Photos

In the first three years of F W Klerk’s presidency, at least 7,000 South Africans were killed in political violence perpetrated by the Inkatha Freedom Party and undercover forces. In its September 1992 Month of Action for Peace and Democracy, the AAM called on de Klerk to take measures to stop the killings.

TUC General Secretary Norman Willis with shopworkers leader Garfield Davies and Rodney Bickerstaffe, General Secretary of the public sector workers union NUPE, at the AAM’s stall at the 1992 TUC annual congress.

These women were part of the Europe-wide demonstration outside a meeting of European Community Foreign Ministers held at Brocket Hall, Hertfordshire on 12 September 1992. They asked the EC to press de Klerk to take measures to end the violence in South Africa, so that negotiations for a democratic constitution could go ahead.

Every year in the late 1980s and 1990s the AAM held a prize-winning raffle to help fund its campaigns. In the photo AAM Chair Bob Hughes MP draws the winning ticket in the 1992 raffle, with staff members Mamta Singh, Vanessa Eyre and Gerard Omasta-Milsom looking on. The AAM depended on fund-raising initiatives like this to pay for its campaigns. It received no government grants and no significant funding from grant-giving bodies.

ELTSA (End Loans to Southern Africa) and the AAM insisted that there should be no new loans to South Africa until there was firm agreement on a democratic constitution. In 1992 the parastatal electricity company ESCOM tried to float a new bond issue on international money markets. It was forced to withdraw in the face of reluctance to lend and protests like this one organised by ELTSA.

Exeter AA Group held a vigil in the main shopping centre on 20 March 1993 to ask the British government to help end the violence in South Africa. It said Britain should support the sending of international peace monitors. It forwarded 500 letters to Foreign Secretary Douglas Hurd from local people urging him to take action

Around 50 British local councils were represented at the sixth biennial conference of Local Authorities Against Apartheid in Manchester 25–26 March 1993. Moses Mayekiso, President of SANCO (South African National Civic Organisation) briefed the conference on plans for a new democratic local government system in South Africa. Councils pledged practical support in training observers for the April 1994 election. They pledged post-apartheid solidarity with all the countries of the Southern African region.

After Chris Hani’s murder on 10 April 1993, the AAM held a vigil outside South Africa House. At a march and rally on 19 April supporters pledged to support the ANC in its efforts to stop the killing from derailing the negotiations for a new constitution in South Africa.