This resource is hosted by the Nelson Mandela Foundation, but was compiled and authored by Padraig O’Malley. It is the product of almost two decades of research and includes analyses, chronologies, historical documents, and interviews from the apartheid and post-apartheid eras.
Reddy: the anti apartheid movement - 1959 -1979
A brief survey of its foundation and the development of its work
[On 26 June 1979 the Anti-Apartheid Movement, AAM, records 20 years of campaigning work in support of the African struggle for liberation. The following is a brief account of this work, concentrated on the early years. Annual Reports and Anti-Apartheid News - first published in 1965 - provide a comprehensive record of the later period.]
In the late 1950's international attention was focussed on the African continent, then emerging from the colonial era. Ghana, under the leadership of its first president, Kwame Nkrumah, played a significant role in encouraging the freedom movements and the overall thrust towards independence throughout the African continent. In December 1958 the first All African Peoples' Conference took place in Accra, at which representatives of the African National Congress of South Africa (ANC)appealed for an international boycott of South African goods. Chief Albert Luthuli, President General of the ANC, reiterated this call in April 1959, defining the purpose of the boycott as (i) a protest against apartheid, and (ii) a gesture of solidarity with the oppressed people of southern Africa. In response to this call a public meeting was held in London on 26 June 1959 - South Africa Freedom Day - -to promote the boycott: the main speakers were Julius Nyerere, then President of Tanganyika African National Union, and Father Trevor Huddleston. By December 1959 a special committee had been established, representing some 20 organizations, to launch a national boycott campaign, the Boycott Movement. The Movement was launched at a mass rally in Trafalgar Square on 28 February 1960.
Hundreds of local meetings were held throughout the country and over 500 local boycott committees were formed. Leaflets describing life for the majority black population under apartheid were distributed widely, together with Boycott News. For the first time, British involvement in support of the repressive and exploitative system of apartheid was brought home to the British people.
The boycott campaign provoked some controversy and a number of journalists were sent to South Africa to investigate and report on conditions there. Shortly afterwards, on 21 March 1960, the massacre at Sharpeville took place and photographs showing the dead and wounded appeared in the world's press. In Britain this shooting down of unarmed, peaceful demonstrators produced a groundswell of anger and it was noted that British-made Saracen tanks had been used by the South African police. Spontaneous protests took place outside South Africa House, and, at a massive rally of protest in Trafalgar Square a few days later, demands were made for the termination of all British arms supplies to South Africa. In South Africa, the ANC and the recently-formed Pan Africanist Congress were banned and went underground. In Britain, at a delegate action conference called by the Boycott Movement in April 1960, it was resolved to extend the boycott and to work for the total isolation of South Africa. The Anti-Apartheid Movement was thus established and its structure, its tasks and its organization more clearly defined. Until that time the work had been done on an ad hoc basis; now that the structure was established the scope of the Movement's campaigning work expanded.
Also in 1960, Prime Minister Harold MacMillan, after visiting several African countries, delivered his famous "winds of change" speech in Cape Town, in which he was critical of apartheid, but condemned boycotts. At the Commonwealth Conference, held in London, the AAM joined Oliver Tambo (then Vice-President of the ANC)and Dr. Yusuf Dadoo (President of the South African Indian Congress) in working for South Africa's expulsion from the Commonwealth. A 72-hour vigil was organized in which many prominent public figures participated, and Julius Nyerere of Tanganyika declared in an article in the Observer that, once independent, his country would not apply for membership of the Commonwealth if South African member-ship was retained. The AAM campaign built up and in 1961 when South Africa declared itself a republic, it was effectively excluded from the Commonwealth.
The work of the new Movement grew, in spite of a waning of the initial enthusiastic support as a result of the media presentation of the Congo crisis. Meetings were organized at political party conferences and at the Trade Union Congress, providing platforms for exiled liberation movement leaders. Resolutions of support for the struggle in South Africa were called for. Contacts were established with similar groups in other countries and direct representations made to governments. The AAM was also working for a change in Britain's policy at the United Nations. In 1962, in the face of resolute Western opposition, the General Assembly adopted a resolution calling for comprehensive economic and other sanctions against South Africa. In September of that year AAM set up a membership structure for individuals and organizations and Barbara Castle, MP, became the Movement's first President.
In 1962, the Movement exposed the growing alliance between South Africa Portugal and, as it was then known, the Central African Federation, in a pamphlet, The Unholy Alliance. As a result of the increased militancy of the now banned liberation movements in South Africa and their military wings and of the growing world-wide support for efforts to isolate the country, the Pretoria regime massively increased its defence budget, made large-scale arms purchase abroad and initiated a domestic armaments industry.
