Revolution without the revolution: On the unintended consequences of illegitimate state repression in South Africa.

In light of contradictory findings regarding relationships between repression, movement mobilization and outcomes, scholars have called for further investigations of these issues. Based on interviews with state officials, government documents, and secondary sources, this paper examines how successful South African state repression contained anti-apartheid movement protest but did not prevent the movement from achieving its primary goal of state deracialization. Goldstone and Tilly (2001) argue that the apartheid state conceded power to preempt revolutionary state overthrow. However, my evidence suggests that the anti-apartheid movement won despite successful protest repression. This was because the movement effectively framed its goals in terms of international norms of deracialization with demands for "nonracial democracy." This highlighted the illegitimacy of state repression and shifted the balance of state-versus-movement legitimacy in favor of the movement. As a result, the movement grew internationally and domestically, eventually even among white elites, who adopted movement goals and norms and formed new anti-apartheid organizations. In the late 1980s, the movement became a countervailing state that subsequently revolutionized race norms through democratization.