This radical change in policy by DeKlerk was sudden and unexpected; he was taking a major risk by doing this. He was willing to talk because, I think, he could see that it was better if he could get South Africa alive on its feet rather than reviled and crippled. Without DeKlerk coming to power it is very unlikely that apartheid would not have collapsed, at least not so soon. However, it is due to other factors that he was forced to make his sweeping changes in policy.
One of the pressures that encouraged DeKlerk to do this came from the ANC and other black organisations. Violence was bad for business and for the country and as the ANC increased their armed action, the country became more and more ungovernable. This way DeKlerk was more ready to back down to them because he realised they were managing to help bring the country down and if the violence didn’t stop then there would soon not be much of South Africa left. DeKlerk’s move towards getting rid of segregation earned him much more status from the rest of the world.
One of the official views the Government leaders gave as to why they could not trust the ANC was that they were allies of the Communist Russia and wanted to spread the communism to South Africa. This was not entirely true, so when in the late 1980’s and the Soviet Union broke up, the Government lost one of its reasons for not going along with the ANC. However the ANC lost much of its support too.
Nelson Mandela was probably the key factor for the ending of the apartheid. He came from Royal Family and was a member of the ANC. He was sentenced to life imprisonment at the Rivionia trial after being found guilty of sabotage. However, before the sentence was passed, Mandela made a four and a half hour address to the court outlining his views of a future South Africa. This earned him many supporters over the years from all over the world as being the prisoner of apartheid. His speech as echoed all over the globe.
Mandela became a world hero, and the Nationalist government were willing to grant him freedom, but only if he would give up politics and retire. Mandela would not only consider a deal if it involved the release of his ANC colleagues and the right to start political activities to promote racial harmony. He was the voice of the blacks from prison and had great vision in seeing that he could try and manipulate the government into releasing him and his fellow ANC members. All the government wanted was for the whites to retain control and have power, while Mandela and the blacks wanted equality and freedom.
He was a statesman, and saw that it was better not to alienate the whites because he needed them to from a united South Africa. If there had been a sudden change in 1990 then there would have been disaster. The ANC were not ready for full leadership and did not even want it. The whites would have rioted and caused further problems, this is why near full equality and the ending of apartheid took over four years to develop. Mandela was a huge factor because he had support from all over the world and had the courage, dream and wisdom not to turn whites against him, but to try and welcome them. He encouraged the rest of the world to criticize the South African government, which pout pressure on them to reform and led to the disintegration of apartheid.
In my opinion, Mandela and DeKlerk are obviously the main two factors that caused the ending of the apartheid, however, there are evidently some other people and events that contributed. One of these is Bishop Desmond Tutu, who in 1975 became the first black dean of the Anglican Church in Johannesburg. He bitterly and blatantly opposed apartheid and attacked the government saying that they were dictators and would not succeed. Any people listened to him and he travelled the world preaching. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1984, which didn’t look too good for the government. Without Tutu, perhaps the rest of the world wouldn’t have condemned the South African’s so much and therefore not put as much pressure on them to reform as they might have.
I think the ending of the apartheid in South Africa is due to a number of factors that individually, would not have been strong enough, but together they managed to slowly bring down apartheid to from a racially harmonic state. Some of the factors may be deemed to be more important than others, such as the two individuals from contrasting sides, Mandela and DeKlerk, who basically negotiated a conclusion. In doing so, they created an almost unrecognisable state to that which had existed years earlier. Without the astuteness of these individuals, the willingness of the rest of the world, the persistence of the anti apartheid movement and the luck of DeKlerk coming to power at the right time, none of this would have happened.
