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T-shirt produced by the ANC Women’s Section. ANC women members in exile in Britain worked closely with the AAM Women’s Committee. Activities included highlighting the situation of women political prisoners and collecting goods for women in ANC camps and the Solomon Mahlangu Freedom College in Tanzania.

T-shirt produced for SWAPO Women’s Council. SWAPO women members worked with the AAM Women’s Committee to collect goods needed by women living in SWAPO camps in Angola.

The Anti-Apartheid Women’s Committee was formed in 1980 and published a regular newsletter from late 1981. The first issue highlighted the deportation of women from Cape Town to the Transkei, reported on meetings to celebrate South Africa’s Women’s Day in Cape Town and Durban and called for protests against the apartheid government’s promotion of the contraceptive drug Depo Provera among young black women.

This double issue of the Women’s Newsletter reported on a legal challenge to apartheid rules that prevented women from living with their husbands in urban areas and on the number of babies born in South African prisons. It featured articles on donations in kind by London shoppers to the ANC’s creche set up in Tanzania for South African political exiles and the role of women in building new societies in Mozambique. It also pointed out parallels between British immigration legislation and South Africa’s citizenship laws.

In August 1982 journalist, academic and former political prisoner Ruth First was assassinated by South African agents in Mozambique. She was mourned by the women who had known her as an activist in the AAM. The Women’s Newsletter obituary highlighted her biography of Olive Schreiner as a contribution to British feminism. This issue also featured the new wave of above-ground organisation among women inside South Africa and a conference held in Liverpool on how British women could support their sisters in South Africa. 

The apartheid government tried to change the racial population balance in South Africa by forcing African women to use the cheapest forms of birth control, especially Depo Provera. This issue showed how apartheid distorted women’s control over their own fertility. It also featured an interview with SWAPO Women’s Council member Frieda Williams.

Issue No. 6 of the newsletter introduced a debate column, a guest column and a letters page. The first issue for debate was the relevance of the demands of Britain’s women’s liberation movement to women in South Africa. The column argued that some demands, for example for equal pay, were the same, but others, such as access to full-time childcare, were not relevant to South African women. The newsletter also carried a report of the AAM women’s workshop held on 22 January 1983.

The May Day issue looked at the situation of women workers in Namibia and South Africa. The debate column called on the AAM to do more to involve the British black community and to appeal to people’s awareness of racism in Britain as a basis for fighting racism in South Africa.