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Statement by the United Nations Special Committee against Apartheid, New York, 1985.

The international community must recognise that voluntary measures have failed. For over two decades, appeals to South Africa to dismantle apartheid have been rejected. The regime has intensified repression: a State of Emergency was declared in July 1985 and thousands of opponents have been detained without trial. Constructive engagement, the policy of maintaining economic and diplomatic ties in the hope of gradual reform, has produced no meaningful change. The Special Committee calls on all member states to impose comprehensive mandatory economic sanctions, including a complete embargo on trade and investment, and to sever diplomatic relations with the Pretoria regime until apartheid is abolished and all political prisoners are freed.

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British political cartoon published in the Observer, 1985, showing two businessmen in suits standing next to a large banner reading "Against Apartheid." The men are looking away from the banner, engaged in a handshake over a briefcase labelled "South African Contracts." The caption reads: "Constructive Engagement."

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President P.W. Botha of South Africa, address to the South African Parliament, 15 August 1985.

I am not prepared to lead white South Africans and other minority groups on a road to abdication and suicide. South Africa's problems cannot be solved by the stroke of a pen. We find ourselves in a world of growing terrorism and power politics, where the strong nations try to dictate to the weak. I know for a fact that most leaders of the countries imposing or calling for sanctions against South Africa know that sanctions do not work. They are using South Africa as a whipping boy for their own internal political purposes. Sanctions will harm, above all, the black people of South Africa whom these leaders claim to be helping. The South African government will not be intimidated.

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Historian Allister Sparks, Tomorrow Is Another Country: The Inside Story of South Africa's Negotiated Revolution, published 1995.

The years between 1984 and 1989 saw the most intense internal and international pressure on the apartheid state it had ever faced. Inside South Africa, the township revolts, the formation of the United Democratic Front in 1983, and the rolling mass actions organised by COSATU created a governability crisis that the State of Emergency could contain but not resolve. Internationally, the Rubicon speech, in which Botha refused to announce meaningful reforms, triggered a financial crisis when Chase Manhattan Bank refused to roll over South Africa's loans in August 1985 and other banks followed. Within months South Africa had been forced to suspend repayment of its foreign debt. The combination of internal revolt and financial isolation, more than trade sanctions, convinced key figures in the National Party government that negotiations with the ANC were ultimately unavoidable.

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Statement by South African Prime Minister B.J. Vorster, broadcast on South African state radio, 18 June 1976, two days after the Soweto uprising began.

The events of the past few days in Soweto are the work of agitators who have exploited the grievances of a small group of students for subversive purposes. The South African government will not be held to ransom by those who seek to undermine order and the proper functioning of society. Education is provided to black students at great expense and this government will not permit the disruption of schools by those who reject the reasonable conditions under which that education is offered. The decision to use Afrikaans as a medium of instruction is an educational matter, and it will not be reversed under pressure from the streets. The police acted with restraint in difficult circumstances. The government calls on responsible community leaders to restore calm.

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Photograph taken in Soweto, 16 June 1976, showing crowds of schoolchildren running through the streets with police vehicles visible in the background and smoke rising from buildings. Signs carried by students read "Down with Afrikaans" and "Bantu Education Must Fall."

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Desmond Tutu, Anglican Bishop of Johannesburg, writing in a public letter to Prime Minister Vorster, 6 May 1976, six weeks before the uprising.

I am writing to you, sir, because I have a growing nightmarish fear that unless something is done very soon then bloodshed and violence are going to happen in South Africa almost inevitably. A black person feels like a dog in his own country. Black people are bitter, and I must be honest with you: the anger of black people is real and growing, and I fear it will burst into violence that will be a blot on South Africa's name. I am writing as one who has deep love for this land, for all its peoples. We have tried to work peacefully, constitutionally, for change. But we are left with the growing feeling that we are being played for suckers. I plead with you in God's name, listen to us before it is too late.

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Historian Nigel Worden, The Making of Modern South Africa, third edition, 2000.

The Soweto uprising of June 1976 marked a decisive turning point in the history of resistance to apartheid. It demonstrated that the apparent calm of the early 1970s had concealed a profound anger among the black urban population, particularly its youth. The immediate trigger was the Afrikaans medium decree of 1974, which required mathematics and social studies to be taught in Afrikaans in black schools. But the uprising was about far more than language: it was a rejection of Bantu Education as a system designed to condemn black South Africans to permanent inferiority. The international response, including the withdrawal of foreign investment and the strengthening of the arms embargo, accelerated the pressure on the apartheid state.

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Nelson Mandela, statement from the dock at the opening of his trial, Pretoria Supreme Court, 20 April 1964.

