Apartheid and Anti-Apartheid in Western Europe 3030532836, 9783030532833

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Apartheid and Anti-Apartheid in Western Europe Edited by  Knud Andresen Sebastian Justke · Detlef Siegfried

Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies Series Editors Richard Drayton Department of History King’s College London London, UK Saul Dubow Magdalene College University of Cambridge Cambridge, UK

The Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies series is a well-established collection of over 100 volumes focussing on empires in world history and on the societies and cultures that emerged from, and challenged, colonial rule. The collection includes transnational, comparative and connective studies, as well as works addressing the ways in which particular regions or nations interact with global forces. In its formative years, the series focused on the British Empire and Commonwealth, but there is now no imperial system, period of human history or part of the world that lies outside of its compass. While we particularly welcome the first monographs of young researchers, we also seek major studies by more senior scholars, and welcome collections of essays with a strong thematic focus that help to set new research agendas. As well as history, the series includes work on politics, economics, culture, archaeology, literature, science, art, medicine, and war. Our aim is to collect the most exciting new scholarship on world history and to make this available to a broad scholarly readership in a timely manner. More information about this series at http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/13937

Knud Andresen  •  Sebastian Justke Detlef Siegfried Editors

Apartheid and AntiApartheid in Western Europe

Editors Knud Andresen Hamburg, Germany

Sebastian Justke Hamburg, Germany

Detlef Siegfried Copenhagen, Denmark

ISSN 2635-1633     ISSN 2635-1641 (electronic) Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies ISBN 978-3-030-53283-3    ISBN 978-3-030-53284-0 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-53284-0 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the ­publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and ­institutional affiliations. Cover illustration: Photograph: Protest against apartheid violence, 5 September 1984 / Martijn de Jonge This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG. The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

We dedicate this volume to Axel Schildt (1951–2019), the long-serving director of the Research Centre for Contemporary History in Hamburg, whose contribution to securing the project was decisive and who took part in our discussions with great commitment.

Acknowledgements

This volume is based on a conference that was held at the University of Hamburg in 2018, and it is also a summary of the results of a German-­ Danish research group about Western European responses to the apartheid system, which began in 2013. We would like to thank all of the participants of the conference and the preparatory workshop that we conducted in Copenhagen in 2015 for exploring these issues with us. We also want to thank all of the contributors to this volume for their cooperation. We are especially grateful to the further members of our research group Andreas Kahrs, Hanno Plass and Jakob Skovgaard. We would also like to thank the numerous colleagues who supported our work on this project: Louise Bethlehem, Saul Dubow, Jan Eckel, Steven L.B.  Jensen, Wulf D. Hund, Anna Konieczna, Christoph Marx, Stefanie Schüler-Springorum, Kier Schuringa, Alexander Sedlmaier, Tor Sellström, Håkan Thörn and Michael Wildt. We also thank the German Research Foundation, the Research Centre for Contemporary History in Hamburg, the Hans Böckler Foundation, the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation and the Faculty of Humanities at the University of Copenhagen for providing grants and material support for the project. We are also grateful to Lisa Hellriegel and Greg Sax for their work on the manuscript and to Lauriane Piette, Maeve Sinnott and Molly Beck from Palgrave Macmillan for their support. We thank Saul Dubow and Richard Drayton for including this volume in their Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies Series.

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Contents

Introduction  1 Knud Andresen, Sebastian Justke, and Detlef Siegfried Part I Moral and Economy  23  Between Goodwill and Sanctions: Swedish and German Corporations in South Africa and the Politics of Codes of Conduct 25 Knud Andresen  Perceptions of Petroleum: The British Anti-­apartheid Campaign Against Shell 49 Jakob Skovgaard  Shopping Against Apartheid: Consumer Activism and the History of AA Enterprises (1986–1991) 71 Benjamin Möckel

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Part II Apartheid in Culture and Media  91  The Comic Representation of Apartheid on British Television in the Late 1960s 93 Tal Zalmanovich  ‘This Peculiar Fact of Living History’: Invoking Apartheid in Black British Writing113 Andrea Thorpe  Anti-apartheid and the Politicisation of Pop Music: Controversies Around the Mandela Concert in 1988139 Detlef Siegfried  Dutch Dialogues with Afrikaners: The Netherlands and the Cultural Boycott Against the Apartheid Regime in the 1980s163 Vincent Jurg and Vincent Kuitenbrouwer Part III Transnational Entanglements in Politics and Churches 185  Conflicting Solidarities: The French Anti-apartheid Movement and the Liberation Struggle in South Africa, Circa 1960–1991187 Namara Burki  Re-centring the Apartheid Discourse: Strategic Changes in South African Propaganda in West Germany205 Andreas Kahrs  Overcoming Apartheid Through Partnership? ‘Glocal’ Relationships Among Christians in West Germany, South Africa and Namibia: 1970s–1990s229 Sebastian Justke Index259

Notes on Contributors

Knud  Andresen is senior researcher at the Research Centre for Contemporary History in Hamburg and adjunct professor at the University of Hamburg. His research focuses on social history and cultural history in the twentieth century, and he has published monographs and articles on labour movement, new social movements, Oral History and the New Left. He is finishing a book on Swedish and West German companies in South Africa. Namara Burki  completed her master’s degree in contemporary history at the Doctoral School of History of Sciences Po, Paris, in 2018. In her master’s thesis, she analysed the French anti-apartheid solidarity movement from the late 1960s to the early 1990s, its evolution within the French New Left and the ideological tensions that pervaded it. Her areas of research include the social, political and cultural interactions among emerging social movements in Europe in the late 1960s and their support of liberation struggles in what was then considered the ‘Third World’. Vincent  Jurg is a third-year undergraduate student at the History Department of the University of Amsterdam. Sebastian  Justke is a historian and research assistant at the Research Centre for Contemporary History in Hamburg. His doctoral thesis, published under the title ‘Brückenbauen’ gegen Apartheid? Auslandspfarrer in Südafrika und Namibia, explores the history of West German Protestant ministers who were sent by the Protestant Church in Germany to Germanspeaking congregations abroad in South Africa and Namibia during the apartheid era. xi

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Andreas  Kahrs  studied history and political science in Hamburg and Kraków. He holds a PhD from Humboldt University Berlin (2019). His research focuses on the propaganda of the apartheid state in South Africa and German-South African relations during apartheid. He also researches the Holocaust in Central Eastern Europe and the current extreme right in this region. Andreas works as a freelance educator in different projects, focusing on the Holocaust in Poland, Lithuania and Ukraine. He is editor and co-author of the 2020 published book Fotos aus Sobibor  – Die Niemann-Sammlung zu Holocaust und Nationalsozialismus. Vincent Kuitenbrouwer  is Senior Lecturer in History of International Relations at the University of Amsterdam. He has published extensively on the relations between the Netherlands and South Africa, including the book War of Words: Dutch Pro-Boer Propaganda and the South African War (1899–1902) (2012). Benjamin Möckel  is assistant professor at the Historical Institute of the University of Cologne. From 2018 to 2019 he was research fellow at the Oxford Centre for European History. He holds a PhD from the University of Göttingen (2013) with a book on the post-war youth generations in East and West Germany after 1945. He is working on a second book project, which is titled The Invention of the Ethical Consumer: Global Products and Political Activism in Britain and West Germany Since the 1960s. The project analyses how NGOs in the field of human rights, global justice and environmentalism began to use consumer products for political protests. Detlef Siegfried  is Professor of Modern German and European History at the University of Copenhagen. He has published extensively on the cultural, social and political history of Germany and Western Europe in the twentieth century. Recent research includes collaborative projects on Western European perceptions of the apartheid system in South Africa 1948–1994 and on German-Danish mutual perceptions after 1945. He is member of the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters since 2011 and was granted the Humboldt Research Award in 2016. Jakob  Skovgaard holds a PhD in English from the University of Copenhagen, where his research has been focused on social movements, activism and the social responsibility of the private sector. Jakob has also worked with these topics in civil society and think tanks, and he is employed in the public sector at the Department for Sustainable Development in the City of Copenhagen.

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Andrea Thorpe  holds a PhD in English from Queen Mary University of London and has recently completed a postdoctoral fellowship at Rhodes University, South Africa. She is teaching writing and media studies in the School of Journalism and Media Studies at Rhodes University. Andrea has a monograph forthcoming on South African writing about London. Tal Zalmanovich  is research fellow in the Department of English at the University of Haifa. She is a historian of modern Britain and has examined television and celebrity culture as sites of political engagement and solidarity. Tal has published in Postcolonial Studies, Critical Arts and Safundi. Her monograph, Watch and React: Apartheid on the British Screen, 1960-1990, examines television as a site of political engagement. Prior to her academic career she was a journalist. She is a podcast host for the site New Books Network.

Abbreviations

AAA AAB AABN AAE AAM AFASPA ANC ASEA ATO AWB AZAPO BBC BCM BDI BMU BMW BOA BPM CAO CASA CBS CCSA CDU

Artists Against Apartheid Anti-Apartheid Bewegung (West Germany) Anti-Apartheid Beweging Nederland AA Enterprises Anti-Apartheid Movement (Great Britain) Association française d’amitié et de solidarité avec les peuples d’Afrique African National Congress Allmänna Svenska Elektriska Aktiebolaget Alternative Trading Organisation Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging Azanian People’s Organisation British Broadcasting Corporation Black Consciousness Movement Bundesverband der Deutschen Industrie (Federation of German Industries) British Musicians’ Union Bayrische Motoren Werke Boykott Outspan Aktie (Dutch Boycott Outspan Action) Black Parents Movement Campagne anti-Outspan Culture in Another South Africa Columbia Broadcasting System Christian Concern for Southern Africa Christlich-Demokratische Union (Christian Democratic Union, West Germany)

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ABBREVIATIONS

COCIAA CSR CSU DGAP DM DOI DSAG EC EEC EFTA EKD ELC ELOC ELTSA EMW EPC FAA FDP FEANF FRELIMO FRG GDR GLC ICCR IDAF IFP IKON JAAA KZA LWF MAA MRAP NATO NGOs NP

Comité d’organisation de campagnes d’information sur l’Afrique australe Corporate Social Responsibility Christlich-Soziale Union (Christian Social Union, West Germany) Deutsche Gesellschaft für Auswärtige Politik (German Council on Foreign Relations) Deutsche Mark Department of Information Deutsch-Südafrikanische Gesellschaft (German-South African Society) European Community European Economic Community European Free Trade Association Evangelische Kirche in Deutschland (Evangelical Church in Germany) Evangelical Lutheran Church in South West Africa (Rhenish Mission) Evangelical Lutheran Ovambo-Kavango Church End Loans to Southern Africa Evangelisches Missionswerk (Association of Protestant Churches and Missions in Germany) European Political Co-operation Foreign Affairs Association Freie Demokratische Partei (Free Democratic Party, West Germany) Fédération des étudiants d’Afrique noire en France Frente de Libertação de Moçambique Federal Republic of Germany German Democratic Republic Greater London Council The Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility International Defence and Aid Fund Inkatha Freedom Party Interkerkelijke Omroep Nederland Joint Action Against Apartheid Komité Zuidelijk Afrika Lutheran World Federation Mouvement anti-apartheid Mouvement contre le racisme et pour l’amitié entre les peuples North Atlantic Treaty Organization Non-governmental Organizations National Party

 Abbreviations 

NRC Nieuwe Rotterdamse Courant NUS National Union of Students NZAV Nederlands Zuid-Afrikaanse Vereniging OAU Organisation of African Unity OECD Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development PAC Pan-Africanist Congress PCF Parti communiste français PCR Programme to Combat Racism PEN Poets, Essayists and Novelists RNCA Rencontre nationale contre l’apartheid SACC South African Council of Churches SACP South African Communist Party SAF South Africa Foundation SKF Svenska Kullagerfabriken SWAPO South West Africa People’s Organisation UDF United Democratic Front UEM United Evangelical Mission UN United Nations UNEF Union nationale des étudiants de France VW Volkswagen WCC World Council of Churches WISC West Indian Standing Committee

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Introduction Knud Andresen, Sebastian Justke, and Detlef Siegfried

On June 11, 1988, more than 70,000 people crowded into London’s Wembley Stadium to celebrate Nelson Mandela’s 70th birthday with famous musicians, such as Simple Minds, Miriam Makeba, Meat Loaf and Dire Straits, and famous actors such as Daryl Hannah and Richard Attenborough. Around 600 million people worldwide, over 10 per cent of the world’s population at the time, watched the concert on television. ‘A Tribute to Nelson Mandela’ was the media climax of the worldwide condemnation of apartheid, which seems to have been dominant also in Western Europe. The concert cannot be understood just in terms of the

K. Andresen (*) University of Hamburg, Hamburg, Germany e-mail: [email protected] S. Justke (*) Research Centre for Contemporary History in Hamburg (FZH), Hamburg, Germany e-mail: [email protected] D. Siegfried (*) University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2021 K. Andresen et al. (eds.), Apartheid and Anti-Apartheid in Western Europe, Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-53284-0_1

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worldwide anti-apartheid movement, which contributed to the long process of overcoming institutionalized racism in South Africa. It was also a result of developments within Western Europe, and understanding its relationship with South Africa provides a broader perspective on European history, that is, as part of global history. In this collection, we examine how Western European societies reacted to the apartheid conflict in South Africa and how theses reactions influenced political and social transformations in Western Europe itself. Håkan Thörn has pointed out that the debate over apartheid was an ‘anti-­ apartheid debate’ in that it primarily focused on the extent to which societies should work to abolish apartheid and the means they should take, in particular whether they should boycott South Africa economically, politically and culturally, or use these relations to support a process of reform. It is fitting that supporters of South Africa rarely openly defended the racist core of apartheid. In Western Europe, Thörn’s argument applies above all to the period after the late 1960s, for attitudes towards South Africa were predominately sympathetic from the introduction of apartheid in 1948 until the early 1960s (though this sympathy did not immediately disappear in the period that followed). How did the change from a positive view of South Africa’s racism to a critical and negative one come about? Did all social groups share this attitude, as Thörn believes? Did politicians, businesspeople, Church leaders, cultural workers, media professionals and activists respond similarly or differently to the apartheid regime? To what extent did they advocate for the retention or abolition of apartheid; what strategies did they use to enforce their preference and what were their underlying motives? What processes of structural transformation in societies contributed to the change in their image of apartheid, and what were their historical points of reference and legitimation strategies? How did countries’ self-images, differences in their political cultures and the understanding of apartheid as a global conflict over the legitimacy of racist exclusion influence the debate? What role did the conflict over apartheid play in domestic political disputes, for example, between liberals and conservatives? What tensions arose within anti-apartheid movements? Were they more about South Africa or activists’ own countries or societies? To what extent were reaction to apartheid—in politics, business, churches, anti-­ apartheid movements and cultural work—shaped by self-serving? At first glance, one notices two causes of the change in Western European attitudes towards apartheid. One was the increasing importance

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of human rights in international politics, in the discussion of which South Africa became a permanent subject after the Sharpeville massacre in 1960.1 The other was the ‘shock of the global’,2 the increasing impact of global developments on Western European nations since the beginning of the 1970s. As the world became more integrated, people paid more attention to social injustice farther from home; thus, South Africa’s racist disenfranchisement of its non-white population received more attention. We take a multi-perspectival approach to explaining these influences of the changes in attitudes towards and reactions to apartheid that combines the political with other socially relevant factors and actors. We also trace transnational and transcontinental interdependencies between South African and Western European societies, for we believe that they were part of the explanation of these changes, and they place Western European history within global history. Thus, the volume is a contribution to the history of Western Europe, the history of South Africa and the history of the relationship between the Global North and the Global South.

Western Europe and Apartheid: A Part of Western Europe’s Global History If we look at Western Europe, it is noticeable that scholarship on anti-­ apartheid and the relation towards South Africa has thus far been very much British- and Scandinavian-oriented, largely because attention followed the money and the politics, but there are important and overlooked stories that we want to draw attention to. What is more, in the context of apartheid and the Cold War, ‘Western Europe’ meant something—in particular, democracy, free enterprise and anti-communism, at least in some tellings. This means that our book redresses the strong emphasis on Britain and reminds us of the very complex stories emanating from the German Federal Republic, France, the Netherlands, partly in comparison with Sweden or the United Kingdom. Having said this, it is worth noting that there are still areas of Western Europe which seem to have had little direct interest in apartheid: Italy, Spain and Greece, for instance. In fact, we don’t know very much about their relation to South Africa as well as on anti-apartheid movements in these countries. This shows once again that ‘Western Europe’ is a complicated concept that suggests more homogeneity than it actually contains. How exactly the different parts of Europe west of the ‘Iron Curtain’ differed in their relationship to South Africa can

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be described more precisely only once these research gaps have been approached. Why is the history of Western European perceptions of and reactions to apartheid part of the global history of Western Europe? In this volume, we take Western Europe to comprise the countries that were not under Soviet hegemony until 1990 and whose societies had capitalistic economies and democratic representative governments since the 1970s at the latest. It differs from Eastern Europe in that it experienced a social change after 1945 whose key descriptors are ‘prosperity’, ‘growth of the service sector’, ‘educational advancement’ and ‘democratization’. Its solidarity with South Africa’s liberation movements also had different dynamics than in Eastern Europe, where support for the liberation struggle was the policy of dictatorial governments, and free media, which could communicate political controversy, did not exist. In Western Europe, discourses and practices pertaining to global issues were reflected in the complex interactions of social agents more directly than under state socialism, in which society was controlled from above. A political and social tension can be observed in the countries of Western Europe in the second half of the twentieth century. It was a result of, on the one hand, colonial and racist attitudes and perceptions and, on the other hand, a gradual, and by no means contradiction-free, sensitization to those countries’ colonial pasts, contemporary racist exclusions and living conditions in the Global South. Studying how they dealt with apartheid makes it possible to explore their transformation at the time by focusing on their discussions of their colonial pasts and the global constellations that resulted. We strive not for a renewed Eurocentrism but, on the contrary, for an understanding of European history in a global context. To consider transnational connections and entanglements is to view the world globally, with dependencies and differences in power but no epistemological hierarchies.3 In studying Western Europe, this means criticizing its ‘civilizing mission’, which after the Second World War again became an important intellectual foil to the idea of ‘development’.4 A fundamental characteristic of South Africa, compared to other formerly colonized countries, was the historical presence of a large group of white settlers whose nationalism incorporated the guiding idea of a European cultural mission. In their dealings with South Africa, Western European societies had to take into account, along with its racism, their historical connections to the country, which stemmed from their colonial

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pasts. In their debates over apartheid, they also contested their own racist exclusions, which had long traditions. In light of Afrikaners’ and other white South Africans’ continual references to Christian and European values, was South Africa’s apartheid a reflection of the dark side of Western Europe?5 There were overlaps, for until the early 1970s modern apartheid was politically connectable to Western European racism.6 This racial discourse, which perpetuated but also transformed Western Europe’s conception of its superiority, should be understood as a part of global history. Håkan Thörn’s thesis of the emergence of ‘global civil society’ described a positive transnational effect of the international apartheid debate, and that thesis has resonated with many scholars. On the basis of his study of the Swedish and British anti-apartheid movements, their interdependencies and their interactions with the UN, Thörn identified the ‘globalization of politics’, which changed societies of the Global North through their consequent perceptions of the world far beyond the northern hemisphere and social movements.7 The recent volume that Anna Konieczna and Rob Skinner edited on the global anti-apartheid movement makes its character as a human rights movement clear, but they also emphasize that in its early years the anti-apartheid-movement ‘embodied a new form of liberal humanitarianism, adapting older forms of moral politics for a post-­ colonial world’. They suggest that a ‘global history of anti-apartheid might, therefore, begin with an analysis of the ways in which activists imagined themselves as players in a global movement’.8 We follow their suggestion here but expand it from anti-apartheid movements to all social agency who were involved with South Africa in whatever way. Were multinational companies or churches also considered global players in an interwoven world? There is evidence that neither were guided by internationalist ideas, unlike the anti-apartheid movements and the governments of Eastern Europe.9 In addition to its globalism, European and national features also shaped Western Europe’s apartheid debates. Roeland Muskens has argued against Thörn that the Netherlands’ anti-apartheid movement was characterized above all by its concern with domestic politics and operated primarily within a national framework.10 Though it would go too far to assume this Western Europe in general, there clearly were domestic political components in the practices of apartheid critics, and supporters, in other countries as well. For example, politicians’ debates over apartheid were part of domestic political disputes between progressives and conservatives, who

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saw South Africa as an anti-communist ally and defender of the free market. According to Saul Dubow, ‘This, too, is why apartheid had global ramifications: anti-apartheid activists in countries like the United States and Britain were, by opposing apartheid, engaged in fighting domestic political battles against the political right as well.’11 Another conspicuous feature of Western European anti-apartheid movements was the dominance of white citizens. Despite the participation of ANC members in exile, the proportion of people of colour in the movements was low. Two central issues in Western European debates over apartheid were whether or not to interfere in South Africa’s internal affairs, and, if so, then should it take the form of increased political, economic and cultural pressure or the total isolation of the apartheid regime. The European Community promoted ‘critical dialogue’ in the 1970s.12 However, Western European societies could come to no consensus on how to proceed, and their opinions were often contradictory. For example, Great Britain, West Germany and France opposed what they saw as the UN’s overly strict sanctions policy, while Sweden had long pressed for sanctions and instituted a national ban on business investments in South Africa in 1979. However, the closer political and economic cooperation in Western Europe that began the 1970s blurred the differences in countries’ South Africa policies. And with the advent of economic alliances, such as the European Community (EC) and the European Free Trade Association (EFTA), and cooperation in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), intra-European conflicts eased. Starting in 1971, the EC tried to develop the European Political Co-operation (EPC) and with it a common foreign policy for Africa. South Africa was the dominant issue in the EPC. In 1977, the foreign ministers of the EC’s member states decided on the Code of Conduct for European companies with subsidiaries in South Africa, the first such joint initiative beyond mere declarations of intent.13 The contradictions in foreign policies for South Africa that nevertheless persisted reflected the multitude and diversity of Western European political actors involved with apartheid and managing relations with South Africa. But it is not only about foreign politics. Western European perceptions of and reactions to apartheid, in the context of global history, can also be understood as part of a complex history of relations rooted in a period well before apartheid began.

