Anti-Apartheid Movement

This article is about the British organisation. For opposition to apartheid, see Internal resistance to South African apartheid.

The Anti-Apartheid Movement (AAM), originally known as the Boycott Movement, was a British organisation that was at the centre of the international movement opposing South Africa's system of apartheid and supporting South Africa's non-whites.[1]

History

A consumer boycott organisation

In response to an appeal by Albert Luthuli, the Boycott Movement was founded in London on 26 June 1959 at a meeting of South African exiles and their supporters.[2] Members included Peter Koinange, Claudia Jones, Steve Naidoo and Ros Ainslie.[3]

Julius Nyerere would summarise its purpose:

We are not asking you, the British people, for anything special. We are just asking you to withdraw your support from apartheid by not buying South African goods. .[4]

The boycott attracted widespread support from students, trade unions and the Labour, Liberal and Communist parties. On 28 February 1960, the movement launched a March Month, Boycott Action at a rally in Trafalgar Square. Speakers at the rally included Labour Party Leader Hugh Gaitskell, Liberal MP Jeremy Thorpe, Conservative peer John Grigg, 2nd Baron Altrincham, and Tennyson Makiwane of the African National Congress (ANC).[5]

Expansion and renaming

The Sharpeville massacre on 21 March 1960, when 69 unarmed protesters were shot dead by the South African police, triggered an intensification of action. The organisation was renamed the "Anti-Apartheid Movement" and instead of just a consumer boycott the group would now "co-ordinate all the anti-apartheid work and keep South Africa's apartheid policy in the forefront of British politics",[1] and campaign for the total isolation of apartheid South Africa, including economic sanctions.

At the time, the United Kingdom was South Africa's largest foreign investor and South Africa was the UK’s third biggest export market. The ANC was still committed to peaceful resistance: armed struggle through Umkhonto we Sizwe would only begin a year later.

Early successes

Commonwealth membership

The AAM scored its first major victory when South Africa was forced to leave the Commonwealth in 1961. It held a 72-hour vigil outside the Commonwealth Secretariat venue, Marlborough House, and found willing allies in Canada, India and the newly independent Afro-Asian member states. In 1962, the United Nations General Assembly passed a resolution calling on all member states to impose a trade boycott against South Africa. In 1963 the UN Security Council called for a partial arms ban against South Africa, but this was not mandatory under Chapter VII of the UN Charter.

Olympic participation

Abdul Minty, who took over from Rosalynde Ainslie as the AAM’s Hon. Secretary in 1962, also represented the South African Sports Association, a non-racial body set up in South Africa by Dennis Brutus. In the same year, he presented a letter to the International Olympic Committee meeting in Baden-Baden, Germany about racism in South African sports. The result was a ruling that suspended South Africa from the 1964 Tokyo Olympics.[1] South Africa was finally expelled from the Olympics in 1970.

Economic sanctions campaign

In November 1962, the United Nations General Assembly passed Resolution 1761, a non-binding resolution establishing the United Nations Special Committee against Apartheid and called for imposing economic and other sanctions on South Africa. All Western nations refused to join the committee as members. This boycott of a committee, the first such boycott, happened because it was created by the same General Assembly resolution that called for economic and other sanctions on South Africa, which at the time the West strongly opposed.

Following this passage of this resolution, the Anti-Apartheid Movement spearheaded the arrangements for international conference on sanctions to be held in London in April 1964. According to Lisson, "The aim of the Conference was to work out the practicability of economic sanctions and their implications on the economies of South Africa, the UK, the US and the Protectorates. Knowing that the strongest opposition to the application of sanctions came from the West (and within the West, the UK), the Committee made every effort to attract as wide and varied a number of speakers and participants as possible so that the Conference findings would be regarded as objective."[1]

The conference was named the International Conference for Economic Sanctions Against South Africa. Lisson writes:

The Conference established the necessity, the legality and the practicability of internationally organised sanctions against South Africa, whose policies were seen to have become a direct threat to peace and security in Africa and the world. Its findings also pointed out that in order to be effective, a programme of sanctions would need the active participation of Britain and the US, who were also the main obstacle to the implementation of such a policy.[1]

The AAM was enthusiastic with the results of the conference for two key reasons.[1] First, because of "the new seriousness with which the use of economic sanctions is viewed." Second, because the AAM was able to meet for the first time with the UN Special Committee on Apartheid, a meeting that established a long-lasting working relationship between the two parties.

