The Apartheid Issue at the Security Council

First I consider the issues upon which the Council has been divided when it has considered apartheid, and in particular the issues, arguments and assumptions that have separated the three Western Great Powers on these occasions from most of the other members. The next section of this paper focuses upon how the African states on the Council have utilized their limited political resources to manipulate the decision-making of the Council re apartheid, and the following section tries to answer the question whether given the reality of these efforts, among other considerations, the Security Council should now be seen to have influenced, or refracted," the state of international politics on apartheid, or whether instead the Council merely reflects that state without contributing in any appreciable way to changing it. And in the final section of this paper I comment on the likely future role of the Security Council in ending apartheid in South Africa in the light of the evidence previously adduced."