The Online Library of Liberty

A project of Liberty Fund, Inc.

• Editorial Staff
• Associate Editors
• Editorial
• Bibliographical Essay: Justus D. Doenecke, the Anti-interventionist Tradition: Leadership and Perceptions
• I: Freedom, Choice, and Social Stability
• Locke As a Revolutionary
• Smith, Commerce & the Common Good
• Antifederalism: Military & Civilian Concerns
• Isaiah Berlin: Pluralism Vs. Rationalism
• Feyerabend On Freedom and Diversity
• Braudel, History, and Patterns
• Vouchers, Education & Choice
• II: Government, Violence and Social Instability
• Bryan & Moralistic Foreign Policy
• War and Social Change
• Dewey, Pragmatism, and War
• Militarism: a Domestic & Foreign Affair
• Western Support For Apartheid
• U.s. Pacification of the Hopi
• The Celtic South: the Aftermath of War
• The U.s. & Mexico: the Drug Connection
• Political Violence In Guatemala
• The Monroe Doctrine & National Policy
• Imperialism's Cost In Human Suffering
• The Strategy and Logistics of Empire
• Presidential Power Vs. the Press

Western Support for Apartheid

Carolyn Brown

“Apartheid and Trilateralism: Partners in Southern Africa.” In Holly Sklar (ed.), The Trilateral Commission and Elite Planning for World Management. Boston: South End Press, 1980, pp. 352–376.

Despite international boycotts and armed resistance against white South Africa, the trilateral countries have largely supported the regime of racism or “apartheid” in South Africa together with the bogus “reform” movement that seeks to extend and strengthen apartheid. Among the reasons for supporting apartheid, the critical ones are economic: the trilateral countries are heavily dependent upon the strategic minerals that are mined in South Africa. South Africa ranks fourth among the world's nations in known reserves and exports of minerals necessary for industrialization: chromium, manganese, cobalt, platinum, uranium, and gold. The mining industries themselves depend upon cheap Black labor, and the Black liberation movement represents a threat to securing needed minerals and metals at a price that favors Western capital.

Apartheid itself is based on government legislation which robbed the African farmers of their land, excluded Blacks from skilled job categories, shifted Blacks to resource-deficient areas, and denied Blacks any political participation in the government of South Africa. International capital supports apartheid by its mining investments—investments which attain high profits by the low costs of a largely nonunionized and mostly migrant labor force.

Criticism of trilateral countries' cooperation with the minority regime in South Africa has sparked a “reform” movement to improve the international image of apartheid. However, the “reforms” that have taken place actually strengthen apartheid, while doing little to dismantle it. Labor legislation, for example, denies Blacks the right to strike and empowers the government to control union membership and to deny any union affiliation with political parties. Influx control laws prohibit Blacks from remaining in urban areas without a job or approved housing, while increasing penalties for any employer hiring “illegal” urban Blacks. Even so, the national liberation movement is growing in strength, and it remains to be seen whether the trilateral-backed South African reform effort will revitalize the minority regime or hasten its demise.