1980s

Sixty thousand people marched through London from Embankment to Hyde Park on 24 October 1987 to call for sanctions against South Africa. The demonstration took place before the Commonwealth conference in Vancouver. A delegation handed in a letter to 10 Downing Street. The speakers in Hyde Park included SWAPO President Sam Nujoma, Johnstone Makatini from the ANC, TUC General Secretary Norman Willis, Glenys Kinnock, Labour MPs Bernie Grant and Joan Lestor, and AAM activist Rekha Patel. In the picture: Trevor Huddleston, Sam Nujoma and Norman Willis.

Poster produced for placards on a demonstration calling for sanctions against South Africa held in central London on 24 October 1987. Around 60,000 people marched from the Thames Embankment to Hyde Park to a rally addressed by SWAPO President Sam Nujoma, Johnstone Makatini of the ANC, Archbishop Trevor Huddleston, Labour MP Bernie Grant and Glenys Kinnock.

Children held cards remembering young detainees in South Africa on a march organised by Wales AAM in Cardiff on 24 October 1987. In Sophia Gardens, ANC representative Thando Zuma said the apartheid regime had imprisoned 8,000 young people without charge in the previous 18 months.

Letter from Richard Caborn MP asking Prime Minister Thatcher to withdraw her remark describing the ANC as a ‘typical terrorist organisation’.

Letter from Prime Minister Thatcher defending her description of the ANC as a ‘typical terorrist organisation’ and reiterating her opposition to sanctions.

Delegates at the AAM’s annual general meeting in Sheffield in 1987. The AGM was the first held under the AAM’s new constitution, under which local groups all over the country elected delegates to the conference.

The keynote speaker at the AAM 1987 annual general meeting was Simba Makoni, Executive Secretary of the Southern African Development Coordination Conference. He set out its policy on international sanctions against South Africa: SADCC member states’ vulnerability should not be used as an excuse by other countries for not imposing sanctions. This pamphlet reproduces his speech.

Outside the annual general meeting of Consolidated Goldfields in London on 4 November 1987. A ‘judge’ holds the scales of justice symbolising South Africa’s ‘rule of law’ in Namibia. In August 1987 ConsGold sacked 4,000 Namibian mineworkers at its Tsumeb mine.