The AAM campaigned urgently for a total embargo on the sale of arms and military equipment to South Africa and won the support of the Labour and Liberal opposition parties. At a rally in Trafalgar Square on 17 March 1963, the newly elected leader of the Labour Party, Harold Wilson, M.P.,reaffirmed his party's policy and called on the Conservative government to "act now and stop this bloody traffic in the weapons of oppression". Later in the year the United States Government informed the AAM that it would also apply an arms embargo. In August 1963 the United Nations Security Council adopted a resolution calling on all member states to maintain an arms embargo against South Africa.
In 1963, in order to mobilize public opinion worldwide to save the lives of Nelson Mandela, Walter Sisulu and the other accused in the Rivonia Trial, the AAM sponsored the World Campaign for the Release of all South African Political Prisoners. Representations were made at all levels, to heads of state, religious leaders, political parties, trade unions, prominent public figures and organizations; leaflets, postcards, posters and other information material were distributed; meetings were held. This campaign played an important part in ensuring that the death sentences were not imposed.
These two major campaigns were carried out alongside the continuing work of the AAM to extend the boycott and to isolate South Africa in every field. The consumer boycott remained a major plank of the Movement's work but new efforts were made in the cultural, academic and sporting fields to expose British involvement in support of apartheid. In 1963, after AAMrepresentations, South Africa's membership of the International Olympic Committee was suspended. Similar representations were made to FIFA (football) and to the ICC (cricket). The major campaign conducted against the 1965 Test series held in Britian between Springbok cricket team and England was the forerunner to the AAM/Stop the Seventies Tour campaign in 1969/70 which ended with South Africa's effective exclusion from the ICC.
The AAMtook the initiative in sponsoring an international conference to examine the feasibility of economic sanctions against South Africa and methods whereby sanctions could be imposed. The conference received the support of many governments and the documentation was subsequently published by Penguin Books. Though the AAM had earlier worked for economic disengagement from South Africa, this conference, held in April 1964, brought the debate to a new level.
With the election of a Labour Government in 1964, Prime Minister Harold Wilson announced a qualified arms embargo which spurred the Movement on to further campaigning activity. In 1967 under a Labour Government, and again in 1970 under a Conservative Government, there were indications that the arms embargo was to be abandoned: the AAM embarked on massive campaigns, through the media in 1967 and public demonstrations in 1970, to ensure that it was maintained. In November 1977 the United Nations Security Council imposed a mandatory arms embargo against South Africa. Despite the Movement's lengthy and intensive campaigning activities, which undoubtedly contributed to this achievement, South Africa continues to receive covert support in this area and the Movement's research and campaigning work continues. It therefore established in March 1979 the World Campaign against Military and Nuclear Collaboration with South Africa.
In 1965, Anti-Apartheid News was launched and became a major force in educational and campaigning activities in Britain and abroad. 1965 also saw the intensification of the Movement's work to cover southern Africa as a whole, and the Unilateral Declaration of Independence in Rhodesia in November. Campaigns in support of the liberation wars in Mozambique, Angola and Guinea-Bissau were launched and extensive work was undertaken on Namibia (then still known as South West Africa). In March 1966 an international conference on South West Africa, sponsored by the AAMand the Africa Bureau, was held in Oxford. In the same year SWAPO launched the armed struggle in Namibia.
The political changes which had taken place both in Southern Africa and in Britain prompted a reassessment by AAMof its style of work and campaigning activities; it recognized the armed struggle as the primary movement for change on the subcontinent and the corresponding need to build a wider base of support for that struggle. The year 1967- which was crowded with activities against, for example, the "Tiger" talks on Rhodesia, South Africa's invasion of Rhodesia and the trial of 37 SWAPO members under the newly passed Terrorism Act in South Africa - was a period of intensive educational work among trade unionists, youth and students, church and other groups; the local AA committee network was strengthened. Conferences on "The Crisis in Southern Africa" were held in Manchester, Birmingham and London. Full adherence to the Security Council resolution imposing mandatory sanctions against the Smith regime (called for by AAM at a conference at the end of 1966) was major campaign issue during the year, coupled with action against the possibility of a sell-out to the white minority regime.
A pamphlet on Labour's Record on Southern Africa was published during 1967 and widely distributed. It highlighted the failures of the Labour Government to fulfil the policies of the Labour Party adopted while in opposition.
