Apartheid and Anti-Apartheid: The German Connection

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Apartheid and Anti-Apartheid: The German Connection – South Africa | Germany

Themed tours

A button created by the Anti-Apartheid Bewegung protesting atomic cooperation between West Germany and South Africa.

Willow Allen, 2024

This tour explores the transnational entanglements between Apartheid South Africa and Germany. As this year, South Africa recognizes it’s 30-year anniversary of the end of Apartheid, it is about time that scholars, anti-colonial activists, and the general public in Germany reflect on the role that the German state played in supporting the human right’s abuses of apartheid.

This tour begins by exploring the German-Afrikaners relations before the official start of apartheid. It then goes on to address how global Cold War political alliances shaped the way West and East Germany interacted with the Apartheid government. Then it will look at how West German diplomats and corporations supported apartheid and how East Germany helped train the resistance movement in SA. Finally, it will explore the anti-apartheid movement in West Germany.

Contact: williaa01@zedat.fu-berlin.de

References:

Thompson, Leonard: A History of South Africa, 2014.

Marx, Christoph / Oxwagon, Sentinel: Radical Afrikaner Nationalism and the History of the Ossewabrandwag, 2008.

Justke, Sebastian / Siegfried, Detlef: Apartheid and Anti-Apartheid in Western Europe, 2021.

Morgenrath, Birgit / Wellmer, Gottfried: Deutsches Kapital am Kap. Kollaboration mit dem Apartheidregime, 2003.

Edwards, Paul N. / Hecht, Gabrielle: History and the technopolitics of identity. The case of apartheid South Africa, in: Journal of Southern African Studies, 36 No. 3 (2010), pp. 619-639.

Schrafstetter, Susanna: A Nazi Diplomat Turned Apologist for Apartheid: Gustav Sonnenhol, Vergangenheitsbewältigung and West German Foreign Policy towards South Africa, in: German History 28 No. 1 (2010), pp. 44-66.

Elis, Stephen: External Mission: The ANC in Exile, 1960-1990s, 2013.

Hartmann, Heike / Lewerenz, Susann: Campaigning against Apartheid in East and West Germany, in: Radical History Review, No. 119 (2014), pp. 191-204.

Stationen

What was Apartheid?

The Ossewabrandwag and Nazi-South African Connections before Apartheid

West Germany and Apartheid

A Nazi Turned Diplomat: The Case of Gustav Sonnenhol

German Cooperate Support for Apartheid

East German Opposition to Apartheid

Anti-Apartheid Movement in West Germany, 1978.

Legacies: End of Apartheid and German Reunification

The five-year model project Dekoloniale Memory Culture in the City was completed in 2024 +++ The project website will therefore no longer be updated +++ A final publication on the project was published in September 2025 +++ The five-year model project Dekoloniale Memory Culture in the City was completed in 2024 +++ The project website will therefore no longer be updated +++ A final publication on the project was published in September 2025 +++ The five-year model project Dekoloniale Memory Culture in the City was completed in 2024 +++ The project website will therefore no longer be updated +++ A final publication on the project was published in September 2025 +++