The fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of apartheid

The Fall of the
BERLIN WALL
and the End of
APARTHEID
Illustration by Phothooth on deviantART
by Sue Onslow
T
he fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of apartheid
in South Africa has come to be inextricably linked in
popular imagination, typified by newspaper headlines and
editorial comment in South Africa commemorating the
20th anniversary. The bureaucratic bungle that lead to the
opening of the East German border crossing point into West
Berlin on the night of 9th November 1990, and subsequent
destruction of the Berlin Wall, seemed to be followed
seamlessly by President FW de Klerk’s announcement in
the South African Parliament on 2nd February 1990 of the
unbanning of the ANC/SACP and the forthcoming release
of the ANC leader Nelson Mandela from Robben Island.
As physical and ideological walls came tumbling down in
Eastern Europe, so racial walls in South Africa appeared to
be disintegrating. Thus they are linked: QED.
History is never this tidy. In reality, the loosening of the
bonds of the apartheid system owed more to internal
dynamics, than external events in Eastern Europe. By the
early 1980s the foundations of insular Afrikaner nationalism
had been eroded, in cultural, ideological and institutional
terms. As an economic system, apartheid also made
less and less sense; industrialisation and technological
modernisation both created semi-skilled labour and its
associated demands for employment rights and salary
scales, but also a skills’ shortage. Despite a determined
repressive response by the South African police, rising
trade union militancy and urban unrest (the ‘In-xiles’)
was making the country ungovernable. External financial
pressure, through disinvestment and economic sanctions,
compounded the problems of a contracting economy
and capital flight facing the beleaguered South African
government. The international arms embargo and spiralling
security defence costs – and burden of the war in Angola
and South West Africa against perceived Soviet proxies
- further compounded the NP government’s problems;
furthermore, the international sports boycott rubbed salt
into the wound of national pride of a passionately pro-sport
white South African community.
Other important developments had taken place for South
Africa before 9th November 1989. Cautious political
reform had already been initiated by the preceding PW
Botha government – although it was patently ‘Too little,
too late’. The negotiated withdrawal of Cuban and South
African troops from Angola, and the future independence
of Namibia, had been accepted in the New York Accords in
December 1988. De Klerk had already made a decision to
decommission South Africa’s nuclear programme, with the
active encouragement of the US Administration; in October
1989, following this decision, a specialist committee was
appointed to provide specific recommendations as to the
dismantlement of South Africa’s nuclear arsenal of six and
a half bombs.
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By the early 1980s the foundations
of insular Afrikaner nationalism
had been eroded, in cultural,
ideological and institutional terms.
As an economic system, apartheid
also made less and less sense;
industrialisation and technological
modernisation both created semiskilled labour and its associated
demands for employment rights
and salary scales, but also a
skills’ shortage.
But that does not mean the two events are purely
coincidental, and unconnected. Closer examination
underlines the complex reality of the unravelling of the
global Cold War. It was a systemic process, not simply
a date; and that it ended at different times in different
regions, and at different points for different political,
military and social constituencies. Parallel to the decline
of the South African state (its ability to defend South
African territory never cracked) and economy there were
important shifts within the opposition movement in the
1980s. The ANC exiled leadership (the so-called Ex-iles)
privately began to change its attitude and rhetoric of armed
struggle in the 1980s; secret negotiations began with
South African business leaders, and soundings with foreign
governments (including officials in Thatcher’s government).
The loss of financial support and political backing from
the former German Democratic Republic was considerable
in November 1989, but the ANC still received important
Scandinavian assistance.
The greatest connection between the two events is in the
shift in popular and wider political perceptions, which
enabled the De Klerk leadership to take the dramatic
step of the February 1990 announcement in Parliament
– which both electrified and shocked South Africans by
turns. Sustained superpower detente in the 1980s critically
supported negotiations over Angola and Namibia; it also
strengthened the hand of the liberal element within the
NP government against the hard-line securocrats. The
disintegration of the communist bloc removed the fear of
a communist ‘Total Onslaught’ against the South African
state, creating the necessary political space for public
negotiations with the previously demonised ANC. But
most of all, in the words of former foreign Minister RF ‘Pik’
Botha, ‘We were lucky in Nelson Mandela. Without him,
it would not have been possible.’
***
Dr Sue Onslow is co-Director of IDEAS’ African International
Affairs Programme.
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