How Terrorism Ends: Understanding the Decline and Demise of Terrorist Campaigns

by Audrey Kurth Cronin

The ANC became a legal political actor in 1990, having achieved its objective of ending the apartheid regime, and Nelson Mandela, imprisoned for terrorist acts from 1964 to 1990, was elected first president of postapartheid South Africa. The armed struggle was an important element in this success, but it was not the only factor. It may not even have been the most important. The extensive pressures that led to the end of apartheid, including economic, sporting, and cultural sanctions by the international community, a revolt among white English- and Afrikaner-speaking youth, a political revolt among members of the South African National Party, widespread, grassroots frustration and violence within the black community, and overreaction and violence by the Afrikaner regime, all undermined the legitimacy of the policy of apartheid and were more important than terrorist attacks.60 Also crucial was the ending of the Cold War, a key development that rendered long-standing cooperation between the ANC-MK and the Communist Party instantly irrelevant. Indeed, while it is never possible to prove the counterfactual, in the broad context of the ending of the bipolar contest, the decaying political legitimacy of the Afrikaner regime, and the eruption of widespread ethnic violence, it is just as easy to argue that MK attacks on civilian targets held back the ANC’s cause as it is to find evidence that they advanced it.