Nederland tegen apartheid. The role of anti-apartheid organisations 1960-1990

Abstract

In the early 1990s, during a visit to the Netherlands, Nelson Mandela specially thanked the Netherlands for the role they had played in helping to bring apartheid to an end, and more specifically for their support for the African National Congress (ANC). However, on considering the actions of the Netherlands' government during the apartheid period, it becomes apparent that the government did not take major steps to help end apartheid. In actual fact, the Netherlands' government's policy was more often characterised by a lack of specific resolutions against apartheid with few promised actions resulting in concrete steps. This lack of action is seen in aspects such as the 'ton van Luns'; continued cultural relations through the Cultural Accord; and in the two-stream policy of the RFM Lubbers government. The aim of this article is to look beyond the official Dutch government reaction to apartheid, and consider the non-governmental anti-apartheid organisations in the Netherlands in order to asses why the Netherlands is characterised as so actively anti-apartheid.