The federal government followed the massacre by carrying out hundreds of arrests and banning black opposition parties, including the ANC. In despair, opponents of South African apartheid saw armed struggle as the only choice. A campaign of sabotage was launched, with attacks on targets such as oil refineries and power stations. At this stage, South Africa could still count about the support of neighbouring states.

The three British protectorates of Bechuanaland (now Botswana), Swaziland and Basutoland (now Lesotho) had been all economically dependent on the republic and had not much more freedom of action than the Bantustans; the former German colony of South West Africa (now Namibia) had been occupied by South African since World War I, and Rhodesia, Angola and Mozambique were all firmly under white rule.

The edifice started to crack in 1966, when the United Nations declared South Africa’s occupation of Namibia to be illegal. Encouraged by the UN ruling, the South West African People’s Organization (SWAPO) was soon waging a bloody guerrilla war against the South Africans. The fighting became more widespread in 1975, when Angola and Mozambique, having gained their independence from Portugal, provided bases for ANC attacks on South Africa.

Meanwhile, the cycle of protest and repression continued inside the republic itself. In 1976, hundreds of school aside – kids in the black township of Soweto, outside Johannesburg, who were protesting against the injustices of the education system, were shot dead. Like Sharpeville prior to it, the Soweto massacre provoked world-wide condemnation. Many countries and companies refused to trade with South Africa, and it was excluded from some important international sporting events, including the Olympic Games.

White South Africans, particularly the Afrikaners, tended to dismiss critics of their country as either fools or Communists. But the threat of economic sanctions, combined with substantial disinvestment by international companies, was an issue they could not afford to ignore. The federal government tried to conciliate globe opinion by abandoning some from the more oppressive South African apartheid legislation.

The humiliating pass laws were abolished, segregation on public transport was ended, and also the notorious prohibition on marriage between members of different races was scrapped. As a further concession to its critics, the federal government also agreed to withdraw from Namibia, which joined the ranks of independent African nations in 1989. A year later, majority rule came to Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe).

Black unrest continued in South Africa, nevertheless, and the message finally began to sink in that peace would only come when the whole South African apartheid system was abolished. In 1990, the country’s new president, F W de Klerk, unbanned the ANC and released its leaders from prison. They included Nelson Mandela; then aged 72, who had been locked away for the past 28 years. Another four years had been to pass prior to the election of South Africa’s first democratic, non-racial federal government, but the days of South African apartheid had been numbered.