1980s

Poster produced for placards on a demonstration calling for sanctions against South Africa held in central London on 24 October 1987. Around 60,000 people marched from the Thames Embankment to Hyde Park to a rally addressed by SWAPO President Sam Nujoma, Johnstone Makatini of the ANC, Archbishop Trevor Huddleston, Labour MP Bernie Grant and Glenys Kinnock.

Children held cards remembering young detainees in South Africa on a march organised by Wales AAM in Cardiff on 24 October 1987. In Sophia Gardens, ANC representative Thando Zuma said the apartheid regime had imprisoned 8,000 young people without charge in the previous 18 months.

Letter from Richard Caborn MP asking Prime Minister Thatcher to withdraw her remark describing the ANC as a ‘typical terrorist organisation’.

Letter from Prime Minister Thatcher defending her description of the ANC as a ‘typical terorrist organisation’ and reiterating her opposition to sanctions.

Delegates at the AAM’s annual general meeting in Sheffield in 1987. The AGM was the first held under the AAM’s new constitution, under which local groups all over the country elected delegates to the conference.

The keynote speaker at the AAM 1987 annual general meeting was Simba Makoni, Executive Secretary of the Southern African Development Coordination Conference. He set out its policy on international sanctions against South Africa: SADCC member states’ vulnerability should not be used as an excuse by other countries for not imposing sanctions. This pamphlet reproduces his speech.

Outside the annual general meeting of Consolidated Goldfields in London on 4 November 1987. A ‘judge’ holds the scales of justice symbolising South Africa’s ‘rule of law’ in Namibia. In August 1987 ConsGold sacked 4,000 Namibian mineworkers at its Tsumeb mine.

Musicians Little Steven and Jerry Dammers sign the SATIS petition calling for the release of detainees in South Africa. Altogether 30,000 South Africans were held in detention under the national State of Emergency imposed in June 1986. The petition was supported by the British Council of Churches and the TUC and was signed by a third of a million people in Britain. It was presented to the South African authorities, Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and the UN Secretary-General on Human Rights Day, 10 December 1987.