I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in harmony and with equal opportunities. It is an ideal which I hope to live for and to achieve. But if needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die. The African National Congress was formed in 1912 to defend the rights of the African people. For thirty-seven years it followed a policy of non-violence. It was only when all else had failed, when all channels of peaceful protest had been barred to us, that the decision was made to embark on violent forms of political struggle. The Government had left us with no other choice. I do not deny that I planned sabotage. I did not plan it in a spirit of recklessness nor because I have any love of violence. I planned it as a result of a calm and sober assessment of the political situation after many years of tyranny, exploitation and oppression.

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British editorial cartoon published in a national newspaper, 1985, showing a large prison wall with "Robben Island" written on it. Behind the wall, a raised fist is visible above the top. Outside the wall, a crowd of supporters holds signs reading "Free Mandela" and "ANC Lives." A guard on the wall looks nervous.

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Chief Mangosuthu Buthelezi, leader of the Inkatha Freedom Party, speech in KwaZulu, 1986.

The ANC does not speak for all black South Africans. It never has and it never will. The people of KwaZulu have their own traditions, their own leadership, and their own aspirations. We reject the armed struggle. We reject the call for sanctions which will destroy the livelihoods of the very people the ANC claims to represent. We believe in negotiation, in dialogue, in building bridges rather than burning them. The ANC's campaign of violence and intimidation in the townships is not liberation: it is the replacement of one tyranny with another. Inkatha will continue to seek a peaceful settlement that respects the diversity of South Africa's peoples.

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Historian William Beinart, Twentieth-Century South Africa, second edition, 2001.

The anti-apartheid struggle was never a monolithic movement led by a single organisation. The ANC, despite its dominance in the international imagination, shared the political landscape with the Pan Africanist Congress, the Black Consciousness Movement, the trade unions, the United Democratic Front, and the Inkatha Freedom Party. The relationship between the ANC and Inkatha was particularly destructive: in the late 1980s and early 1990s, political violence between supporters of the two organisations killed over 14,000 people in KwaZulu-Natal and the Witwatersrand townships. This violence, which the apartheid security forces actively encouraged and armed, complicated the transition and threatened to derail the negotiation process. Mandela's personal authority and his willingness to engage with both de Klerk and Buthelezi were critical in preventing the violence from escalating into civil war.

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Martin Luther King Jr., "Letter from Birmingham Jail," 16 April 1963.

I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Councillor or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action." Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection. I had hoped that the white moderate would understand that the present tension in the South is a necessary phase of the transition from an obnoxious negative peace to a substantive and positive peace.

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American editorial cartoon published in a national newspaper, 1964, showing two paths diverging from a crossroads. On one path, a figure in a suit carries a sign reading "Nonviolence" and leads a peaceful march. On the other path, a figure with raised fist carries a sign reading "By Any Means." A signpost at the crossroads reads "Civil Rights."

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Malcolm X, speech at the Founding Rally of the Organization of Afro-American Unity, New York, 28 June 1964.

We declare our right on this earth to be a man, to be a human being, to be respected as a human being, to be given the rights of a human being in this society, on this earth, in this day, which we intend to bring into existence by any means necessary. The day of nonviolent resistance is over. We tried nonviolence. We tried sitting in. We tried freedom rides. And every time we tried, they bombed a church. Every time we tried, they beat us. Every time we tried, they set dogs on us. You don't take your case to the criminal; you take your criminal to court. And when a government fails to protect its citizens, those citizens have the right to protect themselves. The philosophy of nonviolence has failed, and those who preach it are keeping black people defenceless in the face of an armed enemy.

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Historian Clayborne Carson, In Struggle: SNCC and the Black Awakening of the 1960s, published 1981.

The tension between nonviolent integrationism and militant black nationalism was not simply a disagreement between King and Malcolm X as individuals. It reflected a deeper generational and strategic divide within the Civil Rights Movement. The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), which had begun as an offshoot of King's philosophy of nonviolence, became by 1966 the vehicle through which younger activists rejected both King's gradualism and the NAACP's legalism. Under Stokely Carmichael's leadership, SNCC's call for "Black Power" in June 1966 represented a fundamental reorientation: away from moral appeals to white conscience and towards independent black political organisation. The shift alienated white liberal allies and divided the movement, but it also gave voice to an urban black population whose experience of poverty and police violence was not addressed by Southern desegregation campaigns.

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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.

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Press photograph taken outside Victor Verster Prison, Paarl, 11 February 1990, showing Nelson Mandela walking free with his fist raised, surrounded by ANC supporters.

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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.

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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.