South Africa started raising eyebrows early on due to its apartheid policies and refusal to transition South West Africa to independence.

In 1964, United Nations Security Council Resolution 191 was adopted, reiterating previous requests made by the UN security council and further condemning apartheid with an arms embargo.

In 1970, UN Security Council Resolution 282 was adopted further emphasizing the previous arms embargo.

By 1977, after the Operation Savannah interventions into Angola and the heavy handed approach during the 1976 "Soweto uprising" the United Nations had had enough.

Resolution 418 was unanimously adopted and now the arms embargo was mandatory.

The embargo was not quite as effective as was hoped. Due to its slow escalating nature, in the decade preceding, many methods had been established to circumvent it.

Local production had a good head start, as could be seen from excellent locally designed and manufactured weaponry.

The Eland, Ratel, Buffel and Casspir were just a couple of many world class locally produced armaments that would be locally designed and produced... as they say necessity is the mother of invention.

The Eland MK7(first produced in 1962)

Responsible for so much carnage in Operation Savannah.

By User:Katangais , CC BY 2.5, Link

The Ratel (first produced in 1976)

img source

The Buffel(first produced in 1978)

By Bob Adams from George, South Africa - Buffel armoured personnel carrier, CC BY-SA 2.0, Link

The Casspir(first produced in 1979)

By Borisgorelik , CC BY-SA 3.0, Link

Later smuggling, utilization of foreign specialist and manufacturing under license would all be methods employed to circumvent the arms embargo.

Ultimately South Africa would end up falling behind, especially in the fighter aircraft department with a clear loss of air superiority to the MIG-23's in the closing years of the war.

Previous posts in this series can be found at the bottom of this post:

The South African Border War - 1976, The end of a chapter and the beginning of a new phase.
The South African Border War - Mines, Mines did I say mines?
The South African Border War - Enter the Ratel