Switzerland And South Africa 1948 1994

While other states imposed economic sanctions on the apartheid regime of South Africa, Swiss authorities long adhered to the position that South Africa is a state like any other. Swiss big business corporations saw an attractive trade partner in South Africa; in part, they also profited from the boycotts of others. Additionally, some political forces sympathised openly with the regime in Pretoria. Encouraged by the debate concerning Swiss policy and activity during the Second World War, in 1997 the order was given to initiate a historical study of Swiss behaviour towards the apartheid regime. Thus this report, commissioned by the Swiss parliament and the Federal Council, and passed over to the Swiss National Science Foundation for execution, came into being. It unites the results of ten different research projects. The report identifies the most important players involved in fashioning relations with South Africa, it explains the legal situation in which these persons acted, and it describes the thought processes that led to the actions. The longest chapter deals with the attitudes and the areas of activity in the economic sector. Here the trade with loans, gold, diamonds and war materials is paramount. Other chapters are concerned with questions that are not primarily economic in nature, such as political declarations, the illusion of being in the role of a mediator, contacts in sports and culture, and, after 1986, the beginning of support for the black majority.

In its last decades, the apartheid regime was confronted with an existential threat. While internal resistance to the last whites-only government grew, mandatory international sanctions prohibited sales of strategic goods and arms to South Africa. To counter this, a global covert network of nearly fifty countries was built. In complete secrecy, allies in corporations, banks, governments and intelligence agencies across the world helped illegally supply guns and move cash in one of history's biggest money laundering schemes. Whistleblowers were assassinated and ordinary people suffered. Weaving together archival material, interviews and newly declassified documents, Apartheid Guns and Money exposes some of the darkest secrets of apartheid's economic crimes, their murderous consequences, and those who profited: heads of state, arms dealers, aristocrats, bankers, spies, journalists and secret lobbyists. These revelations, and the difficult questions they pose, will both allow and force the new South Africa to confront its past.

Apartheid posed profound challenges to the conceptions of humanity and development that dominated the world stage after World War II. Embroiled analyzes the manner in which international religious organizations dealt with the formulation and implementation of apartheid. The book studies this through an examination of the Swiss Mission in South Africa (SMSA), an institution that acted in South Africa, Switzerland, and the international ecumenical community. As a socially embedded institution, the SMSA mirrored divisions present within Swiss and South African societies on the issue of apartheid. *** Embroiled brings out the complex, even turbulent, nature of a missionary society: at once political intermediary, spiritual guide and non-government organisation. Caught between different communities and discrete continents, missionaries discussed and debated their role in South Africa and attempted, however fitfully, to respond to the changes that swept through the country, particularly as opposing nationalisms fought to seize hold of it. ~ From the Preface (Series: Schweizerische Afrikastudien - Etudes africaines suisses - Vol. 9)

In Switzerland and Sub-Saharan Africa in the Cold War, 1967-1979, Sabina Widmer analyses Swiss foreign policy in Angola, Mozambique, Ethiopia, and Somalia in the late 1960s and 1970s, at the crossroads of the global East-West confrontation and decolonisation. Focusing on the independence wars in Angola and Mozambique, the Angolan War and the Ogaden War as well as regime changes that brought Soviet-allied governments to power, this book sheds new light on Switzerland’s role in the Third World during the Cold War. Based on extensive multi-archival research, it exposes the limits of neutrality in North-South relations, reveals the growing marge de manoeuvre of small states during Détente, and highlights the role of non-state actors in the making of foreign policy.

This book sheds new light on the foreign policies, roles, and positions of neutral states and the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) in the global Cold War. The volume places the neutral states and the NAM in the context of the Cold War and demonstrates the links between the East, the West, and the so-called Third World. In doing so, this collection provides readers an alternative way of exploring the evolution and impact of the Cold War on North-South connections that challenges traditional notions of the post-1945 history of international relations. The various contributions are framed against the backdrop of the evolution of the Cold War international system and the decolonization process in the Southern hemisphere. By juxtaposing the policies of European neutrals and countries of the NAM, this book offers new perspectives on the evolution of the Cold War. With the links between these two groups of countries receiving very little attention in Cold War scholarship, the volume thus offers a window into a hitherto neglected perspective on the Cold War. Via a series of case studies, the chapters here present new viewpoints on the evolution of the global Cold War through the exploration of the ensuing internal and (mainly) external policy choices of these nations. This book will be of much interest to students of Cold War Studies, international history, foreign policy, security studies and IR in general.

This collection of essays by leading experts seeks to explore what lessons for the exploitation and management of secret intelligence might be drawn from a variety of case studies ranging from the 1920s to the ‘War on Terror’. Long regarded as the ‘missing dimension’ of international history and politics, public and academic interest in the role of secret intelligence has continued to grow in recent years, not least as a result of controversy surrounding the terrorist attacks on the United States on September 11 2001. Intelligence, Crises and Security addresses a range of themes including: crisis management, covert diplomacy, intelligence tradecraft, counterterrorism, intelligence ‘overload’, intelligence in relation to neutral states, deception, and signals intelligence. The work breaks new ground in relation to numerous key international episodes and events, not least as a result of fresh disclosures from government archives across the world. This book was previously published as a special issue of Intelligence and National Security.

This edited volume is a sequel to, and a development of, The Long Aftermath: Cultural Legacies of Europe at War, 1936-2016 (2016). It focuses on the six major European countries and states that remained officially neutral throughout the Second World War, namely Ireland, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and the Vatican. Its transnational, comparative and interdisciplinary approach addresses complex questions pertaining to collective remembrance, national policies and politics, and intellectual as well as cultural responses to neutrality during and after the conflict. The contributions are from a broad range of scholars working across the disciplines of history, literature, film, media, and cultural studies. Their thought-provoking chapters challenge many assumptions about neutrality in the post-war European and global context, thereby filling a gap in the existing scholarship. Common themes that run through the volume include the intertwined and dynamic links between neutrality and moral responsibility during and after the Second World War, the importance of memory politics and popular culture in shaping collective memories, and the impact of the Holocaust in shifting traditional perspectives on neutrality since the 1990s. This volume will be of interest to undergraduates, postgraduates, scholars interested in the field of memory studies, as well as non-specialist readers.

National history has once again become a battlefield. In internal political conflicts, which are fought on the terrain of popular culture, museums, schoolbooks, and memorial politics, it has taken on a newly important and contested role. Irrespective of national specifics, the narratives of new nationalism are quite similar everywhere. National history is said to stretch back many centuries, expressesing the historical continuity of a homogeneous people and its timeless character. This people struggles for independence, guided by towering leaders and inspired by the sacrifice of martyrs. Unlike earlier forms of nationalism, the main enemies are no longer neighbouring states, but international and supranational institutions. To use national history as an integrative tool, new nationalists claim that the media and school history curricula should not contest or question the nation and its great historical deeds, as doubts threaten to weaken and dishonour the nation. This book offers a broad international overview of the rhetoric, contents, and contexts of the rise of these renewed national historical narratives, and of how professional historians have reacted to these phenomena. The contributions focus on a wide range of representative nations from around all over the globe.