Early activism against apartheid in the United Nations has frequently been cited as a critical moment in world history. As historians have argued, attempts to use the machinery of the UN against apartheid marked the emergence of the postcolonial world’s new influence on international politics and demonstrated the potential of the UN to address policy in individual states. Supporters of UN actions on apartheid, from resolutions and declarations to the 1953-55 UNCORS investigations, aimed for such actions to educate, socialize, or shame the South African government into accepting emerging norms of non-discrimination while providing international moral support to apartheid’s opponents within South Africa. Although South Africa’s government repeatedly met such actions with defiance, most supporters of public, symbolic international condemnations appeared to believe they could ultimately have an impact. While the UN Security Council acknowledged the South African government’s “continued disregard...of the resolutions of the Generally Assembly” condemning apartheid, it nevertheless called upon the UN Secretary General in the wake of Sharpeville to work with the South African government to bring about change.
Both international pressures on South Africa and South Africa’s defiance have been well documented by historians. In hindsight, we know that international pressures proved futile until much, much later. However, the international condemnation of apartheid, particularly the efforts within the UN did have an impact, this paper argues, just not the intended impact. Paradoxically international pressures served for many years to strengthen apartheid. Examining white South African responses to the UN’s 1952-1956 investigation of “the racial situation in South Africa,” this paper will argue that international pressure not only hardened the Nationalist government’s commitment to apartheid, it undermined the position of those who did care about international opinion and ultimately served to unify a normally divided white South Africa behind evermore extreme measures of apartheid.