Beyond that, other forces were responsible for creating the political conditions that doomed apartheid. A global anti-apartheid movement was not only protesting but demanding sanctions. When the Chase Manhattan Bank refused to roll over government loans, the handwriting was on the wall. The pressure was building.
Largely unknown is the role that the demand for cultural sanctions had played as a high profile part of this campaign. I was privileged to have played a role in the Sun City project which mobilized 54 well known music stars, under the leadership of Little Steven and Producer Arthur Baker to popularize sanctions with the ("I Won't Play) Sun City song and video
That was in l985. The song became a soundtrack for the struggle, contributed to creating a climate that led the US Congress to override a veto of a sanctions bill submitted by California Congressman Ron Dellums. Dellums and other black leaders in DC had been arrested sitting in at the South African Embassy. Anti-apartheid groups protested on campuses across America. Even a student named Barack Obama was involved while studying at Occidental College in California.
At the same time, South Africa's townships were fired up by a campaign to make the country ungovernable. There was violence and mass arrests with 14,000 mostly young activists in jail. This led to an international outcry and pressure from the United Nations which sent eminent persons to meet Mandela and push for a diplomatic resolution of the deepening crisis.
Also outside the country, the ANC's guerilla force stepped up its offensive as the Pretoria government retaliated with bombing attacks on the neighboring Front Line States. A campaign of destabilization was underway with South African backed proxy wars in Angola and Mozambique and covert assassination squads unleashed against activists. Leading anti-apartheid figures were killed including whites like David Webster in Natal and Ruth First in Maputo. Steve Biko had been murdered earlier.
The Afrikaners pictured themselves fighting a war against a Soviet-backed "Total Assault," a figment of their propaganda, Right-wing groups in the US allied with their attempts to stop independence for Namibia. The convicted American right-wing lobbyist Jack Abramoff, now in prison for bribing members of Congress, was behind a propaganda movie called Red Dawn to demonize liberation struggles.
What the South Africans didn't count on was the role played by the Cuban army which defeated the South Africans in the Southern Angolan town of Cuito Carnivale and forced the regime to back town. That victory was followed by the independence of Namibia, which became a forerunner to what was to come in South Africa. This is why Fidel Castro attended, and was loudly cheered, at Nelson Mandela's inauguration as President in 1994.
These were the pillars of the fight to release Mandela and free South Africa. They were rarely referenced or explained in our media. Reporting here focused on violence and one man. The ANC was considered a terrorist force in Pretoria, and by the Reagan Administration. When the Congress called for Mandela's release, Dick Cheney, then in the House, voted against the resolution Reagan's Secretary of State refused to meet with ANC leader Oliver Tambo, Mandela's onetime law partner, when he visited Washington. The ANC was undeterred.
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