1990s

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.

Many people assumed the release of Mandela and the lifting of bans on the ANC and PAC meant an end to apartheid. This AAM recruitment leaflet stated that the pillars of apartheid were still in place. It argued that democracy meant one person one vote in a unitary South Africa and that free political activity was a prerequisite of negotiations for majority rule.

This open letter was published after crisis talks between President de Klerk and the ANC on 12 February 1991. It asked Prime Minister John Major to press de Klerk to agree to the setting up of a constituent assembly and interim government as key steps towards a democratic constitution.

Leaflet distributed by Notting Hill AA Group in west London as part of the national AAM campaign to pressure the South African government to release all political prisoners and stop fomenting ‘black on black’ violence.