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The AAM’s 1986 annual general meeting reaffirmed its call for a total boycott of Shell. This issue of Embargo’s newsletter reported on the November 1986 month of Shell boycott action. It announced plans for an international day of action on 21 March 1987 to expose Shell’s role as the biggest oil company in South Africa and its complicity in apartheid. Embargo was a coordinating group set up by ELTSA (End Loans to Southern Africa) to campaign for a boycott of Shell.

Children from South Africa, Namibia, Zimbabwe and Mozambique were forced into exile by the South African government’s repression inside its borders and its attacks on its neighbours. This pamphlet exposed the harsh conditions in refugee camps and the initatives taken by the Southern African liberation movements to provide care and education for exiled children. It was published by the International Defence and Aid Fund and distributed by the AAM.

The International Defence and Aid Fund published pamphlets covering every aspect of life in apartheid South Africa and Namibia. It also produced posters, exhibitions and videos illustrating the brutality of apartheid and the struggle to end it. Its publications and other material were widely distributed by the Anti-Apartheid Movement.

Mary remembers how South Africans exiles living in London drew her into the South African liberation struggle in 1958, before the formation of the Boycott Movement. She left London the following year, but her experience in the nascent Anti-Apartheid Movement led her to join other social justice movements. She now lives in Australia, and at the age of 89 campaigns for justice for Palestinians.