However, the conference was not successful in persuading the UK to take up economic sanctions against South Africa. Rather, the British government "remained firm in its view that the imposition of sanctions would be unconstitutional "because we do not accept that this situation in South Africa constitutes a threat to international peace and security and we do not in any case believe that sanctions would have the effect of persuading the South African Government to change its policies"."[1]

Making sanctions an election issue

The AAM tried to make sanctions an election issue in the 1964 General Election in the UK. Candidates were asked to state their position on economic sanctions and other punitive measures against the South African government. Most candidates who responded answered in the affirmative. After the Labour Party sweep to power though, commitment to the anti-apartheid cause dissipated. In short order, Labour Party leader Harold Wilson told the press that his Labour Party was "not in favour of trade sanctions partly because, even if fully effective, they would harm the people we are most concerned about - the Africans and those white South Africans who are having to maintain some standard of decency there."[1] Even so, Lisson writes that the "AAM still hoped that the new Labour Government would be more sensitive to the demands of public opinion than the previous Government." But by the end of 1964, it was clear that the election of the Labour Party had made little difference in the governments overall unwillingness to impose sanctions.

Rejection by the West

Lisson summarises the UN situation in 1964:

"At the UN, Britain consistently refused to accept that the situation in South Africa fell under Chapter VII of the [United Nations] Charter. Instead, in collaboration with the US, it worked for a carefully worded appeal on the Rivonia Trial and other political trials to try to appease Afro-Asian countries and public opinion at home and abroad; by early 1965 the issue of sanctions had lost momentum."[1]

Academic boycott campaign

The Anti-Apartheid Movement was instrumental in initiating an academic boycott of South Africa in 1965. The declaration was signed by 496 university professors and lecturers from 34 British universities to protest against apartheid and associated violations of academic freedom. They made a special reference to the issue of banning orders against two South African academics named Jack Simons and Eddie Roux, who were two well-known progressive academics.[6]

A part of the declaration:

Academic Boycott of South Africa: Declaration by British Academics, 1965

We, the (undersigned) professors and lecturers in British universities in consultation with the Anti-Apartheid Movement:

  1. Protest against the bans imposed on Professors Simons and Roux;
  2. Protest against the practice of racial discrimination and its extension to higher education;
  3. Pledge that we shall not apply for or accept academic posts in South African universities which practise racial discrimination.

— [6]

Cooperation with the United Nations

Faced with the failure to persuade the West to impose economic sanctions, in 1966 the AAM formulated a strategy whereby they would shift toward spearheading "an international campaign against apartheid under the auspices of the United Nations."[7] AAM's proposed strategy was approved by the UN Special Committee on Apartheid and then by the General Assembly. This new partnership formed the basis for all future action against apartheid. The man originally responsible for the new strategy gives this summary:

"The strategy was to press for a range of measures to isolate the regime, support the liberation movement and inform world public opinion; to continue pressing for effective sanctions as the only means for a peaceful solution, and at the same time to obtain action on other measures which could be decided by a majority vote in the General Assembly; to isolate the major trading partners of South Africa by persuading other Western countries to co-operate in action to the greatest feasible extent; and to find ways to promote public opinion and public action against apartheid, especially in the countries which were the main collaborators with the South African regime. This also meant that we built the broadest support for each measure, thereby welcoming co-operation rather than alienating governments and organisations which were not yet prepared to support sanctions or armed struggle."[7]

After apartheid

The Anti-Apartheid Movement continued to operate in the UK until 1994.[8] After the first democratic elections in South Africa, AAM changed its name to ACTSA: Action for Southern Africa.

See also

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 "The Anti-Apartheid Movement, Britain and South Africa: Anti-Apartheid Protest vs Real Politik", Arianna Lisson, PhD Dissertation, 15 September 2000.
  2. ↑ "Catalogue of the archive of the Anti-Apartheid Movement, 1956-98". Bodleian Library of Commonwealth and African Studies.
  3. ↑ Stefan Manz and Panikos Panayi (eds), Refugees and Cultural Transfer to Britain, Routledge, 2013, p. 163.
  4. ↑ "The Anti-Apartheid Movement: A 40-year Perspective". South Africa House, London.
  5. ↑ C. Gurney, "A Great Cause: The Origins of the Anti-Apartheid Movement", Journal of Southern African Studies, Vol. 26, No. 1, pp. 123–144.
  6. 1 2
    • Spotlight on South Africa, Dar es Salaam, 26 November 1965, reprinted by on the ANC Website for Historical Documents
  7. 1 2 "AAM and UN: partners in the international campaign against apartheid" in "The Anti-Apartheid Movement: A 40-year Perspective", E. S. Reddy, 25–26 June 1999.
  8. ↑ "The Birmingham Anti-Apartheid Movement continued...". Birmingham City Council.

External links

Further reading

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