Apartheid Internationalism: Canadian Activism in Defence of White Rule in Southern Africa, 1965–94

Abstract

From 1965 to 1994, some Canadians participated in transnational activism aimed at supporting or excusing white minority rule in South Africa and Rhodesia. Their ideas, arguments, and interconnections contributed to “apartheid internationalism,” a form of internationalism without central organization yet forged through a common cause and specific (and sometimes covert) political networks. The Canadian fraction of the movement was internally diversified and decentralized. Yet this article shows that ties among activists were considerable. Whether taking pro-apartheid or “anti-anti-apartheid” positions, participants expressed variants of white supremacism, contextualizing and qualifying their views on racial superiority within adjacent right-wing political projects. Not entirely unlike studies of anti-apartheid activism, the examination of the defenders of apartheid demonstrates the importance of race in Canadian international history. It also shows how a range of people beyond politicians and diplomats engaged with transnational issues. Most strikingly, the analysis reveals that liberal internationalism or internationalisms associated with the political left were not the only responses to a decolonizing world. Some Canadians with conservative and authoritarian perspectives refused to accept a decline of white power or found new ways to present their support for white minority governments in southern Africa.