Faith organisations

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.

Brochure calling on all people of faith in Britain to keep up the pressure on President de Klerk to enter into genuine negotiations for a democratic constitution in South Africa. The brochure argued that the campaign for comprehensive sanctions against South Africa should continue until apartheid had been irreversibly dismantled.

This leaflet asked people of faith to boycott South Africa and challenge investments there. It showed how apartheid was incompatible with the beliefs of all the world’s major religions.

This membership leaflet asked people of faith to join the Anti-Apartheid Movement.

More than 4,000 people asked their MPs to support the maintenance of sanctions against South Africa on 27 February 1990. The lobby achieved a record coverage, with constituents lobbying 495 of 523 MPs sitting for English constituencies and a majority of Scottish and Welsh MPs. The day before Nelson Mandela’s release, Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher announced that Britain would end its limited restrictions on new investment and tourism. The lobby was organised by the Southern Africa Coalition, a broad-based grouping of church organisations, trade unions, overseas aid agencies and the AAM.

Four thousand people from nearly every parliamentary constituency in Britain lobbied Parliament on 27 February 1990 calling for a ‘fundamental change in British policy’ towards South Africa. The lobby was organised by the Southern Africa Coalition and was the biggest ever parliamentary lobby on Southern Africa.

Leaders of the mass movement against apartheid within South Africa were the main speakers at a meeting held at the parliamentary lobby organised by the Southern Africa Coalition on 27 February 1990. The lobbyists asked their MPs to support the maintenance of sanctions against South Africa. The day before Nelson Mandela’s release, Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher announced that Britain would end its limited restrictions on new investment and tourism.

Pauline Webb was a Methodist minister who began her career in the church’s Overseas Division and worked for the Methodist Missionary Society. In 1968 she attended the seminal Fourth Assembly of the World Council of Churches in Uppsala, Sweden, which led to the setting up of the Programme to Combat Racism. She served as Vice-Moderator of the WCC and later became Head of Religious Programmes at the BBC World Service. She was a strong supporter of the Anti-Apartheid Movement and spoke at numerous meetings and conferences, including the AAM’s first women’s conference in 1976.  

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