As the armed resistance in Southern Africa increased in momentum, so did the activities of the pro-apartheid lobbies in Britain and throughout the world. South Africa expanded its military intervention, both overtly and covertly, in the wars against the forces of liberation in Rhodesia, Angola and Mozambique.
Public meetings held throughout 1967 and 1968, addressed by representatives of the liberation movements, emphasized the "unholy alliance" of South Africa, Rhodesia and Portugal against the growing forces of resistance. Dr. Eduardo Mondlane, then President of FRELIMO, visited Britain at the time of the formation of the Committee for Freedom in Mozambique, Angola and Guiné (CFMAG), with which the AAM worked closely throughout its existence.
With the growth of armed struggle in Southern Africa the AAM called on the United Nations to adopt a resolution recognizing "the belligerent status of the national liberation organizations of Southern Africa", demanding that their forces be accorded the protection of the Geneva Conventions and appointing a Member State to act as the protecting power for the purposes of the Geneva Convention on the Treatment of Prisoners of War.
At this time support for the Movement's policies was growing in the trade union movement but slowly and in 1968, in order to expand support in this vital area, a Trade Union Action Group (later renamed Trade Union Committee) was set up. This Committee, which has increased in strength and enlarged its range of activity, has developed close links with the trade union movement at all levels and has worked closely with the South African Congress of Trade Unions (SACTU).
The passing by the British Government in 1968 of the racist Commonwealth Immigrants Act prompted the Movement to increase its support for anti-racist activities in Britain. Many local AA groups were and continue to be active in opposition to racialism in Britain and Anti-Apartheid News increased its coverage of this issue.
At the beginning of the second decade of its life the Movement could look back over ten years of vigorous campaigning and educational work and could take some pride in the achievements won in difficult circumstances. But the problems of the future had become considerably more complex, with South Africa using all its powerful resources to fight back against its increasing isolation. Within South Africa repression was on the increase, detention without trial had become widespread and the known number of deaths of detainees under torture had reached 20 by the end of 1969. At the same time South Africa began to pursue an "outward looking" policy, expanding its operations at all levels -diplomatic, political, military, industrial and financial. It threatened the territorial integrity of Zambia and Tanzania. Its links with the West were close and Western investment in apartheid was increasing.
In spite of this there was room for optimism, with the expansion of the liberated areas in Mozambique and Angola, the, development of the armed struggle in Namibia and the growth of underground networks in South Africa and Zimbabwe.
Entering its second decade; the AAM resolved to intensify its campaigns for the total isolation of South Africa, with emphasis on economic sanctions, and to raise support, both moral and material, for the liberation movements. Consolidation of its organizational base was an important first step and this was manifest in the increasing participation in the AAM's work by youth and students, trade unions, and local political parties, among others. The AAM continued to organize major rallies and meetings and other organizations joined with the AAMin arranging events at a national level, thus ensuring a wider distribution of publicity and educational material. Two such demonstrations were organized in 1969 - a march to mark South Africa Freedom Day on 26 June, designed to draw attention to the collaboration of British firms with South Africa, and a mass demonstration in January in solidarity with the liberation movements.
Work on the Rhodesian issue continued. The "Fearless" proposals contained further concessions to the Smith regime. The Movement campaigned strenuously for a reaffirmation of NIBMAR, ("No Independence Before Majority Rule"), numerous meetings were held and interviews took place with Commonwealth High Commissioners or their representatives to discuss the Rhodesian issue. Support was forthcoming from constituency Labour Parties, MPs, student and youth organizations, and many other groups. These activities built up to a climax during the 1969 Commonwealth Prime Ministers Conference, during which vigils, sit-ins, teach-ins and other events were held. In June the Rhodesia Front introduced its new constitution and declared a republic.
The Cabora Bassa Dam project in Mozambique, in which an international consortium of firms was participating, led to the formation of the Dambusters Mobilizing Committee. It campaigned against the participation of British firms and banks. The involvement of Barclays Bank, in addition to its enormous interests in Southern Africa, made it the focus of a campaign in Britain. The Barclays campaign led to the withdrawal of individual and organizational accounts from the bank.
The Movement's campaigns - on the arms embargo, for the release of all political prisoners and with specific emphasis on specific trials, for the ending of links in the academic, sporting and cultural fields, and particularly for economic disengagement - continued at a high level throughout the 1970s.
