Disinvestment from South Africa

Disinvestment (or divestment) from South Africa was first advocated in the 1960s, in protest against South Africa's system of apartheid, but was not implemented on a significant scale until the mid-1980s. The disinvestment campaign, after being realised in federal legislation enacted in 1986 by the United States, is credited by some as pressuring the South African Government to embark on negotiations ultimately leading to the dismantling of the apartheid system. In November 1962, the United Nations General Assembly passed Resolution 1761, a non-binding resolution establishing the United Nations Special Committee against Apartheid and called for imposing economic and other sanctions on South Africa. All Western nations were unhappy with the call for sanctions and as a result, boycotted the committee. Following this passage of this resolution, the UK-based Anti-Apartheid Movement (AAM) spearheaded the arrangements for an international conference on sanctions to be held in London in April 1964. According to Arianna Lisson, "The aim of the Conference was to work out the practicability of economic sanctions and their implications on the economies of South Africa, the UK, the US, and the Protectorates. Knowing that the strongest opposition to the application of sanctions came from the West (and within the West, Britain), the Committee made every effort to attract as wide and varied a number of speakers and participants as possible so that the Conference findings would be regarded as objective." The conference was named the International Conference for Economic Sanctions Against South Africa. Lisson writes that this conference: [E]stablished the necessity, the legality, and the practicability of internationally organised sanctions against South Africa, whose policies were seen to have become a direct threat to peace and security in Africa and the world. Its findings also pointed out that in order to be effective, a programme of sanctions would need the active participation of Britain and the US, who were also the main obstacle to the implementation of such a policy.

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“Please Ensure the Gate is Properly Closed”: Questioning the Swiss Presence in Apartheid South Africa Through the Swiss Social Club in Cape Town

Denise Bertschi

It’s a special type of Swiss enclave that Denise Bertschi came across in South Africa in 2018: the Swiss Social & Sports Club welcomes Cape Town’s Swiss ex-pat community and temporary visitors to sit back and relax, be they businesspeople, bankers, or fina ...

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Slender yet densely packed with images, this 44-page publication presents items discovered during an artistic research project that investigated various relationships between Swiss people and the South African apartheid regime in the 1980s and 1990s. Adver ...

Auto-édité par Denise Bertschi2018

Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela (mænˈdɛlə; xolíɬaɬa mandɛ̂ːla; 18 July 1918 – 5 December 2013) was a South African anti-apartheid activist and politician who served as the first president of South Africa from 1994 to 1999. He was the country's first black head of state and the first elected in a fully representative democratic election. His government focused on dismantling the legacy of apartheid by fostering racial reconciliation. Ideologically an African nationalist and socialist, he served as the president of the African National Congress (ANC) party from 1991 to 1997.

Fossil fuel divestment or fossil fuel divestment and investment in climate solutions is an attempt to reduce climate change by exerting social, political, and economic pressure for the institutional divestment of assets including stocks, bonds, and other financial instruments connected to companies involved in extracting fossil fuels. Fossil fuel divestment campaigns emerged on campuses in the United States in 2011 with students urging their administrations to turn endowment investments in the fossil fuel industry into investments in clean energy and communities most impacted by climate change.

Economic sanctions are commercial and financial penalties applied by states or institutions against states, groups, or individuals. Economic sanctions are a form of coercion that attempts to get an actor to change its behavior through disruption in economic exchange. Sanctions can be intended to compel (an attempt to change an actor's behavior) or deterrence (an attempt to stop an actor from certain actions). Sanctions can target an entire country or they can be more narrowly targeted at individuals or groups; this latter form of sanctions are sometimes called "smart sanctions".