South Africa was split into two main groups, Blacks and Whites, the whites gained most of the rights and better standard of living as they were given the best quality jobs for best pay while the blacks were made to work on the worst jobs for near to nothing. Whites controlled most of the land in South Africa and had the best items, For example whites would own all of the best cars as they could afford them whereas blacks could not. Blacks were made to be servants for wealthy whites and get hardly any pay; they could only leave when told by their owner.
In South Africa whites took sport very seriously as it showed them as superior to blacks, it also meant that whites were better at all sports then the blacks. It was a traditional way for whites to show Superiority by playing sports like Rugby, Cricket, Golf and Tennis. It was not allowed for blacks to play sports in South Africa as it is against the Apartheid laws.
A sporting Boycott, or also known as International isolation, was when one or more countries stop playing competitive sports with another country; this means that they will not allow this country to take part in any big sporting events until they give in to the other ones demands. This happened to South Africa when all the main powerful countries decided racism was wrong and boycotted South Africa. They stopped all competitive sports between them. An excellent example of a famous sporting boycott happened in 1968 when the English cricket tour of South Africa was cancelled because of Basil d’Oliviera. Basil d’Oliviera was black and was born in South Africa, he left when he tried to get into the professional South African team but was rejected so he moved to England to play cricket. South Africa rejected playing England as they believe it would show them as not superior as they were playing a black man. This offended England and many other countries which then began their hate towards apartheid. South Africa believed that if they were beaten by England it would show them as lower and less superior to blacks.
However such sporting boycotts were an annoyance to South Africa but they were never enough to bring down the Apartheid System. In actual fact, White South Africa often got around the sporting boycotts. Foreign sportsmen were paid a huge wages to come and play South Africa competitively and take part in competitions against them. These were used to get around the sporting boycotts as many of the sportsmen agreed as the money involved was massive. Sporting boycotts were a failure in South Africa as they didn’t help see the end of Apartheid.
Even though sporting boycotts had failed the other countries didn’t stop in bringing down Apartheid. The world had slowly become more and more against South Africa; they knew Apartheid was a big problem as it segregated blacks from whites which had now become wrong in the eyes of many countries. They knew it had to be stopped. There was a swing in world opinion in favour of economic sanctions, so they reintroduced them forgetting that they had failed before. This change in public view on economic sanctions meant that more countries got involved including many African countries as they had now come over to black rule. The more countries involved in this, the harder it became for South Africa to deal with anyone, in the earlier ones they could make easy trade as not many countries were involved whereas now they cannot. Another problem South Africa got from economic sanctions was that many big companies left as they were given a bad name from the Apartheid system and racism among South Africa, For example Barclays bank left as no one would deal with them, Shell oil did the same as it was bad for business, People would not buy any South African fruit or wine and Common Markets refused to buy South African iron and steel. This had terrible effects as the economy of South Africa was plummeting beyond salvation. They meant South Africa was not all as rich as it was before and many people left to save the money they still had. This meant huge drops in money flow for the country so they had to realise that Apartheid was loosing them money and keeping it going any longer would ruin South Africa financially. Inflation increased, prices rose for all South Africans as the economic was at an all time low. High taxes were installed throughout South Africa to try and gain money back, Meanwhile White South African realised that their golden economy was beginning to weaken as they were forced to pay bigger and larger taxes and prices to use anything inside South Africa, this led to a threat to White superiority and domination as Apartheid was weakened immensely. The end of Apartheid was soon to follow as they couldn’t carry on with it crippling the country economically.
In conclusion, we see that earlier economic sanctions failed as they didn’t have full backing from the biggest countries in the world and were easy for South Africa to get around. We also see that Sporting boycotts failed as once again South Africa managed to get around them easily. We see that the later economic sanctions worked as they managed to cut of the flow of income into South Africa by blocking all imports to them. The external pressures of the bigger countries helped as they made it harder for South Africa to dodge around certain problems in their way. External pressures, economic sanction and sporting boycotts played a big part in the fight against Apartheid and minority rule in South Africa as they blocked the country from others with sanctions and put immense pressure on them till they ended Apartheid.