3. ‘ONLY THE STUPIDEST COUNTRIES STICK TO THE ECONOMIC BOYCOTT’: GERMANY, SWITZERLAND AND AUSTRIA AS PROFITEERS AND PILLARS OF THE APARTHEID SYSTEM

Simone Knapp, Jakob Krameritsch, Barbara Müller and Walter Sauer Translated by Sally McPhail

Let’s start by taking a look back: in 1948, the National Party won the general elections in South Africa and immediately started to implement its programme of apartheid, which in many cases merely systematised the colonial legislation already in place. The foundational law was the 1950 Population Registration Act, which was aimed at classifying every person according to race as ‘white’, ‘black’, ‘Indian’ or ‘coloured’. Hundreds of additional laws were passed that regulated everyday life for the groups thus constructed, and defined the systematic economic, social, cultural and political privileges of the white minority.