British Policy Towards Military Cooperation with the Republic of South Africa, 1961–1975

The early 1960s were a turbulent time in South Africa; the Sharpeville Massacre provoked condemnation from the international community, which, with the acceleration of decolonisation, was turning increasingly against Pretoria. The decision to withdraw its re-application to the Commonwealth in October 1960 further isolated South Africa. Despite this, UK–South African military cooperation remained largely unaffected until the pivotal Simonstown Agreement's termination in 1975. This article explores this relationship and explains why British policy-makers consistently maintained links with an overtly racist regime. UK–South African military cooperation was persistently controversial and engendered frequent criticism from African members of the Commonwealth and from campaigning groups such as the Anti-Apartheid Movement, whose membership included Labour ministers. Concurrently, Pretoria was viewed as an important Cold War ally, particularly in the context of the build-up of Soviet naval incursions into the Indian Ocean from 1968 onwards. This article will analyse how British officials attempted to navigate its military relations with South Africa under such heated circumstances.     

南非民主进程的顿挫与延续——略论博塔的改革总战略

博塔任南非政府首脑期间,面对索韦托暴动引起的政治、经济与社会动荡和国内外的新形势,提出和推行改革总战略：对不适应南非现代化建设和政治稳定的现存制度进行改革;坚决镇压反抗白人统治、破坏社会秩序的行为;全力营造一个有利于改革总战略的国际环境。其目的是维护白人统治和种族隔离制度。他的改革在沃斯特的种族政策调整与德克勒克的民主改革之间架起了一座桥梁,起到了承前启后的作用,将南非的改革进程带入一个新阶段,一定程度上改善了黑人的处境。但博塔的镇压造成国内局势紧张并迅速恶化,以至于到了几乎失控的程度,改革进程陷入停顿。     

THE FRONTIER REMIX

In The Deaths of Hintsa: Postapartheid South Africa and the Shape of Recurring Pasts, Premesh Lalu claims to offer a critique of apartheid's colonial past. Emblematic of this colonial past is the 1835 killing and mutilation of the Xhosa king Hintsa. Lalu uses this violent event to argue against the evidence provided by the colonial archives. He argues that the killing of Hintsa was not an empirical fact but a product of the colonial imagination. The review argues that although the critique of apartheid's colonial past is timely, the book is not about Hintsa and does not therefore offer an alternative narrative of the death of the Xhosa king.     

Despairing at ‘A World Made New’? South Africa Encounters the Post-war Human Rights Idea

ABSTRACT

This article surveys the efforts of the South African state to respond to the reconfigured world that emerged after 1945. Focussed on those years around the adoption of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), it argues that South African governments and officials were well attuned to the rising threat of human rights. Drawing on South African archives, it demonstrates that representatives of late United Party and early apartheid era governments were insightful observers of the mortal danger universal human rights posed to the racialised ideological architecture which governed essentially all of the country’s politics and society. Paradoxically, the most avowed opponents of the new crusade for universal human rights perceived its significance with equal or greater acuity than those more enthusiastic about the nascent rights order.     

Internationalisation at Stellenbosch University during the international academic boycott of the apartheid era (1948–1994)

In this article, we address the international dimension of Stellenbosch University (SU) during the apartheid era, most notably during the academic boycott of South African universities between the early 1960s and the early 1990s. Based on information gathered from the documentary sources of the university and interviews with key role players at the university, the findings of the research will put some of the well-established hypotheses on South Africa’s academic isolation and an increasing localism in higher education during that period into perspective. The article will show that prior to 1990 there were different kinds of international activities going on at SU, despite the academic boycotts.