Photos

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.

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.

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.

Demonstrators told President de Klerk he must honour his promise to free all political prisoners by the 30 April deadline agreed with the ANC, as he arrived for a reception at the South African Embassy in April 1991.

The AAM converted its ‘Boycott Bandwagon’ into a ‘Freedom Bus’ after the release of Nelson Mandela and the opening of negotiations for a democratic constitution in South Africa. The bus was destroyed by arsonists in February 1992 and reduced to a burnt-out shell.

The AAM launched its ‘Vote for Democracy’ campaign at the TUC Congress in Glasgow in September 1991. The campaign called for ‘one person one vote’ in response to the National Party’s constitutional proposals, which gave special voting rights to the white minority. In the photograph are AAM President Trevor Huddleston and railway workers’ union leader Jimmy Knapp.