1990s

AAM supporters marched up Whitehall to the South African Embassy to protest against the killing of around 40 township residents at Boipatong on 26 June 1992. They asked the British government to support international monitoring of the violence in South Africa. Among those carrying the banner (left to right) are Peter Hain MP, Billy Nair, Patsy Pillay, Bob Hughes MP, Archbishop Trevor Huddleston and Ken Campbell, General Secretary of the Fire Brigades Union. After the march, Walter Sisulu and Trevor Huddleston led a vigil outside the South African Embassy in memory of those who died.

Walter Sisulu led a march up Whitehall on 26 June 1992 to protest against the massacre of residents of Boipatong township in the southern Transvaal. He called for sanctions to continue against South Africa until there was agreement on a new constitution. The protesters later held a vigil outside the South African Embassy.

On the night of 17 June 1992 around 40 residents of  Boipatong township were massacred in an attack by supporters of the Inkatha Freedom Party. The police did nothing to stop the killings and were later accused of complicity. The massacre was part of a pattern of killings by the IFP and undercover forces. Trevor Huddleston spoke at the funeral of the victims on 29 June. In the photograph he is seen with AAM Executive Secretary Mike Terry and Rev Dr John Lamola, Head of the South African Council of Churches Justice and Social Ministries Department.

Wales Anti-Apartheid Movement held this vigil in the aftermath of the massacre at Boipatong in June 1992. It called for international monitors to go to South Africa to help stop the violence and for the setting up of an interim government as a first step to a new democratic constitution.

In June 1992 negotiations for a new constitution broke down after a massacre of township residents at Boipatong in the southern Transvaal. At least 7,000 people died in political violence between 1990 and 1992. The killings were carried out by undercover units of the South African police and army and Zulu supporters of the Inkatha Freedom Party. This leaflet endorsed the ANC’s demands for specific actions to end the violence.

Anti-apartheid movements in Western Europe worked together in the 1990s to pressure the European Community to support democracy in South Africa. This leaflet publicised a march to lobby a meeting of EC Foreign Ministers held in September 1992, in Welwyn Garden City, near London.

In the first three years of F W Klerk’s presidency, at least 7,000 South Africans were killed in political violence perpetrated by the Inkatha Freedom Party and undercover forces. In its September 1992 Month of Action for Peace and Democracy, the AAM called on de Klerk to take measures to stop the killings.

TUC General Secretary Norman Willis with shopworkers leader Garfield Davies and Rodney Bickerstaffe, General Secretary of the public sector workers union NUPE, at the AAM’s stall at the 1992 TUC annual congress.