Free Mandela

This concert celebrating Nelson Mandela’s 70th birthday on 18 July 1988 featured the Zimbabwean group, the Bhundu Boys, calypsonian David Rudder and Orchestra Marrabenta from Mozambique. It took place at The Academy, a major rock venue in Brixton, home of one of London’s biggest black communities.

The AAM produced T-shirts, badges, caps, mugs and a range of other merchandise for the ‘Nelson Mandela Freedom at 70’ campaign. They were designed to brand the campaign and give it a distinctive image.

Badge produced for the AAM’s ‘Nelson Mandela: Freedom at 70’ campaign in 1988.

Display box for the badge produced for the ‘Nelson Mandela Freedom at 70’ campaign. The AAM aimed to get 1,000,000 people in Britain wearing the badge on Mandela’s 70th birthday, 18 July 1988.

Mug produced for the AAM’s ‘Nelson Mandela: Freedom at 70’ campaign.

Carrier bag publicising the ‘Nelson Mandela: Freedom at 70’ campaign

Stickers for the AAM’s 1988 ‘Nelson Mandela: Freedom at 70’ campaign. At Wembley Stadium on 11 June rock stars played to a capacity audience in a concert that was broadcast around the world. Next day 25 freedom marchers set off from Glasgow on a 5-week march stopping at 32 towns and cities. On 17 July over 50,000 people joined the marchers on the last leg of the march to Hyde Park, where a crowd of a quarter of a million people heard Desmond Tutu call for Mandela’s release. The campaign was the biggest ever organised by the Anti-Apartheid Movement. It projected Nelson Mandela as the future leader of a non-racial South Africa in the eyes of people throughout the world.