80s20. AAM demonstration, 16 June 1985

The uprising in the townships of the southern Transvaal from September 1984 triggered a new wave of repression by the apartheid government. On 21 March 1985 40 people were shot by the South African police at Langa in the Eastern Cape. Two days before this demonstration took place, South African forces killed 16 people in Gaborone, Botswana. Thousands of demonstrators marched through central London to protest against the killings. They called at the headquarters of Shell, Barclays Bank and the Ministry of Defence to demand that British companies and the Conservative government end their links with South Africa.