Practice IB History Topic South Africa with authentic exam-style questions for both SL and HL students. This question bank focuses on the exact syllabus content for South Africa and mirrors Paper 1, 2, 3 style where relevant.
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Source M
Speech by South African President F.W. de Klerk to the South African Parliament, 2 February 1990.
The prohibition of the African National Congress, the Pan Africanist Congress, the South African Communist Party and a number of subsidiary organisations is being rescinded. The media emergency regulations as well as the education emergency regulations are being abolished in their entirety. The epoch of colonialism, paternalism and apartheid cannot be reconciled with the dynamic demands of our time in the rest of the world. We must honestly admit that our international isolation is a burden we can no longer afford to carry. I am placing a new South Africa on the negotiating table. I am inviting all leaders who commit themselves to peace and to renounce violence to come to the negotiating table. Together we must devise the constitution of the new South Africa.
Source N
Press photograph taken outside Victor Verster Prison, Paarl, 11 February 1990, showing Nelson Mandela walking free with his fist raised, surrounded by ANC supporters.
Source O
Nelson Mandela, Long Walk to Freedom, published 1994.
As I walked out the door toward the gate that would lead to my freedom, I knew if I didn't leave my bitterness and hatred behind, I'd still be in prison. I had been walking for a long time and I was tired, but I walked with the awareness that I was entering a new era in the life of my country and the life of our struggle. I raised my fist to the crowd. The emotion was overwhelming. I had not been in contact with the outside world for twenty-seven years. I did not then know that the world had changed so profoundly. I knew only that the tyrant I had fought had now agreed to share power. But I also knew that the hard work of building a new South Africa lay entirely ahead of us. Liberation had arrived; the real work of freedom had not yet begun.
Source P
Historian Patti Waldmeir, Anatomy of a Miracle: The End of Apartheid and the Birth of the New South Africa, published 1997.
De Klerk's speech of 2 February 1990 was the single most dramatic moment in modern South African history. Yet it was not an act of moral conversion. De Klerk had concluded, after taking office in 1989, that apartheid was economically and politically unsustainable: the costs of the security state, the isolation of the economy, and the internal revolt made the status quo untenable. He also calculated (wrongly, as it turned out) that the ANC was sufficiently weakened by years of exile and internal repression that it could be brought into a managed transition in which the National Party would remain a dominant force. What de Klerk did not foresee was that the moral authority of Mandela and the ANC's organisational resilience would make the transition to majority rule unavoidable rather than negotiated on National Party terms.
What, according to Source M, were the reasons de Klerk gave for unbanning the ANC and other organisations?
What is the message conveyed by Source N?
With reference to its origin, purpose and content, analyse the value and limitations of Source O for a historian studying the end of apartheid and the transition to democracy in South Africa.
Compare and contrast Sources M and P regarding the reasons for and nature of de Klerk's decision to unban the ANC and open negotiations.
Using the sources and your own knowledge, evaluate the view that the end of apartheid was primarily the result of internal resistance rather than international pressure.