ABSTRACT
This chapter explores how the anti-apartheid movement capitalized on the blurring of distinctions between domestic and foreign politics and widened its access to a broad range of public and private policymaking arenas. This expansion exhibits three central elements outlined by political process theory. First, the political opportunity structure improved as South Africa grew more vulnerable to regional political pressures and experienced economic instability. Second, Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford could not develop a national consensus on southern Africa, thus providing an opening for critics to create a new context for linking the region to post-Vietnam foreign policy generally. Third, new locally based groups and new southern Africa programs created by existing protest organizations swelled the organizational base of anti-apartheid activism. Nixon administration policies and corporate investment patterns suggested a commitment to work with the apartheid system, but domestic developments in the late 1960s created more opportunities for addressing racial inequality in southern Africa.
