A dissertation submitted to the faculty of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of Political Science. This dissertation is about the struggle for the national liberation of South Africa and centres around the strategy and tactics of the main lliberation organization, the African National Congress, and its alliance partner of teh South African Communist Party (SACP). The core of the study covers the period 1960-1993, a time, with the exception of the last three years, in which these organizations were officially banned by the white minority apartheid government. More precisely, this study seeks to provide a critical historical analysis of those strategy and tactics within the externalized (internationalized) environment within which these organizations operated.