THEAPARTHEIDERA
Sharpeville killings in 1960 and the Soweto uprising in 1976, the United
States and Western Europe provided the necessary capital and equipment,
and although the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC)
imposed an oil embargo on South Africa in 1973, it was unable to enforce
it, and most of South Africa's oil came from Iran until the fall of Reza Shah
Pahlavi in 1979. To reduce its dependence on imports, the government
meanwhile created a stockpile of petroleum products, and by 1978 it was
producing more than 10 percent of South Africa's domestic consumption
ofgasoline in two large oil-from-coal plants created by a state corporation,
the South African Coal, Oil and Gas Corporation
(SASOL).79
In those circumstances, powerful interests in the United States and West-
ern Europe were loath to disturb the status quo in South Africa. \Vith their
cold war perspective they were prone to exaggerate the communist menace,
and with their business perspective they tended to assume that economic
growth was bound to erode apartheid.
Great Britain had especially close ties with South Africa, even after
1961, when South Africa became a republic and left the Commonwealth.
Tensof thousands of white South Africans were born in Britain, hundreds