ABSTRACT
The political situation in South Africa was, until the democratic elections, a focus of the international community’s attention and, from the start of the de-colonisation process to the demise of apartheid, an ideological and strategic battleground between the East and the West. As a CIA report noted way back in 1950, ‘apartheid [was] a ready-made invitation for propaganda from the Communist bloc against both [South Africa] and the countries associated with it’ (CIA Report CIA/RE 27-50, November 17, 1950: 8).
