Anti-Apartheid Movement (1959-1994): Britain's Boycott Campaign

The Anti-Apartheid Movement (AAM) was a British campaign that, from 1959 to 1994, worked to isolate South Africa’s apartheid government through boycotts and pressure for sanctions. It began as a consumer boycott of South African goods, grew into one of the largest solidarity movements in British history and helped make apartheid a central issue in British politics. It dissolved after South Africa’s first democratic election in 1994.

Origins: the Boycott Movement

Apartheid, the system of legally enforced racial segregation introduced in South Africa after 1948, banned the Black majority from political rights and controlled where they could live and work. In 1958 the All-African Peoples’ Conference in Accra called for an international boycott, and Chief Albert Luthuli, president of the African National Congress (ANC), appealed to people abroad to stop buying South African goods.

On 26 June 1959 South African exiles and British supporters met at Holborn Hall in London to launch the Boycott Movement. Speakers included Julius Nyerere, the future president of Tanzania. The movement won backing from the Labour Party, the Liberal Party and the Trades Union Congress, and on 28 February 1960 a rally in Trafalgar Square, addressed by the Labour leader Hugh Gaitskell, opened a month-long boycott of South African products.

Britain was an important target. It was South Africa’s largest trading partner and foreign investor, many British companies had South African subsidiaries, and the two countries were linked through the Commonwealth. Campaigners believed that pressure in London could have a real effect in Pretoria.

From boycott to movement

Weeks later, on 21 March 1960, police killed 69 protesters at the Sharpeville massacre. The shock persuaded organisers that a short boycott was not enough. The campaign was renamed the Anti-Apartheid Movement and set out to achieve the total isolation of South Africa. An early success came in 1961, when South Africa withdrew its application to remain in the Commonwealth as a republic after sharp criticism from other member states at a conference in London, a step the AAM had campaigned for.

The AAM was a coalition rather than a mass-membership party. Its support rose sharply at moments of crisis in South Africa, such as the Rivonia Trial of 1963–64, when Nelson Mandela and other ANC leaders were sentenced to life imprisonment, and the Soweto uprising of 1976, when police opened fire on protesting schoolchildren. Local groups, trade unions, churches, students and later many local councils affiliated to it. Key figures included Abdul Minty, its honorary secretary from 1962 to 1995, the Anglican bishop Trevor Huddleston, president from 1981 to 1994, and Mike Terry, executive secretary from 1975 to 1995.

Campaigns

Sport. Sporting contact mattered greatly to white South Africans, and the AAM made it a priority. In 1968 the D’Oliveira affair, when South Africa refused to accept the mixed-race, South African-born England cricketer Basil D’Oliveira, led to the cancellation of England’s tour. In 1969–70 the Stop the Seventy Tour campaign, led by Peter Hain, disrupted the Springbok rugby tour, and the planned 1970 South African cricket tour of England was called off. South Africa was expelled from the Olympic movement in 1970, and Commonwealth leaders agreed the Gleneagles Agreement against sporting contact in 1977.

Consumer and bank boycotts. Shoppers were urged to refuse South African fruit, wine and other goods. Brands such as Outspan oranges and Cape apples became familiar targets, and local groups picketed supermarkets that stocked them. From the late 1960s students led a campaign against Barclays, then one of South Africa’s biggest banks, encouraging customers to close their accounts. In November 1986 Barclays sold its South African subsidiary, which campaigners hailed as a major success.

Culture and academia. Many British actors, musicians and writers refused to perform in South Africa, and in the 1980s the United Nations published a register of entertainers who had done so. Universities, trade unions and councils were pressed to withdraw investments from companies doing business there. By the mid-1980s many local councils had declared their areas “apartheid-free zones”, refusing to buy South African goods for schools, canteens and other services, and some renamed streets or buildings after Nelson Mandela.

Sanctions and solidarity. The AAM lobbied successive governments for an arms embargo, which the UN made mandatory in 1977, and for comprehensive economic sanctions. Margaret Thatcher’s government opposed broad sanctions, arguing they would harm Black South Africans, and this disagreement became a major political dispute in the 1980s. In 1987 she described the ANC as a typical terrorist organisation, a remark that angered campaigners. Pressure nevertheless grew: in 1986 the Commonwealth and the European Community adopted limited measures, and the United States Congress passed the Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act over President Ronald Reagan’s veto.

The Mandela campaigns

From the 1980s the release of Nelson Mandela, imprisoned since 1962, became the movement’s most powerful theme. The 1984 single “Free Nelson Mandela” by The Special AKA was a chart hit, and in 1986 the City of London Anti-Apartheid Group began a continuous picket outside the South African embassy on Trafalgar Square that lasted almost four years.

The high point came on 11 June 1988, when the Nelson Mandela 70th Birthday Tribute concert at Wembley Stadium was broadcast to an estimated audience of several hundred million in dozens of countries. Two days later a march set off from Glasgow, reaching London for a rally in Hyde Park in July. After Mandela’s release in February 1990, he appeared at a second Wembley concert in April 1990 to thank supporters.

Opposition and controversy

The movement had powerful opponents. Many in British business, sport and the Conservative Party argued that engagement was better than isolation, and South African agents carried out operations in Britain, including the bombing of the ANC’s London office in March 1982. Within the movement, there were disputes over how closely to align with the ANC and over the tactics of some local groups.

Dissolution and legacy

South Africa held its first democratic election on 27 April 1994, and Mandela became president. The AAM concluded that its purpose had been achieved and voted to dissolve itself in 1994. It was succeeded by Action for Southern Africa (ACTSA), which supports development and democracy in the region.

Historians debate how much boycotts and sanctions contributed to ending apartheid compared with internal resistance, economic crisis and the end of the Cold War. Most agree that the AAM helped turn international opinion decisively against apartheid, and its methods have influenced many later boycott and solidarity campaigns.

Timeline

• 1959, 26 June: The Boycott Movement is launched at Holborn Hall, London.
• 1960, 28 February: Trafalgar Square rally opens a month-long boycott.
• 1960, March: After Sharpeville, the campaign becomes the Anti-Apartheid Movement.
• 1970, May: The South African cricket tour of England is cancelled.
• 1977: UN mandatory arms embargo; Commonwealth Gleneagles Agreement on sport.
• 1986, November: Barclays sells its South African subsidiary.
• 1988, 11 June: Nelson Mandela 70th Birthday Tribute concert at Wembley.
• 1990, 11 February: Nelson Mandela is released from prison.
• 1994, 27 April: South Africa’s first democratic election; the AAM later dissolves.

Why it matters

The Anti-Apartheid Movement showed how ordinary people in one country could put sustained pressure on a government thousands of miles away. Its boycotts touched daily life, from the fruit bowl to the cricket ground, and kept the injustice of apartheid in British public debate for 35 years.