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South Africa and Western Europe: Outlines of a History of Perceptions and Relations After 1945 The countries of Western Europe studied in this volume, namely Sweden, West Germany, the Netherlands, France and Great Britain, had long maintained close relations with South Africa. These relations resulted from their histories of colonialism—parts of South Africa were under Dutch and British rule between the seventeenth and twentieth centuries, and Namibia was a German colony until the end of World War I—and European emigration to Southern Africa. In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Europeans tended to view the white settlers positively, which was partly the result of intra-­ European conflicts. Continental Europeans viewed the Afrikaans-speaking population positively because of a widespread anti-British attitude, especially during the Second South African War of 1899–1902.14 For example, Nazi Germany worked closely with extreme right-wing Afrikaners.15 After World War II, Western Europeans perceived South Africa positively, though predominantly in colonial terms, considering its white population the bearers of European civilization who would maintain order there. Before the Sharpeville massacre in 1960, criticism of apartheid in Western Europe was sporadic.16 Afterwards, perceptions became more critical. Several causes of this change in perception in the second half of the twentieth century can be identified. Decolonization in the 1960s saw the emergence of many new states in Africa, which were increasingly arenas of the Cold War. Consequently, the foreign policies of France, Great Britain, the Federal Republic of Germany and other Western European countries suffered conflicts of interest because the new African states condemned their support for South Africa. In his famous speech in the South African Parliament in February 1960, Britain’s Conservative Prime Minister, Harold Macmillan, highlighted the subsequent change of interest in foreign policy, which he described as the ‘wind of change’ in Africa, causing uncertainty in his own Conservative Party.17 However, Africa’s new states did nothing to alter Western European racism. In West Germany, for example, the public viewed them with a mixture of racism and a sense of loss.18 In the 1960s, the UN, and particularly member states from the Global South, called on the world community to isolate South Africa in order to end apartheid.19 In 1966, it condemned apartheid as a crime against

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humanity. And the US-American civil rights movement continued to address racism in the West’s leading power, which sharpened criticism of racist practices of exclusion in other Western countries. As a result, perceptions of South Africa shifted, according to different time frames in different countries. From the 1970s onwards, public condemnation of South Africa’s institutionalized discrimination against the majority of its population was widespread, catalysed by the regime’s crackdown of the Soweto uprising in 1976 and its murder of Steve Biko in 1977. In Western foreign policy, South Africa was a strategic outpost against Soviet influence in the region. However, recent research has undermined the thesis that Western governments saw the South African regime primarily in Cold War terms. Though anti-communism was an important concern of politicians in Western Europe and justified their attentisme towards South Africa, the Cold War was not the only, or even the most important, cause of the wave of decolonization in Southern Africa, which ultimately washed away the apartheid regime as the last bastion of the colonial system. Also important for the disruption of apartheid was the fact that the US-American civil rights movement had ended the era in which the world community accepted ‘race’ as a basis for institutionalized separation,20 as the Eastern and Western blocs’ movements in solidarity with the liberation movements in Southern Africa made abundantly clear. Thus, as Sue Onslow argues, the fate of apartheid was ‘associated with, but not defined by, the Cold War confrontation and its demise’.21 Therefore, historians must pay greater attention to South Africa’s internal developments and their effects on the rest of the world, without an understanding of which the changes in Western European perceptions and policies cannot be explained. This includes the policy for reforming apartheid that the South African government introduced as an ‘anti-anti-apartheid’ strategy at the end of the 1970s in reaction to the international and internal anti-­apartheid movements.22 The reform program was in fact an attempt to modernize apartheid, and its real aim was to maintain the National Party’s hold on power by creating a black middle class, which would presumably strengthen the moderate opposition at the expense of apartheid’s radical opponents. But the dismantling of petty apartheid and the reform of labour laws, which permitted black labour unions, were received positively in Western Europe. As a result, the ‘language of legitimation’23 that the regime and its friends in Western Europe used in their propaganda there changed.24 It was only because the regime instituted reforms in the apartheid system and included voices critical of it in its propaganda that Western European

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supporters of the regime were heard in the 1980s. Thus, conservative and moderate supporters of South Africa were able to deflect demands for radical change and campaign for patience and continued engagement. However, with P.W. Botha’s Rubicon speech in 1985 and his declaration of a state of emergency the following year the regime scared off its Western European supporters, who began to distance themselves from it. Opposition to apartheid could mix with long-felt sympathy and other bonds. For example, some Dutch organizations felt obliged to remain engaged with South Africa because of their stamverwantschap—kinship— with the Afrikaans-speaking population. ‘Although the word stamverwantschap increasingly became a politically incorrect anachronism, several groups of anti-apartheid activists in the Netherlands continued to consider the Afrikaners to be akin, and their motivations can be explained to some extent from a sense of shame.’25 Since the 1970s, only extreme right-wing groups in Western Europe publicly supported the principle of racial segregation. However, these groups had little influence on the discourse of society as a whole. Western European businesses with subsidiaries in South Africa, which were attacked in their home countries, stressed that their involvement contributed to the peaceful elimination of apartheid. In 1977, the European Community, which consisted at that time of the Federal Republic of Germany, France, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Denmark, Ireland and Great Britain, tried to persuade such companies to follow its Code of Conduct for implementing non-racist practices in their South African affiliates. In the 1980s, public demands for divestment grew louder. However, most of the European Community’s member states did not heed them. Sweden was the pioneer. It had already banned its companies from investing in their South African subsidiaries in 1979, and in 1986 it, and the other Scandinavian countries, decided on a total trade boycott of South Africa. Though the EC tightened some of its trade restrictions that year, its members continued to do business with South Africa. Differences were always about how to deal with human rights violations in other countries and went therefore beyond the South African example. The confidence of companies that their continuing commitment to their South African subsidiaries contributed to ending apartheid must be understood in part as a reaction to the divestment campaigns of their countries’ anti-apartheid movements. As a result of these campaigns, companies felt exposed to the public’s moral criticism, which also found its way into internal corporate discourses.26 A general change of

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perception in many multinational companies can be observed during the 1970s and 1980s, but it was the result not only of domestic public pressure but also of their involvement in South Africa’s debate over reform.27 Even among apartheid’s opponents in Western Europe, a central question was whether apartheid could be ended through evolution or only by revolution.28 For a long time, concern for the white population group of South Africa dominated this debate, for it was seen as a threatened minority whose interests needed to be protected from the black majority.29 The notion that South Africa was the creation of the dark side of Europe played a part in this perception. Adrian Guelke has argued that the ‘Janus-faced nature of Western society is reflected in the complexity of the relations that prevailed between the countries of North America and Western Europe and South Africa during the apartheid era’. Thus, the white population of South Africa was often seen as ‘the black sheep of the family’.30 The history of Western Europe’s relations with South Africa was extremely ambivalent on this issue. Its foreign policies condemned institutionalized racism, but it also continued to maintain good relations with South Africa and to take its fears for South Africa’s white population seriously. The increased attention that Western Europe paid to South Africa in the 1960s called on it to acknowledge and question its own racism. This can be observed, for example, in literature, as with black British writers who called apartheid an ‘important, but sometimes submerged and shifting, reference point’ in their engagement with racism and with entertainment that addressed apartheid.31 The latter communicated the anti-apartheid message to a wider audience. Mass media consumption played an important role for many of the actors examined in this volume, especially anti-apartheid movements. For example, in Britain Anti-­ Apartheid Enterprises was a company associated with the Anti-Apartheid Movement (AAM) that sold solidarity products from Southern Africa and through them raised the awareness of consumers outside of the AAM and similar groups.32 The transformation of protest through consumption and the media was exemplified by the Nelson Mandela 70th Birthday Tribute Concert in June 1988 mentioned at the start of this chapter. This ‘fusion of politics and lifestyle’ was essential to anti-apartheid activism in the 1980s.33 In Western Europe’s Christian churches, lifestyle issues were also important in congregations’ discussions of how they should respond to apartheid, in which questions about how one should live were posed as questions about how one should understand faith. Just as Western

 INTRODUCTION 

11

European societies had been undergoing change since the 1960s, their churches were also experiencing a profound transformation involving pluralization, individualization and democratization.34 One cause was decolonization in Africa and Asia, where Western European missionaries had been active for centuries, and the emergence of independent churches that accompanied decolonization. The latter challenged the traditional relationship between church and mission and changed the ecumenical movement, which increasingly turned its attention to developments in the Global South and issues of global inequality.35 The ecumenical movement gave special attention to apartheid and South Africa, which it saw as a country that mirrored the conflicts of the entire world. The World Council of Churches (WCC) set up the Programme to Combat Racism (PCR) in 1969, and its special fund financially supported liberation movements in the Global South until the 1990s.36 The resulting publicity went far beyond the religious sphere and began an intense controversy among Christians, which, in turn, initiated processes of politicization and polarization. For many Christians, the question of whether or not to condemn apartheid raised the question of whether or not it was appropriate for churches to interfere in politics, and the ensuing discussions revealed a plurality of understandings of faith. Against this background, Christians in South Africa and Western Europe experimented with new forms of transnational partnership that incorporated the changes in the ecumenical movement and provided counter-models to society under apartheid.37 At first glance, the history of Western Europe’s relationship with South Africa in the second half of the twentieth century seems like a story of increasing political and cultural alienation. However, that is too simple, for Western Europeans predominantly identified with South Africa’s ‘Europeans’. This was a fundamental perception throughout the relevant history that did not disappear, not even with the end of apartheid. Many Western Europeans felt close to the white South Africans and took their fear of losing power seriously. And ideologically, South Africa’s claim that apartheid was a reasonable project in social engineering to solve political problems found a hearing in some parts of Western Europe societies.

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Western European Responses to Apartheid: Five Theses How can one characterize debates about apartheid’s effects on the transformation of Western European societies more? That transformation was influenced by the beginning of a new wave of globalization. For example, the shift of production and tourism to the Global South; the transition from an industrial to a service society with the associated rise in education and erosion of traditional milieus, such as ethnic or working-class neighbourhoods; the explosive growth of consumption and popular media in an ‘experience society’ and the expansion of representative democracy and participatory methods—to name some of its most important determinants. It is impossible to answer fully this large question about the causal relations between complex phenomena. However, we begin our answer with five theses. 1. The apartheid debate benefitted from the politicization of everyday life and advanced it. The politicization of everyday life to which the terms ‘life politics’ and ‘lifestyle politics’ refer has been described as a typical feature of an ‘experience society’ of the 1980s. As such, it was an important feature in the background of anti-apartheid activism, especially in the last decade of the apartheid regime, for individualization entailed different perceptions of and responses to the Global South.38 The fact that meaning was no longer so strongly determined by collectives but by individuals did not mean that adherents of politicized lifestyle did not participate in collective activities; rather, they understood their participation as an expression of their individual lifestyle. Thus, boycotting, protesting and attending concerts could be forms of personal expression, and, so, part of a ‘reflexive project of the self’.39 In this way, the issue of the consumer society’s ‘transformation of human rights activism or its inclusion in popular culture’ becomes relevant,40 for participation in the anti-apartheid movement through the consumption of goods and media products manifested in everyday life a sensitivity to global problems. However, there were national differences. The extent to which one’s attitude towards apartheid could be expressed in the practice of a reflexive self also depended on whether the anti-­ apartheid movement in one’s nation included approaches to everyday life that differed from traditional politics. Consumer boycotts, anti-apartheid

 INTRODUCTION 

13

merchandise, solidarity concerts and their television broadcasts richly interwove politics and lifestyle and shaped their global contours. 2. The apartheid debate increased the ethical thinking of businesses and their legitimacy. Today’s buzzword ‘corporate social responsibility’ (CSR) signals a company’s ethical behaviour in virtue of globalization. The debate over apartheid was a catalyst in the process that led to this awareness. So, too, were the interventions of states and supranational organizations to regulate business, such as the EC’s Code of Conduct in 1977, in response to the public’s increasing criticism. But the efficiency of these measures was controversial. Often anti-apartheid movements opposed them, for they demanded companies’ complete divestment from South Africa. Moreover, the practices of companies showed how narrow their ethical concerns were. For example, they eliminated the restrictions of ‘klein’ or ‘petty’ (such as segregated toilets) but did nothing about the blatant absence of blacks in skilled or management positions.41 Nevertheless, the debate over anti-racist codes of corporate conduct and their implementation sensitized companies to their ethical responsibilities. 3. The apartheid debate did not make ‘race’ or racism insignificant, but it did raise awareness of the problems with them and reinforce the legitimacy of anti-racist positions. The overall picture only partially confirms Ulrich Beck’s thesis about ‘reflexive modernity’.42 Contrary to Beck’s claim, Western European societies were prepared to only a limited extent to question self-critically the foundations of modernity. In addition, one should not conceptualize a society’s sensitization to questions of ethnicity as a linear process. This is particularly true in the case of apartheid, whose elimination is often described as a triumph (of either the anti-apartheid movements or of vaguely specified ‘Western values’). Though citizens’ initiatives and social movements for the expansion of participatory representative democracy have been widely studied, it is still not clear what role they played in the incipient globalization of European societies, for example, the extent to which their approach, which often transcended national borders, was put into practice. In contemporary work on development policy and ‘Third World movements’,43 scholars only cursorily consider the extent to which

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these have overcome the Eurocentric perspective.44 According to Håkan Thörn, the anti-apartheid movement, which had been active in more than 100 countries for more than four decades, since the end of the 1950s, was ‘one of the most influential social movements during the post-war era’. Although it was never a mass movement, it owed its effectiveness to the global norm of racial equality.45 In this respect, anti-apartheid movements were not the trigger but partly a profiteer and partly an accelerator of an anti-racist self-image of Western societies; however, they could not eliminate the racist attitudes that were still dominant in the populations of many Western European countries in the 1960s. Future research might be interested to understand why the anti-apartheid movements in Western Europe hardly reflected the fact that the majority of their members were ‘white’ and very few coloured people were to be found in their ranks. 4. Participants in the debate about apartheid were often determined by their attitudes towards significant national issues. Apartheid was discussed as part of the North-South problem; thus it was relevant to national disputes. Consequently, the discourse on South Africa was embedded in numerous overarching discourses, for example, about ‘overpopulation’ in the South and population decline in Europe. Thus, disputants’ attitudes towards apartheid were also determined by their attitudes towards significant national issues. This was clearest in the different national contours of anti-apartheid movements. For example, the British and West German movements opposed the policies of national governments that tolerated or supported the apartheid regime, but their Swedish counterpart were confronted with governments that made the support of anti-colonial liberation movements, especially in Southern Africa, a central foreign policy concern. The respective domestic debates on apartheid were shaped by different societal players beyond anti-apartheid activists. Due to the specific political cultures in which they operated, actors in churches, trade unions and companies had different influences on the respective national debates. By addressing apartheid, these actors also pursued their own goals, which were directed at their country’s politics and culture. There were various reasons to get involved in the apartheid debate. Indignation over the abuse of human rights seems not always to have been the most important one. Thus, the language of human rights was a powerful medium of

 INTRODUCTION 

15

mobilization against, say, the Thatcher government, because of its aggravation of the situation in South Africa. 5. Western Europe was a battlefield in the strategies of the apartheid regime and the South African liberation movements. The Global South’s liberation movements built non-state support networks in the Global North and initiated global discourses on human rights, development aid and Marxist internationalism, both of which increased their pressure on the United States and Western Europe. Since the 1960s, the ANC became increasingly perceived in Western Europe as the main representative of the South African opposition, with differences in the single countries. In Sweden, for example, it was fully recognized and funded by the government, while in West Germany the ANC was seen more sceptically due to its socialistic programme. The activities of the apartheid regime in Western Europe also became more intensive since the 1960s. The regime interfered in Western European politics, going so far as to murder ANC activists in exile, for example, Dulcie September, the ANC’s representative in Paris. And the regime supported conservative forces in Western European countries and strove to change public opinion with its propaganda aimed at opponents of apartheid.

Notes 1. Jan Eckel, The Ambivalence of Good. Human Rights in International Politics since the 1940s (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019). 2. Niall Ferguson et al., eds, The Shock of the Global. The 1970s in Perspective (Cambridge M.A./London: Harvard University Press: 2010). For Europe, see Göran Therborn, Modernity and Beyond. The Trajectory of European Societies, 1945–2000 (London: SAGE, 1995); Andreas Wirsching, “The 1970s and 1980s as a Turning Point in European History?’, in: Journal of Modern European History, 9, no. 1 (2011) 7–26. 3. Dipesh Chakrabarty, Provincializing Europe  – Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008). 4. Gilbert Rist, The History of Development: From Western Origins to Global Faith, (London: Zed Books, 2003). 5. Saul Dubow, Apartheid 1948–1994 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014).

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6. Philipp Rock, Macht, Märkte und Moral (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2010), 123. 7. Håkan Thörn, Anti-Apartheid and the Emergence of a Global Civil Society (Basingstoke, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), 4. 8. Konieczna, Anna and Rob Skinner. “Introduction: Anti-Apartheid in Global History,” in A Global History of Anti-Apartheid. ‘Forward to Freedom’ in South Africa, ed. Anna Konieczna and Rob Skinner (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019), 8 and 22. 9. For a recent discussion on anti-apartheid in Eastern Europe, see Kim Christiaens and Idesbald Goddeeris, “Solidarity or Anti-Apartheid? The Polish Opposition and South Africa, 1976–1989,” in A Global History of Anti-Apartheid. ‘Forward to Freedom’ in South Africa, ed. Anna Konieczna and Rob Skinner (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019), 291–315; Paul Betts et al., “Race, Socialism and Solidarity. Anti-Apartheid in Eastern Europe,” in A Global History of Anti-Apartheid. ‘Forward to Freedom’ in South Africa, ed. Anna Konieczna and Rob Skinner (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019), 151–200. 10. Roeland Muskens, Aan de goede kant: biografie van de Nederlandse anti-­ apartheidsbeweging 1960–1990, (Soesterberg: Aspekt, 2014); Simon Stevens, “Why South Africa? The Politics of Anti-Apartheid Activism in Britain in the Long 1970s,” in The Breakthrough. Human Rights in the 1970s, ed. Jan Eckel and Samuel Moyn (Philadelphia: Penn Press, 2014), 204–225. On the correlation between Western European anti-apartheid protests and domestic political motivations, see Burki’s contribution in this volume. 11. Dubow, Apartheid, 277. 12. Philip. P. Everts, Controversies at Home. Domestic Factors in the Foreign Policy of the Netherlands (Dordrecht: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 1985), 217. 13. Martin Holland, The European Community and South Africa. European Political Co-operation under Strain (London: Oxford University Press, 1988), 5. 14. Vincent Kuitenbrouwer, War of Words. Dutch Pro-Boer Propaganda and the South African War (1899–1902) (Amsterdam: University Press, 2012); Tor Sellström, Sweden and National Liberation in Southern Africa Volume  I. Formation of a Popular Opinion (1950–1970), (Uppsala: Nordiska Afrikainstitutet, 1999). 118–122. 15. Albrecht Hagemann, Südafrika und das ‚Dritte Reich‘. Rassenpolitische Affinität und machtpolitische Rivalität (Frankfurt/New York: Campus, 1989); Christoph Marx, Im Zeichen des Ochsenwagens. Der radikale Afrikaaner-Nationalismus in Südafrika und die Geschichte der Ossebrandwag (Münster: Lit-Verlag, 1998).

 INTRODUCTION 

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16. See a Swedish editor after a visit to South Africa: Herbert Tingsten, The Problems of South Africa, (London: Gollancz, 1955) (Swedish 1954). 17. Saul Dubow, “Macmillan, Verwoerd, and the 1960 ‘Wind of Change’ Speech,” in The Historical Journal 54, 4 (2011), 1087–1114. 18. Susan Arndt, ed., AfrikaBilder. Studien zu Rassismus in Deutschland (Münster: Unrast-Verlag, 2001). 19. Steven L.B.  Jensen, “Embedded or Exceptional? Apartheid and the International Politics of Racial Discrimination,” in Zeithistorische Forschungen/Studies in Contemporary History, 13, no. 2 (2016): 314–323; Roland Burke, Decolonization and the Evolution of International Human Rights (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2010). 20. The end of the Jim Crow era in the United States in 1964 made South Africa the last ‘overtly racist regime’ of the twentieth century. See George M.  Fredrickson, Racism. A Short History (Princeton, NJ: Univ. Press, 2002), 101. 21. Sue Onslow, ed., Cold War in Southern Africa. White Power, Black Liberation (London and New York: Routledge, 2009), 29. 22. Saul Dubow, “New Approaches to High Apartheid and Anti-Apartheid,” South African Historical Journal 69, no. 2 (2017): 304–329, 319. 23. See Deborah Posel, “Language, Legitimation and Control: The South African State After ’78,” Social Dynamics 10, no. 1 (1984): 1–16. 24. See contribution by Andreas Kahrs in this volume. 25. Kuitenbrouwer, War, 299. See contribution by Vincent Kuitenbrouwer and Vincent Jurg in this volume. 26. See contribution by Jakob Skovgaard in this volume. 27. See contribution by Knud Andresen in this volume. 28. William Frank Gutteridge, “South Africa. Evolution or Revolution (1985),” in South Africa. From Apartheid to National Unity. 1981–1994, ed. William Frank Gutteridge (Aldershot: Brookfield, 1995), 85–145; S. Prakash Sethi, ed., The South African Quagmire. In Search of a Peaceful Path to Democratic Pluralism (Cambridge, MA: Ballinger, 1987). 29. For West Germany in the 1960s, see Axel Schildt, “Zwischen Hoffen und Bangen. Südafrika im Blick westdeutscher Intellektueller der 1960er Jahre,” Zeithistorische Forschungen/Studies in Contemporary History. 13, no. 2 (2016) 360–364. 30. Adrian Guelke, Rethinking the Rise and Fall of Apartheid (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), 7. 31. See contributions by Andrea Thorpe and Tal Zalmanovich in this volume. 32. See contribution by Benjamin Möckel in this volume. 33. See contribution by Detlef Siegfried in this volume. 34. See Hugh McLeod, The Religious Crisis of the 1960s (Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press, 2010).

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35. See Katharina Kunter and Jens H.  Schøjrring, eds., Changing Relations Between Churches in Europe and Africa: The Internationalization of Christianity and Politics in the 20th Century (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2008). 36. For the significance of the PCR and the ecumenical movement for the global anti-apartheid struggle, see Ian Macqueen, “Ecumenism and the Global Anti-Apartheid Struggle. The World Council of Churches’ Special Fund in South Africa and Botswana, 1970–75,” Historia 62, no. 2 (2017): 87–111. 37. See contribution by Sebastian Justke in this volume. 38. W. Lance Bennett, “The UnCivic Culture. Communication, Identity, and the Rise of Lifestyle Politics. Ithiel de Sola Pool Lecture,” PS.  Political Science and Politics 31, no. 4 (1998), 740–761; Gerhard Schulze, The Experience Society (London: SAGE, 2005). 39. Anthony Giddens, Modernity and Self-Identity. Self and Society in the Last Modern Age (Oxford: Stanford University Press, 1991), 214. 40. Benjamin Möckel, Review of: Eckel, Jan: Die Ambivalenz des Guten. Menschenrechte in der internationalen Politik seit den 1940ern. Göttingen 2014, in H-Soz-Kult, 16.01.2015, http://www.hsozkult.de/publicationreview/id/rezbuecher-22946. 41. Vgl. Gay W. Seidman, Beyond the Boycott. Labour Rights, Human Rights, and Transnational Activism (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2007). 42. Ulrich Beck and Wolfgang Bonß, eds., Die Modernisierung der Moderne (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2001). 43. Bastian Hein, Die Westdeutschen und die Dritte Welt. Entwicklungspolitik und Entwicklungsdienste zwischen Reform und Revolte 1959–1974 (München: Oldenbourg, 2006); Karen Steller Bjerregaard, “Et undertrykt folk har altid ret. Solidaritet med den tredje verden i 1960ernes og 1970ernes Danmark” (PhD-diss., Roskilde: Roskilde Universitet, 2010); Inge Brinkman, Bricks, Mortar and Capacity Building. A Socio-Cultural History of SNV Netherlands Development Organisation (Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2010). 44. Jørgen Lissner, The Politics of Altruism. A Study of the Political Behaviour of Voluntary Development Agencies (Geneva: Lutheran World Federation, 1977). So far, critical studies on the affirmation of non-­European ethnic groups in European countercultures from a cultural-historical perspective have been available mainly with regard to African Americans. See Moritz Ege, Schwarz werden. ‘Afroamerikanophilie’ in den 1960er und 1970er Jahren (Bielefeld: transcript, 2007); Shirley Anne Tate, Black Beauty. Aesthetics, Stylization, Politics (Farnham: Surrey, 2009). 45. Thörn, Anti-Apartheid, 5.

 INTRODUCTION 

19

References Arndt, Susan, ed., AfrikaBilder. Studien zu Rassismus in Deutschland. Münster: Unrast-Verlag, 2001. Beck, Ulrich and Wolfgang Bonß, eds. Die Modernisierung der Moderne. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2001. Bennett, W.  Lance. “The UnCivic Culture. Communication, Identity, and the Rise of Lifestyle Politics. Ithiel de Sola Pool Lecture.” PS. Political Science and Politics 31, No. 4 (1998): 740–761. Betts, Paul, James Mark, Idesbald Goddeeris, and Kim Chrstiaens. “Race, Socialism and Solidarity. Anti-Apartheid in Eastern Europe.” In A Global History of Anti-­ Apartheid. ‘Forward to Freedom’ in South Africa, edited by Anna Konieczna and Rob Skinner, 151–200. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019. Bjerregaard, Karen Steller. “Et undertrykt folk har altid ret. Solidaritet med den tredje verden i 1960ernes og 1970ernes Danmark.” PhD diss., Roskilde: Roskilde Universitet, 2010. Brinkman, Inge. Bricks, Mortar and Capacity Building. A Socio-Cultural History of SNV Netherlands Development Organisation. Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2010. Burke, Roland. Decolonization and the Evolution of International Human Rights. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2010. Chakrabarty, Dipesh. Provincializing Europe – Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008. Christiaens, Kim, and Idesbald Goddeeris. “Solidarity or Anti-Apartheid? The Polish Opposition and South Africa, 1976–1989.” In A Global History of AntiApartheid. ‘Forward to Freedom’ in South Africa, edited by Anna Konieczna and Rob Skinner, 291–315. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019. Dubow, Saul. “Macmillan, Verwoerd, and the 1960 ‘Wind of Change’ Speech.” The Historical Journal 54, no. 4 (2011): 1087–1114. Dubow, Saul. Apartheid 1948–1994. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014. Dubow, Saul. “New Approaches to High Apartheid and Anti-Apartheid.” South African Historical Journal 69, no. 2 (2017): 304–329. Eckel, Jan. The Ambivalence of Good. Human Rights in International Politics since the 1940s. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019. Ege, Moritz. Schwarz werden. ‘Afroamerikanophilie’ in den 1960er und 1970er Jahren. Bielefeld: transcript, 2007. Everts, Philip. P., Controversies at Home. Domestic Factors in the Foreign Policy of the Netherlands. Dordrecht: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 1985. Ferguson, Niall et  al., eds. The Shock of the Global. The 1970s in Perspective. Cambridge MA/London: Harvard University Press: 2010. Fredrickson, George M. Racism. A Short History. Princeton, NJ: Univ. Press, 2002. Giddens, Anthony. Modernity and Self-Identity. Self and Society in the Last Modern Age. Oxford: Stanford University Press, 1991.