1974 marked the defeat of Portuguese colonialism in Africa, the establishment of the independent state of Mozambique under the leadership of FRELIMO, full independence and recognition of the state of Guinea Bissau; and 1975 saw the coming to power of the MPLA government in Angola. South Africa's military invasion of Angola and its subsequent defeat and withdrawal marked a turning point in the struggle for freedom throughout southern Africa. It profoundly affected the oppressed people of South Africa, many of whom openly supported FRELIMO in Mozambique and MPLA in Angola.
Towards the end of 1974 Royal Navy ships began a second round of joint exercises with South African forces. The AAM campaign against these exercises and the "Simonstown Agreements" culminated in an official announcement on 4 December that the government was to enter into "negotiations with the South African Government with a view to terminating the Simonstown Agreements". The fact of the termination was revealed in June1975 in answer to a parliamentary question.
The uprising of African students in Soweto in June 1976, which then spread throughout South Africa, marked a watershed in the struggle. The Movement organized demonstrations, produced leaflets and campaigned vigorously throughout the country. By these means tremendous support was generated in solidarity with these young people.
Throughout its history the Movement has worked closely with other organizations, notably the International Defence and Aid Fund for Southern Africa, Liberation (formerly the Movement for Colonial Freedom), and with the trade unions, students, churches, political parties, etc. Joint actions in campaigns such as the Rhodesia Emergency Campaign Committee - set up in 1972 to oppose a sell-out in Rhodesia at the time of the Pearce Commission - were very effective and this co-operative action is now again in force with the establishment of the Zimbabwe Emergency Campaign Committee (ZECC).
The last twenty years have witnessed the emergence of the world-wide campaign against apartheid, in the development of which the AAM has played a special role. At the United Nations, with the governments of many countries, and with the international organizations and above all with other anti-apartheid and solidarity movements, it has been possible to elevate the consumer boycott campaign into an international movement for total economic sanctions.
The situation in southern Africa and internationally now presents new and more complex challenges and will require an even greater commitment and a fiercer energy on the part of the AAM and all its supporters.
PART II - PERSPECTIVES OF THE ANTI-APARTHEID MOVEMENT FOR THE 1980's
The AAM's policies and tasks have been and will remain a function of the developing situation in South Africa on the basis of its over-riding objective of creating the most favourable international environment for the winning of the struggle for freedom by the national liberation movements of South Africa, Zimbabwe and Namibia. For twenty years the AAM has devoted itself to generating public awareness about the nature of the apartheid system and to mobilize support for the freedom struggle through the boycott of South African products. This support was further developed in the 1960s through campaigns for international trade and investment sanctions, the sport and cultural boycott and the embargo on the provision of arms and military equipment to South Africa. These policy developments were themselves dictated not only by the gathering political crisis in the southern African region, but also by the Movement's perceptions about the growing threat of the apartheid regime and its system to the peace of Africa arising out of that regime's expansionist course in southern Africa, and the impunity with which it defied the United Nations by enlarging and systematically intensifying the repressive institutions and policies of apartheid. South Africa's massive rearmament drive had become by the late 1960s an alarming new fact in the southern Africa crisis. These perceptions and the resulting policies doubtlessly played a crucial role in the development of United Nations policy towards apartheid and in the united stand of the African States and many other nations for world-wide sanctions against South Africa. For them, opposition to apartheid has become a central issue in the fight for world peace.
By the 1970s, the great majority of the nations of the world had ceased having trade and other economic and political contacts with the apartheid regime.
South Africa was expelled from the great majority of international organizations and barred from most international sporting and cultural exchanges. South African ships and aircraft are refused docking and landing rights in Africa and many Third World countries. In these respects, then, the campaigns of the AAM and the pressure from Africa for the isolation of apartheid have scored significant successes in these past twenty years.
Moreover, as a result of the collapse of Portuguese colonialism and the advances of the national liberation struggles in southern Africa, a crisis of power of considerable acuteness has now come to prevail in the region. That crisis has indeed become an international polarization of forces with explosive potentialities. The Western powers are striving desperately to contain that crisis, but their strategies are now more explicitly aimed at sustaining the apartheid system and even more provocatively to secure South Africa's dominance in the region. This is reflected in the aggressive direction of South Africa's current policies towards Zimbabwe and Namibia.
