Hi! I'm struggling to come up with a thesis/ argument for this question
To what extent did relations between South Africa and its neighbours influence the end of apartheid?
so far I have: Relations between South Africa and its neighbouring countries both boosted and hindered the end of apartheid movement considerably.
help me pls
Hey roryjessica,
Welcome to the forums! I noticed you posted this topic twice, so I've removed your other post to avoid confusion and make sure all the responses end up in the same place. This just helps keep the forums clean and make it easier for other people to find and answer your question!
The purpose of a thesis is to answer the question in it's purest form, and is what every single argument and detail in your essay should go back to support. Your current thesis is good in that it's nuanced in acknowledging other factors and has a strong opinion in that these relations were considerable in influencing the end of apartheid.
In this case, the question explicitly states
"to what extent", and so you should aim to address this by making explicit the extent to which you think these relations influenced the end of apartheid.
With "to what extent" questions, it's often beneficial to explicitly state the extent somewhere in your thesis so that your stance on the question is abundantly clear to your marker. For example, just adding "to a considerable extent" onto the end of your thesis would provide a much stronger link to the question.
Another thing I noticed with your thesis is that it's very general, and could refer to almost anything. While you don't want to be introducing your arguments in your thesis, it would help greatly to refer to specific aspects of the relations which helped or hindered the end of apartheid.
In this case, you'd want to draw from the rest of your introduction and your core arguments to add detail - if you think that the communist status of SA's neighbors were initially helpful in justifying apartheid security measures but later detrimental due to the fall of the soviet union, expand your thesis to focus on communism! If you think that SA's relations with it's neighbors were detrimental due to the high security expenditures of the SADF but ultimately not a major influence compared to other factors, make sure you mention the expenditure and those other factors in your thesis.
You shouldn't be explicitly stating any specific arguments, but you can still find ways to integrate them the main themes of your essay so that your thesis is stronger and holds more weight due to the added detail and specificity. Your thesis should be unique to your essay, and should try to capture the essence of what you're trying to convey to the reader.
Hope this helps! Feel free to reply below to ask for clarifications or more advice if anything was unclear
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