Apartheid always was an unworkable as well as immoral system whose breakdown was inevitable. But the trade and financial sanctions imposed by the U.S., the European Community, the Commonwealth and other groups of nations hammered home to South African whites, as probably nothing else could have, the fact that their country had become a global outlaw, judged unfit for membership in the world community of nations. Their dismay at that knowledge accelerated the process of dismantling apartheid at least a bit, and perhaps with somewhat less violence than would have been the case without sanctions. Now that the process seems irreversible,...
South Africa: A Black-and-White Future
Apartheid would have fallen anyway, but sanctions helped speed the process. So Bush decided it was time to lift them as an incentive for more progress.
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