It is against this background that the AAMdefines its perspectives and tasks for the coming period. The political situation in the region is now dominated by three basic features. First, as suggested above, there is the crisis of power resulting from the advances of the liberation struggles and the total opposition of and alienation of the black masses from their rulers. The latter now maintain themselves solely through the force of arms and intense police repression. Secondly, the Southern African question is now truly internationalized with nations and states taking defined positions, aligning themselves for or against the Southern African status quo and South Africa's drive for a commanding role in the region. The major Western powers have become explicitly involved by helping to sustain the apartheid system whilst others have begun to increase their support for the liberation struggle. And thirdly, there exists today an unprecedented degree of awareness among the peoples of the world about the nature of the southern African crisis and its far-reaching implications for world peace. This has become a political force of considerable influence, especially in the Western countries, and is now manifested in the campaigns against trade, investment and other forms of support for the apartheid rulers. The further growth of this public awareness, and the strengthening of world-wide solidarity for the freedom struggles could in this respect become a decisive factor in staying the hands of the Western powers, their multinationals and banks, in restraining their pro-apartheid activities and removing the threat of Western armed intervention on the side of apartheid in the coming period of escalating conflict in the region.
It is useful to consider the implications of these features of the Southern African crisis. Within South Africa, active steps are now underway towards constructing a more explicit corporate or fascist form of state control over the labour and raw material resources of the country. This control is being supported with measures aimed at involving foreign capital more directly as partners of the state in the management of an economy under increasing sanction pressures and in particular of the oil embargo. Laws have been enacted to bring the services of foreign capital and their enterprises in the procurement of armaments and the expansion of their local manufacture. These laws and policies guarantee the conditions of profitability through a more effective regimentation of the black labour force, and by South Africa's military control over the rich raw material producing countries of southern Africa.
Externally, the South African government has now drawn what the RandDaily Mail has called a "blueprint for a newpolicy which aims to draw into its orbit all southern African states upto and including Zaire". This implies that not only Zimbabwe and Namibia but also the independent states of Mozambique and Angola will now become objects of South African aggression and regional ambitions. Angola produces oil, and it is undoubtedly this fact which explains the brutal interventions of the South African military forces in 1975 and other activities aimed at "destabilising" the Angolan government.
The Rhodesian army is now doing the same in Mozambique and Zambia with South African military support and with the tolerance, if not the connivance, of the Western powers and their intelligence organizations. The fundamental fact of the present situation is that South Africa now conceives the attainment of its aims, no longer in terms of the defunct dialogue exercise or the Rhoodie-type subterfuges, but of outright hostilities. By internationalizing the race war and by presenting South Africa and Southern Africa as victims of "communist expansion", the South African regime expects that the Western powers could be forced into intervening on its behalf. Muzorewa's recent visit to Pretoria is inextricably bound up with this blueprint for aggression and war, since in the thinking of the South African regime only such a war (or the prospects of such a war) can bring about the conditions of open recognition of Muzorewa's regime in Salisbury.
The AAM does not believe that South Africa possesses the power by itself to construct such a programme of expansion through the force of arms without the support and involvement of the Western powers. It would be a total mis-conception of the situation, and highly misleading, to believe that South Africa is capable of developing ambitions which are contrary to and independent of Western interests. Well over one-half of South African production is under foreign capital control and the vital resources and materials needed to sustain the economy (oil, capital investment and advanced technology) are all supplied by the Western countries. The Western multinational corporations are in active partnership with the South African state in creating an economic base for their joint operations in southern and central Africa. The international banks are equally implicated in financing the South African state and its many para-statal enterprises. The provision of military know-how, the blueprints for the production of advanced technology, and the expertise of modern economic and financial management all come from the West. These supports are the critical pillars of the apartheid economy. Thus South Africa's apartheid system only survives because the Western powers increasingly view South African dominance in southern and central Africa as the only way out of the crisis of power in the region, even if that dominance is now to be achieved through the force of arms.
The evidence for this conclusion is considerable. The period up to only a decade ago was characterized by only one major outside power having anything of a decisive presence and influence in the southern African region. That was Britain. Today, in the aftermath of the collapse of Portuguese colonialism and the growth of armed struggles of the liberation movements, with accompanying African pressures for the expulsion of South Africa from Namibia, it is not Britain alone but the five most important Western powers - all NATO members - which have joined in creating a collective presence in the region, and who arrogate to themselves the power to determine the outcome of the crisis. The South African intervention in Angola in 1975 is known to be the result of a concerted Western effort to overthrow the MPLA-led government in Luanda. The sustained efforts since then of Western oil and other companies to keep South Africa and Rhodesia supplied with oiland with the weaponry necessary to keep their regimes in power have been exposed in the past year.
