Arms Embargo

Report detailing South Africa’s military build-up in the early 1980s and its attacks on the front-line states. The Committee on South African War Resistance (COSAWR) was set up by young white South Africans who refused to be conscripted into the apartheid government’s armed forces. Increasing numbers of them were forced into exile from the late 1970s. They played an important part in anti-apartheid campaigns, especially in Britain, and COSAWR worked closely with the Anti-Apartheid Movement.

In 1979 South Africa conducted a secret nuclear test and it became clear that it was trying to develop a nuclear bomb. The AAM campaigned to stop Western countries, especially West Germany, supplying it with nuclear technology.

Leaflet advertising a conference on South Africa’s nuclear bomb and the campaign against British nuclear collaboration with apartheid.

In April 1981 the South African’s Energy Minister F W de Klerk announced that the country could manufacture uranium fuel elements. A UN report concluded that South Africa was now a nuclear power. This meeting, organised by Hackney AA Group and Hackney Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, featured the 1980 World in Action film ‘Follow the Yellow Brick Road’, which exposed Britain’s illegal imports of uranium from Namibia.

In 1981 the AAM asked the British government to stop the sale of radar equipment manufactured by Plessey, a British electronics company, to the South African Defence Force. This pamphlet argued that the contract was in breach of the mandatory UN arms embargo.

In 1979 South Africa tested a nuclear device in the south Atlantic Ocean. This report traced the development of South Africa’s nuclear capacity and showed how Western countries had helped create it.

The AAM launched the World Campaign Against Military and Nuclear Collaboration in 1979. Its aim was to expose military and nuclear collaboration with South Africa and strengthen the UN arms embargo. Much of AAM’s international activity in the 1980s was through this campaign, collaborating with national anti-apartheid groups worldwide. Action included presenting detailed evidence to the UN about breaches of its mandatory embargo.