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Labour MP Bernie Grant with Haringey AA Group activist Sean O’Donovan, signing the AAM’s ‘Boycott Apartheid 89’ petition.

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.

In December 1988 South Africa signed the UN Plan for the Independence of Namibia, which led to the holding of free elections in November 1989. Church Action on Namibia marked 1 April 1989, the date set for the implementation of the plan, with a street theatre performance outside the South African Embassy showing British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher greeting South African President P W Botha.

Supporters of End Loans to Southern Africa (ELTSA) leafleted shareholders outside the annual general meeting of NatWest Bank in April 1989. They were asking the bank not to take part in an agreement to reschedule South Africa’s foreign debt. In 1985 South Africa was forced to announce a moratorium on its debt repayments, a crunch moment in the decline of the apartheid economy which led to the opening of negotiations in the early 1990s.

This petition was launched in April 1989 to pressure the British government to intervene to stop all death sentences in political trials in South Africa. The AAM also sent a delegation to Foreign Office Minister Lynda Chalker. The number of death sentences imposed on political prisoners increased sharply from the mid-1980s. The petition was signed by 34,000 people and presented to the British parliament on 10 November 1989.