AA News July–August 1980

Under the headline ‘Mandela speaks to the world’, this issue reproduced a message smuggled out from Robben Island, and reported on the showing of a new film, ‘Portrait of Nelson Mandela’. It highlighted the shooting of more than 100 protesters in Cape Town after demonstrations by school students and action by striking workers in the Western Cape. It argued that the the ANC guerrilla attack on oil storage tanks at Sasolburg exposed the apartheid regime’s manpower crisis and inability to guard vital infrastructure. A feature on Dorothy Nyembe, serving a 15-year gaol sentence in Kroonstad women’s prison, asked readers to send her messages of support.