The United States and Europe put pressure on South Africa in the form of sanctions.
The purpose of these sanctions was to force South Africa to take down its policies of Apartheid, a system of racial segregation in which only the white population had political rights.
At the end of the 1980s, in the framework of the South African border war, the Soviet Union withdrew its economic and military support to Angola and Cuba, making it impossible for both countries to continue the struggle; Similarly, the United States ceased its financial support to South Africa, which had serious consequences for the government of Pretoria and marked the beginning of the end of the Apartheid regime in southern Africa, which was in force until the 1990s, being in 1992 the last time only white people voted fully.