Why did the struggle to end apartheid in South Africa take so long?
The struggle to end apartheid in South Africa appears, at the dawn of the twenty first century, to be an aberration of social and world history. Viewed within the context of the pervasive civil rights movement in North America and the abolition of slavery (first in Britain at the beginning of the nineteenth century and followed by America after the Civil War in 1865), apartheid seems like a medieval notion that was imprinted upon modern history; an anachronistic nightmare imposed on civilised society. In a world that had banished National Socialism and seen the back of Stalin, the Immorality Amendment Act (1961) remained a legal statute in South Africa until 1985, making sexual relations between whites and non‑whites an unlawful act under apartheid. Yet the very singularity of apartheid remained a key reason for its longevity: for as long as South Africa could be isolated and swept under the international diplomatic rug the rest of the free world could comfort itself in its liberal att
