Abstract
A crucial resource the apartheid state needed to import was oil. As an embargo took hold
through the 1970s, methods were sought to circumvent it through the use of intermediaries
and the construction of pipelines off the Durban coast for the speedy off-loading and
transport of oil to the economic heartland, some 500 kilometres inland. This paper casts a net
into that period, illustrating how the apartheid state made common cause with the most
ruthless of traders, some of whom developed ingenious ways to make considerable amounts
of money indirectly fuelling a pariah state’s violent repression of its people. In particular, the
paper focuses on a ship called the Salem, which sank off the coast of Senegal in January
1980. The case of the Salem illustrates the global networks that existed in the illicit oil trade,
the lengths the state would go to by relying on brokers to break the embargo and also
explores maritime insurance scams, of which the sinking of the Salem was one of the biggest
in maritime history. The final section of the paper brings the story up to the present to show
how pipelines off the Durban coast and the selling of oil reserves are still the site for
nefarious schemes of one sort or another.