Here’s the thing. A boycott isn’t about individual intentions, it’s about collective action. If you support the farm workers, you don’t buy the grapes, even if they’re for a gay brunch. If you support desegregation, you don’t take the bus, even if you’re heading to an NAACP meeting. If you don’t want the bar to discriminate against African Americans, you don’t cross the picket, and if you want to get rid of apartheid, you don’t travel to South Africa and play at Sun City.

Boycotts are not built over night. Even the relatively successful UFW grape boycott took years to build and a huge organization to maintain. The Palestine divestment movement is self-consciously modeled after the South Africa movement, which most people seem to remember as having started in about 1987 or so, and having brought about a negotiated end to apartheid in 1992 leading to the election of Nelson Mandela in 1994.

The South Africa boycott actually started before Nelson Mandela began serving what became a 27 year sentence. In 1960, south african police opened fire on marchers in Sharpeville who were protesting the pass laws. Sixty-nine people were killed, and several hundred were wounded. There were calls for an international boycott of South Africa. Some of the early boycott efforts included "We Say No To Apartheid," a campaign that started in 1965 and encouraged artists, writers and entertainers not to visit South Africa or allow their works to be distributed there "until the day when all its people – black and white – shall equally enjoy the education and cultural advantages of this rich and lovely land." The campaign included Tallulah Bankhead, Leonard Bernstein, Harry Belafonte, Victor Borge, Diahann Carroll, Sam Davis Jr., Henry Fonda, Julie Harris, Langston Hughes, Burgess Meredith, Arthur Mller, Sidney Poitier, Ed Sullivan and Eli Wallach.

Other boycott efforts in the 1960s included a conference on economic sanctions in 1964, which led to a campaign to end investments and loans. After several years of this work, the united methodist church withdrew a portfolio of $10 million from first national city bank, because the bank refused to end its participation in a revolving loan fund for south africa. The loan fund was finally terminated in 1969. In 1960, an all-white south african team competed in the Rome olympics. But when south africa ignored the international olympics committee’s demand in 1963 to integrate its athletics program, the south african team was barred from the 1964 Tokyo games, and did not compete again until the end of apartheid. The boycott in international athletics grew to such strength that 25 African countries withdrew from the 1976 games in Montreal to protest the olympic participation of new zealand, which had continued sports links with south africa.

Throughout the 1960's to1980's there were also boycotts of companies that profited from the apartheid regime, or did business with the government there. Several boycotts targeted companies that provided the government’s identification card system (pass system), including kodak, polaroid, and later, IBM.

In the mid-1980s, Queen, Rod Stewart, and Status Quo, all broke the entertainment boycott and played Sun City, a big music complex in Bophutswana (one of 10 South African Bantustans). Here’s what Brian May of Queen said about it, "The truth is we thought very carefully about going and we considered that it was right because for the first time we were going to be able to play to non-segregated audiences, which we did, and it's absolutely true, whether people believe it or not...We feel that by going there and by stating very clearly our point of view, which was that we were utterly opposed to apartheid, that we did a lot more to accelerate the end of that way of thinking in South Africa than many people have done by staying away...By going there we feel like we helped them, and I know a lot of them there feel the same way...Nevertheless, we've now had so much pressure from people, the UN committee, Little Steven and all his friends, that it's better to stay away that we've said "OK, we'll go along with you, we'll do it your way", and we've said we won't go back."

Many LGBT individuals and groups, including LAGAI, were active in opposing apartheid in South Africa. However, until the late 1980s the participation of white south african gay organizations was not challenged in the mainstream gay movement. Scottish Activist Brian Dempsey, recalled that, "in 1987 SHRG [the Scotland Homsexual Rights Group, which later became Outright] did take a leading position in the successful campaign to have the Gay Association of South Africa (GASA) excluded from ILGA on the grounds that GASA was a predominantly white group which did not take an anti-apartheid stance (Gay Scotland, #27 & 30). SHRG had opposed GASA's membership from 1983, and in the struggle to expel GASA, SHRG supported other South African groups such as the Rand Gay Organisation (RGO) as having a "genuine multi-racial membership and clear opposition to apartheid" (Gay Scotland 30). They also publicised and urged support for, the case of Simon Nkoli, an RGO member on trial for his life for protesting against apartheid (Gay Scotland 28). At the 1987 ILGA conference the vote to suspend GASA was won and shortly after this GASA collapsed thus removing the issue from the agenda. This campaign is seen as one of the most effective of SHRG's in the international gay movement although the work done on it was limited to a few leading members of the group." (Taken from Brian Dempsey (1995) Thon Wey (USG, Edinburgh)).