globe. As soon as Prime Minister de Klerk approved democratic voting in South Africa, the U.S. ended sanctions and raised foreign assistance, and numerous of the American corporations who withdrew their investments in the 1980s came back with new capital and joint ventures.19 Racism and the Cold War In the white-led societies of southern Africa, Cold War issues were placed over local movements originating from colonial situations. Colonies with huge numbers of immigrants or settlers mostly declined the concept of majority rule and liberation or independence. Similar to Mozambique, Angola, and Algeria, white-led regimes in the Anglophone areas of South Africa struggled to sustain economic freedom and political control in European rule, while the apartheid system of South Africa tried to keep its unlawful takeover of Namibia.20 To disguise the core problem, which was the handover of power and control from an elite white minority to the majority, the immigrant governments of Southern Africa took advantage of the Cold War discourse to acquire Western approval. Pretoria, specifically, took advantage of the possibility of a communist attack that would devour the final stronghold of white Western Christian society in southern Africa.21 In spite of their open disapproval of a regime that embedded racism, Western powers, especially the United States, largely backed up the besieged South African administration and held the same fears about the growing radical liberation campaigns both within and outside the country.22 Nordic countries were some of the handful Western countries to furnish the African liberation campaigns with humanitarian assistance. Resisting and criticizing the policies of their governments, popular Southern African solidarity and anti-apartheid campaigns were formed in Western Europe and the United States. Built in 1937, the African American Council on African Affairs could have been the earliest American campaign in solidarity with anti-apartheid and anticolonial goals.23 The fatality of a Cold War period witch persecution, the council disbanded in 1955. The American Committee on Africa, starting in 1953, mobilized students, trade unions, religious groups, and civil rights organization against the rule of a white minority and colonialism.24 Many other local and national solidarity and anti-apartheid groups were formed in several countries between the 1960s and 1970s. Built in 1984, the Free South Africa Movement influenced by African American mobilized protests at the South African Embassy and other embassies all over the U.S., leading to numerous arrests and a great deal of negative propaganda for Pretoria. Such popular campaigns in Western nations reinforced local pressure for economic support and arms restrictions, which ended in the latter part of the 1980s.25 Unable to acquire aid from the powerful Western countries, the Southern African liberation groups sought assistance somewhere else. China, Eastern Europe, the Soviet Union, and several African countries offered military assistance. Autonomous African nations neighboring those governed by a white minority—the alleged Frontline States—fulfilled an important part as well, usually with grave outcomes for their own people.26 Several of them offered secure sanctuary for political revolutionaries and expatriates. Others allowed weapons and insurgents to pass through their areas. Some permitted the construction of training posts and military sites in their territories. The entire Frontline States contributed to the rise of international demand for mediated resolutions that would lead to majority rule. South Africa achieved majority rule in 1994.27 In the interceding period, the apartheid regime fought major battles of destabilization against neighboring countries so as to defend the remaining traces of white-minority power. Max Beloff, writer of the well-known American journal Foreign Affairs emphasized the value of liberal domestic reform in the U.S. as a way of frustrating the democratic ideological pull of the USSR in the colonial realm.28 As argued by Beloff, “If one agrees that in the long run events in Asia and Africa will be as decisive as those in Europe are proving in the short run, then to the preaching and practice of political democracy and social justice must be added that of racial equality.”29 He claimed that enduring racism was seriously unfavorable in the newly created world of the Cold War, although self-government should possibly not be awarded to ‘dependent’ countries that were very unstable at the time to counterattack communist influence by themselves. Beloff argued that for Western countries to become successful in the Cold War fight for the support of the nonwhite majority across the globe, “it must be admitted as a principle of action that no opportunities of social or political development shall be denied anywhere in the world on grounds of race alone.”30 The program and policy of Truman in the presidential campaign of 1948 had revealed his conviction that a strengthening in civil rights guarantees in the U.S. suits the country’s new position as the major advocate of noncommunist democracy and independence. The eagerness of Britain to award independence to majority of its colonies in Asia without the demands and tensions of extensive military engagement indicated that white rule over nonwhite people overseas may also be on the process of becoming an important feature of the developing Western cooperation.31 However, the growing hatred between the U.S. and the Soviet Union in 1949 pushed American legislators to concentrate somewhat wholly on the repression of communism and the Soviet, with the outcome that all other concerns, as well as the eradication of racism, gained little interest in Washington. The fruitful Soviet nuclear weapon experiment and the