In 1989 the AAM appointed a women’s campaign organiser and held a month of anti-apartheid action on women. All over the country women organised meetings, exhibitions and demonstrations outside supermarkets selling South African and Namibian products. This poster advertised a Women’s Cabaret Evening in Tottenham, north London to raise funds to buy a minibus for the ANC’s Solomon Mahlangu Freedom College in Tanzania.
In March 1989 the AAM held a month of anti-apartheid action on women. Women all over Britain held meetings, exhibitions and demonstrations outside supermarkets selling South African and Namibian products. The month had three themes: the collection of material aid for South African and Namibian women, freedom for women prisoners and the boycott of South African and Namibian products.
Many local AA groups organised women’s campaigns in solidarity with their sisters in Southern Africa. This leaflet advertised a women only concert orgaised by Sheffield AAM women members on International Women’s Day 1989 to raise funds for women in Southern Africa.
In 1989 the AAM appointed a women’s organiser and produced this leaflet to attract new women members. The leaflet highlighted the situation of South African and Namibian women and asked women in Britain to support the AAM’s ‘Boycott Apartheid 89’ campaign.
The AAM held its first women only conference on 3 June 1989, following a Month of Action in March, which publicised the impact of apartheid on South African women. All over Britain, women held meetings, exhibitions and benefit concerts.
This women-only conference, held at Wesley House Women’s Centre in central London in 1989, discussed ideas for campaigning in solidarity with women in Southern Africa. It also talked about the position of women within the AAM and pressed for women to have a more distinctive voice.
South Devon AA Group mounted an exhibition about the lives of women and children under apartheid in the high street in Totnes, Devon in 1989.
Leaflet advertising a picket of South Africa House on International Women’s Day, 1990. South Africa continued to hold hundreds of political prisoners and detainees, including many women, after the release of Nelson Mandela in February 1990. The campaign for the release of all political prisoners was one of the priorities of the AAM in the early 1990s.
