Boycott

Representatives of British local authorities joined a protest against the inclusion of South Africa and Bophuthatswana in the World Travel Market at Olympia in November 1990. One of the few sanctions Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher agreed to was a voluntary ban on the promotion of tourism to South Africa and Namibia, but the British government did nothing to put this into practice.

In 1990 the AAM made tourism a major part of its consumer boycott campaign. It wrote to major British holiday companies about their policy on selling trips to South Africa. Local AA groups campaigned to persuade local travel agents to stop promoting South African holidays. In London local activists held a sit-in next to the South African Airways stall at the World Travel Market in the Olympia exhibition centre.

In 1990 a Newcastle branch of the William Low supermarket chain sacked a young worker, Clare Morgan, for refusing to handle South African products. Tyneside AA Group distributed this leaflet to shoppers asking them to boycott the store until it stopped stocking goods from South Africa.

Throughout the negotiations for a democratic constitution from 1991 to 1993 the AAM asked supporters to maintain the boycott of South African goods. It argued that continued pressure was needed on the South African government to force it to agree to a genuinely democratic constitution. The UN finally lifted the boycott in September 1993 after it was agreed to set up a transitional executive council. 

In September 1992 the AAM asked its supporters to take part in a month of action to press the de Klerk government to agree to an interim government and constituent assembly. It called for the maintenance of international sanctions and boycotts.  On 1 September the London AA Committee picketed Sainsbury’s headquarters, because Sainsbury’s sourced its ‘own label’ wines from South Africa. During the month AAM supporters distributed thousands of leaflets outside supermarkets asking shoppers to boycott South African goods.

In September 1992, in the aftermath of the massacre at Boipatong, the AAM organised a month of events calling for international support for negotiations for peace and democracy in South Africa. It argued that the consumer boycott must continue until the apartheid government agreed to a democratic constitution. This leaflet advertised a picket of the head office of Sainsbury’s supermarket chain.

Leaflet asking shoppers not to buy South African goods. It answered commonly asked questions about the boycott.

Bilingual leaflet calling for a boycott of South African goods distributed by anti-apartheid campaigners in Wales.