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Mandela Pioneers, the children of ANC supporters, outside South Africa House on 27 December 1978. They carried placards asking passers-by to remember the massacres at Sharpeville and Soweto. They were also supporting young ANC activist Solomon Mahlangu, condemned to death in South Africa in March 1978.

Solomon Mahlangu was a young ANC freedom fighter sentenced to death in March 1978 for his involvement in a gun battle with police in which two men died. The judge accepted that he had not fired the fatal shots. Thousands of this postcard were distributed in Britain and as a result of the campaign the British Foreign Secretary David Owen intervened with the South African government. Despite worldwide demands for clemency, Mahlangu was hanged on 6 April 1979.

The year 21 March 1978 to 20 March 1979 was designated as International Anti-Apartheid Year by the UN General Assembly. In Britain the AAM brought together 40 organisations in a broad-based co-ordinating committee to organise events during the year. As a UN member the British government supported the initiative and Foreign Secretary David Owen spoke at a public meeting in January 1979.

This report provided a comprehensive analysis of the involvement of British banks in South Africa in the 1970s. It concluded that the banks’ operations did more to sustain apartheid than to erode it. It recommended that British banks should terminate export credits and halt loans to South Africa, and called for a debate on the issue within the British churches. Christian Concern for Southern Africa (CCSA) was set up in 1972 to research and publicise the role played by British companies in South Africa. Its reports were widely distributed by the AAM.

This leaflet was distributed during the May 1979 British general election campaign. It asked AAM supporters to raise the issues of an arms embargo and sanctions against South Africa, Zimbabwe and Namibia with prospective candidates. The election was won by the Conservative Party. The new Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, opposed sanctions and almost any form of anti-apartheid action throughout the 1980s.

Report of a UN Seminar held in London on South Africa’s nuclear capacity in February 1979.  The report presented evidence of how US and Western European technology had helped the apartheid government develop a nuclear bomb. The seminar was organised with the support of the UN Centre against Apartheid.

The Katumba Brothers, 16-year-old Benchard and 19-year-old Leavit, were sentenced to death in 1979 by the illegal government headed by Bishop Abel Muzorewa. They were convicted of ‘carrying arms of war’. This poster was produced by the Zimbabwe Emergency Campaign Committee, set up by the AAM, to ask the British government to intervene to stop the hangings.

ANC women picketed South Africa House to demand freedom for all women political prisoners on 7 March 1979, the eve of International Women's Day. They also called for the release of Solomon Mahlangu. In the photo are former political prisoner Dulcie September and ANC Women’s Section members Ramnie Dinat and Teresa Nannan.