Photograph Source: Annette Kurylo – CC BY-SA 3.0

By the early 1980s, South Africa’s system of racial apartheid had evolved from an issue of limited concern to becoming a major issue globally. Years of campaigning by anti-apartheid activists, the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC), and student-led divestment movements were beginning to bear fruit. This momentum, however, stalled due to the conservative turn in U.S. politics after Ronald Reagan’s 1980 election victory. His constructive engagement policy toward South Africa “prioritized resistance against communist expansion over efforts to end human rights violations internationally,” stated the Foreign Policy Research Institute.

Moreover, Cold War concerns over some anti-apartheid groups’ links to radical or communist entities made the cause politically sensitive for many Democrats. The breakthrough came with the Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act (CAAA) of 1986, when Congress overrode President Reagan’s veto to impose sanctions on South Africa, a result of years of pressure from progressive lawmakers and Democrats. It marked a turning point that would help see apartheid officially dismantled by 1994, assisted by the easing of Cold War tensions and the end of Soviet backing for South Africa’s liberation movements.

Apartheid was never a decisive electoral issue for most Americans. For Democrats with presidential ambitions in the 1980s and early 1990s, support for ending it was strongest in liberal centers like New York and on university campuses, where protests and local resolutions aligned with activist solidarity. Nationwide, however, the cause risked alienating some conservatives and foreign policy hawks. Still, prominent Democrats helped normalize legislation against South Africa, including bans on state entities doing business with companies operating there. Their pressure on the Reagan administration cemented a Democratic brand of foreign policy based on moral conviction. But having claimed a leading role in dismantling apartheid, this legacy has increasingly come back to haunt them.

Carter to Reagan

By the 1970s, events like the 1976 Soweto uprising and the rise of independent trade unions created a link between South African struggles and U.S. civil rights, student activism, and labor movements. For many Democrats, condemning apartheid was becoming a public litmus test for moral internationalism and prioritizing genuine social change abroad over realpolitik. President Jimmy Carter’s administration favored heavier pressure against South Africa, backing the 1977 UN-sponsored arms embargo and restricting exports of certain products.

Carter’s defeat in 1980 led to a policy turnaround. Ronald Reagan’s administration viewed South Africa’s liberation movements—the African National Congress (ANC) and the United Democratic Front (UDF)—as too closely tied to the Soviets, and embraced the constructive engagement policy with the South African government. Seeking gradual reform while maintaining political links, the White House downplayed apartheid as a priority in favor of retaining South Africa as a Cold War ally.

Some Democrats continued to see the issue as both morally and politically urgent. In 1983, Representative Stephen Solarz introduced H.R. 1693 to limit U.S. financial assistance to business operations in South Africa and ban the import of certain goods from the country. The bill failed, but Solarz emerged as a prominent foreign policy force

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