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Guelke, Adrian. Rethinking the Rise and Fall of Apartheid. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005. Gutteridge, William Frank. “South Africa. Evolution or Revolution (1985).” In South Africa. From Apartheid to National Unity. 1981–1994, edited by William Frank Gutteridge, 85–145, Aldershot: Brookfield, 1995. Hagemann, Albrecht. Südafrika und das ‚Dritte Reich‘. Rassenpolitische Affinität und machtpolitische Rivalität. Frankfurt/New York: Campus, 1989. Hein, Bastian. Die Westdeutschen und die Dritte Welt. Entwicklungspolitik und Entwicklungsdienste zwischen Reform und Revolte 1959–1974. München: Oldenbourg, 2006. Holland, Martin. The European Community and South Africa. European Political Co-operation under Strain. London: Oxford University Press, 1988. Jensen, Steven L.B. “Embedded or Exceptional? Apartheid and the International Politics of Racial Discrimination.” Zeithistorische Forschungen/Studies in Contemporary History 13, no. 2 (2016): 314–323. Konieczna, Anna and Rob Skinner. “Introduction: Anti-Apartheid in Global History.” In A Global History of Anti-Apartheid. ‘Forward to Freedom’ in South Africa, edited by Anna Konieczna and Rob Skinner, 1-30. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019. Kuitenbrouwer, Vincent. War of Words. Dutch Pro-Boer Propaganda and the South African War (1899–1902). Amsterdam: University Press, 2012. Kunter, Katharina and Jens H. Schøjrring, eds. Changing Relations between Churches in Europe and Africa: The Internationalization of Christianity and Politics in the 20th Century. Studien zur aussereuropäischen Christentumsgeschichte (Asien, Afrika, Lateinamerika) 11. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2008. Lissner, Jørgen. The Politics of Altruism. A Study of the Political Behaviour of Voluntary Development Agencies. Geneva: Lutheran World Federation, 1977. Macqueen, Ian. “Ecumenism and the Global Anti-Apartheid Struggle. The World Council of Churches’ Special Fund in South Africa and Botswana. 1970–75.” Historia 62, no. 2 (2017): 87–111. Marx, Christoph. Im Zeichen des Ochsenwagens. Der radikale Afrikaaner-­ Nationalismus in Südafrika und die Geschichte der Ossebrandwag. Münster: Lit-­ Verlag, 1998. McLeod, Hugh. The Religious Crisis of the 1960s. Oxford, New  York: Oxford University Press, 2010. Muskens, Roeland. Aan de goede kant: biografie van de Nederlandse anti-­ apartheidsbeweging 1960 –1990, Soesterberg: Aspekt, 2014. Onslow, Sue, ed. Cold War in Southern Africa. White Power, Black Liberation. London and New York: Routledge, 2009. Posel, Deborah. “Language, Legitimation and Control: The South African State After ’78.” Social Dynamics 10, no. 1 (1984): 1–16.

 INTRODUCTION 

21

Rist, Gilbert. The History of Development: From Western Origins to Global Faith. London: Zed Books, 2003. Rock, Philipp. Macht, Märkte und Moral. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2010. Schildt, Axel. “Zwischen Hoffen und Bangen. Südafrika im Blick westdeutscher Intellektueller der 1960er Jahre.” Zeithistorische Forschungen/Studies in Contemporary History 13, no. 2 (2016): 360–364. Schulze, Gerhard. The Experience Society. London: SAGE, 2005. Seidman, Gay W. Beyond the Boycott. Labour Rights, Human Rights, and Transnational Activism. New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2007. Sellström, Tor. Sweden and National Liberation in Southern Africa. Volume  I. Formation of a Popular Opinion (1950–1970). Uppsala: Nordiska Afrikainstitutet, 1999. Sethi, S. Prakash, ed. The South African Quagmire. In Search of a Peaceful Path to Democratic Pluralism. Cambridge, MA: Ballinger, 1987. Stevens, Simon. “Why South Africa? The Politics of Anti-Apartheid Activism in Britain in the Long 1970s.” In The Breakthrough. Human Rights in the 1970s, edited by Jan Eckel and Samuel Moyn, 204–22. Philadelphia: Penn Press, 2014. Tate, Shirley Anne. Black Beauty. Aesthetics, Stylization, Politics. Farnham: Surrey, 2009. Therborn, Göran. Modernity and Beyond. The Trajectory of European Societies, 1945–2000. London: SAGE, 1995. Thörn, Håkan. Anti-Apartheid and the Emergence of a Global Civil Society. Basingstoke, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006. Tingsten, Herbert. The Problems of South Africa. London: Gollancz, 1955 (Swedish 1954). Wirsching, Andreas. “The 1970s and 1980s as a Turning Point in European History?” Journal of Modern European History 9, no. 1 (2011): 7–26.

PART I

Moral and Economy

Between Goodwill and Sanctions: Swedish and German Corporations in South Africa and the Politics of Codes of Conduct Knud Andresen

In June 1986, top representatives of West German business met in Bonn to discuss their concerns regarding the situation in South Africa as new sanctions by the European Community were about to complicate trade there. They agreed that companies should be more political and press for reforms in South Africa, and their proposals included projects to promote training and social benefits for black workers and cooperation with desegregated trade unions. Siegfried Mann, Managing Director of the Federation of German Industries (BDI), even proposed making contact with the African National Congress (ANC),1 which met with scepticism but was not rejected in principle. One result of the meeting was a letter from West German business associations to Prime Minister Botha calling for decisive steps towards ending apartheid.2

K. Andresen (*) University of Hamburg, Hamburg, Germany e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2021 K. Andresen et al. (eds.), Apartheid and Anti-Apartheid in Western Europe, Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-53284-0_2

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This episode illustrates how the attitudes of multinational companies to apartheid changed in the mid-1980s from a lack of interest in its disenfranchisement of the South African majority in the 1950s and 1960s to demanding its end. Companies that had trade relations with or production facilities in South Africa were important determinants of Western countries’ perceptions of apartheid and participants in their debates over it. Anti-apartheid movements saw such companies headquartered in their countries as their main domestic opponents and had conducted campaigns for disinvestment from and trade sanctions against them since the early 1970s. For they saw them as driven by greed to collaborate with the apartheid regime in order to reap profits from its institutionalized racism.3 Especially in export-oriented economies, such as the Federal Republic of Germany and Sweden, politicians saw these companies as important players in their economies, whose profits should not be jeopardized by government intervention. Also, Europe’s strategy of ‘critical dialogue’ (and the US ‘constructive engagement’), according to which companies should exert their influence positively to help end apartheid, relied on those companies’ links to South Africa.4 How did companies position themselves in these conflicts, how did they understand their role in South Africa and how did they react to the political pressure that the apartheid debates in their own countries generated? These questions raise a multitude of further questions, as companies interacted with a multitude of factors, including the foreign policies of their own countries, domestic political developments in South Africa and the tension between economics and morality. In a nutshell, there are two relevant questions. Did companies see themselves as a political force in South Africa at all? If they did, did they see themselves as collaborating with apartheid or, rather, as progressive, forward-looking companies, working for peaceful change in South Africa?

Multinational Corporations in Sweden, West Germany and South Africa The answers are more complex than a simple ‘Yes’ or ‘No’. Foreign capital and technology were vital to the apartheid regime. Beginning in the 1950s, it had sought to industrialize the country by attracting foreign firms and capital, and its success led to the economic boom of the 1960s.5 It was multinational companies, in addition to a few small and

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medium-sized enterprises, that had the interest and ability to establish subsidiaries in South Africa. The country was attractive to them because of its wealth of raw materials and the relative prosperity of the privileged white population. In particular, producers of consumer goods and metalworking companies, especially automobile companies, often set up subsidiaries in South Africa in the 1960s. Executives who were seconded to, or already lived in, South Africa joined the white ruling class and had little interest in the situation of the disenfranchised majority. Many were in favour of apartheid, sometimes because of their own racism.6 Because their primary interest was political stability, companies largely ignored the oppression of the majority before the 1970s. However, their South African subsidiaries were also players in South Africa, where it was widely believed in business circles that racist oppression would disappear as prosperity increased.7 In the early 1970s, South African business associations, especially those in industries that depended on skilled labour, began to criticize the apartheid system and demand reforms.8 By the second half of the 1980s, most were calling for its abolition. According to the business ethicist John M. Kline, these multinational subsidiaries had a ‘dual character’. They were organized in accord with South African law, but they were also representatives of international companies.9 The South Africanization of management in the 1960s reinforced their dual character. Foreign managers were made responsible mainly for technical production, personnel and finance, and South Africans often became the managing directors and other executives.10 In general, then, multinational subsidiaries were transnational contact and exchange zones. Their management groups became more international in the 1980s.11 Compared with South African companies, foreign subsidiaries were under double pressure: the pressure of South African politics, which the former also faced, and that from the increasing international condemnation of economic relations with South Africa. Their main argument against adopting a political agenda was the principle of political non-interference, according to which a foreign company must respect a country’s laws and not interfere in its politics. Following that principle, companies refused for a long time to condemn apartheid publicly. However, Kline pointed out a contradiction that had become evident in the human rights campaigns of the early 1970s. Activists considered US-American corporations’ support for the conservatives during Chile’s coup in 1973 unacceptable interference, but they called upon Gulf Oil, for example, which did business in Angola, to overthrow Portugal’s colonial regime there. As Kline put it:

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The principle of political non-interference forged in the Chilean experience clashed with calls for corporations to advance particular political goals. In other words, the standard for the ‘rightness’ of MNE [Multinational Enterprises] conduct was shifting from a process-based rule against political interference to a case-dependent evaluation of whether projected outcomes might justify such involvement.12

This shift was the result of an upsurge in human rights campaigns in Western countries and their influence on those countries’ foreign policies. The transnational campaign against South Africa was the most prominent example of a human rights campaign that sought regime change.13 It led governments to intervene in the activities of companies doing business there and, so, to alter somewhat the traditional relation between government and business. Such intervention occurred in both Sweden and West Germany, where companies with South African subsidiaries were main targets of their anti-apartheid movements. In both countries, a new orientation towards exports in the 1950s and 1960s had made the economy considerably more international than previously.14 In the 1970s, around 20 Swedish and up to 300 West German companies were doing business in South Africa. However, the two governments’ policies towards South Africa were significantly different. In Sweden, there were consumer boycotts of South African goods as early as 1960, and nearly all of the political parties condemned apartheid. The government tried to get the UN to impose far-­ reaching international trade sanctions, and it began to support liberation movements in Southern Africa, including financially, in 1970.15 The West German government took a different position. The Federal Republic was one of the Western states, along with Great Britain, France and the US, that blocked economic sanctions whenever possible. The government’s policy towards South Africa had long been one of support and understanding for the regime. After West Germany joined the UN in 1973, its policy towards South Africa included issues of human rights, but relations between the two countries remained friendly.16 Another important difference between Sweden and West Germany was their political cultures’ attitudes towards the state. Swedes used the metaphor folkhemment (‘the people’s home’) to describe the welfare state, a society in which the state eased social tensions and no one was to be excluded. The Swedish sociologist Håkan Thörn has pointed out that many anti-apartheid movements were very critical of their countries’

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governments, but the Swedish government subsidized anti-apartheid groups, which saw themselves as participating in political discourse with it.17 Similarly, Swedish companies generally operated in cooperation with state institutions and complied with government regulations. In 1973, the Swedish Employers’ Association informed its members that certain institutions, including some universities and the socialist youth federation, would conduct a series of investigations into the behaviour of Swedish companies in South Africa, and the companies agreed that ‘in the long run, one would win’ if they cooperated fully with the enquiries.18 In the Federal Republic, the anti-apartheid movement and companies were more sceptical of the state. The attitude of the latter was that the state should provide stable and secure conditions for business but not interfere in how they conducted it. And politicians had the same understanding. The federal government was extremely reluctant to impose restrictions on companies. In 1968, the Social Democrat Willy Brandt, who was then Foreign Minister and would become Chancellor in 1969, stressed to diplomats the principle that politics and business should not be mixed ‘without need’.19 Although West Germans citizens regularly condemned apartheid, the government maintained a policy of dialogue with South Africa. The attitude of politicians towards companies doing business in South Africa, repeated almost like a mantra, was volunteerism: companies should adopt progressive measures, but they should not be forced to do so by law. After 1973, the Western European public was increasingly critical of its countries’ firms with subsidiaries in South Africa, especially for their treatment of employees classified in South Africa as ‘black’. In early 1973, the British newspaper The Guardian published a series of articles on British subsidiaries’ poor treatment of black workers. The British government investigated the allegations, and in early 1974 it issued a code of practices, ‘Guideline for United Kingdom Companies with Interests in South Africa’, calling for higher wages and social benefits for their black employees.20 These events were a catalyst for public discussions in Sweden and West Germany.

Sweden: The Sanctions Model Stimulated by events in Great Britain, the Swedish public demanded that their companies improve the circumstances of black workers in their South African subsidiaries. And enquiries into the practices of South African

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subsidiaries began. Members of the Sveriges Industriförbundet (Swedish National Federation of Industry) representing industries in which many companies had such subsidiaries argued that companies should be as cooperative as possible to the enquiries.21 As a result of discussions that companies held with representatives of Sweden’s Churches, they adopted a voluntary code of conduct in June 1974. The ‘Kodex Ethicus’ focused on improving labour-management relations, employee benefits and education and training with the overall aim of reducing the wage gap between workers classified as ‘black’ and ‘white’.22 The code was supported by a study of Swedish companies in South Africa that the political scientist Ǻke Magnusson had conducted that year, in which he recommended that companies pursue a ‘new strategy’ of better jobs, higher wages and social benefits to improve the circumstances of black employees. The new strategy’s long-term goal was the peaceful dismantling of apartheid. ‘Instead of isolating South Africa, the new strategy thus implies that the fact that foreign companies exist there is to be taken advantage of’.23 However, Magnusson’s new strategy could not bring about rapid change. Thus, Swedish government policy, which incorporated it, relied more on internationally agreed-upon sanctions. Two years after the UN failed to pass binding sanctions in 1975, Sweden’s parliament set up a committee to prepare a sanctions law,24 which eventually led to the South Africa Act, a ban on Swedish investment in South Africa that took effect on 1 July 1979.25 The committee heard from many individuals and organizations, including the ANC, which rejected the new strategy: ‘Slavery was and can never be made acceptable by providing good food and comfortable slave quarters’.26 This raised a fundamental political question: could economic engagement with South Africa contribute to ending apartheid, or did it only strengthen it? Companies justified doing business in South Africa in terms of its ability to bring about change. ‘In actual fact it is among companies, employers that the strongest forces against the apartheid system are to be found’, wrote the chairman of the Swedish Employers’ Association in 1978.27 That is, Swedish companies had the same liberal, white, commitment to the peaceful, gradual, negotiated dismantling of apartheid that was widespread in South African business circles. And they pointed out that banning, or just politicizing, business with South Africa could harm Swedish prosperity.28 The South Africa Act was a compromise. It did not require companies to withdraw from South Africa. But they did have to go into hibernation, so to speak. For the South Africa Act banned new investment, although it did allow for special exemptions,

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which the Kommerskollegium (National Board of Trade) had to request on a company’s behalf and the government had to approve, which they usually did.29 Why did companies stay in South Africa despite the public’s disapproval and the restrictions of the South Africa Act? The management of Svenska Kullagerfabriken (SKF), a ball bearing company headquartered in Gothenburg, never considered leaving. One reason was that its share of the South African ball bearing market was over 40 per cent. It generated a good rate of return on investment and at the beginning of 1979 the company believed that it could handle the upcoming ban on investment. Also, internal documents show that SKF’s management felt responsible for the employees of its two South African subsidiaries and saw itself as a force for reform in South Africa.30 However, the subsidiaries reacted more aggressively to the South Africa Act. In a memorandum to senior executives in South Africa, Dale Campkin-Smith, Managing Director of SKF’s Johannesburg subsidiary, dismissed the law as an electoral manoeuvre and emphasized that SKF was fully committed to its South African operations.31 Campkin-Smith later told Olle Wärneby, the responsible SKF board member in Gothenburg, that the harsh tone of his memo was necessary to reassure local management and that he had circulated it without consulting Gothenburg in order to fly the company flag for their benefit.32 His memo mentioned no progressive commitment on the part of SKF. However, one cannot conclude that SKF’s public criticism of apartheid was simply for public relations. Rather, different communications had different aims. The company’s internal communications in South Africa were to reassure its white managers that it would remain an attractive employer; its public announcements in Sweden explained its goal of ending apartheid through economic engagement. Despite the government’s tendency to approve requests for exemptions from the South Africa Act, Swedish companies that remained in South Africa lost market share until 1990. Of the eight companies with South African production facilities, all but the steel group Allmänna Svenska Elektriska Aktiebolaget (ASEA) (which claimed to own only a minority share in its South African subsidiary and, thus, to be unable to influence it) abided by the South Africa Act, even after the government tightened its restrictions in 1984 and after the Nordic states instituted a complete trade boycott of South Africa in July 1987. Trying to prevent the addition of new restrictions to the South Africa Act, in 1983 the International Council of the Swedish Economy, which was actually a South African advocacy

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group, emphasized the progress Swedish companies were making in the fight against apartheid. It published a small volume summarizing the political and moral positions of Swedish companies on apartheid. The book also discussed the international credibility of Sweden’s foreign policy and the contribution of Swedish multinationals to the country’s prosperity. And it downplayed the moral dilemma of doing business in South Africa by describing black moderate’s support of the progressive role of companies. That role was the cornerstone of Swedish companies’ self-­ image. They regarded themselves as part of the solution to South African’s problems and believed that sanctions would only aggravate them.33 However, the arguments of Swedish business had little effect on the debate in the government. Of the bourgeois parties, only the Moderate Party accepted those arguments. In 1984, the Foreign Trade Minister, the Social Democrat Mats Hallström, argued for extending the South Africa Act by inverting Magnusson’s argument for the new strategy: ‘Swedish companies, like other foreign-owned companies, are subject to South African law and thus can be said, in a sense, to participate in discrimination’.34 In emphasizing their participation in apartheid, he expressed doubts about the progressive role that companies repeatedly said they played. And although he acknowledged that there had been improvements, he argued that they were more steps in modernizing apartheid than in ending it. So, while companies emphasized their progressive role in overcoming apartheid, the government emphasized the immorality of any sort of participation in such a criminal system. But Hallström also rejected the argument that an investment ban would harm Sweden’s economy, for there had been no downturn after the South Africa Act had taken effect in 1979. But even if the economy were to worsen, ‘We must, however, be prepared to pay a certain price for solidarity with the black majority of the population in South Africa’.35 Hallström’s arguments expressed the willingness of Sweden’s politicians and public to bear the cost of opposing apartheid on moral grounds, while outside of the Moderate Party the companies’ arguments drew little agreement from either. Another prominent supporter of the progressive role of Swedish companies in South Africa, but with a different approach, was Swedish Metalworkers’ Union, Metall. In deciding, contrary to other trade unions, against demanding their withdrawal, Metall was not just concerned about Swedish jobs; it had close links with South Africa’s desegregated trade unions, for whose organizing efforts Swedish production facilities were important.36 Swedish companies had wanted to negotiate with black and

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desegregated trade unions since the late 1970s. In 1979, South Africa reformed its labour laws, and trade unions not organized according to racist principles became legal; with the support of the management of most South African companies, especially in the manufacturing sector, they gradually became important in the workplace.37 Swedish companies emphasized not only their opposition to apartheid but also their commitment to comply with Swedish legislation.38 After the institution of the complete trade ban in 1987, SKF instructed its offices worldwide not to do business with South Africa: ‘In view of the public debate in Sweden, we … again underline that there are no exceptions to this law and that SKF is committed to follow the law, which is a criminal law’.39 SKF believed that abiding by the ban was essential to its credibility in the public debate. But it continued to argue, until the end of apartheid, that the ban was the wrong approach to take. However, politicians hoped that the ban would make Sweden the role model for other Western countries, a hope that was not realized. Of all European countries, Sweden imposed the most far-reaching restrictions on companies’ entrepreneurial freedom.40 And they suffered economically. However, in the 1980s they also supported South African trade unions and worked to improve the lives of their black workers. That is, they were committed to both Swedish law and their South African employees. Their surprising commitment to their subsidiaries, despite the legal restrictions and negative publicity, was not based only on profits. They also believed in the importance of transnational exchange, and, particularly, of long-term relations with South Africa, which they expected would lead to the end of apartheid.

West Germany: Hoping for Goodwill from Business West German companies with South African subsidiaries were also subject to public criticism but far less than were those in Sweden. Here, too, the British government’s code of practices public criticism of such companies and their treatment of their black South African workers catalysed the debate.41 In April 1973, members of the Bundestag demanded information from the government on the situation of black workers in companies’ South African subsidiaries.42 The ruling Social Democratic and Liberal coalition replied that West German companies paid black workers above-­ average wages, but it emphasized that it could not regulate how West German companies did business in other countries.43 This was also the

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view that companies expressed in internal documents. Heinrich Blohm, Chairman of Volkswagen’s South African Board of Directors and a Namibian-born German, stressed in a 1971 letter to the board of directors in Wolfsburg that efforts were being made throughout the company to improve the situation of black employees, but they did not want to make this public.44 In 1973, Protestant Churches began negotiations with companies about doing business in South Africa, but unlike in Sweden, they were fruitless.45 The events of 1973 set the tone for the period that followed. The government continued to see West German companies in South Africa as a positive force for improving the situation of their black employees, and it continued to believe that it should not restrict their entrepreneurial freedom by compelling them to institute changes. Its attitude was informed by its fundamental economic policy, its desire to maintain West Germany’s traditionally good relationship with South Africa and the influence of a number of advocacy groups.46 One of these was the German-South African Society, a pressure group for support of apartheid; around 1970, a number of company executives belonged to it.47 Another was the German-­ South African Chamber of Commerce. Founded in Johannesburg soon after World War II, it was part of the system that the West German Chambers of Industry and Commerce had set up to represent the economic interests of West German companies in South Africa and worked on behalf of as many as 300 of them. From the mid-1970s, the government’s South Africa policy included West Germany’s participation in the coordinated political action of the European Community (EC). Most Western European governments wanted their nations’ companies to commit voluntarily to minimizing inequality in their operations rather than to compel them legally. And South African business circles provided the basis for their commitment. The South African Employers’ Association adopted a code of conduct in 1975 that stated that companies should strive, within the law, for the social progress of their employees classified as ‘black’, in particular, by improving their training. And South African businesses soon showed signs of increased ‘social awareness’.48 The pressure on European companies in South Africa slowly increased after the foreign ministers of the then nine states in the EC issued a code of conduct in September 1977. It was based on the British government’s code of practices from 1974 and the Sullivan principles, which General Motors board member Leon Sullivan had developed in the US that year.

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The voluntary principles obligated US companies to better treatment of their black employees, beginning with the elimination of workplace segregation. In the early 1980s, Sullivan politicized his principles in that a company’s acceptance of them explicitly committed it to help end apartheid.49 Like Sullivan’s original principles, the EC’s code of conduct covered training, wages, migrant workers, social welfare and non-discrimination in the workplace, but it went one step further by calling for the recognition of desegregated trade unions. The EC saw its code as a constructive alternative to investment restrictions, which only Denmark’s representatives demanded. The West German delegation, which strongly opposed any interference in the free movement of capital, thought that the code would also be an effective publicity tool.50 Initially, however, West German business representatives from the Bundesverband der Deutschen Industrie (Federation of German Industries) (BDI), who feared the politicization of foreign trade, vehemently opposed West Germany’s adoption of the code. They argued that the West German business was already improving the lives of its black employees in South Africa and that public statements could undermine its efforts.51 In the view of most businessmen, the code would be a dangerous precedent, the first step towards sanctions; the public would interpret it as the product of business’s ‘guilty conscience’ and it would harm the black population.52 In reality, the EC’s code of conduct, which was the ‘first attempt at EPC [European Political Co-operation] action beyond declaratory statements’, was intended to signal opposition to apartheid without jeopardizing economic investment.53 However, its weakness was reflected in the fact that the South African government welcomed it, for it could be integrated into its reform programme to develop a black middle class.54 Nevertheless, West German businesses complained over the following years about their obligations under the code to report on their progress. These complaints clearly illustrated earlier fears that the code would introduce political control of business. The EC jointly adopted the code of conduct but left implementation to the member states and produced no joint report.55 In the Federal Republic of Germany, companies were to report their progress to the government. A lengthy intra-governmental conflict broke out over how they were supposed to do this, as the Ministry of Economics and the companies did not want their names to be made public, but the Ministry of Foreign Affairs wanted such transparency. It took almost two years for the first report to be filed. The eventual compromise was that companies would report their progress to the Ministry of

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Economics, which would publish an anonymous summary. But cooperation was voluntary; the government instituted no consequences for refusing to comply. Many companies felt that the obligation to report to the government was unreasonable. The Managing Director of BMW South Africa, Eberhard Koerber, commented, ‘It is very regrettable that the BDI and thus German industry have given in and now oblige individual companies to submit to direct political reporting to the government’.56 Koerber missed the ‘solidarity’ among companies, which he understood that large companies, like BMW, with better working conditions would ‘protect’ smaller ones. BMW pursued an aggressive information campaign regarding their South African operations. Koerber claimed that the firm had already eliminated discrimination without a code of conduct: ‘BMW South Africa is particularly proud of one fact in particular: in 1978, it was one of the first companies in the automotive industry to introduce a general canteen for all employees (black and white)’.57 At the same time, some companies were complacent about apartheid laws. A representative of the stationery manufacturer Pelikan wrote in 1979, ‘We have never practised racial discrimination in this sense, except where it is a matter of legal requirement’.58 But unlike in the 1960s, such compliance could no longer be admitted publicly. The last public statement that favoured ‘Grand Apartheid’ appeared in a Volkswagen public relations brochure in 1975.59 Companies explained the persisting wage gap largely in terms of black workers’ lack of education. They underlined the need for education and training and saw their own efforts in this regard as important contributions to reducing wage differences in the long run. West German companies, like their counterparts in Sweden, defended their presence in South Africa as progressive because they offered their black workers social benefits like health insurance and pensions as well as training, a view that the West German government supported more than the Swedish government did. So, business associations and the government agreed in opposing trade sanctions and demands that firms leave South Africa. For example, Volkswagen repeatedly argued that it trained black workers, although that was not officially permitted; paid them more than the legal minimum wage and was dismantling racial barriers,60 but it could make such contributions only if it remained in South Africa. In March 1978, its CEO Toni Schmücker wrote confidentially to Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher asking him to reply officially to the

