Poster advertisin a fundraising gig at Camden Town Hall, Central London, with Jabula, Immigrant, Red Rinse and Mayibuye.
Poster advertising a rally organised by the Greater London Council on 21 March 1984, the anniversary of the Sharpeville massacre. The main speaker was ANC President Oliver Tambo. In December 1983 the GLC launched an Anti-Apartheid Declaration pledging that it would discourage all links between London and apartheid South Africa.
Poster advertising a demonstration outside the John Player rugby cup final at Twickenham in protest against the Rugby Football Union’s tour of South Africa in May–June 1984. Student activists demonstrated at Heathrow on the day of the team’s departure. The tour went ahead in spite of a long-running campaign against it. The Conservative government expressed its opposition to the tour but took no action to stop it.
Poster connecting the purchase of South African fruit with lynchings in the American south by quoting the Billie Holliday song ‘Southern trees bear a strange fruit’.
The Freedom Charter was adopted by the Congress of the People held in South Africa in 1955. In the 1980s it once again became a rallying point for anti-apartheid organisations within the country.
Students played a big part in the campaign to force Barclays Bank to withdraw from South Africa. This poster was displayed in student unions to persuade students not to bank with Barclays. By the mid-1980s Barclays share of student accounts had fallen to 17 per cent and this was a big factor in the bank’s decision to withdraw from South Africa in 1986.
This debate at the Oxford Union featuring Bantustan chief Gatsha Buthelezi, South African Cabinet minister Allan Hendrickse and South African Ambassador Denis Worrall was cancelled after protests from Oxford students. Instead, students held a torchlight march through Oxford. They heard Father Smangaliso Mkhatshwa of the United Democratic Front call for the unconditional release of all South African political prisoners.
Poster advertising an AAM rally calling for sanctions against South Africa on 16 June 1985. The uprising in the townships of the southern Transvaal from September 1984 triggered a new wave of repression by the apartheid government. On 21 March 1985 40 people were shot by the South African police at Langa in the Eastern Cape. Two days before this demonstration South African forces killed 16 people in Gaborone, Botswana. Thousands of demonstrators marched through central London to protest against the killings. They called at the headquarters of Shell, Barclays Bank and the Ministry of Defence to demand that British companies and the Conservative government ended their links with South Africa.
