come to loathe the regime and its institutions.
Young Indians and Colo-
ureds as well as Africans regarded the regime as illegitimate. They were not
deferential toward Whites; they were defianr.s
The South African government also faced a transformed world order.
Instead of being at the southern end of a continent controlled by Euro-
peans, in a world dominated by Europeans and North Americans, South
Africa had become an isolated anomaly. Except for Rhodesia and Nami-
bia, its neighbors were no longer European colonies but black states. The
white minority in Rhodesia was losing its war against African guerrillas.
The United Nations had declared South Africa's control of Namibia illegal
and in I 97 8 devised a program to liberate that territory. 3
In 1977 the United Nations had passed a mandatory embargo on the
sale of arms to South Africa. By I978 the civil rights movement had made
significant gains in the United States and racist opinions were no longer
acceptable in American politics. Racial discrimination had been eliminated
from American law and, to a considerable extent, from American practice,
and black American activists were beginning to espouse the cause of black
South Africans."
Indeed, whereas the structure of South African society had been com-