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international public’s demands for sanction, saying, ‘Through our pragmatic approach in recent years, we—like other German companies—have contributed to the creation of social conditions for thousands of black Africans and coloured people that are ahead of official political developments’.61 Though Schmücker was exerting his political influence on Genscher to persuade him, his argument, which was the argument companies typically made, was a strong one, namely, their presence in South Africa benefitted their black employees more than their leaving the country would. Genscher did speak out against sanctions, but he expected West German companies to eliminate discrimination in the workplace quickly in order to prevent developments in South Africa from becoming violent.62 Companies continued to oppose proposals for regulatory intervention in the Bundestag, which had begun in 1973 with its demand for basic information on subsidiaries in South Africa. When West Germany introduced the EC’s code, authorities did not know how many West German companies were doing business in South Africa, and the embassy in Pretoria made a protracted effort to compile an accurate list. The consulate in Windhoek feared that companies might see efforts to learn details about their business as an assault on their entrepreneurial freedom.63 In Sweden, by contrast, the central bank, the Riksbank, informed the Parliament’s South Africa Committee of every company that had invested in South Africa.64 At the beginning of March 1979, the West German embassy recorded that out of the 240 companies that it knew of 134 were manufacturers, 73 were distributors and 33 provided services, but it was difficult to be exact as owners and names frequently changed. According to the embassy’s research, most distribution and service companies had only a few black employees. The German-South African Chamber of Commerce in Johannesburg sent the embassy a list of 89 companies, and it was only with the Chamber’s cooperation that it was able to estimate that these 89 accounted for about 90 per cent of West German companies’ black employees.65 At least 50 companies with South African production sites produced annual progress reports for the Ministry of Economics. In the 1980s, acceptance of one or another of the various codes of conduct then in existence became the established means for companies to commit themselves to ending apartheid. But by then, the EC’s code was no longer important in West Germany’s apartheid debate. Although the government continued to publish annual summaries of companies’ progress in South Africa, the companies’ reports became less debated in the public. However, companies became more concerned with the social

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progress they were achieving and the elimination of apartheid. In addition, labour reforms in South Africa in 1979 made their compliance with the EC’s code easier by ending job reservation and legalizing vocational training for employees classified as ‘black’ and desegregated trade unions.66 These unions soon became strong enough in the workplace to push out the segregated white unions. The West German Metalworkers’ Union also backed desegregated unions, and its support played a role in the decisions of large West German companies to begin close working relationships with them. Like Sweden’s Metall, the West German union, with its close ties to South Africa, demanded constructive engagement, not disinvestment.67 When John Gonomo, the shop steward of the Volkswagen plant in Uitenhage, South Africa, spoke at a factory in West Germany in 1983, several thousand employees enthusiastically welcomed him.68 In virtue of their increasing influence in South African industry, non-racial trade unions later contributed to the negotiations over the transition from apartheid to democracy. ‘The unions’ skilful use of the opportunities and institutions open to them helped to evolve the negotiation mechanism and skills that later produced South Africa’s post-apartheid settlement, in which experienced union leaders such as Cyril Ramaphosa played a major part’.69 At the end of the 1980s, BMW announced that the militant National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa represented the workers in its South African plant and that it would allow NUMSA to train members for union activities during working hours and allow picketers on the factory’s premises during strikes.70 But the firm’s real goal was to increase productivity by instilling a performance ideology in all of its employees. BMW of South Africa had hired Professor Nic Wiehahn, who had headed the government’s commission on labour reform, as a consultant in 1980. In a speech to the firm’s executives, he stressed that companies must evolve ‘from discrimination to performance orientation’ and build a ‘meritocratic work society’. Because he considered the EC’s code of conduct to be a step in this direction,71 BMW made vocational training and better living conditions for black and coloured skilled workers a goal. Like BMW and the other more progressive companies in the automotive industry, the South African-German Chamber of Commerce also experienced change in the 1980s. Liesel Quambusch, who had previously worked for the BDI in Bonn as a consultant for international relations, became its first female managing director. In its annual report for 1986, the Chamber stated that it had become more important since 1979 for

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companies and managers to deal with ‘the real problems of the country’.72 In the report for 1987, Quambusch, looking back on ten years of following the EC’s code of conduct, wrote that operating in accord with codes of conduct had become a part of companies’ increasing social responsibility. Though it sometimes seemed hard, especially for smaller companies, to fulfil their requirements,73 she reminded her readers of the shift in thinking that West German business associations had made in no longer opposing codes of conducts in principle, not even in South Africa.

Conclusion When apartheid became a major political issue in Sweden and West Germany in the early 1970s, companies in both countries, aware of the public’s criticism of their doing business in South Africa, declared that their goal there was its elimination and stressed that their South African enterprises were progressive and contributed to that goal. Swedish and West German firms differed in their domestic political influence as a result of persisting differences in the two countries’ governments, whether they were Social Democratic, Liberal or Conservative.74 In Sweden, there was broad political consensus over supporting the ANC financially and politically and outlawing business in the apartheid state. West German governments pursued a policy from the other end of the Western spectrum, believing that they should only encourage companies to take voluntary measures to make their businesses in South Africa socially progressive. Multinational companies’ interactions with apartheid from the 1970s to the 1980s involved a change of perception as they evolved away from their almost complete and often racist ignoring of the disenfranchisement of South Africa’s majority. Critics have often dismissed this evolution as a mere matter of public relations. But domestic politics was not the only, and not the main, reason for companies’ change of perception. In keeping with their subsidiaries’ dual character, the change was more the result of political changes in South African business circles. As early as 1984, the historian and economist Merle Lipton emphasized the self-interest in South African business associations’ contributions to ending apartheid. While the agricultural and mining sectors wanted cheap unqualified labour, the industrial sector needed skilled labour.75 Because apartheid produced so little skilled labour, South Africa’s capitalist economy became increasingly dysfunctional. To keep it running, it seemed that the

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privileged white skilled workforce had to be replaced with a desegregated one adhering to a performance ideology. The desire for a performance ideology motivated Swedish companies to accept the South Africa Act and West German companies to accept the EC’s code of conduct. So, multinationals’ change of perception should not be misunderstood as the result of their opposition to racism and interest in human rights. Although both Swedish and West German companies wanted to prevent the politicization of their South African operations, apartheid’s treatment of the majority of the population became an obstacle to their economic growth. And it was this fact that allowed companies to see themselves not as collaborators in apartheid but as contributors to a peaceful process of change. With the South Africa Act in 1979, Sweden went considerably further in its opposition to apartheid than West Germany ever did. The explanation is their different political cultures. Swedish companies were very willing to accommodate the state’s intervention in business. But in West Germany companies were sceptical about the state, and politicians preferred voluntarism to legal coercion. So, in adopting the EC’s code of conduct in 1977, the West German government compromised its basic policy towards business. The EC’s foreign ministers, who authored the code without consulting business lobbying groups, intended companies’ acceptance of it to be a symbolic commitment. Compliance became easier as companies recognized the public relations benefits. But, as a result of reforms in South African labour law, codes of conduct lost some of their significance with the European public in the 1980s, as social improvements for black workers in European subsidiaries were no longer the primary subject in public debates. Rather, the elimination of apartheid came to the fore, as it did for companies. In the 1980s, companies developed negotiation procedures with non-racial trade unions that were later models for South Africa’s negotiated political transition.76 In this way, companies did, despite their contributions to stabilizing apartheid, contribute in the long run to ending it. Did companies change their ways of doing business in South Africa only to be able to appease the apartheid-critical public? Though that evaluation may seem convincing if one believes that every interaction with the South African regime reinforced its rule, it overlooks the fact that multinational companies were actors in South Africa. Multinational companies and their South African business circles did not spearhead the fight against apartheid, and their opposition to it was a reaction to the growing

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resistance of the oppressed majority. But it is also true that operating factories in South Africa did not necessarily make those companies proponents of apartheid. However, the long-accepted principle of non-interference in South Africa’s internal affairs lost its persuasiveness when the country cracked down on militant resistance and its subsequent violations of human rights could not be ignored. In this way, the long debate over multinational companies doing business in South Africa helped to promote their respect for human rights. This is one of the long-­ term effects of the perception of apartheid in Western Europe.

Notes 1. Mitschrift der Südafrika-Sitzung mit leitenden Herren der deutschen Industrie am 26.6.1986 im Wissenschaftszentrum Bonn, in: Archiv für alternatives Schrifttum (AFAS), Kasa 11. 2. The letter, signed by representatives of the BDI, Deutscher Industrie- und Handelstag, Bundesverband deutscher Banken and Bundesverband des deutschen Groß- und Außenhandels, was forwarded to President Botha by the German Ambassador Lahusen: Telex Auswärtiges Amt Bonn an Botschaft Pretoria, 7.7.1986, in: Politisches Archiv des Auswärtigen Amtes (PAAA), Botschaft PRET 26697. 3. West Germany: Günter Verheugen, Apartheid. Südafrika und die deutschen Interessen am Kap (Köln: Kiepenhauer & Witsch, 1986); Birgit Morgenrath and Gottfried Wellmer, Deutsches Kapital am Kap. Kollaboration mit dem Apartheidregime (Hamburg: Nautilus, 2003). Sweden: Tor Sellström, Sweden and National Liberation in South Africa, two Volumes: Solidarity and Assistance 1950–1970 (Uppsala: Nordiska Afrikainstitutet, 1999), Vol. 1; Solidarity and Assistance 1970–1994 (Uppsala: Nordiska Afrikainstitutet, 2002), Vol. 2. 4. S. Prakash Sethi and Oliver F. Williams, Economic Imperatives and Ethical Values in Global Business. The South African Experience and International Codes Today (Boston, Dordrecht: 2000), 263–265; Philipp Rock, Macht, Märkte und Moral. Zur Rolle der Menschenrechte in der Außenpolitik der Bundesrepublik Deutschland in den sechziger und siebziger Jahren (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2010), 169–171. 5. Saul Dubow, Apartheid 1948–1994 (Oxford: University Press, 2014), 99–101; John S.  Saul and Patrick Bond, South Africa  – The Present as History, From Mrs. Ples to Mandela & Marikana (Bognor Regis: James Currey, 2014), 56–62. 6. Evidence of racist perceptions, often still influenced by National Socialism, can be found in two books promoting economic engagement in South

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Africa. The authors were German business journalists who were already active during Nazism. Kurt Hesse, Wirtschaftswunder Südafrika (Düsseldorf: Droste, 1954); Fritz Spiesser and Heinrich Spiesser, Südafrika. ‘Weißen Mannes Land’ (Haag/Amper: Linck-Verlag, 1949). Sympathy for white South Africans was still popular in Sweden in the 1950s. Sellström, Vol. 1, 124–130. 7. See Norman Bromberger, “Economic Growth and Political Change in South Africa,” South Africa: Economic Growth and Political Change. With Comparative Studies of Chile, Sri Lanka and Malaysia, ed. Adrian Leftwic (Cambridge: University Press, 1974), 61–123. 8. Merle Lipton, Capitalism and Apartheid. South Africa, 1910–84 (Aldershot: Gower, and Temple, Smith, 1985). 9. John M.  Kline, “Business Codes and Conduct in a Global Political Economy,” Global Codes of Conduct: An Idea Whose Time Has Come, ed. Oliver F. Williams (Notre Dame, Ind.: University Press, 2002), 40. 10. David Duncan, We are Motor Men. The Making of the South African Motor Industry (Caithness: Whittles Publishing, 1997), 64–69. 11. Manfred F. R. Kets de Vries and Elizabeth Florent-Treacy, The New Global Leaders. Richard Branson, Percy Barnevik, and David Simon (San Francisco, Calif: Jossey-Bass, 1999), xvi. 12. Kline, “Business Code,” 47. 13. Jan Eckel, “Vieldeutige Signatur. Menschenrechte in der Politik des 20. Jahrhunderts,” Das 20. Jahrhundert vermessen. Signaturen eines vergangenen Zeitalters, eds. Martin Sabrow and Peter Ulrich Weiß (Göttingen: Wallstein, 2017), 293. 14. Hans Sjögren, “Welfare capitalism: the Swedish economy, 1850–2005,” Creating Nordic Capitalism: The Business History of a Competitive Periphery, eds. Susanna Fellman et  al. (Basingstoke: Hampshire, 2008), 22–74; Werner Abelshauser, Deutsche Wirtschaftsgeschichte. Von 1945 bis zur Gegenwart (Bonn: Bundeszentrale für Politische Bildung, 2011). 15. Sellström; Vol 2, 81–86; Håkan Thörn, “Nordic Support to The Liberation Struggle in Southern Africa - Between Global Solidarity and National SelfInterest,” Southern African Liberation Struggles. Contemporaneous Documents 1960–1994 Countries and Regions outside SADC & International Organisations, Vol. 9, eds. Arnold J.  Temu and Joel das N. Tembe (Dar-Es-Salam: Mkuki na Nyota Publishers, 2014), 2–38. 16. Peter Meyns, Cooperation without Change. The Foreign Policy of the Federal Republic of Germany in Southern Africa (Bonn, Friedrich-Ebert-­Stiftung, 1987); Rock, Macht. 17. Thörn, “Nordic Support,” 19.

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18. Meddelande Olle Wärneby till SMD L.  Johansson, Svar om Sydafrika, 11.9.1973, in: Landsarkivet Göteborg, CO267 Svenska Kullager Fabriken F19 A:2. 19. Rock, Macht, 155–6. 20. Fifth Report of the Expenditure Committee, Session 1973–74: Wages and conditions of African workers employed by British firms in South Africa. Ordered by The House of Commons to be printed 22 January 1974, London reprinted 1975. 21. The enquiries were from the Ekumisken Nämnd (Church), University Gothenburg, Socialist Youth Sweden (SSU) and the Sveriges Industriförbundet. See Axel Iveroth/Sveriges Industrieförbundet till VD i samtliga börsnoterade svenska industriföretag, 12.7.1973, in: Landsarkivet Göteborg, CO267 Svenska Kullager Fabriken F19 A:2. 22. Code of practice for Swedish business operations in South Africa, issued by the Federation of Swedish Industries, 11.6.1974, in: Landsarkivet Göteborg, CO267 Svenska Kullager Fabriken F19 A:1. 23. Ǻke Magnusson, Swedish Investments in South Africa (Uppsala: The Scandinavian Institute of African Studies Research Report No. 23, 1974), 47. 24. Kommittédirektiv (Dir 1977:90), Utredning om förbudsåtgärder från svensk sida med avseende på kapitalexport till Sydafrika och Namibia i samband med svenska investeringar där, 7.7.1977, in: Riksarkivet, YK 3099 Sydafrikautredningen 1. 25. It was called Sydafrika-lag (South Africa Act). Sellström, Vol. 2, 481–491. 26. ANC, 30.11.1977 Submission on the Question of Foreign Investment in South Africa, in: Riksarkivet, YK 3099 Sydafrikautredningen 2. 27. Hans-Göran Myrdal an Sten Niklasson, 21.3.1978 (Translation), in: Landsarkivet, CO267 Svenska Kullager Fabriken, F19 A:1. 28. See the record of a meeting between the committee and representatives of companies: Arbetsanteckningar från överläggning med företagsrepresentanter, 3.3.1978, in: Riksarkivet, YK 3099 Sydafrikautredningen 1. 29. Svensk författningssamling: Förordning om förbud mot investeringar i Sydafrika och Namibia, 7.6.1979, in: Landsarkivet Göteborg, CO267 Svenska Kullager Fabriken, F19 A:5. 30. SKF Present Position, 2.2.1979, in: Landsarkivet Göteborg, CO267 Svenska Kullager Fabriken, F19 A:9. 31. Dale Campkin-Smith to Senior Executives, 13.2.1979, in: Landsarkivet Göteborg, CO267 Svenska Kullager Fabriken, F19 A:9. 32. Dale Campkin-Smith to Olle Wärneby, 19.2.1979, in: Landsarkivet Göteborg, CO267 Svenska Kullager Fabriken, F19 A:9. 33. Näringslivets Internationella Råd, Sydafrika och Svensk Näringsliv (Stockholm, 1983).

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34. Extracts of Minutes of Cabinet Meeting 1 November 1984, in: Archiv für alternatives Schrifttum AAB.II.1985:48 SF. 35. Ibid. 36. Jonas Sjölanger, “Metall och den internationella solidaritet,” Ett nytt sätt och tänka och handla. Svenska Metallindustriarbetareförbundet 1982–2005, eds. Lars Berggreen et al. (Stockholm: Tiden-Barnängen tryckerier, 2017), 630; Sellström, Vol. 2, 477–481. 37. Eddie Webster, “The Independent Black Trade Union Movement in South Africa. A Challenge to Management”, in A Question of Survival. Conversations with Key South Africans, eds. Michel Albeldas and Alan Fischer (Johannesburg: Jonathan Ball Publishers, 1987), 21–29. 38. Statement 1985-09-01 by Swedish enterprises with subsidiaries in South Africa, in: Landsarkivet Göteborg, CO 267 SKF F19 A:9. 39. Circular Letter to all SKF companies, Lars G.  Malmer, Public Affairs Director, 30.8.1988, in: Landsarkivet Göteborg, CO 267 SKF F19 B:13. 40. American companies had to withdraw from South Africa after Congress mandated this in a law in 1986. Ford, for example, sold its plant to a trust of employees. Sethi and Williams, Economic Imperatives, 139–40. 41. Fifth Report from the Expenditure Committee, Session 1973–74: Wages and conditions of African workers employed by British firms in South Africa. Ordered by The House of Commons to be printed 22nd January 1974, London reprinted 1975, 98–102. 42. Kleine Anfrage der Abgeordneten Frau von Bothmer u.a., Deutscher Bundestag, Drucksache 7/448, 5.4.1973, Sachgebiet 80; see also Rock, Macht, 157–9. 43. Antwort der Bundesregierung auf die Kleine Anfrage der Abgeordneten Frau von Bothmer u.a., Deutscher Bundestag, 7. Wahlperiode, Drucksache 7/484, 25.4.1973, Sachgebiet 80. 44. E.G.  Blohm to G.  Prinz, 15.11.1971, in: Unternehmensarchiv VW, 174/627/1. 45. Gunther J.  Hermann, Apartheid als ökumenische Herausforderung. Die Rolle der Kirche im Südafrikakonflikt (Frankfurt a.M.: Lembeck, 2006), 131–146. 46. On the links during National Socialism, see the old but still fundamental Albrecht Hagemann, Südafrika und das ‘Dritte Reich’. Rassenpolitische Affinität und machtpolitische Rivalität (Frankfurt/New York: Campus, 1989). 47. For example, Kurt Lotz, CEO of Volkswagen from 1967 to 1971, was a member. He resigned in 1971, but still regarded the DSAG as an important political player. Kurt Lotz to Dr Graf Dönhoff, Deutsch-Südafrikanische Gesellschaft ev. in Wissen, 19.10.1972, in: Unternehmensarchiv VW, 69/375/1.

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48. This is the conclusion of a survey of companies: F.  Wagenaar, “Social responsibility: The changing role of business in South Africa,” South African Journal of Business Management 10, no. 2 (1979): 93–100. On business in South Africa in general, see: Anthony Sampson, Black & Gold: Tycoons, Revolutionaries and Apartheid (London, Hodder & Stoughton, 1987). 49. An extremely positive drawing-account of the success of the Sullivan principles is: Sethi and Williams, Economic Imperatives, passim. 50. VLR I Müller an Herrn Minister [Genscher], Betr.: Europäische Politische Zusammenarbeit, 1.9.1977, in: Politisches Archiv Auswärtiges Amt, Zwischenarchiv 121,380. 51. Leiterin der Abteilung V, Steeg, to Minister [Friderichs], Bonn, 2.9.1977, in: Politisches Archiv Auswärtiges Amt, Zwischenarchiv 121,380. 52. BDI-Hauptgeschäftsführung (Dr. Mann und Steves) to Bundesminister des Auswärtigen Hans-Dietrich Genscher, 16.9.1977, in: Politisches Archiv Auswärtiges Amt, Zwischenarchiv 121,380. 53. Martin Holland, The European Community and South Africa. European Political Co-operation under Strain (London: Oxford University Press, 1988), 5. 54. Erklärung der Presse-Abteilung der südafrikanischen Botschaft: Südafrika begrüßt EG-Kodex, Bonn, 21.9.1977, in: Politisches Archiv Auswärtiges Amt, Zwischenarchiv 121,380. 55. Holland, European Community, 33–4. 56. Koerber an Avenarius, 16.3.1979, in: Unternehmensarchiv BMW, UA 1996–1 Berichte über Südafrika. 57. See for example: Bericht zur Lage der schwarzen Arbeitnehmer von BMW Südafrika im Vergleich zu den von der EG aufgestellten Regeln  – März 1979, in: Bundesarchiv Koblenz, B 102, 212,886. 58. Pelikan AG to Bundeswirtschaftsministerium Abt. V, 8.5.1979, in: Bundesarchiv Koblenz, B 102, 212,886. 59. VW in Südafrika. Ein Report, Veröffentlichung der Volkswagen AG, Wolfsburg 1975 (Text: Thilo Koch), in: UAVW, 174 /1936/11. 60. Ibid.; Toni Schmücker und Peter Frerk (VW-Vorstand) to Eugen Loderer, 15.9.1978, in: UNISA, Hesse-Versamelig EG. Blohm, Volkswagen of SA, Correspondence between EG. Blohm and Volkswagen, Germany 1977–82. 61. Toni Schmücker to Bundesaußenminister Hans-Dietrich Genscher, 23.3.1978, in: UNISA, Hesse-Versamelig EG. Blohm, Volkswagen of SA, Correspondence between EG. Blohm and Volkswagen, Germany 1977–82. 62. Bundesaußenminister Hans-Dietrich Genscher to Toni Schmücker, 28.4.1978, in: UNISA, Hesse-Versamelig EG. Blohm, Volkswagen of SA, Correspondence between EG. Blohm and Volkswagen, Germany 1977–82.

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63. Deutsches Konsulat Windhuk to Auswärtiges Amt, 18.7.1973, in: Bundesarchiv Koblenz, B 102/212872. 64. See the correspondence in: Rigsarkivet YK 3099, Sydafrikautredningen 4 Företagsuppgifter B. 65. Botschaft Pretoria to Auswärtiges Amt, 12.3.79, Fernschreiben an 422, in: Politisches Archiv des Auswärtigen Amtes, Zwischenarchiv 121,383. 66. Lipton, Capitalism, 62–5. 67. See Eugen Loderer, ed., Metallgewerkschaften in Südafrika (Köln: Bund-­ Verlag, 1983); Michael Kittner, “Arbeitsbeziehungen in Südafrika und die Forderung nach Mindeststandards in deutschen Tochterunternehmen,” Gewerkschaftliche Monatshefte Nr. 8, 1988, 490–499. 68. Südafrikanische Gewerkschafter zu Gast in Wolfsburg, in: Autogramm Nr. 11, (13, 1.11.1983). 69. Merle Lipton, Liberals, Marxists, and Nationalists. Competing Interpretations of South African History (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), 89. 70. BMW Presse Information, 6.3.1988: Südafrika-Bericht 1. Juli 1987 bis 30. Juni 1988, in: Unternehmensarchiv BMW. 71. Quotes from: Arbeitsbeziehungen und Arbeitsmarkt in Südafrika in den 80er Jahren, Vortragsreihe für Obere Führungskräfte des BMW Konzerns, Prof. Nicholas Everhardus Wiehahn, in: BMW-Archiv, UA 2000–1 [Verhaltenskodex Südafrika]. 72. Jahresbericht 1986, hg. von der Deutsch-Südafrikanischen Kammer für Handel und Industrie, Johannesburg 1986, S. 7. 73. Liesel Quambusch, “Warum eigentlich Verhaltenskodizes?,” Report Nr. 3, South-African-German Chamber of Commerce and Industry, (1987), 8. 74. Social democrats and liberals ruled the Federal Republic of Germany from 1969 to 1982, followed by a conservative-liberal coalition. From 1976 to 1982, Sweden was ruled by a conservative coalition; social democrats ruled before and after. 75. Lipton, Capitalism, 6. 76. Webster, “The Independent Black Trade Union Movement,” 1–9.

References Abelshauser, Werner. Deutsche Wirtschaftsgeschichte. Von 1945 bis zur Gegenwart. Bonn: Bundeszentrale für Politische Bildung, 2011. Bromberger, Norman. “Economic Growth and Political Change in South Africa.” In South Africa: Economic Growth and Political Change. With Comparative Studies of Chile, Sri Lanka and Malaysia, edited by Adrian Leftwich, 61–123. Cambridge: University Press, 1974. Dubow, Saul. Apartheid 1948–1994. Oxford: University Press, 2014.