ultimate triumph of the guerilla groups of Mao Zedong in China deeply heightened American worries about the expanding power of global communism.32 With the formation and establishment of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and with Marshall Plan assistance flowing into the countries of Western Europe, the U.S. became more advantageous for the European imperialists and thus linked itself once more to the racism entrenched in colonialism.33 Although the conflict between the West and the East consumed the Truman government, considerable racial segregation in southern Africa in the later 1940s foretold a bleak future for that region. White immigrants in the British settlements tried to seize power over the future of their colonies so as to ensure continuous white rule in the area. Racism exploded in South Africa, and the Union administration started to put into effect apartheid rule.34 Informed of the fact that white voters were gradually pulled toward the racial agenda of the Nationalists, the United Party resistance largely blamed its loss in the earlier elections to the quite progressive racial principles of Jan Hofmeyr. In view of this, Hofmeyr was replaced by J.G.N. Strauss, a conservative.35 The consequent early demise of Hofmeyr on the 3rd of December 1948 strengthened the submission of the United Party in the apartheid regime. Publicly endorsing the authoritarian, conservative administration of Francisco Franco in Spain and condemning the Nuremburg prosecutions of suspected Nazi war criminals, the Nationalists clarified that their rendition of anticommunism had almost no similarity with that promoted by the liberal democracies.36 The black nationalists of South Africa acted in response to the conservative rules of the Malan administration by starting to mobilize as a formal and progressively radicalized resistance, consolidated in a restored African National Congress.37 By the close of 1949, South Africa’s Nationalist administration had established the Union as a political weakness for the West in the Cold War. Although not a NATO member or a part of the European Recovery Program, the relationship of South Africa with the U.S. and Britain and its hostile anticommunism place it directly in the Western faction.38 The Union’s economic, political, and strategic value to the U.S. had been openly made known in the early postwar period, and would grow in line with the American uncertainty in the Cold War. Yet, the Nationalists’ clear resolve to strengthen racial polarization and white domination in southern Africa put their country in conflict with the international community, humiliating the Truman government by exposing an evident exemption to the democratic discourse and ambitions of the Western cooperation.39 South Africa was considered the economic cornerstone of the Southern Africa. Developed from poor ethnic populations and a structure of migratory labor, South Africa’s mineral abundance and inexpensive labor economy appealed to foreign investors. Even though South Africa was a British colony for five decades, from 1910 to 1961, the administrator ruled by Afrikaners sustained frequently strained relations with Britain, particularly after the launching of the racist apartheid rule in 1948.40 Ties declined even more as new Asian and African constituents of the Commonwealth harshly condemned apartheid and requested Britain to respond against it. South Africa, after a whites-only election in 1960, withdrew from the Commonwealth and proclaimed itself a republic. Britain remained a major investor in South Africa and sustained firm trade relations.41 Nevertheless, as the U.S. became the main economic thrust in the world after the Second World War, its interest in South Africa rose consequently. Conclusions The Apartheid rule, reinforced by nationalists in South Africa, promoted racism and racial polarization in the country; it originated from previous laws, yet made racism stricter, harsher, and more inhumane and implemented it more viciously. It substantially expanded the scope of the racially prejudiced stated and resulted in a methodical and ultimate decline of the status of black populations in South Africa for the subsequent years. The Cold War intensified Western support for the Apartheid system and anti-communist sentiments in South Africa. But it also revealed how brutal racism can be when fueled by political aspirations and imperialist goals. Bibliography Bandopadhyaya, Jayant. “Racism and International Relations.” Alternatives: Global, Local, Political 3.1 (1977): 19-48. Borstelmann, Thomas. Apartheid’s Reluctant Uncle: The United States and Southern Africa in the Early Cold War. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1993. Downing, John. “US Media Discourse on South Africa: The Development of a Situation Model.” Discourse & Society 1.1 (1990): 39-60. Ferreira, Rialize & Dan Henk. “Operationalizing Human Security in South Africa.” Armed Forces & Society 35.3 (2009): 501-525. Gibson, James. “The Legacy of Apartheid: Racial Differences in the Legitimacy of Democratic Institutions and Processes in the New South Africa.” Comparative Political Studies 36.7 (2003): 772-800. Landsberg, Chris. “Afro-Continentalism: Pan-Africanism in Post-Settlement South Africa’s Foreign Policy.” Journal of Asian and African Studies 47.4 (2012): 436-448. Leffler, Melvyn & David Painter. Origins of the Cold War: An International History. UK: Psychology Press, 2005. Matusevich, Maxim. “An exotic subversive: Africa, Africans and the Soviet everyday.” Race & Class 49.4 (2008): 57-81. Onslow, Sue. Cold War in Southern Africa: White Power, Black Liberation. UK: Routledge, 2009. Schmidt, Elizabeth. Foreign Intervention in Africa: From the Cold War to the War on Terror. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2013. Read More