Browse the AAM Archive

AA News began 1971 with a redesign: its front page featured a Janus-like Prime Minister Edward Heath facing both ways on apartheid. The issue focused on the AAM’s campaign against the Conservative Government’s decision to resume arms sales to South Africa. Over 100,000 people signed a Declaration opposing the sales and thousands attended nationwide meetings and rallies. AA News featured major British companies with big stakes in apartheid and reported on the spread of FRELIMO guerrilla activity to Tete province, home of the Cabora Bassa dam. It exposed South Africa’s growing economic ties with Israel, Ivory Coast and Iran. 

The March issue exposed leading Tory MPS who profited from apartheid through their holdings in companies with big stakes in South Africa. A special article featured the far-right Monday Club, founded in 1961 in reaction to Harold Macmillan’s ‘wind of change’ speech. A centrespread described the inequalities of the apartheid education system. Guy Clutton-Brock, recently deported from Zimbabwe, told how Zimbabweans looked to the liberation movement ZAPU for the removal of the minority white regime, rather than to the British Government. AA News endorsed an appeal by SACTU for support from British trade unions.

The April issue slated South Africa’s white-led churches for their failure to take any meaningful steps to oppose apartheid. It exposed the decision by the British Steel Corporation to hand over its South African operation to the government-owned Iron and Steel Corporation of South Africa. It attacked the failure of the Nixon administration in the USA to implement anti-apartheid policies and revealed French collaboration with South Africa’s armed forces. A centrespread featured the education and social systems being built by the liberation movements of Portugal’s African colonies in the areas they had freed from Portuguese control. 

The British Government was about to launch new talks with the illegal Smith regime in Zimbabwe, warned AA News. The issue previewed demonstrations against the Springbok rugby and cricket tours of Australia. It reported on the disruption of Barclays Bank’s AGM by supporters of the Dambusters Mobilising Committee and on the US Presbyterian Church’s challenge to Gulf Oil over its oil shareholdings in Angola. Former political prisoner Lewis Baker told how life under apartheid drove people to break the law and described the living conditions of long-term political prisoners. Former conscript Howard Smith told of his experiences in the South African Defence Force.

The June issue exposed the lie behind the apartheid government’s claim that the Bantustans could develop into ‘separate black states’. It again focused on British corporations with big stakes in the apartheid economy, including the mining company RTZ and engineering company GKN. It reported on Zambia’s attempts to reduce its economic dependence on South Africa and on Ivory Coast’s new alliance with the apartheid government. A former Portuguese army soldier explained why he had refused to serve in the war in Mozambique. 

A round-up of anti-apartheid action included reports of the AAM’s ‘Partners in Imperialism’ conference on 4 July and the demonstrations against the Springbok rugby tour of Australia. AA News exposed South Africa’s new sports policy, under which segregated black teams would be allowed to tour overseas, and the apartheid government’s hopes to win economic advantage from Britain’s membership of the European Economic Community. It reported on how South African Defence Minister P W Botha was greeted with smoke bombs when he visited the British Defence Ministry. A centrespread explained the significance of the Cabora Bassa dam in Mozambique.

The September issue contested the argument that ‘constructive engagement’ could lead to peaceful change in South Africa. It reported on the show trial of Gonville Ffrench-Beytagh, Dean of Johannesburg, and carried a special feature exposing the built-in racial discrimination in South Africa’s legal system. A feature article argued that white rule in Rhodesia was as discriminatory as apartheid in South Africa. Special correspondent Antonio de Figueredo examined the economic impact of Portugal’s colonial wars. The issue’s back page reproduced the ANC leaflet distributed in major cities all over South Africa.  

This issue reported on the comprehensive resolution on Southern Africa passed at the TUC Congress. It hailed the cancellation of the Springbok cricket tour of Australia as a victory for the international anti-apartheid movement. It carried an extract from The Discarded People, Cosmas Desmond’s book about communities dumped into ‘resettlement camps’. AA News named ICI as the latest target in the Dambusters Mobilising Committee’s campaign against British involvement in the Cabora Bassa dam. A feature on the National Front revealed its ties with South Africa and the illegal Rhodesian regime.