Yves here. To some, this post might seem quaint. It looks back on a period when some Democrats were willing to act in a principled manner, at least when the costs were not high. It even show members of what Black Agenda Report calls the black misleadership class like Charles Rangel and Maxine Waters acting as if they had some decency.
But a key, albeit secondary part, of this account on how the South African divestment and sanctions movement got rolling is the seminal role of year of campus activism, which included targeting university endowments for divestiture of South African holdings. No wonder Zionist billionaire have been so savage in their efforts to stamp out student and faculty opposition to Israel’s genocide and ethnic cleansing.
By John P. Ruehl, an Australian-American journalist living in Washington, D.C., and a world affairs correspondent for the Independent Media Institute. He is a contributor to several foreign affairs publications, and his book, Budget Superpower: How Russia Challenges the West With an Economy Smaller Than Texas’, was published in December 2022. Produced by Economy for All, a project of the Independent Media Institute
By the early 1980s, South Africa’s system of racial apartheid had evolved from an issue of limited concern to becoming a major issue globally. Years of campaigning by anti-apartheid activists, the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC), and student-led divestment movements were beginning to bear fruit. This momentum, however, stalled due to the conservative turn in U.S. politics after Ronald Reagan’s 1980 election victory. His constructive engagement policy toward South Africa “prioritized resistance against communist expansion over efforts to end human rights violations internationally,” stated the Foreign Policy Research Institute.
Moreover, Cold War concerns over some anti-apartheid groups’ links to radical or communist entities made the cause politically sensitive for many Democrats. The breakthrough came with the Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act (CAAA) of 1986, when Congress overrode President Reagan’s veto to impose sanctions on South Africa, a result of years of pressure from progressive lawmakers and Democrats. It marked a turning point that would help see apartheid officially dismantled by 1994, assisted by the easing of Cold War tensions and the end of Soviet backing for South Africa’s liberation movements.
Apartheid was never a decisive electoral issue for most Americans. For Democrats with presidential ambitions in the 1980s and early 1990s, support for ending it was strongest in liberal centers like New York and on university campuses, where protests and local resolutions aligned with activist solidarity. Nationwide, however, the cause risked alienating some conservatives and foreign policy hawks. Still, prominent Democrats helped normalize legislation against South Africa, including bans on state entities doing business with companies operating there. Their pressure on the Reagan administration cemented a Democratic brand of foreign policy based on moral conviction. But having claimed a leading role in dismantling apartheid, this legacy has increasingly come back to haunt them.
Carter to Reagan
By the 1970s, events like the 1976 Soweto uprising and the rise of independent trade unions created a link between South African struggles and U.S. civil rights, student activism, and labor movements. For many Democrats, condemning apartheid was becoming a public litmus test for moral internationalism and prioritizing genuine social change abroad over realpolitik. President Jimmy Carter’s administration favored heavier pressure against South Africa, backing the 1977 UN-sponsored arms embargo and restricting exports of certain products.
Carter’s defeat in 1980 led to a policy turnaround. Ronald Reagan’s administration viewed South Africa’s liberation movements—the African National Congress (ANC) and the United Democratic Front (UDF)—as too closely tied to the Soviets, and embraced the constructive engagement policy with the South African government. Seeking gradual reform while maintaining political links, the White House downplayed apartheid as a priority in favor of retaining South Africa as a Cold War ally.
Some Democrats continued to see the issue as both morally and politically urgent. In 1983, Representative Stephen Solarz introduced H.R. 1693 to limit U.S. financial assistance to business operations in South Africa and ban the import of certain goods from the country. The bill failed, but Solarz emerged as a prominent foreign policy force throughout the 1980s.
In an 1985 Opinion piece in the New York Times, he pointed out that “Just as President Reagan’s policy of constructive engagement could not bring Pretoria to its senses, American economic sanctions alone will not bring it to its knees. It will take a combination of increasing internal and international pressure to convince the South African Government that the price of maintaining apartheid exceeds the cost of abandoning it.”
By 1992, political analyst Charlie Cook floated him as a possible presidential contender, but his prospects faded after losing his House seat in post-1990 redistricting. He was offered the Indian ambassadorship by Bill Clinton, which fell through following allegations that he had sought a U.S. visa for a Hong Kong businessman with a criminal record.
