This dissertation examines the apartheid debate from an international perspective. Positioned at the methodological intersection of intellectual and diplomatic history, it examines how, where, and why African nationalists, Afrikaner nationalists, and American liberals contested South Africa’s place in the global community in the 1960s. It uses this fight to explore the contradictions of international politics in the decade after second-wave decolonization. The apartheid debate was never at the center of global affairs in this period, but it rallied international opinions in ways that attached particular meanings to concepts of development, order, justice, and freedom. As such, the debate about South Africa provides a microcosm of the larger postcolonial moment, exposing the deep-seated differences between politicians and policymakers in the First and Third Worlds, as well as the paradoxical nature of change in the late twentieth century.
This dissertation tells three interlocking stories. First, it charts the rise and fall of African nationalism. For a brief yet important moment in the early and mid-1960s, African nationalists felt genuinely that they could remake global norms in Africa’s image and abolish the ideology of white supremacy through U.N. activism. These efforts existed parallel to the fall and rise of the Nationalist government. This work also follows Pretoria’s attempt to circumvent African diplomacy by rehabilitating South Africa’s status among specific power brokers in Washington, New York, London, and other Western metropoles. The United States shaped the arena surrounding African/ Afrikaner antagonism and functioned as the referee of this contest. The final prong of this project, therefore, explains the growth and collapse of American liberal internationalism, as well as the rise of realpolitik in the late 1960s. As international politics grew more unwieldy in the postcolonial years, U.S. policymakers began to reconsider both the intellectual universalisms that had propelled decolonization and the institutional integrity of organizations like the United Nations. This shift eroded the power of African nation-states, cemented the stability of the South African government, and established the template of the 1970s—an era marked by moral ambiguity, transnational activism, and geopolitical détente.