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Duncan, David. We are Motor Men. The Making of the South African Motor Industry. Caithness: Whittles Publishing, 1997. Eckel, Jan. “Vieldeutige Signatur. Menschenrechte in der Politik des 20. Jahrhunderts.” In Das 20. Jahrhundert vermessen. Signaturen eines vergangenen Zeitalters, edited by Martin Sabrow and Peter Ulrich Weiß, 284–304. Göttingen: Wallstein 2017. Hagemann, Albrecht. Südafrika und das ‚Dritte Reich‘. Rassenpolitische Affinität und machtpolitische Rivalität. Frankfurt/New York: Campus, 1989. Hermann, Gunther J. Apartheid als ökumenische Herausforderung. Die Rolle der Kirche im Südafrikakonflikt. Frankfurt a.M.: Lembeck, 2006. Hesse, Kurt. Wirtschaftswunder Südafrika. Düsseldorf: Droste, 1954. Holland, Martin. The European Community and South Africa. European Political Co-operation under Strain. London: Oxford University Press, 1988. Kets de Vries, Manfred F. R., and Elizabeth Florent-Treacy. The new global leaders. Richard Branson, Percy Barnevik, and David Simon. San Francisco: Jossey-­ Bass, 1999. Kittner, Michael. “Arbeitsbeziehungen in Südafrika und die Forderung nach Mindeststandards in deutschen Tochterunternehmen,” Gewerkschaftliche Monatshefte 8, 1988, 490–499. Kline, John M. “Business Codes and Conduct in a Global Political Economy.” In Global Codes of Conduct. An Idea Whose Time Has Come, edited by Oliver F. Williams, 39–56. Notre Dame: University Press, 2002. Lipton, Merle. Capitalism and Apartheid. South Africa, 1910–84. Aldershot: Gower, and Temple, Smith, 1985. Lipton, Merle. Liberals, Marxists, and Nationalists. Competing Interpretations of South African History. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007. Loderer, Eugen, ed. Metallgewerkschaften in Südafrika. Köln: Bund-Verlag, 1983. Magnusson, Ǻke. Swedish Investments in South Africa, Uppsala: The Scandinavian Institute of African Studies Research Report No. 23, 1974. Meyns, Peter. Cooperation Without Change. The Foreign Policy of the Federal Republic of Germany in Southern Africa (Analysen aus der Abteilung Entwicklungsländerforschung der Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung Nr. 129). Bonn: Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, 1987. Morgenrath, Birgit, and Gottfried Wellmer. Deutsches Kapital am Kap. Kollaboration mit dem Apartheidregime. Hamburg: Nautilus, 2003. Rock, Philipp. Macht, Märkte und Moral. Zur Rolle der Menschenrechte in der Außenpolitik der Bundesrepublik Deutschland in den sechziger und siebziger Jahren. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2010. Sampson, Anthony. Black & Gold: Tycoons, Revolutionaries and Apartheid. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1987. Saul, John S., and Patrick Bond. South Africa – The Present as History, From Mrs. Ples to Mandela & Marikana. Bognor Regis: James Currey: 2014.

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Sellström, Tor. Sweden and National Liberation in South Africa, two Volumes: Solidarity and Assistance 1950–1970. Uppsala: Nordiska Afrikainstitutet, 1999, Vol. 1; Solidarity and Assistance 1970–1994. Uppsala: Nordiska Afrikainstitutet, 2002, Vol. 2. Sethi, S. Prakash, and Oliver F. Williams. Economic Imperatives and Ethical Values in Global Business. The South African Experience and International Codes Today. Boston: Dordrecht, 2000. Sjögren, Hans. “Welfare capitalism: the Swedish economy, 1850–2005.” In Creating Nordic Capitalism: The Development of a Competitive Periphery, edited by Susanna Fellman et al., 22–74. Basingstoke: Hampshire, 2008. Sjölanger, Jonas. “Metall och den internationella solidaritet.” In Ett nytt sätt och tänka och handla. Svenska Metallindustriarbetareförbundet 1982–2005, edited by Lars Berggreen et  al., 593–651. Stockholm: Tiden-Barnängen tryckerier, 2017. Spiesser, Fritz and Heinrich Spiesser. Südafrika. “Weißen Mannes Land”. Haag/ Amper: Linck-Verlag, 1949. Thörn, Håkan. “Nordic Support to The Liberation Struggle in Southern Africa Between Global Solidarity and National Self-Interest.” In Southern African Liberation Struggles. Contemporaneous Documents 1960–1994 Countries and Regions outside SADC & International Organisations, Vol. 9, edited by Arnold J.  Temu and Joel das N.  Tembe, 2–38. Dar-Es-Salam: Mkuki na Nyota Publishers, 2014. Verheugen, Günter. Apartheid. Südafrika und die deutschen Interessen am Kap. Köln: Kiepenhauer & Witsch, 1986. Wagenaar, F. “Social Responsibility: The Changing Role of Business in South Africa.” South African Journal of Business Management 10, no. 3 (1979): 93–100. Webster, Eddie. “The Independent Black Trade Union Movement in South Africa. A Challenge to Management.” In A Question of Survival. Conversations with Key South Africans, edited by Michel Albeldas and Alan Fischer, 21–9. Johannesburg: Jonathan Ball Publishers, 1987.

Perceptions of Petroleum: The British Anti-­ apartheid Campaign Against Shell Jakob Skovgaard

Reflecting on the global effort to withdraw investment from South Africa and transnational corporations operating in the country, Lord Nicholas Stern, former Chief Economist and Senior Vice-President of the World Bank, pointed to ‘international divestment from apartheid South Africa’ as an example of a ‘revolution in moral and social attitudes’ and asserted that divestment changed ‘perceptions of what is morally and socially responsible behaviour by individuals, businesses, and governments’.1 In Britain, a notable manifestation of this transformation was the Anti-Apartheid Movement (AAM), which for decades worked for democratic transition in South Africa by (among other things) drawing public attention to British companies’ links to the apartheid government. From its inception in the late 1950s to the first democratic elections in South Africa in 1994, the AAM targeted companies with ties to South Africa in widely publicized consumer boycott campaigns. Their stated purpose was to compel the companies to withdraw their investments from South Africa in order to isolate the country economically and impel the

J. Skovgaard (*) Corporate Relations, Børns Vilkår, Copenhagen, Denmark © The Author(s) 2021 K. Andresen et al. (eds.), Apartheid and Anti-Apartheid in Western Europe, Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-53284-0_3

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authorities to introduce democratic reforms.2 ‘Nobody thought we’d end apartheid by bankrupting the regime’, Piers Telemacque, a former member of the National Union of Students (NUS), recently conceded, continuing, ‘It was about delegitimizing them, shifting public opinion, and ramping up political pressure’.3 The AAM focused on the social responsibility of private-sector actors; while the targeted companies already acknowledged their responsibilities towards their shareholders, the state and so on, the AAM sought to reinterpret corporate responsibilities to include social considerations through interaction (boycotting, engaging in dialogue, etc.) with the companies. This chapter examines the extent to which anti-apartheid activists contributed to altering Shell’s perception of its social responsibilities. Strategically, their decision to boycott the company accorded with Håkan Thörn’s claim that the boycott ‘seems to be a political strategy well suited for a phase of the globalization process in which increasingly mobile transnational corporations more and more easily escape the political control of states’.4 The boycott offered opportunities for mobilization and visibility and presented a simple means of expressing support for the anti-apartheid cause.5 The names of the precursors to the AAM, the Boycott Committee and the Boycott Movement, indicate the central role that anti-apartheid activists assigned the boycott. Yet, in the early days of British anti-­apartheid activism the Boycott Committee had stated, ‘the boycott in this country is essentially a gesture … No-one imagines this boycott will bring an unjust and detested system swiftly to an end’.6 Accordingly, the AAM said that boycotts should be seen within the context of calls for the total isolation of apartheid in all its international aspects – economic, diplomatic, military, sporting, cultural  – which are made by the leaders of the struggling black people of South Africa.7

Apartheid and the Social Responsibility of Companies According to the sociologist Gabriel Abend, ‘business ethics is a great area to empirically study public moral normativity’.8 In extending Abend’s claim, the sociologist Gay Seidman cites a journalist who argued that anti-­ apartheid efforts to compel companies to take an ethical stance were ‘based on Milton Friedman’s classic model of social responsibility, whereby

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external pressures on a corporation defined its societal obligations, not the moral instincts arising from within’.9 Thus, we can trace the conversion of moral indignation over the atrocities of apartheid into activists’ boycott of Shell, which did compel the company to reflect on its social responsibilities in accord with its assessment of how public moral norms had changed. ‘The history of social conflict between corporations and public-interest groups during the last thirty or more years’, the management scholars S. Prakash Sethi and Oliver F. Williams asserted in 2000, ‘is replete with instances in which corporations failed to appreciate the moral and ethical context within which emerging social conflicts were being framed’.10 According to the business scholar John M. Kline, among these instances, anti-apartheid consumer boycott campaigns were ‘pivotal’ in the increase in corporate social initiatives.11 During the first decades of apartheid, most transnational corporations in South Africa were hesitant to discuss their social responsibilities. According to Sethi and Williams, the reason was not that they were unmoved by the immorality of apartheid but that they were simply ‘adhering to the prevailing dogma of proper corporate conduct’.12 Thus, as George Champion, Chairman of Chase Manhattan Bank, explained in 1965, ‘we can’t be responsible for the social affairs of a country … Where there’s commerce and trade, we feel we should be part of it’.13 But Williams identifies a sizeable shift in attitudes beginning in the late 1970s, when he notes, ‘the implicit social contract between business and society was being rewritten’.14 This new development meant that companies ‘saw the necessity of factoring human rights into business decisions’.15 The writer and journalist Anthony Sampson argues that by the mid-­1980s South Africa had ‘become the new testing-ground for all the old arguments about the social responsibility of corporations’.16 In an address to the Business International Conference in London in 1988, Desmond Watkins, Director of Shell International, noted that ‘no current business problem is more complex than that of South Africa which, like an X-ray machine, shows up the complex interdependence of the structure beneath the skin of each business decision’.17

The Campaign Against Shell ‘Oil is often touted as the ideal economic weapon’, the sociologist David Rowe asserts, ‘because no modern economy can function without a stable supply of petroleum products’.18 The importance of foreign oil to the

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apartheid government motivated the plan to boycott Shell. The company had had a major presence in South Africa since the first barrels of Shell oil arrived in Cape Town in 1902. In 1907, Royal Dutch Shell was founded in the merger of the British Shell Transport and Trading Company and the Netherlands’ Royal Dutch Petroleum Company.19 In its early years in South Africa, Shell worked through its subsidiaries, like the British Imperial Oil Company SA (Ltd).20 In 1926, the Shell Company of South Africa Limited was registered in London.21 The first official call for oil sanctions against South Africa was issued at the Second Conference of Independent African States in June 1960.22 On 13 November 1961, an oil embargo was proposed by UN member states, and two years later a UN General Assembly resolution on Namibia pushed for an oil embargo against South Africa. In July 1964, the Organization of African Unity (OAU) made a similar call.23 These early calls indicate how crucial foreign oil was to South Africa’s economy.24 Throughout the 1970s, sporadic oil embargos were implemented.25 Coordinated anti-apartheid action against Shell began in the early 1970s, roughly the same time as the campaign against Barclays. At the centre of the interaction between the activists and Shell was the conflict between proponents of constructive engagement and divestment. The former believed that international engagement with South Africa would gradually improve conditions for its non-white population and thereby lead to socio-political transformation; the latter argued that complete withdrawal of foreign investment would force South Africa to abolish apartheid and introduce democracy. Dutch activists were the first to launch a campaign against Shell. Two of the main groups were the Working Group Kairos and the Shipping Research Bureau, which was founded by Kairos and the Holland Committee on Southern Africa. Kairos was founded in 1970, largely by members of Protestant churches, and sought to engage those churches in socio-political developments in Southern Africa.26 Founded in 1979, the aim of the Shipping Research Bureau was to conduct research and publish reports on South Africa’s oil imports after the end of Iranian exports due to the revolution. During the first half of the 1980s, the different national campaigns gradually expanded and plans were made for a more formalized international campaign against companies doing business in South Africa and Shell in particular. In 1984, representatives from the African National Congress (ANC) began a dialogue with the managers and directors of

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several oil companies operating in South Africa. The ANC also organized meetings with the various groups that had expressed an interest in participating in a campaign against Shell.27 There is some disagreement as to when the international campaign against the company began. Some historians say it was March 1985, when the presidents of the South West African People’s Organization (SWAPO) and the ANC issued a joint call for an international oil embargo against South Africa, while others say it began with the conference of the Maritime Unions against Apartheid in London in October 1985.28 However, few anti-apartheid groups engaged fully in the campaign before 1986–1987. Shortly after its annual general meeting (AGM) on 1 December 1985, the AAM entered into a collaboration with the British anti-apartheid group Embargo, which had been formed in late 1985 by the group Christian Concern for Southern Africa (CCSA).29 The group was a collective of ‘church, union, welfare rights and anti-apartheid activists dedicated to exposing how the evils of South Africa’s regime are sustained by a continual flow of oil and oil products’.30 Like the AAM, Embargo researched the role of British companies in selling oil to South Africa and campaigned for the British government, the European Economic Community (EEC) and the UN to ban oil deliveries.31 The two quickly decided to make Shell the target of their campaigns. At the start of their boycott, John Wilson, the chairman of Shell South Africa, said, ‘Strategically, one could not choose a better or bigger target’.32 The company was the largest non-American corporation in the world in terms of assets and the largest single investor in South Africa.33 However, its South African assets generated a mere 1 per cent of its global revenue, which indicated to the activists that they could compel Shell to terminate its operations there.34 Finally, there was the Barclays campaign: a pamphlet published by War on Want35 optimistically predicted that ‘an effective boycott against Barclays has forced it to disinvest; an equally effective boycott of Shell garages could have the same result’.36 The AAM made their case against Shell in a document entitled ‘10 Reasons to Boycott Shell’, which alleged that the company had received $200 million in ‘secret incentive payments by the South African government’ to violate the international oil embargo.37 Another reason was the fact that the company’s South African subsidiary was wholly owned by Royal Dutch Shell.38 Moreover, the subsidiary was legally obliged to supply the South African police and military with fuel and lubricants, and it operated in illegally occupied Namibia (and had been involved in breaking

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sanctions against Rhodesia in the late 1960s and 1970s).39 Finally, the document claimed that Shell paid some of its employees less than the minimum wage.40 The campaign effectively began on 21 March 1986, the anniversary of the Sharpeville and the Langa massacres, when AAM and Embargo sent an ultimatum to Shell’s board of directors stating that several national campaigns would be launched, starting with a month-long boycott in the summer of 1986, if Shell failed to announce its complete divestment by the end of its AGM.41 In a letter a few weeks later, Shell replied, ‘we strongly reject the charge that “Shell” is supporting apartheid’.42 At Shell’s AGM in May, Chairman Peter Holmes devoted ten minutes of his opening statement to South Africa.43 However, the company did not announce its divestment, and plans for the month-long boycott proceeded. In July, local anti-apartheid groups jointly published a Shell Shadow Report and picketed Shell stations and the company-sponsored British Grand Prix.44 A few months later, anti-apartheid groups from more than 20 countries signalled their support for the campaign against Shell. Summarizing Shell’s strategy from 1985 onwards, Erik van den Bergh of the Working Group Kairos noted that the company cautiously acknowledged that it had been too passive in pressing for democratic change in South Africa and said that it would be more active.45 Rather than acquiescing to the activists’ demand to disinvest, Shell would double down on its defence of the benefits of constructive engagement.46 Moreover, the company said that it would ‘isolate radical critics [of reform] as much as possible’ and continue its dialogue with moderates.47 In his keynote address at Shell South Africa’s Senior Staff Conference in August 1986, Wilson, the subsidiary’s chairman, cautioned, Shell’s position is not comfortable. The threat of disinvestment is real. It is important that everyone accepts that. It is important that every member of staff realizes that the survival of this company depends to some extent on their own commitment to the company’s stance.48

Though there had been sporadic anti-apartheid action against Shell in Britain for years, a sustained campaign was not mounted until early 1987, when a popular slogan optimistically announced, ‘1986 was the year of Barclays, 1987 will be the year of Shell’.49 Barclays’ announcement of disinvestment in late November 1986 allowed the movement, whose strategy was to conduct one campaign against a single company at a time, to direct

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its resources against Shell. To the AAM and Embargo, any action short of disinvestment seemed insufficient, and they heard Shell’s repeated statements that the boycott would not compel it to leave South Africa as ‘a challenge to continue’.50 Optimism ran high among activists in early 1987. A paper published in May that assessed the campaign’s early stages argued that the quick, enthusiastic response to the AAM’s second venture into the arena of secondary boycotting to secure disinvestment, viz. the launch of the ‘Boycott Shell’ campaign further demonstrated that, in the right conditions, such a boycott can give a clear focus, and a cutting edge, to a disinvestment campaign in a specific case.51

With decades of experience that included a few years of sporadic action against Shell, the AAM had developed a tactical repertoire. First, it planned to pressure the company through letters to its headquarters and the press.52 This tactic would include efforts to ‘hassle Shell management’ and keep the ‘profile of the campaign reasonably high’.53 ‘Pre-publicity’ was essential for protests at Shell stations, for it would ensure press coverage and more participants.54 It encouraged local groups to ‘try to consider any eye-catching stunts or publicity-generating material and angles which may occur locally’.55 Richard Tookey, Group Public Affairs Director for Shell International, warned management in June 1988 that ‘activist groups are adept at attracting wide international media attention to their causes’.56 The second major action against Shell involved urging individual and institutional shareholders, especially pension funds and local councils, to sell their shares and accompany the sale with a letter to the company condemning South African operations.57 As in the Barclays campaign, students also figured as an important source of protest. According to a company internal report, the ‘divestment movement on campuses was a sign of students’ frustration with their inability to directly pressure for change and of their desire to do “anything” they can to support the anti-­ apartheid movement’.58 The report concluded, ‘if the boycott captures the attention of students, Shell could face demonstrations and recruitment problems’.59 Moreover, a boycott was encouraged among individual consumers, organizations and institutions.60 Targeted bulk purchasers included local and health authorities and fleet operators.61 However, the ‘predominant activity that suggests itself for the Boycott of Shell’, according to a

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campaign document, ‘is that of picketing Shell station and leafleting passers-­by and customers’.62 In order to heighten the visibility of the picketing, large banners were sometimes suspended from motorway bridges; bumper stickers were produced and celebrities were invited to attend.63 According to the Australian Business Review Weekly, the Shell logo was ‘smeared by turning it into a politicized and hated symbol of apartheid’.64 The historian Stephen Sparks has recently proposed that the ‘posters, placards and banners targeting the Royal Dutch Shell oil company for its association with Apartheid may very well be the defining images of the anti-apartheid boycotts in toto’.65 In addition to the AAM, Embargo, End Loans to Southern Africa (ELTSA), War on Want and other protest and solidarity groups picketed Shell stations.66 According to one estimate, 200 local anti-apartheid groups regularly engaged in picketing, automobile processions and other forms of protest.67 Sean O’Donovan, the secretary of the Haringey anti-­ apartheid group in London, described how once when picketers were ‘outside Shell with our “Boycott Apartheid – Boycott Shell” banner and placards, very few cars went into the forecourt’.68 He continued, ‘Any drivers that did were handed a leaflet explaining Shell’s involvement with South Africa, this resulted in many of the drivers turning round immediately and leaving without buying any petrol’.69 Beyond activists’ planning, geopolitical events shaped the campaign. For instance, maintaining the international oil embargo was complicated since the UN General Assembly had passed non-binding resolutions and transnational companies could circumvent the EEC’s embargo in a number of ways. Persuading Shell to comply with the embargo was an uphill struggle since the company made it clear in a letter to activists that it did ‘not believe [it] is in place’.70 However, since Shell did abide by the restrictions put in place by the EEC and the Commonwealth, activists had to concentrate their efforts on the immorality, rather than the illegality, of investment in South Africa.71 Martin Day, Councillor of Joint Action Against Apartheid (JAAA), noted that Tookey, Shell’s public affairs director, had conceded, ‘if Shell had a choice, they would not go into South Africa now, but as they had been there for seventy years they would stay put’.72 In response to being targeted by the AAM’s boycott activists, the company claimed that Shell’s South African subsidiary was ‘financially self-sufficient’ and that its ‘physical assets cannot be removed’, which meant that it would continue operations under different ownership in the event of disinvestment.73 The

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company further contended that the British boycott would mostly impact the ‘small businessmen who are Shell dealers and licenses around the country, and their employees’.74 This prospect worried many participants, who felt that this would unjustly hurt British business-owners. To avoid this, the campaign focused on petrol stations owned by Shell as opposed to franchises.75 Lastly, the company allocated substantial resources to countering activists. Though Shell had occasionally engaged in dialogue with its critics, the company’s American subsidiary hired the consulting firm Pagan International based in Washington, D.C., which put together a 264-page document, entitled ‘The Neptune Strategy’, describing ways for the company to respond to the boycott.76

The Decline of the Campaign After a year, the AAM was still optimistic that the boycott would compel Shell to disinvest from South Africa. The protesters’ disruption of Shell’s AGM in October 1988 indicated that the campaign still had support and that it posed a problem for the company. Activists at the meeting reported that the first seven questions on the agenda pertained to apartheid and disinvestment and that many shareholders ‘left before the end in disgust at the predominance of South Africa and Namibia questions’.77 Assessing the economic impact of the campaign up to this point, activists claimed to have contributed to an estimated decrease in the company’s share of the British market of between 3.3 and 6.6 per cent.78 However, Shell disputed those figures in a letter to Embargo and contended that the ‘boycott has had no measurable effect’.79 But recognizing the possibility of the campaign’s success, Desmond Watkins, Director of Shell International, acknowledged that if the effect of the anti-apartheid pressure, boycotts, etc. were to bring about a position where a continuing investment in South Africa was to be or likely to be financially negative for the Group as a whole, with no probability of this position changing, then there would be a clear case for consideration of withdrawal on business grounds.80

‘So far’, he added, ‘that has not been the case’.81 Kairos’s Erik van den Bergh observed that activists’ ‘objectives were fixed; the strategy was extremely flexible’.82 He summarized Shell’s three foremost concerns about the campaign. First, the profitability of its South

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African subsidiary, though generating only about 1 per cent of total profits, was a powerful motive not to disinvest.83 Second, complying with the campaign’s demands, or even reaching a compromise with activists, could set a precedent and be an incentive for other groups to boycott Shell. Finally, the company was very protective of its ‘personnel and its corporate image’.84 As regards personnel, the president of Shell Nederland explained in an interview that he ‘spent one third of his time on the issue’ during a particularly hectic period.85 Such extensive distraction was not sustainable and was a persuasive argument for Shell to continue with its strategy to defeat the campaign as quickly as possible. In direct interaction and public debate, both the AAM and Shell insisted on its account of events. Shell emphasized the legality of its activities and its conviction about constructive engagement. The activists focused on what in the company’s conduct could be construed as illegal or immoral. The company replied that the ‘end justifies the means seems to be the underlying philosophy!’86 Frequent sabotage of Shell stations and threats of violence against Shell employees substantiated its criticism. The AAM and its collaborators repeatedly condemned such acts, but internal company documents show that it was constantly concerned about acts of violence.87 Though no exact reckoning exists, a Shell publication estimated that every week at the peak of the campaign there were approximately ten attacks on petrol stations, which number had fallen to 76 per year by 1991.88 Despite the campaign’s early success in attracting publicity and maintaining a dialogue with Shell, the activists’ resolve began to falter at the end of 1988. ‘As it became clear during 1988 that Shell was not about to pull out’, an internal AAM report states, ‘the question of how to sustain the campaign became increasingly important’.89 The extensive resources required to organize the Nelson Mandela 70th Birthday Tribute concert delayed the planning of the ‘Week of Action’ in November, which did not have the intended impact.90 A resolution passed at the AAM’s AGM in November committed it to stepping up local group action through: more pickets, greater efforts to shift bulk contracts, more pressure on community and arts groups not to accept Shell sponsorship, more and broader publicity about the boycott throughout the community.91

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Embargo proposed giving higher priority to the activities of local anti-­ apartheid groups and identifying new areas of vulnerability for Shell.92 In June 1989, the campaign’s leaders conceded that the ‘major challenge for the Shell Campaign in 1989 has been to sustain activity following the launch of the Campaign in 1987 and the intense activity throughout 1988’.93 They issued this acknowledgement in the wake of the protest at Shell’s AGM in May 1989, in which 50 activists had participated, more than in any previous protest.94 But despite so much support, the protest was overshadowed by an article in The Guardian on the same day criticizing the activists for ‘retaining the amateurism of student lobbies’.95 A few months later, a report on the Shell campaign to the AAM’s National Committee recommended expanding support for the campaign and instituting stricter quality control of its educational and campaigning material.96 However, the campaign had seriously ‘lost momentum’: no new material was produced for local groups for a couple of years, and the status meeting to reenergize the campaign that had been scheduled for late 1989 was postponed to early 1990.97 The principal reason for this loss of momentum was the election of De Klerk as President of South Africa in August 1989 and his announced plans to begin a transition to democracy. As a result, much anti-apartheid activism was put on hold in anticipation of Mandela’s release in February 1990 and further proclamations about the abolishment of the apartheid system. Actions against Shell planned for February 1990 were cancelled, and it was even suggested that the campaign was rapidly approaching ‘demobilization by default’.98 Though De Klerk’s election had an undeniable impact on sustaining the campaign, its activities had already begun to decline in the face of Shell’s unwavering commitment to its investment in South Africa and the AAM having overstretched itself. Shell’s AGM in May 1990 was unusual in that the company had agreed with the activists that they would have the first 30 minutes of the time set aside for questions. Shell intended this to prevent disruptions of the meeting and lessen the consequent hostility of shareholders.99 Nevertheless, the campaign continued to lose momentum and its activities gradually decreased. For its part, Shell claimed that the political changes in South Africa ‘vindicated’ its policy of constructive engagement.100 In May 1992, Embargo issued a press release commending Shell South Africa for its public support for an interim government and a ‘democratic base on which a new constitution can be built’.101 In concluding, however, Embargo’s David Crane emphasized, ‘companies like Shell could still do

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more to combat the devastating effects of apartheid and its legacies of poverty and injustice’.102 Donna Katzin, Director at the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility (ICCR), claimed that, despite its apparent failure, the boycott was really a ‘victory’.103 The success of the campaign, she argued, was the ‘boycott’s catalytic role in galvanizing the anti-apartheid movement and focusing its effective economic and psychological pressure on Pretoria at the height of the anti-apartheid movement’.104 Many national campaigns against Shell did generate considerable momentum for the anti-­ apartheid cause for a few years. However, though one should not underestimate the consequences that Shell’s disinvestment might have had on Pretoria, even its full-scale disinvestment in the very late 1980s might have been perceived as merely a late addition to the surge of disinvestment that had started a few years earlier. I suggest that other—perhaps farther-reaching and longer-lasting—implications of the British campaign against Shell surfaced in the post-apartheid preoccupation with ethical guidelines for multinational corporations. This is exemplified in the UN Global Compact and Shell’s own Society’s Changing Expectations project in 1996 and its report ‘Profits and Principles’ in 1998. The foundation of this progress was laid during the years of interaction between anti-­apartheid activists and the company.

