Photos

The Southern Africa Coalition was launched on 1 September 1989 to press the British government to impose targeted sanctions against South Africa. These included a ban on imports of coal and agricultural products and on loans to South Africa. The Coalition brought together a wide range of organisations, including trade unions, churches, overseas aid agencies and the Anti-Apartheid Movement

Sheffield MP Richard Caborn and Lord Mayor Tony Damms with Sheffield AAM supporters outside Tesco on 13 October 1989. Over 2,000 shoppers signed Sheffield AA Group’s petition asking Tesco to stop selling South African goods. Earlier in the year, 320 of Tesco 380 stores all over Britain were picketed in a special Day of Action on 22 April.

The AAM campaigned to stop the 1990 rebel cricket tour of South Africa, led by Mike Gatting. It picketed 40 county cricket matches involving members of the team. These demonstrators are outside the Oval. The tour was cut short by protests inside South Africa and made a big financial loss.

COSATU General Secretary Jay Naidoo was the main speaker at the AAM’s annual general meeting in November 1989. He warned that since F W de Klerk was inaugurated as State President in September 1989, there had been an increase in violence and repression against South African trade unionists.

The AAM’s ‘Boycott Apartheid 89’ campaign extended the consumer boycott to tourism. London students and the London Anti-Apartheid Committee called for South Africa to be excluded from the World Travel Market at Kensington’s Olympia exhibition centre, 28 November 1989. The AAM wrote to the ten top British travel agents asking them not to book holidays in South Africa.

South Devon AA Group mounted an exhibition about the lives of women and children under apartheid in the high street in Totnes, Devon in 1989.

William Ntombela was one of several South African trade unionists sentenced to death in 1989. The British shopworkers union USDAW launched a petition for his release, signed by 5,000 members.  In the photograph USDAW General Secretary Garfield Davies (left) displays the petition. Partly as a result of the campaign the sentence was commuted to life imprisonment.

Actor Glenda Jackson launched the AAM Prize Raffle in 1989, with first prize of a Citroen car. Fundraising was an important part of the AAM’s activities – it depended entirely on small donations and fundraising projects and received no grants from government or major donor institutions.