Solarz’s actions, however, showed that standing against South Africa’s apartheid didn’t negatively impact one’s political career. National security concerns, especially over South Africa’s suspected nuclear activities (including a possible 1979 nuclear test), also helped build some bipartisan support for sanctions. In 1983, Representative Charles B. Rangel introduced H.R.1020 to ban exports of nuclear materials and technology to South Africa, while Representative William H. Gray III proposed H.R. 1392 to limit U.S. investment in the country.
He also introduced the Anti-Apartheid Action Act of 1985, which called for prohibiting loans and new investments and restricting imports. Though it passed the House and Senate, the bill stalled before becoming law.
The legislative push against apartheid actually began more than a decade earlier, with Representative Ron Dellums, a member of the Congressional Black Caucus, issuing the first legislative challenge to apartheid in 1972. By the mid-1980s, community leaders and CBC politicians like Maxine Waters,Ron Dellums, and Charles Rangel had all helped raise awareness, notably after the 1984 arrests of Dellums and Representative John Conyers at the South African Embassy for protesting against “racial segregation.”
Civil rights leader Jesse Jackson’s 1984 presidential campaign showed that voters could support a more radical stance on apartheid. In 1984, while speaking at the United Nations Special Committee Against Apartheid, he said, “The present U.S. partnership with apartheid is a violation of our national morality.”
Senior Democrats like Gary Hart and John Glenn, also running for president that year, were less vocal on the issue. However, Democratic nominee Walter Mondale, long critical of apartheid since the 1960sand vocal against it as vice president under Jimmy Carter, endorsed strengthening the strategic embargo and limiting diplomatic contact as part of his presidential campaign.
Mondale was defeated in a landslide, winning only in his home state of Minnesota and Washington, D.C., in an election where his pledge to raise taxes and lingering dissatisfaction with the Carter administration weighed heavily. Despite his defeat, Mondale helped normalize opposition to apartheid within mainstream Democratic discourse, and after retiring from politics following the 1984 presidential election, he later served as U.S. ambassador to Japan under Clinton and narrowly lost a 2002 Senate race.
Democrats continued to introduce new legislation in their fight against apartheid and found success at the local and state levels. By 1985, numerous cities, including New York, Philadelphia, Washington, and Boston, had passed divestment ordinances, while states like Massachusetts, Connecticut, Maryland, Michigan, and Nebraska had enacted divestment laws. The same year, New York Governor Mario Cuomo said that “to demonstrate the abhorrence of… [New York] residents to the pernicious system of apartheid… he would soon propose legislation to require the divestiture, over the next five years, of billions of dollars in state funds.” Despite it being struck down, Cuomo remained a powerful Democratic figure until his 1994 electoral loss.
The movement’s momentum spread from House members to mayors and governors, and senators. Senator Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts, who challenged Jimmy Carter in the 1980 Democratic primary, stayed a vocal critic of apartheid, traveling to South Africa in 1985 and meeting anti-apartheid activist and bishop Desmond Tutu. Kennedy’s strong liberal base and national profile allowed him to champion sanctions, even as personal scandals invited criticism.
In 1986, Senator Joe Biden of Delaware made headlines by sharply rebuking Secretary of State George Shultz during a Senate hearing over the Reagan administration’s lenient policy toward South Africa. Joined by fellow Democrats and several Republicans, Biden pressed for a timetable to end apartheid. While his national profile was still rising, he remained popular in Delaware.
The turning point came in 1986 when Congress, led by Democrats unanimously, reintroduced the Anti-Apartheid Action Act as the Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act. The victory marked the moment when apartheid became mainstream Democratic policy, reflecting growing public support nationwide.
Moving into the Mainstream
Widespread Democratic support for anti-apartheid measures was clear by the 1988 presidential race. Representative Dick Gephardt, a co-sponsor of the 1983 bill to reduce investment in South Africa, won early 1988 election contests like Iowa but later withdrew amid declining support. Joe Biden also ran briefly in 1988, while Jesse Jackson, in his second presidential campaign, made helping end apartheid an integral part of his foreign policy.
The nomination ultimately went to Massachusetts governor Michael Dukakis. Dukakis had already divested state pension funds from companies doing business in South Africa in 1983. During his campaign, Dukakis, influenced by Jesse Jackson, labeled South Africa as a terrorist state. Although he lost the general election, he continued his stance by signing an executive order in 1989, which banned Massachusetts state contracts with firms operating there. However, his political capital had diminished, and he chose not to seek reelection as governor in 1991.
A major reason behind growing Democratic activism against apartheid in the 1980s stemmed from greater public awareness. Campus divestment movements further entrenched anti-apartheid activism into the Democratic Party and wider American political culture.
