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The apartheid government banned the entire leadership of the black student organisation SASO (South African Student Organisation) in February 1973. Leaders of NUSAS (National Union of South African Students) were also banned. British students picketed South Africa House on 2 March 1973 in protest against the bannings.

Starting in 1969, the AAM held an annual conference to build support among British trade unionists. The conference held in March 1973 stressed the importance of building a rank and file solidarity movement. In the photograph (left to right): James Phillips and Archie Sibeko (Zola Zembe) of SACTU, Robert Skillicorn from the public sector workers union NUPE, Christine Page from the shopworkers union USDAW and Colin Clark from NUPE.

The Chair of the UN Special Committee on Apartheid, Nigerian Ambassador Edwin Ogbu, reads Anti-Apartheid News at the opening session of the International Conference for the Support of Victims of Colonialism and Apartheid, held in Oslo, 9–13 April 1973. The conference was organised by the UN and the Organisation of African Unity. It was attended by representatives of over 50 countries and the Southern African liberation movements. Also in the photograph, Perez de Cuellar (left), Peru’s UN ambassador and later UN Secretary-General, and Tanzanian Ambassador Salim A Salim (right), Chair of the UN Committee of 24.

South African lawyer Joel Carlson exposed the sham of South Africa’s legal system at a meeting at University College, London on 31 May 1973. Also on the platform were Labour MP Michael Foot (left), who said the Labour Party was considering calling for an end to new British investment in South Africa, and the Chair and Hon. Secretary of the AAM, John Ennals and Abdul Minty.

AAM supporters picketed the headquarters of the mining company Rio Tinto Zinc (RTZ) in St James’s Square, London on Namibia Day, 1 June. RTZ operated the Rossing uranium mine in Namibia in defiance of a judgement by the International Court of Justice that South Africa’s rule there was illegal.

In 1973 the TUC sent a delegation to South Africa. The report produced by the delegation called on the subsidiaries of British companies to recognise African trade unions. The AAM opposed the recommendation on the grounds that it condoned British investment in apartheid. This leaflet stressed that the TUC and International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU) already had policy calling for the withdrawal of all British capital from South Africa.

Manchester University students first asked the university authorities to sell shares in companies with South African interests In October 1972. In response to a vigorous student campaign and national publicity about the below subsistence wages paid to South African workers, the University Council agreed to press companies in which it held shares to pay higher wages. This was rejected by the student union and students occupied the Council Chamber in protest. Manchester students argued that all investment in South Africa supported apartheid and that the university must disinvest. This newsletter reprinted the statements issued by the university authorities and the student union, and urged students to attend a union general meeting to discuss the next step in the campaign. 

In 1973 the student union at University College Swansea voted to call on the university authorities to sell shares in companies with South African interests. This pamphlet set out the case for disinvestment.