Question by girl likes boy: How much debating was going on during the apartheid in south africa?
Links would be nice. I can’t figure this out. There was divestment, protesting, negotiations, but I can’t find anything online that gives the specific details of debates during south africa. Didn’t any black people do any debating? Didn’t the south african government debate with the world trying to defend it’s apartheid laws? Didn’t the new government debate with the old when apartheid ended?

Best answer:

Answer by Smells like New Screen Names
Apartheid in South Africa was accepted for years. Just as many third world dictatorships were accepted for years. Just the way that the current Israeli apartheid is accepted by many.

How exactly do you criticize an apartheid government, without first criticizing all the out right dictatorships in the world? When you have the kingdom of Saudi Arabia in the world, is your first stop South Africa?

South Africa at least had a viable open market economy, press freedoms (for some), and by its standards was a democracy. Not really that different from Jim Crow era America.

It is only after Jim Crow America is ended and the Cold War cools off that you find people beginning to question South Africa. Then you begin to have boycotts of companies doing business there.

As for the debates in South Africa, a good place might be to begin with Gandhi’s time as a lawyer there, then read up on Steven Biko, and end up with Nelson Mandela. The debate kept raging, the government kept increasing oppression, yet the economic motivation for freedom continued.

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