“Beginning in the late 1970s, a grassroots movement of American college students and faculty across the country started demanding that their academic and civic institutions divest their holdings in companies doing business in South Africa and that pension funds and banks divest any South African assets. … By 1988, more than 155 academic institutions had fully or partially divested from South Africa… In addition, by 1989, 26 U.S. states, 22 counties and more than 90 cities had taken economic action against companies doing business in South Africa,” stated the U.S. Mission to International Organizations in Geneva.
A series of events organized globally further helped bring apartheid into the national spotlight. These included the 25th anniversary of the Sharpeville Massacre in 1985, the 1985 global hit “Sun City,” a song that had roots in the protests against a whites-only resort in South Africa, and the 1988 televised London concert for Mandela’s 70th birthday.
Negotiations to dismantle apartheid began in 1989 when Frederik Willem de Klerk became South African president. In the United States, Democrats were critical of President George H.W. Bush’s decision to lift certain sanctions on South Africa in 1991. It was not, however, a major campaign issue in the 1992 election, with foreign policy sidelined due to the Soviet Union’s collapse and a deep recession at home. The election was primarily shaped by domestic concerns, which Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton and his vice-presidential pick Al Gore successfully navigated to win.
Both men had taken relatively cautious public positions on apartheid in the 1980s. Gore was a vocal supporter of the 1986 CAAA but did not make it a strong part of his political identity. Clinton was, meanwhile, governor of a southern state and did not advance any divestment initiatives. But the 1992 South African referendum, where white South Africans voted to end minority rule, provided a welcome opening. The Clinton presidential administration strongly backed South Africa’s ongoing reforms and offered strong assistance. In April 1994, apartheid was formally dismantled, and South Africa held its first free elections. Six months later, Clinton welcomed President Nelson Mandela on his first official state visit to the U.S., with Clinton later visiting South Africa in 1998.
Yet Clinton’s trip also exposed early strains. Mandela rejected U.S. trade proposals and defended ties with leaders in Libya, Iran, and Cuba. Still, Democrats retained much of the moral authority associated with their stance on apartheid, a perception reinforced by contrast with President George W. Bush’s wars in the 2000s, until disappointment followed. Barack Obama’s presidency, with Biden as vice president, often appeared to be pushing for overall reform but was morally inconsistent with new military campaigns being initiated during his term. Trump’s 2016 campaign leaned on a promise not to start new wars, a record that Biden was able to match.
But what defined Biden instead was his steadfast support for Israel after October 7, 2023. His administration’s political and military backing split Democrats more sharply than any foreign policy issue in decades, alienating younger, progressive, and Muslim and Arab American voters who once saw the party as a vehicle for moral clarity abroad. Biden’s anti-apartheid legacy has been recast as hypocrisy amid his support for Israel as Palestinians suffer. The wider Democratic Party’s inaction on Israel, aside from its progressive voices, showed that the problem was not just Biden’s but reflected the wider sentiment of the party.
What began as a story of global solidarity and moral clarity has become a painful point of contention, particularly over Israel and other perceived failures of Democratic presidents since then. South Africa’s post-apartheid promise, based on U.S. support, has also faltered, with ongoing racial divisions, corruption, crime, power outages, and a water crisis. These issues drove the African National Congress, dominant for 30 years, to its worst-ever electoral results in 2024. South Africans’ frustration has extended to the U.S., with lingering distrust over American intentions over the past two decades, leaving space for China and Russia to expand their influence.
The Democrat legacy of ending apartheid has not only set higher expectations that the Biden administration failed to meet but also contributed to a geopolitical setback. Democrats’ legacy has been further complicated by President Donald Trump’s renewed focus on white South Africans. Beginning in 2018 and escalating during his second term, Trump has framed their plight as evidence of ongoing racial discrimination in the country. In February 2025, he issued an executive order titled “Addressing Egregious Actions of The Republic of South Africa,” and during an Oval Office meeting with South African President Cyril Ramaphosa in May, he accused him of enabling a white genocide in the country. Trump’s refugee program for white South Africans saw its first arrivals during the same month.
The lesson of the Democratic anti-apartheid legacy extends beyond the single historic victory of helping end South Africa’s discriminatory and oppressive system. While its role in ending apartheid was essential and historic, lasting political change depends on the willingness to act decisively, endure political costs, and uphold principles even when they are inconvenient or unpopular. It also means applying the same standards across countries and time periods, which the Democrats have been unable to achieve.
