Political Science

The history of South Africa is among the world richest, and has been of much scholarly interest for decades. While South Africa is associated with economic progress and the heroism of its leaders, not much of South Africa is said without the mention of its cruel and bloody era of apartheid at whose centre were racial segragation and domination of the minority white population over the black population (Green, n.d). Although parallels have been drawn between apartheid era South Africa and Germany and Korea, it can be observed that while the disputants in Korea and Germany were largely native populations, the case was different in South Africa. A minority white population which had immigrated to South Africa from Europe, settled and colonized the country had accumulated enough economic and political power to pass policies which favoured whites and hurt the native population.

While divisions in both Korea and Germany resulted in the division of the countries so that North Koreans would not go to South Korea, and vice versa, South Africas case was different. The white population needed the black population for labour, and could not do without it. The segregation was thus used not to expel black South Africans from their country, but to solidify the political and economic domination of the black population by the white population. Some black South Africans were thus allowed to stay in specific parts of the city from where go to their white-controlled work-places in the morning and return to their ghettoes at sunset. The same was true of those blacks who worked for white largescale farmers in the countrysides. They would spend their days at the farms and go backs to their reserve homes after work. There was therefore no one time when South Africa was split as Korea and Germany. Instead, all South Africans, whether black, white or coloured, were under the same government.

The situation in South Africa deteriorated to the extent that it attracted world attention. The mineral-rich country was attracting investors from all over the world. In a way therefore, apartheid in South Africa was benefitting not just the Afrikaner population but also investors and other countries which invested in South Africa. In particular, US companies had invested heavily in apartheid-era South Africa, with companies like Ford Motor, General Electric, Texaco, Phelps-Dodge, Standard Oil of California, and Union Carbide raking in huge profits from their operations in South Africa (Bob, 1977). Eight years after the 1977 demonstrations and deep in the thick of apartheid-era South Africa, the US was still South Africas largest trading partner, controlling up to 50 percent of the latters oil industry (The Tech-Online, 1985).

Anti-apartheid campaigns in the US started when students of Stanford University started staging demonstrations against US investments in South Africa. In non-violent protests which attracted international media coverage and garnered widespread support from students and civilians, the students argued that by investing in South Africa, where racial segregation and human rights abuses were the order of the day, the US was supporting the South African regime (Knight, 2006). The students thus called on the US to pull out its investments from South Africa. That the US had had a long history of racial segregation and had experienced effects and perils of segregationist policies contributed to the support the Stanford University students attracted with their anti-apartheid call.By 1985, about 55 colleges and universities had divested from South Africa, and the magnitude of the anti-apartheid and divestmant campaigns were too intense for the US government to ignore (MSU, n.d).

The divestment campaign set the stage for the end of white-minority rule in South Africa. It had greatly reduced the profit margins of foreign companies investing in South Africa, forcing many to divest.