Antiapartheid Movements

A obra de Pablo de Rezende Saturnino Braga, intitulada A rede de ativismo transnacional contra o apartheid na África do Sul, representa um estudo valioso e oportuno. Ela retoma a história do regime racista e analisa a rede de atores transnacionais que se levantou contra a forma explícita mais obscurantista de discriminação desde a derrota do nazismo, demonstrando com clareza quem era quem nos anos do apartheid. Isto porque hoje, da África do Sul à Europa, a xenofobia e a doutrina da superioridade racial estão de volta, com o rosto descoberto. Professor Paulo Visentini

For the first time in nearly 30 years, 2013 has seen increasing public awareness of calls for a comprehensive boycott of and sanctions on a state based on questions of an “entrenched system of racial discrimination”. The call to boycott South African sport emerged in the 1950s as the apartheid state was developing and refining its comprehensive and systematic legal form amid growing international pressure for decolonisation. This is a different social and political context than the call 50 years later by Palestinian civil society for boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel (BDS). This paper draws on analyses of international anti-apartheid movements’ campaigns against sporting contact with South Africa and the BDS call for the isolation of the Israeli state to propose a theory of sports boycotts. It looks at the anti-apartheid campaigns, especially those in the early 1960s, to consider ways in which the BDS campaign has an impact on existing historical understandings of cultural boycotts as a tactical and strategic campaign tool.

Previously published in German as: “Warum Südafrika? Die Politik des britischen Anti-Apartheid-Aktivismus in den langen 1970er Jahren.” In "Moral für die Welt? Menschenrechtspolitik in den 1970er Jahren," eds. Jan Eckel and Samuel Moyn (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2012).

[http://www.v-r.de/en/title-248-248/moral_fuer_die_welt-1007361/]

Contribution to forum on "Have You Heard From Johannesburg" [seven-part documentary series on the history of the global anti-apartheid movement; the series trailers can be viewed at: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLpIArD4de-_L3Pjz2cdmAyaBqL8LRQixl]

The forum was itself reviewed by Eric Morgan on H-Diplo, 17 January 2013: http://www.h-net.org/~diplo/reviews/PDF/AR382.pdf.