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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.

In June 1983 three young Umkhonto we Sizwe combatants, Simon Mogoerane, Jerry Mosololi and Marcus Motaung, were hanged by the apartheid government. The newsletter reported on their mothers' bravery and asked readers to send messages of support to their families. Its guest column presented an analysis of the relation of feminist concerns and national liberation struggle by SWAPO Women’s Council member Bience Gawanas. It also carried a response from a black woman AAM member to the debate column in the previous issue questioning the argument that the AAM should ‘make a particular point of addressing itself to the Black community’.

Issue No 10 highlighted the situation of Ida Jimmy, a SWAPO member imprisoned by the apartheid government whose son was born in prison and died when he was two years old. The debate column argued that collections of material aid must be set in the context of building political support for the anti-apartheid struggle. It reported on the growth of the United Democratic Front in South Africa and the prominent role played by women in its formation.

In November 1983 the AAM Women’s Committee and the ANC Women’s Section organised a meeting to publicise the impact of forced removals on South African women, featured in the newsletter together with an exposure of the high incidence of cervical cancer. Its guest column focused on the apartheid government’s plans to destroy Cape Town’s Crossroads ‘squatter camp’. The newsletter also announced the formation of a new AAM Women’s Committee drama group in co-operation with Women in Entertainment.

This issue asked British women’s organisations to celebrate 1984 as ‘The Year of the Women’, designated by the African National Congress. Its debate column defended the decision to set up the women’s committee, partly on the grounds that women faced special obstacles in taking part in political campaigns. It also remembered the women and children who died in the South African armed forces attack on Namibian refugees at Kassinga, Angola in May 1978. Its guest column, by the Greater London Council’s Anti-Racist Year Co-ordinator Pamela Nanda, reported on the action taken by the GLC to implement its Anti-Apartheid Declaration.