Abstract
The workings of the anti-apartheid oil boycott have attracted little scholarly attention to date.
Their symbolic importance and contribution to the significant escalation of financial cost for
the Apartheid state has been noted, as has the role of Western states and multinational oil
companies and Middle Eastern oil states in undermining the boycott. This article focuses on
an aspect of the boycott which has received insufficient attention: the role in the boycott of
the African National Congress (ANC) and of the Shipping Research Bureau (SRB), the Dutch
anti-apartheid organisation specially established in 1979 to trace oil shipments to South
Africa. Through a close reading of under-utilised source materials, the article analyses the
ANC’s handling of the SRB’s identification of Middle Eastern anti-apartheid allies as the
primary source of oil supplies to South Africa throughout the length of the boycott. The
SRB’s ‘anti-apartheid forensics’ was hamstrung by the ANC’s asymmetrical emphasis on the
collaboration of Western oil companies with Apartheid. Dependence on invaluable anti-
Apartheid solidarities of various kinds constrained the ANC’s ability to act vis-à-vis allies,
who in pursuing their own interests, were in violation of the boycott.