Shell and Social Responsibility In 1976, the same year that the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) published its Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises, Shell developed its own internal guidelines. ‘Shell’s Statement of General Business Principles’ affirmed the company’s policy to always ‘act commercially, operating within existing national laws in a socially responsible manner, and avoid involvement in politics’.105 In 1978, the company began to include its socially oriented policies in its annual reports. In 1981, it added a ‘Shell in the Community’ section, which explicated the company’s progressive initiatives in South Africa.106 In May 1985, Wilson, Chairman of Shell South Africa, noted, the businessman can no longer say ‘I am a businessman and not interested in the vital social and political issues of our times and of our country.’ Business must assume these responsibilities and take the initiative.107

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He pointed to the Durban strikes in 1973 and the Soweto uprising in 1976 as defining events that prompted the business community to reconsider the extent to which ‘politics began to hurt business, and to adversely affect the return on investments’.108 The Shell South Africa Social Report 1985–1986 affirmed that the business community ‘commands great persuasive power, and can act as a stimulus, mediator and conciliator’.109 Wilson added that the ‘influence of the business community, and of foreign-owned companies in particular, must not be underestimated’.110 More specifically, Shell said that its subsidiary was a ‘channel through which international influence can be brought to bear on South African social and political mores’.111 Disinvestment, the company argued, would ‘obviously remove this channel’.112 Beginning in the mid-1980s, the company was openly critical of the Botha administration and even closed its offices on 16 June in commemoration of the Soweto uprising.113 It also introduced several social initiatives; offered to remunerate its employees with shares in the company and advertised on the front page of the Weekly Mail in support of a free press, the freedom of assembly and movement, and other democratic rights.114 Because the idea of a moral ‘licence to operate’ had become prominent during the two decades of anti-apartheid action against the company, Shell’s Public Affairs department paid particular attention to developments in what the public expected from the company’s commitment to socially responsible conduct.115 The business historian Keetie Sluyterman noted, ‘In 1972, reputation was considered necessary to enable Shell to operate, but by 1990 Shell was apparently supposed to need a public consent, permission to operate’.116 Thus, the campaign against Shell should be seen as a manifestation of the public’s recognition that its consent to do business with the South African regime was not sought. The Shell Statement of General Business Principles stated, ‘Shell South Africa has resolved to promote and actively contribute to the elimination of racial intolerance, unjust laws and unacceptable human rights practices’.117 However, in his explanation of this change in the company’s principles, Wilson conceded, ‘you would be justified in being highly skeptical and asking whether Shell’s change in direction is merely the result of external pressures, of the threat of sanctions and disinvestment, a reaction to the international boycott action against the group’.118 An internal note from Shell South Africa Public Affairs confirmed, ‘due to the increased pressure on Shell SA in respect of the Shell boycott and disinvestment it has been

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necessary to step up on our corporate advertising’.119 Asked to sum up Shell’s motivation for its new commitment to social responsibility in one word, Wilson responded, ‘survival’.120 Erik van den Bergh concluded that ‘Shell appeared to be prepared and able, when put under pressure, to adjust its policies on various levels’.121 This approach to the social responsibility of companies brings us back to Seidman’s claim (on pg. 2) that ‘external pressures on a corporation defined its societal obligations, not the moral instincts arising from within’.122 By demonstrating its recognition of ethical principles and social responsibility, Shell could deflect activists’ depictions of the company as engaged in immoral conduct and portray itself as a responsible actor. Consequently, Shell’s publications often construed the disinvestment debate between activists and the company as between advocates of two equally moral paths.

Conclusion A plausible explanation for historians’ lack of interest in the campaign is that it failed, at the height of popular support for the anti-apartheid cause, to achieve its stated aim and that it gradually dissolved outside of public view. It had no clear culmination that could be seen as the turning point in the company’s attitude towards its social responsibility. Rather, I argue that Shell was motivated to engage in socially responsible conduct by a combination of the campaign’s sustained pressure, the company’s concern about the campaign’s long-term negative effects on its image and growing international momentum in the mid- to late 1990s for transnational corporations to be socially responsible. Serious corporate policies of engagement with social issues were a novelty at the time of the campaign, and the boycott of Shell provides a fairly accurate glimpse into the impact of the public’s changing moral expectations of private-sector actors. As Desmond Watkins, Director of Shell International, made clear at the business conference ‘Business and South Africa: Reason and Responsibility’ in London in 1988, ‘those who stay are not only trying to run a business in a profitable manner but are also having to wrestle with issues of principle involving a whole range of ethical, human, legal and corporate dilemmas’.123 Thus, though the campaign against Shell failed to compel the company to disinvest from South Africa, I argue that because of its public visibility it contributed to the large-scale emergence of attention that both academics and managers pay to the social responsibilities of transnational

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corporations. In my view, much of the anti-apartheid movement’s legacy is its having helped to create a new public, business and political understanding of how companies should include social and moral issues in their decision-making. Like most other anti-apartheid activities, consumer boycott campaigns are a challenging area of historical research because of the intricate interplay of activist tactics, company responses, political opportunity structures and fluctuations in public support. The valuable insights into anti-­ apartheid activism that such study promises include a nuanced understanding of activists’ mobilization strategies, their strategic reasoning and how socio-political developments influence them. The study of anti-­ apartheid consumer boycotts will also bring us closer to understanding the moral ontology through which the activists conceived the anti-apartheid cause and their action against companies.

Notes 1. Nicholas H. Stern, Why Are We Waiting? The Logic, Urgency, and Promise of Tackling Climate Change (Cambridge, MA London: MIT Press, 2016), 314. 2. While the term disinvestment is commonly used to describe this phenomenon in the context of apartheid South Africa, the cited sources use the terms divestment and disinvestment interchangeably. 3. Piers Telemacque, “Whether It’s Apartheid or Fossil Fuels, Divestment Is on the Right Side of History,” The Guardian, April 27, 2015, https:// w w w. t h e g u a r d i a n . c o m / c o m m e n t i s f r e e / 2 0 1 5 / a p r / 2 7 / divestment-fossil-fuels-apartheid-barclays 4. Håkan Thörn, Anti-Apartheid and the Emergence of a Global Civil Society (Basingstoke et al.: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), 61. 5. In studying the AAM, I have drawn on activists’ documents, briefs and correspondences relating to their campaign strategies, reflections on methods and choices of corporate targets. The sources that disclose Shell’s perspective on the campaign include transcripts from shareholders’ meetings, discussion of policy at board meetings and management documents relating to apartheid and the call for disinvestment. For discussion of anti-apartheid activists’ use of the consumer boycott and the emerging corporate attention to the social responsibility of companies, N.  Craig Smith’s Morality and the Market: Consumer Pressure for Corporate Accountability presents an illuminating analysis in addition to an important insight into the prevalent perceptions of the late 1980s. See:

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N. Craig Smith, Morality and the Market: Consumer Pressure for Corporate Accountability (London: Routledge, 1990). 6. Christabel Gurney, “‘A Great Cause’: the Origins of the Anti-Apartheid Movement, June 1959–1960,” Journal of Southern African Studies 26, no. 1 (March 2000): 139. 7. “Campaign Briefing No. 1” by the AAM from February 1989: Bod.MSS. AAM 459. 8. Gabriel Abend, The Moral Background: An Inquiry into the History of Business Ethics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2014), 369. 9. Gay W.  Seidman, “Monitoring Multinationals: Lessons from the Anti-­ Apartheid Era,” Politics & Society 31, no. 3 (September 1, 2003): 392. 10. S. Prakash Sethi and Oliver F. Williams, Economic Imperatives and Ethical Values in Global Business: The South African Experience and International Codes Today (Boston; Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2000), 5. 11. Oliver F.  Williams, Global Codes of Conduct: An Idea Whose Time Has Come (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2000), 51. 12. Sethi and Williams, Economic Imperatives and Ethical Values, 13. 13. Gay W. Seidman, Beyond the Boycott, Labor Rights, Human Rights, and Transnational Activism (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2007), 50. 14. Ibid., 80. 15. Ibid. 16. Anthony Sampson, Black and Gold (New York: Pantheon Books, 1987), 27. 17. Address by Desmond Watkins (Director of Shell International) to the Business International Conference—international business conference held in London on 3 October 1988 entitled ‘Business and South Africa: Reason and Responsibility’, Bod.MSS.Afr.s. 2350/83. 18. David M.  Rowe, Manipulating the Market: Understanding Economic Sanctions, Institutional Change, and the Political Unity of White Rhodesia (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2001), 133. 19. Esther Hennchen, “Royal Dutch Shell in Nigeria: Where Do Responsibilities End?” Journal of Business Ethics 129, no. 1 (2015): 2, https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-014-2142-7 20. Ibid. 21. Ibid. 22. Richard Hengeveld and Jaap Rodenburg, Embargo: Apartheid’s Oil Secrets Revealed (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 1995), 11. 23. Neta C.  Crawford and Audie Klotz, How Sanctions Work: Lessons from South Africa (Basingstoke; New  York: Macmillan; St. Martin’s Press, 1999), 104.

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24. Enuga S. Reddy, “The United Nations and the Struggle for Liberation in South Africa,” in International Solidarity, The Road to Democracy in South Africa, Vol. 3, ed. SADET (Pretoria: SADET, 2008), 93. 25. Crawford and Klotz, How Sanctions Work, 104. 26. Hengeveld and Rodenburg, Embargo, 313. 27. Ibid., 106–9. 28. Ibid., 106; AAM document on the Shell campaign: LMA/4421/01/02/002; paper entitled “Royal Dutch/Shell: The Campaign So Far”: Bod.MSS.Afr.s. 2350/76 (67H). 29. Paper entitled “Why Royal Dutch/Shell?”: Bod.MSS.Afr.s. 2350/76 (67H). 30. Minutes of an Embargo meeting on 15 November 1985: Bod.MSS.Afr.s. 2350/67; Document entitled “Embargo!”: Bod.MSS.Afr.s. 2350/66. 31. Embargo in correspondence with ELTSA: Bod.MSS.Afr.s. 2350/76 (67H). 32. Keynote address by John R. Wilson at the Shell South Africa Senior Staff Conference on 4–5 August 1986 entitled “A Change from Shell Perspective”: Bod.MSS.Afr.s. 2350/83. 33. Minutes from the Thirty-Ninth Meeting of the World Council of Churches on 10–20 August 1988: Bod.MSS.AAM 1743. 34. Martin Holland, The European Community and South Africa: European Political Co-Operation under Strain (London: Pinter Publishers, 1988), 61. 35. War on Want is an anti-poverty charity based in the UK. 36. Pamphlet entitled “Formula for Apartheid”: WoW, box number 193, acc. no. 00862. 37. Paper entitled “10 Reasons to Boycott Shell”: Bod.MSS.Afr.s. 2350/76 (67H). 38. Ibid. 39. Ibid. 40. Ibid. 41. AAM document on the Shell campaign: LMA/4421/01/02/002; Shell Shadow Report 1987: Bod.MSS.Afr.s. 2350/99; Paper entitled “Royal Dutch/Shell: The Campaign So Far”: Bod.MSS.Afr.s. 2350/76 (67H). 42. Letter from Shell to ELTSA on 18 April 1986: Bod.MSS.Afr.s. s.2350/97. 43. Shell AGM 15 May 1986: Bod.MSS.Afr.s. 2350/70 1/3. 44. Paper entitled “Royal Dutch/Shell: the Month of Boycott – July 1986”: Bod.MSS.Afr.s. 2350/76 (67H); Minutes from the Thirty-Ninth Meeting of the World Council of Churches on 10–20 August 1988: Bod. MSS.AAM 1743. 45. Hengeveld and Rodenburg, Embargo, 316. 46. Ibid.

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47. Ibid. 48. Keynote address by John R. Wilson at the Shell South Africa Senior Staff Conference on 4–5 August 1986 entitled “A Change from Shell Perspective”: Bod.MSS.Afr.s. 2350/83. 49. Internal report on UK Shell Campaign 1989 from 5 June 1989: Bod. MSS.Afr.s. 2350/4. 50. Brief by Sietse Bosgra entitled “Shell must set an example for European companies to leave South Africa” from January 1987: Bod.MSS. AAM 1751. 51. Paper entitled “Targetting of Companies Collaborating with Apartheid: The Role of Boycotts in the Campaign for Sanctions & Disinvestment” from May 1987: Bod.MSS.AAM 1681. 52. Campaign briefing entitled “No Fuel for Apartheid”: Bod.MSS. AAM 452. 53. Briefing entitled “Shell and South Africa: A Campaign Briefing”: Bod. MSS.AAM 1734. 54. AAM document on Shell: LMA/4421/01/02/002. 55. Ibid. 56. Extracts from June 1988 talk to Shell staff by Richard Tookey (Group Public Affairs Director at Shell International): Bod.MSS.Afr.s. 2350/72. 57. Campaign Briefing entitled “No Fuel for Apartheid”: Bod.MSS. AAM 452. 58. Intelligence Assessment report for Shell: Bod.MSS.AAM 1744. 59. Ibid. 60. Campaign Briefing entitled “No Fuel for Apartheid”: Bod.MSS. AAM 452. 61. Minutes from the Thirty-Ninth Meeting of the World Council of Churches on 10–20 August 1988: Bod.MSS.AAM 1743. 62. Briefing entitled “Shell and South Africa: A Campaign Briefing”: Bod. MSS.AAM 1734. 63. Document entitled “Making the Boycott Bite: Shell Campaign”: Bod. MSS.AAM 1738; AAM document on Shell: LMA/4421/01/02/002. 64. Business Review Weekly from 11 December 1987: Bod.MSS.Afr.s. 2350/67. 65. Stephen Sparks, “Crude Politics: The ANC, the Shipping Research Bureau and the Anti-Apartheid Oil Boycott,” South African Historical Journal 69, no. 2 (2017): 253. 66. Embargo meeting minutes from 5 May 87: Bod.MSS.Afr.s. 2350/67. 67. Minutes from the Thirty-Ninth Meeting of the World Council of Churches on 10–20 August 1988: Bod.MSS.AAM 1743. 68. Press release by the AAM entitled “Follow-up on London-wide day of action against Shell Saturday 6 May 1989”: Bod.MSS.AAM 1735.

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69. Ibid. 70. Letter by J.  Claxton, Company Secretary of Davy Corporation, to D. Craine of Embargo, ELTSA, on 2 September 1987: Bod.MSS.AAM miscellaneous notes on the oil campaign. 71. Ibid. 72. Undated letter from Martyn Day to other councils: Bod.MSS.AAM 768. 73. Shell UK report from 23 January 1987: Bod.MSS.Afr.s. 2350/78. 74. Ibid. 75. Minutes from the Thirty-Ninth Meeting of the World Council of Churches on 10–20 August 1988: Bod.MSS.AAM 1743. 76. “Shell Plans Revealed to Counteract Boycott,” in Ecumenical Press Service from October 1987: Bod.MSS.Afr.s. 2350/100. 77. Activist report on the Shell AGM 1988: Bod.MSS.Afr.s. 2350/67. 78. Press release entitled “UK Shell Boycott Bites as Sales Drop” from 23 March 1988: Bod.MSS.Afr.s. 2350/69; “Shell Supports Apartheid: 1988 Update:” Bod.MSS.Afr.s. 2350/99. 79. Letter from Shell to David Crane from Embargo on 4 August 1988: Bod. MSS.Afr.s. 2350/75 (61H). 80. Address by Desmond Watkins (Director of Shell International) to the Business International Conference in London on 3 October 1988 entitled “Business and South Africa: Reason and Responsibility”: Bod.MSS. Afr.s. 2350/83. 81. Ibid. 82. Hengeveld and Rodenburg, Embargo, 314. 83. Ibid., 321. 84. Ibid., 314. 85. Ibid. 86. Letter to Robert Hughes from Shell on 8 August 1989: Bod.MSS. AAM 1741. 87. Intelligence Assessment report for Shell: Bod.MSS.AAM 1744. 88. Hengeveld and Rodenburg, Embargo, 318. 89. Internal Report on UK Shell Campaign 1989–90: Bod.MSS.AAM 1738. 90. Ibid. 91. Resolution for 1988 Anti-Apartheid Movement AGM: Bod.MSS.Afr.s. 2350/97. 92. Motions submitted by Embargo to the AGM of the AAM on 26–27 November 1988: LMA/4421/01/01/001. 93. Internal report on UK Shell Campaign 1989 from 5 June 1989: Bod. MSS.Afr.s. 2350/4. 94. Internal Report on UK Shell Campaign 1989–90: Bod.MSS.AAM 1738. 95. Ibid.

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96. Report to National Committee on Shell Campaign on 9 September 1989: Bod.MSS.AAM 1738. 97. Internal Report on UK Shell Campaign 1989–90: Bod.MSS.AAM 1738. 98. Ibid. 99. Financial Times on 18 May 1990: Bod.MSS.Afr.s. 2350/67. 100. Ibid. 101. Press release by Embargo on 13 May 1992 entitled “Support for interim government welcomed … Shell could still do more”: Bod.MSS.Afr.s. 2350/69. 102. Ibid. 103. Hengeveld and Rodenburg, Embargo, 327. 104. Ibid. 105. Thomas Henry Bingham Grande-Bretagne and Stephan Marius Gray, Report on the Supply of Petroleum and Petroleum Products to Rhodesia (London: H.M. Stationery Office, 1978), 217–18. 106. Keetie Sluyterman, A History of Royal Dutch Shell, Vol. 3 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 320. Annual Report by the Royal Dutch Petroleum Company 1981: Shell archives. 107. Shell South Africa Social Report 1985-86: Bod.MSS.Afr.s. 2350/78. 108. Ibid. 109. Ibid. 110. Ibid. 111. Confidential management brief from Shell entitled “South Africa – the Case against Disinvestment” from May 1987: Bod.MSS.AAM 1740. 112. Ibid. 113. Sampson, Black and Gold, 206. 114. Lee Jones, Societies Under Siege. Exploring How International Economic Sanctions (Do Not) Work (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), 76. 115. Sluyterman, A History of Royal Dutch Shell, Vol. 3, 334. 116. Ibid. 117. Ibid. 118. Ibid. 119. Hengeveld and Rodenburg, Embargo, 310. 120. Keynote address by John R. Wilson at the Shell South Africa Senior Staff Conference on 4–5 August 1986 entitled “A Change from Shell Perspective”: Bod.MSS.Afr.s. 2350/83. 121. Hengeveld and Rodenburg, Embargo, 311. 122. Seidman, “Monitoring Multinationals: Lessons from the Anti-Apartheid Era,” 392. 123. Address by Desmond Watkins (Director of Shell International) to the Business International Conference in London on 3 October 1988 entitled “Business and South Africa: Reason and Responsibility”: Bod.MSS. Afr.s. 2350/83.

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References Abend, Gabriel. The Moral Background: An Inquiry into the History of Business Ethics. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2014. Crawford, Neta C., and Audie Klotz. How Sanctions Work: Lessons from South Africa. Basingstoke; New York: Macmillan; St. Martin’s Press, 1999. Grande-Bretagne, Thomas Henry Bingham, and Stephan Marius Gray. Report on the Supply of Petroleum and Petroleum Products to Rhodesia. London; H.M. Stationery Office, 1978. Gurney, Christabel. “‘A Great Cause’: the Origins of the Anti-Apartheid Movement, June 1959–1960.” Journal of Southern African Studies 26, no. 1 (March 2000): 123–144. Hengeveld, Richard, and Jaap Rodenburg. Embargo: Apartheid’s Oil Secrets Revealed. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 1995. Hennchen, Esther. “Royal Dutch Shell in Nigeria: Where Do Responsibilities End?” Journal of Business Ethics 129, no. 1 (2015): 1–25. https://doi. org/10.1007/s10551-014-2142-7. Holland, Martin. The European Community and South Africa: European Political Co-Operation under Strain. London: Pinter Publishers, 1988. Jones, Lee. Societies Under Siege. Exploring How International Economic Sanctions (Do Not) Work. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015. Klinghoffer, Arthur Jay. Oiling the Wheels of Apartheid: Exposing South Africa’s Secret Oil Trade. Boulder: L. Rienner, 1989. Reddy, Enuga S. “The United Nations and the Struggle for Liberation in South Africa.” In International Solidarity. The Road to Democracy in South Africa, Vol. 3, edited by SADET, 41–140. Pretoria: SADET, 2008. Rowe, David M. Manipulating the Market: Understanding Economic Sanctions, Institutional Change, and the Political Unity of White Rhodesia. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2001. Sampson, Anthony. Black and Gold. New York: Pantheon Books, 1987. Seidman, Gay W. Beyond the Boycott, Labor Rights, Human Rights, and Transnational Activism. New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2007. Seidman, Gay W. “Monitoring Multinationals: Lessons from the Anti-Apartheid Era.” Politics & Society 31, no. 3 (September 1, 2003): 381–406. Sethi, S. Prakash, and Oliver F. Williams. Economic Imperatives and Ethical Values in Global Business: The South African Experience and International Codes Today. Boston; Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2000. Sluyterman, Keetie. A History of Royal Dutch Shell, Vol. 3. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007. Smith, N.  Craig. Morality and the Market: Consumer Pressure for Corporate Accountability. London: Routledge, 1990.

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Sparks, Stephen. “Crude Politics: The ANC, the Shipping Research Bureau and the Anti-Apartheid Oil Boycott.” South African Historical Journal 69, no. 2 (2017): 251–64. Stern, Nicholas H. Why Are We Waiting? The Logic, Urgency, and Promise of Tackling Climate Change. Cambridge, MA; London: MIT Press, 2016. Thörn, Håkan. Anti-Apartheid and the Emergence of a Global Civil Society. Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006. Williams, Oliver F. Global Codes of Conduct: An Idea Whose Time Has Come. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2000.

Shopping Against Apartheid: Consumer Activism and the History of AA Enterprises (1986–1991) Benjamin Möckel

What does it mean to say that a protest movement has taken hold within a society? How can we determine whether its ideas are shared by a large number of supporters? We might first examine demonstrations and other gatherings that attract media attention or protest letters sent to politicians or corporations. But if we take everyday practices of support and dissent into account, we can also look at some more mundane activities. Support for the Anti-Apartheid Movement (AAM), for example, could also have manifested itself in using a coffee mug portraying a South African political prisoner, wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with an anti-apartheid slogan and listening to Angolan pop music released on an anti-apartheid record label. Such practices are common for supporters of solidarity movements. I propose to call them—with no disparaging intention—‘banal solidarities’.1 They are not centred around pamphlets, reports or theoretical debates but

B. Möckel (*) University of Cologne, Cologne, Germany e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2021 K. Andresen et al. (eds.), Apartheid and Anti-Apartheid in Western Europe, Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-53284-0_4

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involve consumer products, entertainment and popular culture. And while demonstrations and other forms of protest rely on activists who are sufficiently committed to a cause to support it publicly, banal solidarities allow people to show their support in very low-key, private ways. It is these mundane and ephemeral practices of support that I discuss in this chapter. In particular, I examine what I call ‘moral merchandise’. This consists in consumer products that are imbued with moral or political meaning and whose use connects a political movement’s cause with the everyday lives of its participants and supporters. Moral merchandise has a long tradition. The abolitionist movement communicated its message on plates, bowls, spoons and medallions; participants in the labour movement and its supporters signified their affiliation with similar products; since at least the nineteenth century, people have shown their support for political parties and their candidates with campaign buttons and other paraphernalia, and British consumers in the 1930s were asked to ‘Buy British’ to help the national economy.2 Since at least the 1960s, NGOs and social movements have also made extensive use of moral merchandise. I consider three ways in which the study of moral merchandise contributes to our knowledge of social and political protest movements and activism. First, since movements often produce such objects to raise funds, the study of moral merchandise can shed light on their financial side, a dimension that research often overlooks, despite the central importance that archival records universally confirm. Second, moral merchandise illustrates movements’ material culture, which is as important as their visual culture of pamphlets, flyers and posters, and, thus, its study takes what have recently been called ‘disobedient objects’ seriously.3 Third, these objects can inform us about the alltagsgeschichte of movements. For, while demonstrations are by their nature exceptional events, moral merchandise fits into the everyday routines of supporters with no conscious thought about the reasons for their support. For this reason, study of the use of these objects incorporates the large number of supporters who do not become deeply involved in movements but participate at their margins. Thus, moral merchandise is multifaceted, and social movements use such objects in manifold ways. Therefore, one of my aims is to show that these forms of banal solidarity are not actually banal. To do this, I analyse the history of AA Enterprises (AAE), a co-operative founded in London in 1986 that sold anti-apartheid merchandise as well as handicrafts and everyday items from the Frontline States on behalf of the AAM. The first section outlines the ideas of those who were behind this enterprise and the

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steps they took to found it and integrate it into the AAM. The second section contextualizes AAE in two ways: first, within the history of the AAM’s use of consumer products as means of political protest; and, second, within the broader context of changes in how NGOs and social movements used consumer products and popular culture in their fundraising activities and public relations strategies in the second half of the 1980s. In the third section, I analyse in detail AAE’s products and how its mail-order catalogues gave them moral and political meaning. My main question is how AAE’s activists used its products to raise not only money but also awareness about South Africa, apartheid and the AAM.

