About the Keynote Lectures

Thursday 7 May 15:30-18:00  KUA2, 15A.0.13

Christoph Marx, Duisburg-Essen University

South Africa and the West

This paper will deal with South Africa's relationship to the Western world during apartheid. The focus will be on the apartheid government's foreign policy and the increasing isolation of the apartheid state when Hendrik Verwoerd was prime minister (1958-66). It was a peculiar perception of the Cold War as a world-wide racial conflict that influenced the apartheid government's interpretation of the reasons for its isolation. Under Verwoerd's successors these problems became even more intense mainly because of the increasingly brutal repression in South Africa.

Håkan Thörn, Göteborg University

Anti-Apartheid and the Emergence of a Global Civil Society

The global anti-apartheid movement was one of the largest and most influential social movements during the post-war era. It did not just contribute to abolish apartheid in South Africa, but played an important role in the emergence of a global civil society.
It stands today as a model for many contemporary movements. In the lecture, Thörn will particularly emphasize how the movement’s history reflects significant dimensions of political globalization, including the power of boycott and divestment campaigns; of networks and of symbolic actions addressing the media.

All are welcome.