The one-year-old parliamentary opposition People Progressive Party (PPP) under the leadership of the former African National Congress (ANC) member Rocky Malebane-Metsing, was banned in Bophuthatswana by President Lucas Mangope. He announced his banning order immediately after the aborted coup attempt by the PPP. Mangope announced that in terms of the 1979 Internal Security Act the PPP was engaged in illegal activities that would endanger the public safety.

The African National Congress (ANC) in Harare, Zimbabwe, agreed to "use its good offices" to facilitate the readmission of South African rugby into international competition on condition that a non-racial controlling board was established.

The Ciskeian police disrupted a residents' meeting, which was held to inform those residents of Peelton unable to attend a previous meeting, of the incorporation of the whole of Peelton into the Ciskei on 12 August 1988. The people of West Peelton were against the incorporation as they were going to loose their South African citizenship and did not wish to fall under the jurisdiction of Ciskei.

The Sowetan reported that the Soweto home of Winnie Mandela, wife of an imprisoned leader of the African National Congress (ANC), Nelson Mandela, was burned down allegedly by a group of schoolchildren. Among the explanations that emerged was one that the attack had been aimed not at the Mandela family but the football club closely associated with Winnie Mandela. Members of the club had allegedly attacked a Soweto schoolgirl.

South Africa's longest and biggest strike was organised by the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM), led by Cyril Ramaphosa. At the time it was the second largest trade union in South Africa. NUM represented mainly Black mineworkers in the gold and coal mines belonging to the Chamber of Mines. Approximately 360 000 Black miners went on strike over wage and working conditions. It lasted for three weeks costing the Chamber of Mines close on R250 million.

Mozambique and the Soviet Union rejected the findings of the Margo Commission, led by Justice Cecil Margo. The commission was instituted to investigate into the aircraft crash in which President Samora Machel of Mozambique had been killed. The commission found that the accident had been caused by an error of the crew and that the aircraft had not been lured off course by a decoy beacon as was alleged.

In protest of the system of apartheid, economic sanctions against South Africa had been advocated from the 1960s onwards. However, it was only in the 1980s that the implementation of sanctions would significantly pressurize the apartheid government to end its policy of segregation. In 1962, the United Nations established their Special Committee against Apartheid, which called for sanctions against South Africa. Britain was not convinced that this would encourage a change of policy in South Africa, and boycotted the committee.

A coup attempt headed by Brigadier-General Thomas Quiwonkpa, a faction of the Liberian military failed to take power from Samuel Doe. It was a third coup attempt since Samuel Doe took power in 1980. The 1985 coup came a month after the fraudulent first elections ever held in Liberia returned Samuel Doe to power. The opposition refused to accept the election and were threatened by Doe to accept them.

According to Coleman (ed.) in A Crime Against Humanity, the mutilated body of Toto Roy Dweba, member of the United Democratic Front (UDF) and of the Natal Freedom Charter Committee was found on this date at the Natal North Coast. Giving testimony before the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), Dweba's widow Daphne stated that her husband was abducted from his place of work on 19 August 1985. He was fatally stabbed and mutilated in Eshowe on 20 August 1985. She said that she had received strange phone calls, and suspected that the caller was responsible for the abduction and killing.

South Africa's Prime Minister since 1978, P.W. Botha, was unanimously elected by eighty-eight members of the Electoral College to the office of first executive president. This was a newly created position after the new constitution came into force in 1984. The constitution further created three houses of parliament, namely the House of Assembly for Whites, the House of Representatives for Coloureds, and House of Delegates for Indians with the president presiding over them. Botha held the position until he resigned in 1989.