The Founding of AA Enterprises Margaret Ling and Roger Harris, the founding directors of AAE, developed their first plans for a mail-order company to support the anti-­ apartheid struggle around 1985. Ling was born in 1948. She first came into contact with the AAM during her undergraduate studies at Oxford in the early 1970s.4 After moving to London, she joined a local AAM chapter. She volunteered as the group’s secretary, and from 1980 onwards she was the editor of Anti-Apartheid News, the AAM’s monthly newspaper. Roger Harris was born in London in 1955.5 His first contact with an anti-­ apartheid campaign was while working at a student union in the late 1970s, when he became involved in the AAM’s Boycott Barclays campaign.6 Thus, by 1985 Ling and Harris had been active supporters of the AAM for some time. According to the interviews that Håkan Thörn and David Shortland conducted with them for the Anti-Apartheid Movement Archives project, they also had some of the same motivations for setting up the company. Both thought that the AAM was not good at fundraising. They both wanted to develop a project that was independent of its relatively strict hierarchy. And both had developed an interest in the Frontline States when young through their travels and encounters with students and exiles from the region. In January 1986, Ling and Harris wrote a memorandum to the AAM about their ideas for the company, which they discussed with its leaders.7 They explained that the company was to ‘serve as a marketing outlet for Anti-Apartheid Movement goods and gifts’,8 and they emphasized that its two main objectives were, first, ‘to raise funds for the AAM and hence help to put its campaigning work on a more secure financial footing’ and,

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second, ‘to take the anti-apartheid boycott a stage further by promoting and marketing alternatives to South African and Namibian produce from the front line and neighbouring states, and from the ANC and SWAPO’.9 They also explained that the company would ‘generate publicity for the freedom struggle and hence for the AAM and its policies’.10 And it would ‘fulfil an important political role by contributing to a forward-looking, imaginative image for the AAM at a time of rapid expansion and change’ and ‘would also help to win support for the AAM from sectors of the British public who have as yet remained relatively untouched by more traditional campaigning approaches’.11 In their ‘General Principles’, a document attached to the memorandum describing the prospective company in more detail, Ling and Harris explicitly presented it as an enterprise that ‘will be run on strictly commercial lines, subject to usual marketplace criteria of profitability and risk’. That made independence from the AAM important. So, the company would have ‘a clear political identification with the anti-apartheid struggle and specifically with the Anti-Apartheid Movement’,12 but it would operate ‘as a legally separate and independent entity’.13 The pair highlighted the benefits of independence for the AAM. The company would increase its sales revenues. By taking the responsibility for ‘promotion, marketing, dispatch, invoicing, administration etc. away from the AAM’s headquarter staff’, it would leave its resources free for its campaigning activities. And by acquiring expertise in sales, market research and product design, it would assist it in developing new products.14 To start the company, Ling and Harris intended to apply for a starting grant from the London Borough of Camden, for which they would need a business plan and market research. By May 1986, they had put together a detailed ‘business plan and cash flow forecast for AAE’s first two years of commercial operation’ with the help of Popular Polling, a co-operative specialized in marketing and market research.15 The document is a fascinating example of how a social movement can translate its ideas into the economic language of consumer research. It stated that AAE was to be run ‘on strictly commercial lines’ as a company selling ‘a unique range of wares’,16 thereby recognizing a potential market in the widespread support for the anti-apartheid cause: ‘We believe that the AAM and its supporters constitute a largely untapped market for this approach and with the huge public support for the Anti-Apartheid Movement in evidence on all sides, we are convinced that now is the right time to launch our activities and our co-operative’.17 It then divided this ‘untapped market’ into

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four main consumer groups. There were ‘existing AAM purchasers’, who had already bought AAM merchandise but whom a commercial enterprise could much more efficiently target. Secondly, the AAM’s members (approximately 25,000 people) were the main target group: ‘No sustained consistent drive has yet been mounted nationally, with the necessary wide choice of appropriate goods, to service these members with fund-raising products’. This was also true of the third group, the ‘hundreds of thousands of AAM supporters’.18 Finally, there were people who, though not motivated by feelings of political solidarity, would be interested in the products: ‘If the goods we distribute and sell are of high quality relative to price, then this group will contribute significantly to our turnover and income’.19 About all four groups, Ling and Harris maintained, ‘we are confident of the widespread unmet demand for our future lines’. Translating a social movement into an untapped market and unmet demand might at first seem opportunistic. Was it appropriate to frame potential support for the anti-apartheid cause in such economic terms? Was this not a clear instance of the 1980s ‘commodification of dissent’?20 One should not pay too much attention to this business rhetoric. The terminology would have been required by the business-plan genre and the fact that the document was supposed to assure potential sponsors and investors about the project’s economic viability. Nevertheless, it is an interesting example of the decade’s professionalization of social movements, their subsequently greater emphasis on economic rationales and their growing reliance on external expertise. This is also true for a second document, almost 100 pages of market research conducted by a commercial consultancy firm in August 1986. To get a preliminary picture of the ‘untapped market’ that Ling and Harris believed they had identified, the consultants went to the AAM’s March for Freedom in London in June 1986 and conducted 500 interviews and questionnaires with participants, asking them, for example, about the newspapers and magazines they read and whether they had recently bought products from Oxfam’s or Traidcraft’s mail-order catalogues.21 At the time of this early research, AAE had already begun operations on a small scale. The company and the AAM had also already agreed upon their relationship. It was outlined in a contract between the two and a code of practice for a joint steering committee of representatives of both organizations.22 The contract recognized AAE as the AAM’s official marketing agent, giving it exclusive purchasing rights for some products and discounts for others, and granted the company permission to use the

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AAM’s name and logo for all of its sales.23 Additionally, it gave AAE access to member information that the AAM collected and allowed it to advertise its products in the AAM’s publications and newsletters. The AAM agreed to send current copies of AAE’s catalogue to all national members ‘at least once a year’ and to include them in its mailings to local AAM chapters and information packs for new members. Contrariwise, AAE would include ‘at least one item of current AAM publicity material’ in all of its shipments and other mailings. And all of the company’s publicity material would include the phrase ‘Recognized marketing agent for the Anti-Apartheid Movement’ as well as information on the organization’s ‘aims, objects and activities’.24 The contract also established a joint steering committee composed of two representatives of each party. The committee would meet quarterly to monitor the implementation of the contract,25 in particular, the sale of AAM products, the use of the AAM logo, publicity and promotional activities, finances and accounts, and AAE’s membership. Though they had not yet signed the contract, the two organizations agreed to most of its terms at a meeting in March 1986. Shortly afterwards, AAE published its first catalogue, a two-page leaflet offering T-shirts, an AAM coffee mug, a postcard set from Zimbabwe, ANC and SWAPO solidarity buttons, and cashews imported from Mozambique. The company published its first complete mail-order catalogue, with a much larger array of products, in September 1986.

Moral Merchandise and Ethical Consumption: Contextualizing AA Enterprises On the one hand, AAE might seem to have been a marginal and short-­ lived auxiliary of the AAM, a commercial subsidiary at the periphery of the AAM’s real activism. On the other hand, it is an interesting case of the transformation of anti-apartheid activism, and of NGOs and social and political movements in general, in the 1980s. I take up the former in the next section, where I discuss AAE’s business operations in more detail. In this section, I consider the latter, situating the company within the broader historical context by integrating AAE within the AAM’s long tradition of employing consumer products and linking that tradition to similar developments in other NGOs and social movements. Consumer products were important to the AAM from its beginning. Though its boycott of South Africa was primarily an expedient strategy for

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opposing apartheid, it closely linked that anti-apartheid campaign with consumers’ decisions. It therefore both sensitized people to how in their everyday lives they could be complicit in human rights violations in distant places and gave them an everyday way to protest apartheid. At the same time, the boycott showed the potential of consumer products as political objects and how they could be used to further a political agenda, ideas that the fair trade movement was exploring at the same time.26 Thus, consumer products were part of the material culture of anti-apartheid and human rights activism before the founding of AAE.27 For Margaret Ling, selling products from the Frontline States was the next logical step. In today’s terminology, it would transform the boycott into a buycott.28 But this step seemed so logical only because the AAM’s boycott campaign over the preceding three decades had made the link between everyday shopping and apartheid explicit. Firstly, the AAM’s numerous leaflets and other informational materials had made British consumers aware that buying South African products was a form of complicity with apartheid.29 So, it also made sense to think of anti-apartheid solidarity in terms of consumer practices. Secondly, the boycott had educated the AAM’s supporters to be aware of the producers and countries of origin of the products they bought. AAE would encourage this awareness with the products it was about to sell. Thirdly, the boycott had sensitized activists and ordinary supporters to the importance of the economics of solidarity. In the same way that boycotting South African products denied resources to the apartheid regime, buying cashews from Mozambique, wine from Zimbabwe or coffee from Angola would help these post-colonial societies to achieve economic independence. In addition to its continuation of the AAM’s long tradition of consumer campaigns, the work of AAE must also be seen in the context of broader transformations during the 1980s. The decade saw a paradigm shift in how NGOs and social movements concerned with humanitarianism, human rights and ‘Third World’ solidarity organized their campaigns, fundraising and use of mass media, a transformation that has been described as ‘commercialization’, ‘mediazation’ and ‘spectacularization’.30 The decade was particularly important for social movements in Britain, where the political shift to the right in 1979 made things both easier and more difficult for them. On the one hand, the political climate was decidedly less sympathetic and sometimes openly hostile towards social movements in support of ‘Third World’ solidarity. On the other hand, this made it easier for such movements to articulate a clear political message and

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mobilize supporters. Thus, the reactions of these movements to the political climate were often ambivalent: they adopted more radical positions, and they adapted to the new consumer and entertainment culture. While these changes in response to the political context of the Thatcher era were important, there were also more profound changes in the ways that British NGOs and social movements operated during the 1980s. Three changes are particularly relevant to AAE’s marketing of consumer products. First, in the last three decades of the twentieth century, but especially in the 1980s, social movements and NGOs were undergoing the process of professionalization and increasing self-reflection that Hilton et al. have called the ‘politics of expertise’.31 For example, they learned to work with advertising, accounting and media experts; they thought more about how to communicate their aims to the public and, most of all, they paid more attention to finances and fundraising. The latter was partly the result of external pressure, for example, the Charity Commission’s demands for financial accountability, but it was also driven by increasing competition among NGOs. As Hilton et al. have argued, these processes made NGOs more efficient but also more like businesses.32 The new key to the success of their campaigns and fundraising was branding, which transformed NGOs into ‘products that people buy’.33 The second change was the increasing importance of the media to the success of social campaigns. Though they had always been important, it was no coincidence that Harris and Ling came up with the idea for AAE right after the appeals of Band Aid and Live Aid during the famine in Ethiopia.34 Live Aid in particular was a watershed event for many NGOs. Though it was heavily criticized for its stereotypical images of victims, patronizing approach and inaccurate depiction of Ethiopia’s famine as a natural catastrophe, its overwhelming success in raising money and awareness showed humanitarian organizations the power of integrating celebrities and popular culture in ‘mega-events’ that drew global media attention.35 Thus, Live Aid was a ‘challenge to the “experts”’ and made many NGOs rethink how they portrayed their work to the public.36 It was during this time that the AAM turned to popular culture, mass events and celebrity activism, for example, founding Artists Against Apartheid and producing three major concerts: the Clapham Common Festival in June 1986 and two concerts celebrating Nelson Mandela, which, like Live Aid, were held in Wembley Stadium, in 1988 and 1990.37 The third, and most important, change was the widespread move to moralize and politicize consumer products. Ethical consumerism began in

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the late 1960s and early 1970s, but it was only in the late 1980s that it became common and professionalized. During this period, the fair trade companies Traidcraft, Oxfam Bridge and TWIN Trading became successful and The Body Shop became a multinational corporation, showing that ethically framed products could be immensely profitable. When Ling and Harris spoke of an ‘untapped market’ and ‘unmet demand’ in their business plan for AAE, they had in mind this new market of conscientious consumers interested in ethically produced products.38

Moral Merchandise: Raising Money and Awareness AAE was part of the professionalization of NGOs and the merging of political activism and consumption. Ling and Harris were motivated to start it by their impression that the AAM had not kept up with these trends, especially in fundraising. While agencies like Oxfam and Save the Children had become very successful fundraisers, the AAM often had difficulties funding its campaigns. And mail-order business was very popular with NGOs at the time. As Ling argued: All the campaigning organisations had merchandise and wearing a political T-shirt was very much a fashion thing. … I suppose it was partly a reaction to Thatcherism that political T-shirts were fashion items, and it was also the idea of having mail order catalogues, which was quite a new thing. All the campaigning groups and the charities were starting to get them, and for a while it was a way to get money.39

While fundraising was AAE’s main purpose, Ling and Harris emphasized that its moral merchandise was also meant to raise awareness of the anti-apartheid struggle. Ling was explicit that its merchandise was extremely important in conveying a message and in creating and sustaining a sense of identity of the movement. It communicated a message about the movement, it was also a way for people to identify with the movement through wearing T-shirts, buying the merchandise.40

According to Harris, AAE helped ‘promote awareness of the issue’.41 Business began modestly. In its first fiscal year of June 1986 to May 1987, AAE sold, amongst others, 526 T-shirts, 130 music cassettes and 89 coffee mugs emblazoned with the face of Nelson Mandela,42 ending the

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year with a deficit of £5000. But the company was in the black in the next quarter, and it was able to donate some of its profits to AAM at the end of the second year. Sales rose steadily from £47,000  in the first year to £174,000  in 1987–1988, £374,000  in 1988–1989 and £428,000  in 1989–1990.43 AAE contributed financially to the AAM in four ways: it bought all of its anti-apartheid merchandise from the AAM; it paid royalties for the use of the AAM’s logo on all of its other products; it paid for advertising in Anti-Apartheid News and it gave most of its profit to the AAM. Thus, AAE established itself as the commercial fundraising arm of the AAM. The company used its first annual report, which was published in 1988 and summarized its history and success, to introduce itself to the AAM membership at the annual meeting in London in November 198844 as a ‘co-operative established … to promote and market anti-apartheid merchandise’ and thereby ‘raise funds for the Anti-Apartheid Movement’, ‘publicize and mobilize support for sanctions and the consumer boycott’ and, especially, ‘promote solidarity, through trade, for the Front Line States of Southern Africa’.45 The report explained that, in addition to its AAM merchandise, products from the Frontline States were an important source of sales. To make that possible, the company had developed ‘its own direct links of friendship, trade, and solidarity with a wide range of producer partners’.46 Furthermore, it had become ‘an active member of the Alternative Trading Organisation (ATO) movement’ and was developing links with a wide variety of anti-apartheid trading organizations in Europe, the US, Japan, Australia and elsewhere.47 In the report, AAE emphasized its achievements in its first two years of existence. It had contributed more than £14,000 to the AAM, and it had raised awareness of the organization and the Frontline States. The latter claim is difficult to verify. What people did with the products they bought and what the products did to them are difficult to analyse. One can only look at the messages that buyers were supposed to consume along with their purchases and how the company tried to convey them. AAE conveyed these messages through two main conduits: the catalogues and the products themselves. From the outset, it produced relatively large numbers of catalogues. It printed 20,000 copies of its first catalogue with a reprint of 5000 at the end of the year. The second had a circulation of 50,000, of which 10,000 were distributed to the AAM’s national membership, 10,000 to its own customers and contacts, 5000 through local AAM chapters, 5000 as an insert in Marxism Today, 4000 at

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the Glastonbury Festival and 1500 through the National Union of Students. The next catalogue, published in autumn 1988, was also an insert in the New Statesman and Everywoman.48 Catalogues came out twice a year. They were small brochures of 12–20 pages of a steadily increasing range of goods. Their modern design was much closer to other commercial catalogues than to the AAM’s campaign flyers. But compared to the catalogues of the fair trade movement, they contained strikingly little political information and few facts about the products and their producers. Most had only brief paragraphs introducing the company, the AAM and the ANC and SWAPO as the liberation movements from whom the company bought products. However, they did include a leaflet explaining the AAM and at least one of its campaign flyers. The first catalogue already offered a broad selection: books, T-shirts, buttons, coffee mugs, tea towels, handicrafts from co-operatives in the Frontline States and cashews from Mozambique, the first food item.49 Later catalogues offered more, in particular, popular music, which led to the founding of AA Enterprises Records, an in-house label that recorded and released music from the Frontline States.50 The range of food items grew to include wine, coffee and tea. AAE chose products on the basis of their potential to raise awareness of the anti-apartheid cause. They all had at least one of the following three characteristics. First, many were designed to create the sense of belonging to a collective movement. The AAM merchandise especially included items, like buttons, T-shirts and earrings, to be worn in public to express one’s support. Second, many had an emotional dimension intended to create feelings of empathy and solidarity with the people of South Africa and the Frontline States. This was especially so for music, but it was also true of the biographies of important individuals and the coffee mugs and other items on which their pictures or important facts about them were printed. And, third, many were for everyday use, for example, coffee mugs, tea-towels and food items like coffee, tea and cashews, and brought the issue of apartheid into everyday life. What can be said about the influence of all these items on their buyers? One may assume that most were bought by people who supported the AAM in one way or another; that is, AAE was selling mainly to the converted. Many of the products were symbolic and expressed the buyer’s support for the struggle against apartheid. But commodities like coffee, tea and cashews also had the potential to convince consumers who were not yet supporters of the AAM to do so. But to do that, consumers needed

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information about what such items had to do with the fight against apartheid. AAE did not provide this information for all of its products, but coffee and cashews are good examples of how it tried to link its products to social campaigns. AAE imported coffee almost from the beginning. Its second catalogue, in summer 1987, offered Frontline Blend Coffee. According to the description, coffee was a ‘priority export crop in Angola’s fight for economic independence’. Interestingly, the blend included not only Angolan coffee beans but also beans from Tanzania and Nicaragua, two states that European solidarity movements also focussed on at the time. Thus, ‘Blend’ referred less to the mix of coffee beans than to the multiple solidarities that one expressed by drinking the coffee. Coffee soon became an important sales item, and once it did AAE imported it only from Angola and Zimbabwe and marketed it as Café Vitoria. But later catalogues still provided almost no information, saying only that coffee was an ‘important foreign exchange earner’.51 A double-page insert headlined ‘Drink to freedom in Southern Africa!’ added only that Angola and Zimbabwe ‘need international trade to strengthen their economies against the aggression of the South African apartheid regime’,52 which was not much compared to the detailed information that most fair trade companies offered. The company provided more details about the cashews that it imported from Mozambique. Cashews were the first product that it imported on its own from Southern Africa. Though the first catalogue described the nuts only as a ‘vital foreign exchange earner for Mozambique and a delicious snack’,53 shipments also included a leaflet that informed purchasers about Mozambique’s colonial history, its struggle for independence and South Africa’s efforts to destabilize it. The leaflet also outlined Mozambique’s economic difficulties and explained that cashews were key to the country’s economic independence. It described the growing and processing of cashews and explained that many people’s livelihoods depended on this industry.54 And it informed buyers that AAE obtained its supplies ‘through traders whom we know to be supportive of FRELIMO’s economic and social goals’, ensuring ‘that Mozambique secures maximum value from sales’.55 Finally, it encouraged customers to extend their support for the anti-apartheid cause beyond their shopping bags: Don’t stop there! Get involved in the organizations working in Britain in solidarity with the people of Southern Africa and against British collaboration with apartheid. Support the campaign for comprehensive sanctions

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against apartheid South Africa – this is the most immediate, practical contribution that the international community can make to the freedom struggle.56

Such detailed information was the exception, but it shows that one of AAE’s goals in selling comestibles from the Frontline States was to make consumption a means of spreading information about the political and economic situation in South Africa and its neighbouring states. Though the company’s AAM merchandise was primarily intended to create emotional bonds and a feeling of belonging, its everyday commodities were a concrete, practical form of economic solidarity. The last aspect of AAE’s attempt to politicize its business activities was its use of the media. As I mentioned above, media campaigns became much more important for NGOs and protest movements in the 1980s, and AAE was no exception. Though mainly involved in sales, not social campaigning, it kept close track of the media’s coverage of its activities and maintained a file of newspaper and magazine articles. As far as that file shows, the coverage was not extensive, though also not insignificant. The most widely distributed articles were probably those published in the two leading London event magazines of the 1980s: Time Out and City Limits.57 The article in Time Out appeared in its section on consumer issues, called ‘Sell Out’. The article, headlined ‘Black Market’, stated, ‘There is a way of helping while you shop. Not only buy no goods from Botha but also purchase the products of those that oppose apartheid’.58 Other magazines published articles on AAE in their lifestyle sections, often together with articles on other suppliers of fairly traded products. Activists did not universally applaud coverage of anti-apartheid products appearing in the lifestyle pages of magazines, but those appearances are examples of what scholars have recently called ‘lifestyle politics’,59 which refers to both the politicization of lifestyles and the transformation of politics into mere lifestyle decisions.

Conclusion: AA Enterprises and the End of Apartheid Political developments in Southern Africa featured prominently in 1990s catalogues, and in its annual report for 1989–1990 the company stated, ‘The welcome changes in Southern Africa … have naturally had repercussions for AA Enterprises’ trading activities’.60 For example, Namibia had

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recently gained its independence; so, Namibian solidarity products, like the SWAPO campaign T-shirt, had to be phased out. At the same time, AAE argued that the new developments were ‘opening up new prospects for solidarity trade with the region’.61 But fundamental change came much faster than most people had expected. Nelson Mandela was released and the ban of the ANC lifted in February 1990. The summer catalogue for that year had already been printed and did not mention these events. But the new situation was a major topic in the catalogue for winter 1990–1991. Its introduction spoke of Mandela’s recent visit to Britain, during which he had asked for continued support, explaining that South Africa’s need for international solidarity was ‘greater than ever’. Anti-apartheid activists repeated his claim often in discussions about the movement’s future, and AAE’s activists argued in the catalogue: buying and using anti-apartheid merchandise is one way to help to publicize Nelson Mandela’s appeal and to support the Anti-Apartheid Movement’s main campaign for 1990 – South Africa Freedom Now. The goods in our catalogue also have a message about the new non-racial and democratic society for which so many have fought for so long – both in South Africa itself, and in Namibia and the other Front Line States.62

This was a powerful idea. While the AAM was thinking and arguing about its role after apartheid, AAE here pointed to a seemingly viable model for its future. It had always framed the purchase of its products from the Frontline States as a way to support and express solidarity with newly independent countries in Southern Africa, and this would continue to be the case after apartheid was ended. But things did not work out that way, and the company did not survive long after apartheid’s end. Its last catalogue appeared in the summer of 1991. This showed how closely consumers associated its products with the AAM and the fight against apartheid. However, changes in the market for solidarity products also influenced the company’s decision to close. As Ling stated (in the interview first cited in note 4), the market had become ‘too crowded’, and the demand had been met.63 This may have been another reason why Ling and Harris decided against transforming AAE into a fair trade company for goods from Southern Africa. I conclude by raising the question of AA Enterprises’ importance in the context of the Anti-Apartheid Movement and solidarity with Southern

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African states and liberation movements. During its four years of existence, the company sold around £1 million worth of goods. Approximately 400,000 copies of its mail-order catalogue found their way into private homes in Britain, and I estimate that some 25,000 customers bought its products. Thus, these products reached a large number of supporters and others who had not been part of the anti-apartheid movement before. But in order to evaluate their influence on them, one would have to know more about why individuals bought them and how they used them. Did a coffee mug with the story of a South African political prisoner printed on it stay in the buyer’s cupboard, was it used every morning or was it taken to the office? Were all of the Nelson Mandela T-shirts that AAE sold worn only to the concerts at Wembley Stadium, or did buyers wear them regularly? Did people buy cashews from Mozambique primarily as ‘a vital foreign exchange earner’ for that country or as a ‘delicious snack’? The sources of answers are limited. Nevertheless, it is worthwhile investigating the banal solidarities of mail-order catalogues, consumer products and pop songs more systematically, for they contributed in many ways to the creation of an infrastructure for communicating anti-apartheid messages to a range of people not already deeply involved in the movement. Coffee mugs, cashews and Christmas cards were all ways in which anti-apartheid messages found their way into British households.

