Jan Clements

Jan Clements taught English as a volunteer in Angola. She was one of the founders of the Anti-Apartheid Women’s Committee and became the Secretary of the London Anti-Apartheid Committee, that coordinated the activities of local London AA groups. In 1984 she worked with Archbishop Trevor Huddleston on organising an interfaith colloquium on apartheid. She later joined the staff of the International Defence and Aid Fund, supporting the families of political prisoners in South Africa, and visited Robben Island in the early 1990s to assess the needs of prisoners on their release. She now works as a lawyer on the Guardian newspaper.

This is a complete transcript of an interview carried out as part of the Forward to Freedom AAM history project in 2013.

Jan Clements taught English as a volunteer in Angola. She was one of the founders of the Anti-Apartheid Women’s Committee and became the Secretary of the London Anti-Apartheid Committee, that coordinated the activities of local London AA groups. In 1984 she worked with Archbishop Trevor Huddleston on organising an interfaith colloquium on apartheid. She later joined the staff of the International Defence and Aid Fund, supporting the families of political prisoners in South Africa, and visited Robben Island in the early 1990s to assess the needs of prisoners on their release. She now works as a lawyer on the Guardian newspaper.

In this clip she describes the risks to ANC and AAM activists from the South African security forces and from right-wing groups in the UK.