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On 11 October 1990, designated as UN South African Political Prisoners Day, Southern Africa the Imprisoned Society (SATIS) held a vigil outside the British Foreign Office calling for the release of all South African political prisoners. SATIS asked the British Prime Minister to press President de Klerk to implement his pledge to free the prisoners.

In the late 1980s UK Architects Against Apartheid made new links with planning groups within South Africa affiliated to the Mass Democratic Movement. It also worked with groups fighting racial discrimination in the architectural profession in Britain. This issue of the UKAAA Newsletter proposed a joint meeting with the newly formed Society of Black Architects.

The AAM held a conference for anti-apartheid activists in October 1990 to discuss how the international solidarity movement could help promote negotiations for genuine majority rule. The keynote speakers were Max Coleman from South Africa’s Human Rights Commission and former South African Council of Churches staff member Saki Macozoma. 

Representatives of British local authorities joined a protest against the inclusion of South Africa and Bophuthatswana in the World Travel Market at Olympia in November 1990. One of the few sanctions Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher agreed to was a voluntary ban on the promotion of tourism to South Africa and Namibia, but the British government did nothing to put this into practice.

Submission to the Parliamentary Foreign Affairs Committee showing Britain’s failure to enforce the limited restrictive measures it had placed on trade and investment in South Africa.

Southwark AA Group supporters picketed a Shell garage in South London in 1990. After Nelson Mandela’s release, the AAM kept up its campaign for a boycott of Shell and for sanctions to pressure the South African government to agree a genuinely democratic constitution.

Members of Notting Hill AA Group asked shoppers to boycott South African gold in Kensington High Street, West London, as part of the AAM’s Month of Action against apartheid gold sales in December 1990.

ANC president Oliver Tambo accepts a message of solidarity for the ANC’s consultative conference from AAM President Trevor Huddleston in December 1990. Also in the picture are the AAM’s Chair Bob Hughes MP and Executive Secretary Mike Terry.