Switzerland and the apartheid regime

For anchoring the legal racial segregation in South Africa in 1950
opened the Swiss company Ciba (now Novartis), Roche, BBC (now ABB) and
Union Bank of Switzerland (UBS, now UBS) branches in the Cape

In 1956 the Association founded in Zurich in Switzerland and South
Africa, which served as the Chamber of Commerce.

In 1960 the police killed 69 black demonstrators at Sharpeville. After
a general strike, the African National Congress liberation
organization ANC was banned.

1963 the UN imposed an arms delivery to South Africa ban. Switzerland
has stepped this.

In 1964 ANC leader Nelson Mandela and other activists sentenced to
life imprisonment.

Swiss banks founded in 1968 to purchase a pool of South African gold.

Until the late 1980s, Swiss banks bought South African gold for at
least 300 billion francs.

1974 limited the annual Federal investment in South Africa to 250
million francs (300 million francs in 1980). The upper limit was
regularly circumvented.

Came after the 1976 uprising in Soweto in the whole country around 600
people died.

1986, Switzerland supported South African NGO, campaigning for an end
to apartheid and democracy.

Pretoria in 1990 lifted the ban of the ANC. On 11 February was
released Nelson Mandela. On 8 June he met during his visit to
Switzerland, the former Swiss Foreign Minister Rene Felber.

In April 1994 the ANC won the elections superior, Mandela became South
Africa's first black president.