The protracted Western five-power "negotiations" with South Africa over the Namibian question stand as one of the most notable pieces of Western deception
in many years. They have virtually succeeded in freezing the Namibian question at the Security Council. The overtures to Pretoria by the five Western foreign ministers were supposed to bring the weight of the collective power of their countries in favour of an acceptable Namibian settlement. But what did this achieve? Not a solution on the basis of Namibian independence. Rather it facilitated the creation of a puppet Turnhalle regime in Windhoek. It could have led to a major evaluation of the joint interests of the major Western powers and South Africa, leading to the construction of a strategy which now finds its expression in the South African blueprint to draw southern and central Africa into the orbit of the apartheid regime. There can be no illusion about this.
South Africa may not be formally at war with the surrounding African states. But a kind of undeclared war has been going on for some time - against Angola, Mozambique and Zambia - either directly or through the Rhodesian armed forces.
The war embraces not only air strikes and the landing of troops in the neighbouring countries, but the infiltration of sabotage teams, the destruction of villages, bridges and roads and harassment of various kinds. The West does not oppose these acts of violence. This alone gives further encouragement to the apartheid regime to escalate its aggressive drives for domination and control over the region.
The major lesson to be drawn from the experience of the past two decades is the essential importance of the sanctions strategy: to end all forms of collaboration with the apartheid regime and to impose total international sanctions against it and thus make a major contribution to the liberation struggle of the South African people.
However, during the past two decades there have also been in Britain, and abroad, those who have verbally condemned apartheid but argued against sanctions, taken positions hostile to the liberation movements and even suggested that action against the apartheid system must be postponed until the other territories in the region are free and independent. They have, in fact, seemed to undermine the efforts of the AAM and encouraged the Pretoria regime and its allies.
The AAM has always believed that it is South Africa that is the central problem in Southern Africa and that therefore the Pretoria regime should be directly confronted, rather than appeased in the hope that it will somehow behave in a more acceptable manner in future.
Indeed, it is precisely the policy of the major Western powers over the past two decades of "no confrontation with South Africa" which has today created a situation where the Pretoria regime threatens so directly the peace and security of independent Africa. Indeed, South Africa's enormous military build-up and the development of its nuclear capability now represents one of the most serious threats to world peace.
In a very real sense, it is not just the policies of the apartheid regime, but those of the major Western powers towards South Africa, which constitute a grave threat to international peace and security. If this tendency continues, and there is growing Western intervention at various levels on the side of the apartheid regime in order to help it counter the escalating liberation struggle, then we face the real danger of an open confrontation between the major Western powers and the African liberation movement.
This unfolding situation places a major responsibility on the Anti-Apartheid Movement to counteract all those forces which wish to promote an even closer alliance with South Africa, in order to ensure the survival of the apartheid system. In this context, the media, particularly in recent years, by its distorted coverage, have given considerable encouragement to the racist regimes. It is crucial that our campaigns are worked out with care and imagination so that we are able to win the support of large sections of the British people on the side of African freedom. The history of the AAM shows that specific campaigns can mobilize thousands of people on crucial issues and at the same time serve to deepen their understanding of the situation.
As we enter the 1980's the challenge before the AAM is greater than ever. We need to work more actively to ensure that the British people understand the objectives and policies of the African liberation movements and increase their support for the freedom struggle.
In the context of the growing war situation in Southern Africa we need to secure more support for the African front-line states.
The demand for total economic sanctions against South Africa remains the major priority and mass campaigns need to be organized to popularize it.
The United Nations mandatory arms embargo against South Africa must be strengthened and made more effective. Campaigns against investment and bank loans must be intensified and we must work for an effective oil embargo.
The AAM will have to continue its work to fight for the release of all political prisoners and detainees and to halt the execution of captured freedom fighters.
We have to ensure that there is no sell-out of the peoples of Zimbabwe and Namibia.
Footnote
1. This paper was presented by the Anti-Apartheid Movement at a conference on "Southern Africa in the 1980's," held in London on June 26, 1979, to review the work of the AAM since its foundation in 1959 and to consider the tasks ahead. The Conference was addressed, among others, by Oliver Tambo, President of the ANC; J. Chinamano, Vice-President of the Patriotic Front of Zimbabwe; David Steel, M.P.; leader of the Liberal Party; E. S. Reddy, Director of the UN Centre against Apartheid; and leaders of the Anti-Apartheid Movement, Robert Hughes, M. P., Mrs. Joan Lestor, M.P., and Abdul S. Minty.