Disinvestment from South Africa

Disinvestment (or divestment) from South Africa was first advocated in the 1960s, in protest of South Africa's system of apartheid, but was not implemented on a significant scale until the mid-1980s. The disinvestment campaign, after being realized 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 spearheaded the arrangements for an international conference on sanctions to be held in London in April 1964. According to 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. This conference, Lisson writes,

established 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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