International sanctions during apartheid

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As a response to South Africa's apartheid policies, the international community adopted economic sanctions as condemnation and pressure. With Jamaica leading the impetus by being the first country to ban goods from apartheid South Africa in 1959.

On 6 November 1962, the United Nations General Assembly passed Resolution 1761, a non-binding resolution condemning South African apartheid policies, establishing the United Nations Special Committee against Apartheid and calling for imposing economic and other sanctions on South Africa. On 7 August 1963 the United Nations Security Council passed Resolution 181 calling for a voluntary arms embargo against South Africa and that very year the Special Committee Against Apartheid would encourage and oversee plans of action against the country.

While nations such as the United States and the United Kingdom were at first reluctant to place sanctions, by the late-1980s both countries and 23 other nations had passed laws placing various trade sanctions on South Africa.

Economic sanctions against South Africa placed a significant pressure on the government that helped to end apartheid. In 1990, President Frederik Willem (F.W.) de Klerk recognised the economic unsustainability of the burden of international sanctions, released the African nationalist leader Nelson Mandela and unbanned the African National Congress (ANC). In April 1991, The European Economic Community lifted economic sanctions on South Africa.^[1] De Klerk and Mandela guided the country to its first democratic elections in 1994, which resulted in Mandela being elected president. When Mandela was asked if economic sanctions helped to bring an end to the apartheid system, Mandela replied "Oh, there is no doubt."