1980s

One of a set of four posters produced for the AAM’s ‘Southern Africa: The Time to Choose’ demonstration on 14 March 1982. The isolation of apartheid South Africa was the central theme of Anti-Apartheid Movement campaigns from its foundation as the Boycott Movement in 1959. It worked to isolate apartheid in every arena, including sport and culture, and trade and investment. 

This poster reproduced the centrespread of a Special Supplement to the March 1982 edition of the AAM’s monthly newspaper Anti-Apartheid News. It was produced as part of the publicity material for the AAM’s 1982 campaign ‘Southern Africa: The Time to Choose’.

British trade unionists picketed South Africa House on May 11 1982 calling for the release of three leaders of the South African Agricultural Workers Union detained without trial. Left to right: Roger Ward from the draughtsmen’s union TASS, Muriel Turner from the clerical union ASTMS and ASTMS General Secretary, Clive Jenkins.

Anti-apartheid supporters protested outside South Africa House on 16 June 1982, the sixth anniversary of the Soweto uprising. In the photo are Norma Kitson (far left), Eleanor Khanyile (centre) and Sonia Bunting (far right).

Anti-apartheid supporters marched through York on 3 July 1982 in solidarity with workers sacked for going on strike at York-based Rowntree-Mackintosh’s South African subsidiary. The demonstration was part of a long-running campaign by British trade unions and the AAM to make the company reinstate the sacked workers and recognise the South African Allied Workers Union.

Women protested outside South Africa House on 19 August 1982 against the murder of Ruth First. She was killed in Maputo by a letter bomb two days earlier. In a South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission hearing held in 2000 South Africa police agents Craig Williamson and Roger Raven admitted that they organised the attack.The women also called for the release of three young freedom fighters who had been sentenced to death.

Ruth First was assassinated by South African agents in Mozambique in August 1982. The AAM wrote to Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher showing that the killing was part of an escalating pattern of South African aggression, including the bombing of the ANC’s London office in March 1982. It asked her to instruct the British Ambassador in Cape Town to make a formal protest to the apartheid government.

Members of City of London Anti-Apartheid Group call for the release of South African political prisoner David Kitson outside South Africa House in August 1982. Kitson served 20 years imprisonment in South Africa and was released in 1984. In the picture on the right are David Kitson’s wife Norma Kitson and son Steve.