Dutch post-war history and
the anti-apartheid movement
(1960 - 1990)
Background of the Dutch South African relations
• Dutch East India Company and the arrival
of Jan van Riebeeck (1652)
• Dutch colonisation of the Cape province
• Anglo-Boer wars (1880 - 1881 and 1899 1902)
• Dutch sympathy for the Boer - Paul
Kruger
21 March 1960
the Sharpeville massacre
(SA Police killed 69 black South Africans
during a protest)
The Netherlands in the 1960s
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Reconstruction of society after WW-II
Pillarization
Cold war and Dutch Atlantic focus
Youth protest - against Vietnam but also
against authorities and bourgeois
lifestyle
Anti-apartheid in the 1960s
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South Africa Committee
Anti-communism
Blood ties with the Boer
The changes in the Dutch protestant churches
Civil rights movement in the US
Honorary doctorate for Martin Luther King
Anti-apartheid in the 1970s
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Linking with the student movement
Local groups were initiated
New, inventive action methods
Boycot Outspan
Movement was ideology focussed: Marxism,
‘third world-ism’, anti-imperialism
• Dutch anti-apartheid movement - AABN
• Breyten Breytenbach - Solidarité - and the
armed struggle
Anti-apartheid and the
holocaust
• The holocaust shaped the moral identity of the
Dutch
• Racism is the ultimate evil
• Apartheid = racism
• New insight: Not all Dutch had resisted the Nazi
occupier
• Shame about Dutch collaboration with Nazism
1976 - Soweto
• This time the movement was much better
prepared - professionalized
• Repressive tolerance worked very well in the
Netherlands
• Opposition got finance from state
• Nowhere more action groups than in the
Netherlands
• The target of the movement became the
political centre: Christian democrats
• Widening the movement instead of deepening
And then there was Shell
• Shell had violated the UN-embargo
against Rhodesia/Zimbabwe
• Talking with Shell
• An oil boycott against South Africa?
• The debate in parliament
• The closure of the political arena
Radicalization
Radicalization
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The squatter movement stepped in
Reaction to the slackening of the movement
Reaction to repressive tolerance
Reaction to the ‘dark decennium of the 1980ies’
Reaction to right wing leaders like Reagan,
Thatcher, Kohl and Lubbers
• Actions against Shell
• The assaults on MAKRO
• Violence works!
Students against apartheid
• Blood ties between Dutch and South African
universities
• Free University Amsterdam and Potchefstroom
• Students protest against meetings with South
African Universities
• Kampen University and the black theology
students - Allan Boesak
• Students protest against all contacts with South
Africa
• The academic community and Shell
Wageningen
• Working Group South Africa Wageningen
• ANC support group Wageningen
• Anti-apartheidfund Wageningen
University
• WUR university news letter taken
hostage by radical students (november
1989)
The biggest social movement
in Dutch post war history
• The anti-apartment movement mobilized more
people than ever before
• Anti-apartheid became an everyday subject
• Companies withdrew from SA
• SA products were driven from the Dutch
market
• All cultural contacts with SA were banned
• But did it really succeed?
• Government policies stayed the same
• In the set-off between clergyman and
salesman the latter usually wins
• For the Dutch the fight against apartheid
was a rehabilitation after WW-II
• Dutch state policies collaborated with the
enemy (again)
Success factors
• The anti-apartheid movement made it a national, home
struggle
• There were concrete things people could do to fight
apartheid
• The movement operated strategically
• The movement was trustworthy, serious, and realistic
• Movement leaders were upright and self sacrificing
• The movement had firm international backing (e.g. UNembargo)
• The movement was authentic (it voiced the opinion of the
ANC)
• The movement offered a clear and acceptable alternative
(democratic, non-racial majority rule)