Source M
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.
Source N
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."
Source O
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.
Source P
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.
(a) What, according to Source M, was the UN Special Committee's case for imposing comprehensive mandatory sanctions against South Africa?
(b) What is the message conveyed by Source N?
