Apartheid Diplomacy: South Africa and the U.S. Conservative Movement, 1945-1980

Abstract

“Apartheid Diplomacy” employs a transnational approach to investigate the mutually constitutive relationship between apartheid South Africa’s quest for international legitimacy and the post-1945 U.S. conservative movement. In doing so, this dissertation offers fresh insights into both spheres. Drawing on multi-archival research from the United States and South Africa, it illustrates how South Africa’s history and public diplomacy practices influenced U.S. conservative worldviews and political actions during the transformative decades of the 1960s and 1970s. Conservative leaders’ involvement in apartheid diplomacy not only served South Africa’s interests but also advanced their own intellectual and political agenda by helping to thought leaders reframe conservatism as a potent ideological counter to modern liberalism. Through their collaboration with South African officials, U.S. conservatives reshaped narratives about liberal bias in media and government and cast South Africa as pivotal to the preservation of Western civilization. Moreover, this dissertation reveals how South Africa’s official and unofficial “apartheid diplomats” shaped the global anti-apartheid debate by cultivating a countercultural network of knowledge and support within the United States. This network empowered quiet sympathizers and influential leaders in business and finance to publicly defend both the apartheid regime and their shared interests. In this way, apartheid diplomats not only advanced their immediate advocacy goals but also inspired new activists to support white South Africa within various levels of power, from the grassroots to the boardroom and the White House. The reverberations of this influence continue to echo into the present.