Students

South African companies were keen to recruit British students to increase the white skilled labour force. This leaflet asked students not to take jobs with companies with South African subsidiaries. It argued that high profits were a direct result of the payment of below subsistence wage rates to African workers. The leaflet was published by Leeds University Student Union’s Subcommittee Against Racial Discrimination. 

This leaflet asked students at Newcastle University to join a demonstration against the recruitment of students to work for South African mining companies at the university’s Careers Fair. South African companies were keen to recruit British students to increase the white skilled labour force. 

In September 1971 the National Union of Students, the AAM and the Committee for Freedom in Mozambique, Angola and Guiné set up a network to coordinate student campaigning on Southern Africa. The aim was to recruit representatives at every British university and college. This letter to student activists publicised the first of the annual conferences held by the network in the 1970s and 1980s. The 1972 conference set out three priorities: disinvestment from companies involved in South Africa, fundraising for the liberation movements and educational work on Namibia.

In September 1971 the National Union of Students, AAM and Committee for Freedom in Mozambique, Angola and Guiné set up a student network to coordinate student campaigning on Southern Africa. Every year through the 1970s the network held an annual conference to share information and discuss campaign priorities. This is the report of the first NUS/AAM student network conference, held in September 1972.

Hull University Students Union appointed South West Africa People’s Organisation (SWAPO) leader Hermann Toivo ja Toivo as its Honorary Vice-President in the early 1970s. Toivo was serving a 20-year prison sentence on Robben Island.

This booklet tells the story of Hull students’ campaign to make the university sever its links with the food company Reckitt & Colman because of the company’s operations in South Africa. The Hull sit-in was one of many student disinvestment campaigns in the 1970s.

In October 1972 Manchester University students asked the university authorities to sell shares in companies with South African interests. This broadsheet publicised a picket of a meeting of the University Council called to discuss the university’s investment policy in February 1973. When the Council referred the issue to its investment sub-committee, students protested by occupying the administration building.

The apartheid government banned the entire leadership of the black student organisation SASO (South African Student Organisation) in February 1973. Leaders of NUSAS (National Union of South African Students) were also banned. British students picketed South Africa House on 2 March 1973 in protest against the bannings.