Notes 1. The term is borrowed from Michael Billig, Banal Nationalism (London: Sage, 1995). 2. See, for example: Mary Guyatt, “The Wedgwood Slave Medallion: Values in Eighteenth-Century Design,” Journal of Design History 13, no. 2 (2000): 93–105; Philip John Davies, “The Material Culture of US Elections: Artisanship, Entrepreneurship, Ephemera and Two Centuries of Trans-­Atlantic Exchange,” Journal of Political Marketing 1, no. 2–3 (February 3, 2002): 9–24, https://doi.org/10.1300/J199v01n02_02. For the “Buy British” campaign, see: Stephen Constantine, “The Buy British Campaign of 1931,” European Journal of Marketing 21, no. 4 (1987): 44–59. 3. Catherine Flood, Gavin Grindon, and Victoria and Albert Museum, eds., Disobedient Objects (London: V&A Publishing, 2014). 4. The biographical information comes from Håkan Thörn’s interview with Margaret Ling in February 2000. A transcript can be found here: http:// www.aamarchives.org/interviews/margaret-ling.html

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5. The biographical information comes from an interview with Roger Harris by David Shortland from October 2013. A transcript can be found here: www.aamarchives.org/interviews/roger-harris.html 6. See Jakob Skovgaard’s contribution in this volume. 7. Margaret Ling/Roger Harris: “Memorandum to the officers of the AAM” (20 January 1986). (Oxford, Bodleian Library, Archive of the Anti-­ Apartheid Movement, 1956–1998, MSS AAM 3250; in all following citations: MSS AAM 2350). 8. Ibid., p. 1. 9. Ibid. 10. Ibid., p. 3. 11. Ibid. 12. Ibid. 13. Ibid., p. 1. 14. Ibid., p. 4. 15. Popular Polling: AA Enterprises Business Plan (1986), MSS AAM 2350. 16. Ibid., p. 2. 17. Ibid., p. 3. 18. Ibid., p. 4. 19. Ibid. 20. Thomas Frank and Matt Weiland, Commodify Your Dissent. Salvos from the Baffler (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1997). 21. “The Research Marketing Consultancy LTD.: Market Research AA Enterprises” (August 1986), MSS AAM 2350. 22. Both documents can be found only in draft versions in the AAM archive: Contract between Anti-Apartheid Movement and AA Enterprises, Second Draft (December 1986), MSS AAM 2349. 23. Ibid., p. 2. 24. Ibid., p. 3f. 25. Draft Code of Practice for Joint Steering Committee (no date), MSS AAM 2349. 26. For the history of the fair trade movement in Britain, see: Matthew Anderson, A History of Fair Trade in Contemporary Britain from Civil Society Campaigns to Corporate Compliance (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015). 27. Benjamin Möckel, “The Material Culture of Human Rights. Consumer Products, Boycotts and the Transformation of Human Rights Activism in the 1970s and 1980s,” International Journal for History, Culture and Modernity 6, no. 1 (2018): 76–104. 28. Monroe Friedman, “A Positive Approach to Organized Consumer Action: The ‘Buycott’ as an Alternative to the Boycott,” Journal of Consumer Policy 19, no. 4 (1996): 439–51; Emmanuel Adugu, “Boycott and Buycott as Emerging Modes of Civic Engagement,” International Journal of Civic

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Engagement and Social Change 1, no. 3 (July 2014): 43–58, https://doi. org/10.4018/ijcesc.2014070104 29. See, for example, the leaflet “Are we Guilty?”, which explicitly connected British consumers’ money going to South Africa and the military equipment used by the South African regime to enforce its racist policies: See “Are We Guilty?” (protest flyer, c.1960), MSS AAM 2227. 30. See, for example: Christian Lahusen, The Rhetoric of Moral Protest: Public Campaigns, Celebrity Endorsement, and Political Mobilization (Berlin; New York: W. de Gruyter, 1996); Lilie Chouliaraki, The Ironic Spectator: Solidarity in the Age of Post-­Humanitarianism (Cambridge, Malden, MA: Polity Press, 2013); Monika Krause, The Good Project: Humanitarian Relief NGOs and the Fragmentation of Reason (Chicago; London: The University of Chicago Press, 2014). 31. Matthew Hilton, The Politics of Expertise How NGOs Shaped Modern Britain (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013). 32. Hilton, 83. 33. Hilton, 82. Monika Krause highlights the same argument: Krause, The Good Project. 34. On Live Aid, see, for example: H.  Louise Davis, “Concerts for a Cause (Or, ’cause We Can?),” in The Routledge History of Social Protest in Popular Music, ed. Jonathan C.  Friedman (New York, 2013), 211–26; Andrew Jones, “Band Aid Revisited: Humanitarianism, Consumption and Philanthropy in the 1980s,” Contemporary British History 31, no. 2 (April 3, 2017): 189–209, https://doi.org/10.1080/13619462.2017.130619 3 35. On the concept of mega-events, see: Reebee Garofalo, “Understanding Mega-Events. If We Are the World, Then How Do We Change It?,” in Rockin’ the Boat: Mass Music and Mass Movements, ed. Reebee Garofalo (Boston, MA: 1992), 15–35; Christian Lahusen, “Mobilizing for International Solidarity: Mega-Events and Moral Crusades,” in Political Altruism. The Solidarity Movement in International Perspective, ed. Marco Giugni and Florence Passy (Lanham, MD: 2001), 177–95. 36. Colm Regan, “Live Aid: A Challenge to the ‘experts’?,” Trócaire Development Review, 1986. 37. Benjamin Möckel, “‘Free Nelson Mandela’. Popmusik und zivilgesellschaftlicher Protest in der britischen Anti-Apartheid-Bewegung,” Jahrbuch des Zentrums für Populäre Kultur und Musik 60/61 (2016): 199–217. See Detlef Siegfried’s contribution in this volume. 38. Market research played a key role in inventing and defining this new group of consumers. See, for example: Thomas W. Thomas Junior and William H.  Cunningham, “The Socially Conscious Consumer,” Journal of Marketing 36, no. 3 (1972): 23–31. 39. Interview Ling, p. 14.

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40. Interview Ling, p. 14. 41. Interview Harris, p. 7. 42. “Report on Sales of AAM Fund-Raising Merchandise, Financial Year ended 31 May 1987” (MSS AAM 2351). 43. See “AA Enterprises: Report of Activities” for these years: MSS AAM 2351. 44. “AA Enterprises: Trading Against Apartheid: Report of Activities 1987–88” (MSS AAM 2351). 45. Ibid., p. 1. 46. Ibid. 47. Ibid. 48. “Futures Co-Operative Limited: Report from the General Council for the year to 31 May 1987” (MSS AAM 2349). 49. AA Enterprises. Catalogue Winter 1986: Goods and gifts from the Front Line (MSS AAM 2352). The catalogues can be found online: http:// www.aamarchives.org/browse-the-archive/miscellaneous-goods.html 50. AA Enterprises Records released albums: The Kafala Brothers: Ngola (AA Enterprises Records, Cassette and LP, 1989) and Trio AKA: Mama Christina (AA Enterprises, LP, 1989). 51. AA Enterprises Catalogue, Summer 1988 (MSS AAM 2352). 52. Product leaflet: “Café Vitoria” (MSS AMM 2350). 53. AA Enterprises Catalogue, Winter 1986/87, p. 7 (MSS AAM 2352). 54. Product flyer: Cashew Nuts from Mozambique (MSS AAM 2352). 55. Ibid. 56. Ibid. 57. “Black Market,” Time Out, November 3, 1987, “Green Gifts and Politico Pressies,” City Limits, December 7, 1989. Both in: (MSS AAM 2352). 58. “Black Market,” Time Out, November 3, 1987, 125. 59. W. Lance Bennett, “Branded Political Communication: Lifestyle Politics, Logo Campaigns, and the Rise of Global Citizenship,” in Politics, Products and Markets: Exploring Political Consumerism Past and Present, ed. Michele Micheletti, Andreas Follesdal, and Dietlind Stolle (New Brunswick, 2004), 101–26. 60. “AA Enterprises: Trading Against Apartheid: Report of Activities 1989–90” (MSS AAM 2351). 61. Ibid. 62. AA Enterprises Catalogue, Winter 1990/91, p. 2 (MSS AAM 2352). 63. The early fair trade movement was also confronted with this phenomenon. Consumers purchased handicrafts and anti-apartheid merchandise only once or twice, not regularly. This was one reason why the fair trade ­movement began to rely much more on everyday commodities like coffee, chocolate and bananas.

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References Adugu, Emmanuel. “Boycott and Buycott as Emerging Modes of Civic Engagement.” International Journal of Civic Engagement and Social Change 1, no. 3 (2014): 43–58, https://doi.org/10.4018/ijcesd.2014070104. Anderson, Matthew. A History of Fair Trade in Contemporary Britain from Civil Society Campaigns to Corporate Compliance. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015. Anderson, W.  Thomas Junior, and William H.  Cunningham. “The Socially Conscious Consumer.” Journal of Marketing 36, no. 3 (1972): 23–31. Bennett, W.  Lance. “Branded Political Communication: Lifestyle Politics, Logo Campaigns, and the Rise of Global Citizenship.” In Politics, Products and Markets: Exploring Political Consumerism Past and Present, edited by Michele Micheletti, Andreas Follesdal, and Dietlind Stolle: 101–126. New Brunswick; London: Transaction Publishers, 2004. Chouliaraki, Lilie. The Ironic Spectator: Solidarity in the Age of Post-­ Humanitarianism. Cambridge; Malden, MA: Polity Press, 2013. Constantine, Stephen. “The Buy British Campaign of 1931.” European Journal of Marketing 21, no. 4 (1987): 44–59. Davis, H. Louise. “Concert for a Cause (Or, ’cause We Can?).” In The Routledge History of Social Protest in Popular Music, edited by Jonathan C. Friedman, 211–226. New York: Routledge, 2013. Davies, Philip John, “The Material Culture of US Elections: Artisanship, Entrepreneurship, Ephemera and Two Centuries of Trans-Atlantic Exchange.” Journal of Political Marketing 1, no. 2–3 (February 3, 2002): 9–24, https:// doi.org/10.1300/J199v01n02_02. Flood, Catherine, Gavin Grindon, and Victoria and Albert Museum, eds. Disobedient Objects. London: V&A Publishing, 2014. Frank, Thomas, and Matt Weiland. Commodify Your Dissent. Salvos from the Baffler. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1997. Friedman, Monroe. “A Positive Approach to Organized Consumer Action: The ‘Buycott’ as an Alternative to the Boycott.” Journal of Consumer Policy 19, no. 4 (1996): 439–451. Garofolo, Reebee. “Understanding Mega Events. If We Are the World, Then How Do We Change It?” In Rockin’ the Boat: Mass Music and Mass Movements, edited by Reebee Garofolo, 15–35. Boston, MA: South End Press, 1992. Guyatt, Mary. “The Wedgewood Slave Medallion: Values in Eighteenth-Century Design.” Journal of Design History 13, no. 2 (2000): 93–105. Hilton, Matthew. The Politics of Expertise. How NGOs Shaped Modern Britain. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013.

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Jones, Andrew. “Band Aid Revisited: Humanitarianism, Consumption and Philanthropy in the 1980s.” Contemporary British History 31, no. 2 (2017): 189–209. Krause, Monika. The Good Project: Humanitarian Relief NGOs and the Fragmentation of Reason. Chicago; London: The University of Chicago Press, 2014. Lahusen, Christian. The Rhetoric of Moral Protest: Public Campaigns, Celebrity Endorsement, and Political Mobilization. Berlin; New York: W. de Gruyter, 1996. ———. “Mobilizing for International Solidarity: Mega-Events and Moral Crusades.” In Political Altruism. The Solidarity Movement in International Perspective, edited by Marco Giugni and Florence Passy, 177–195. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2001. Möckel, Benjamin. “The Material Culture of Human Rights. Consumer Products, Boycotts and the Transformation of Human Rights Activism in the 1970s and 1980s.” International Journal for History, Culture and Modernity 6, no. 1 (2018): 76–104. ———. “Free Nelson Mandela’. Popmusik und zivilgesellschaftlicher Protest in der britischen Anti-Apartheid-Bewegung.” Jahrbuch des Zentrums für Populäre Kultur und Musik 60/61 (2016): 199–217. Regan, Colm. “Live Aid: A Challenge to the ‘experts’?” Trócaire Development Review, 1986, 68–75.

PART II

Apartheid in Culture and Media

The Comic Representation of Apartheid on British Television in the Late 1960s Tal Zalmanovich

In his 1625 essay ‘Of Discourse’, Francis Bacon argued that certain subjects should be exempt from laughter and ridicule, ‘namely, religion, matters of state, great persons, any man’s present business of importance’.1 In 1960s Britain, a new generation of comedians rejected Bacon’s conclusion.2 The anti-Establishment satire movement introduced cheeky new acts into the mainstream. The writers of Beyond the Fringe, This Was the Week That Was, Monty Python and the Flying Circus and others used the emerging medium of television to ridicule religion, matters of state and any pretence of importance. Meanwhile, situation comedy screenwriters, such as the writer-provocateur Johnny Speight, applied their irreverent brand of humour to the domestic form of the sitcom. Many Britons viewed this new freedom to laugh as a sign of their superior national character. While regimes such as the Soviet Union and apartheid South Africa employed censorship as a tool of governance, Britons This research was partially funded by the European Research Council Programme (FP/2007–2013) / ERC Grant Agreement no. 615564. T. Zalmanovich (*) University of Haifa, Haifa, Israel © The Author(s) 2021 K. Andresen et al. (eds.), Apartheid and Anti-Apartheid in Western Europe, Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-53284-0_5

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proudly pointed to the prevalence of political humour as an indicator of the country’s thriving democracy.3 For instance, the comedian and broadcaster Barry Took proclaimed in 1976 that laughter was a symbol of freedom, that it was anti-totalitarian.4 He claimed, ‘As a race, the British have one peculiarity that sets them apart from the rest of mankind: their extraordinary sense of humour; their ability to laugh at themselves, to laugh at others … to laugh at the sublime and the ridiculous, to laugh at disaster and triumph’.5 Took’s self-aggrandizing statement is steeped in Cold War rhetoric. It also discloses an essentialist view of national identity that frames Britons as an ancient, homogenous race with primordial comedic abilities. In the process, it denies the contingent nature of national identity and community.6 These shortcomings notwithstanding, it reveals a culture that values and permits the criticism of power through humour. Took treated the ridicule of politicians and politics as an act of citizenship. Commentators like him understood the joy created by the comic portrayal of politicians as a symbolic way of getting back at them and disrupting their power. When done well, the more humorously a treatment presents politics to the public, the more ‘serious, critical thinking about civic space’ it produces.7 This objective assumes a level of knowledge and ‘civic commitment’ on the part of the audience that it does not usually have. Furthermore, scholars have shown that the interpretation of and reaction to a comic utterance are not uniform or predictable. Just as comedy can create critical citizens and a community of dissent, it can form ‘a community of complicity’ by dissipating anger and protest.8 Nonetheless, television comedy writers, comics and broadcasters in the 1960s explored the potential of comedy to influence public perceptions of current issues and negotiated its boundaries.9 Television, their arena of experimentation, arose simultaneously with the new brand of comedy. In this chapter, I focus on a single episode of the beloved but thoroughly criticized situation comedy Till Death Us Do Part (BBC One, 1966–1975).10 The series, the precursor to the American series All in the Family, focused on the Garnetts: a white, working-class family that lived together in their East London home. The parents, Alf and Else, are a conservative, royalist, Christian couple, while Rita, their daughter, and Mike, their son-in-law, represent the hip, Labour-voting, counterculture generation. These generational and ideological differences form the show’s main axis of comedy.

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The episode ‘The Blood Donor’, which aired on 12 January 1968, concerned a new medical procedure conducted for the first time only two weeks earlier in South Africa—heart transplantation. Over eight million households tuned in to the show that night.11 The episode’s subject and its ratings exemplify how screenwriters used television to discuss current events and the immense reach their cultural products enjoyed. Like other episodes of the series, this one provoked more than mirth: the BBC received phone calls from viewers who found it offensive, and newspapers reported on the angry reactions to it. I use this episode and the wealth of related sources, such as audience reports, letters to the media and newspaper coverage, to show how its discussion of South Africa functioned as a window onto perceptions of both apartheid and race relations in Britain.12 I shall demonstrate how the comic mode helped to broadcast the episode’s anti-apartheid message to a large audience but also, and inadvertently, to subvert its explicit criticism of apartheid. I will also argue that the critique of one racist system of governance, apartheid South Africa, did not stretch to domestic matters. In fact, the episode is rife with racist comments and highlights the entrenched and endemic racism in Britain.

Television and Apartheid in Late 1960s Britain Scholars now acknowledge the role that the cultural sphere played in the global anti-apartheid struggle,13 but most ignore the importance of television for both the Anti-Apartheid Movement (AAM) and the South African regime.14 In the late 1960s in Britain, however, television became inseparable from politics. In fact, the television audience outnumbered the readership of any national newspaper.15 In addition, after decades in which the franchise widened but opportunities to engage politicians and activists personally narrowed, television offered a new way for voters to ‘meet’ them. Nevertheless, many were suspicious of television, claiming that it contributed to distancing the public from politics. However, Lawrence Black has shown that television ‘not only rendered politics more remote, but more intimate, enlivened it in some respects, made it more rational in others’.16 For television addressed voters who were ‘relatively uninterested in politics in a private, domestic setting’.17 Both the apartheid regime and its opponents in Great Britain believed that television could influence the British public’s perceptions of apartheid. Consequently, it was a coveted and contested representational space for those who wanted to influence the debate.18 The South African

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government had made concerted efforts to control the narrative about the country from early on, founding the propaganda organ the South Africa Foundation (SAF) in December 1959 ‘in direct response to the establishment of the Boycott Movement’ in Britain.19 The regime was already financing the production and placement of favourable television programmes in Britain in hopes of swaying public opinion in its favour.20 When positive messaging seemed not to suffice, it inundated broadcasting organizations such as the BBC with complaints about biased reporting.21 From the 1970s on, when these measures were not enough to block damning news coverage from appearing on the screen, South Africa denied foreign journalists permission to enter the country and made reporting on apartheid a complicated and dangerous endeavour.22 The ferocity of the ‘war of representation’ between South African authorities and the global anti-apartheid movement grew between 1972 and 1976 after South Africa’s Department of Information launched a concentrated effort to ‘put a program of media manipulation’ in place whose ‘central battlefield’ was the Western media.23 The revelation of this campaign in 1978 resulted in the Information Scandal, which eventually led to the downfall of Prime Minister John Vorster, the Minister of Plural Relations and Development, the Head of the Bureau of State Security (BOSS) and the Secretary of Information.24 However, South Africa continued to spend lavishly on propaganda for decades.25 Censorship worsened during the State of Emergency in 1985, and the regime tried to prevent any foreign reporting from the country.26 Journalists that remained in South Africa risked state violence and imprisonment, which severely impaired their coverage of South Africa. In 1988, the foreign editor of BBC Television claimed that Pretoria had managed to stop all coverage of black protest.27 Despite these efforts, television remained a significant medium through which Britons learned about South Africa and apartheid. From the early days of television and apartheid, British broadcasters had been extremely interested in South Africa, and their interest had translated into a deluge of television coverage.28 Between 1948, the year that the National Party won a majority in the general election, and May 1961, when South Africa formally left the Commonwealth, the BBC alone aired around 250 filmed items and over 100 studio reports on its Television News and Newsreel programmes, and it broadcast nearly 100 current affairs and documentary programmes.29 Indeed, in this period the BBC reported on South Africa more frequently than on any other African or Commonwealth country.30

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In contrast to the generous television budget of the South African regime, the AAM operated on a shoestring. Its activists, such as Trevor Huddleston, who headed the organization from 1978, sought out opportunities to appear on television.31 In addition, anti-apartheid organizations aided in the production of television programmes and items and produced their own television material about the South African regime.32 Yet, while both sides contributed to news and current affairs programmes, they did not consider comedy and its potential to offer a new way to influence the perception of apartheid in Britain.

Matters of the Heart: South Africa Leads the Way in Heart Transplants On 3 December 1967, Louis Washkansky, a 54-year-old Jewish man from Cape Town, was the first to undergo a heart transplant. Washkansky had come to South Africa at the age of nine from Kovno, Lithuania. He was a World War II veteran, a husband and the father of an adopted son.33 After three heart attacks and the onset of diabetes, the cardiologist Dr Christiaan Barnard enlisted him as a patient for an experimental heart transplant procedure. Washkansky received the heart of 25-year-old Denise Darvall, who had been fatally injured in a car accident the day before the operation. Eighteen days later, Washkansky died of pneumonia brought on by a weakened immune system. Nonetheless, Barnard and the whole world proclaimed the surgery a success. Barnard then performed another transplant on 2 January 1968 on the 58-year-old white dentist Philip Blaiberg. He fitted him with the heart of 24-year-old Clive Haupt, a coloured man who had collapsed from a stroke on New Year’s Eve. Haupt was brought to Groote Schuur Hospital in Cape Town and put on artificial ventilation. His prospects for survival were slim, and Barnard obtained the family’s consent to end efforts to prolong his life. Haupt was moved to the segregated ward of the hospital, where his body was prepared for the removal of its heart.34 Both operations commanded great national and international press interest.35 Journalists and television teams from around the world reported on Washkansky’s operation within hours of its completion.36 The Daily Mail described it as ‘the world’s most-talked about operation’.37 Photographs of Washkansky and Darvall appeared on the front pages of all of the British newspapers. On the day after the operation, the BBC’s

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science programme Tomorrow’s World broadcast Barnard’s press conference and a telephone interview with him.38 British media reported on the operation not only as a scientific story but also as a human-interest one. They reported, for instance, on the emotional meeting between Darvall’s father and Washkansky’s wife.39 Sometimes they tried to explain medical procedures; for example, when Washkansky took a turn for the worse, the Daily Mirror commented that Darvall’s heart was relatively small and speculated that this might be the reason.40 Another strand of coverage was the ethics of transplants. For instance, the Sun asked its readers to opine on whether heart transplants were ‘[r]ight or wrong’.41 When it was announced on the day of Washkansky’s funeral that his second heart would be removed for post-­ mortem analysis, there were concerns over the ownership of the organ. The Sunday Telegraph reported that the Chief Rabbi of Cape Town criticized the removal of the heart before burial and explained to its readers that Jewish law required that the body be buried intact.42 Barnard’s second operation added race to the global discussion about identity, science and consent that Washkansky’s transplant had initiated. Haupt was still alive when Barnard asked his new wife for her husband’s heart. She collapsed, and Barnard proceeded to obtain consent from Haupt’s mother. Because of the racial identities of both the donor and recipient of the heart, concerns were raised about the exploitation of black bodies.43 In his autobiography One Life, Barnard admitted that he had waited for a white donor for Washkansky to avoid the accusation of experimenting on blacks.44 The African-American newspaper the Los Angeles Sentinel declared on 4 January 1968 that the operation had uncovered the fabrication of supposedly biological racial distinctions: In an operating theater in Cape Town, doctors, patient, and donor have shown once again that we are all one people. The specious rationalizations which permit color discrimination are a political fact, but a biological fraud.45

The Garnett Family Has a Heart to Heart About Transplants In December 1967 and the beginning of 1968 the media were saturated with images of Barnard and his patients and donors and with discussions of the ethics of organ transplants. So, it is perhaps not surprising that Johnny Speight, the creator and writer of the successful British television

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situation comedy Till Death Us Do Part, would devote the episode of 12 January 1968 to the subject. With Till Death Us Do Part, Speight used the sitcom form to criticize class and race relations in Great Britain, and his liberal use of racist slurs and vulgar language in the show made both household names. It also put them at the centre of debates about the impact of racial humour on social relations.46 As the television critic for the Evening Standard wrote in February 1968 about the episode, ‘Some 18 million viewers—half of Britain’s adult population’—watched the show’s protagonist ‘wallowing in the hates and fears and prejudices most of us have tucked away in some genteel niche of our psyche’.47 In the episode ‘Blood Donor’, the Garnetts’ discussion of heart transplantation and blood transfusion echoes the concerns and reactions that Barnard’s work had provoked. It also maps those procedures onto British preoccupations with race, gender and citizenship. Alf, the family patriarch, a bigoted, white, working-class East Londoner, argues that difference is marked on people’s bodies from without (on their skin) and within (their blood and organs). Reading a copy of the Daily Mirror with the headline ‘Heart Knows No Colour’, he argues that people of different races are different and, therefore, blood should not be transfused interracially. His daughter Rita and her husband Mike, whom the show frames as young progressives, disagree. Alf continues that he would not authorize the use of his blood for any ‘old Tom, Dick or Harry’. His wife Else chimes in, ‘Well, if they was putting blood into you … I mean, it would be nice to know it had come from someone decent and respectable’.48 But Alf demands more of his potential blood donors than just being ‘descent and respectable’; he expects them to be white. He argues, there is ‘good’ blood and ‘bad’ blood and ‘bloody rubbish blood’; if this were not the case, the royals would not be so concerned about their bloodline. Alf’s comments show the centrality of the notion of blood to contemporary perceptions of belonging and citizenship. Since 1948, when the first substantial post-war wave of immigrants from the West Indies arrived in Britain, notions of imperial citizenship were being re-examined. Politicians of both parties pressed for an immigration system that would differentiate the rights of imperial subjects to emigrate to the UK according to race. Ideally, this change to the immigration system would happen without official recognition of its racial biases. Thus, in public discussions racist attitudes were formulated as concerns about immigration and social integration: black immigrants, the argument went, did not mesh with the social fabric of the nation and, so, constituted a social problem, not a racial

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one. The 1962 Commonwealth Immigrants Act incorporated this attitude into the law by instituting immigration restrictions but exempting individuals who were born in the UK or held British passports.49 Thus, although the law was colour-blind in wording, in practice its restrictions applied almost exclusively to African and Asian imperial subjects. These restrictions were reinforced by the 1968 Commonwealth Immigrants Act, which Paul Gilroy argues granted and denied citizenship on racial grounds.50 By the end of 1968, ‘blood’ was the defining word of the year. In April 1968, the Tory MP for Wolverhampton, Enoch Powell, gave the definitive immigration speech of the post-war period, remembered as the ‘Rivers of Blood’ address. In it, he invoked Virgil’s illusion of the Tiber River foaming with blood to describe the violence that he predicted massive immigration would provoke. In Powell’s address, ‘blood’ functioned as a signifier of partiality-based citizenship and the distinction between desirable and undesirable future citizens. The public outcry over the speech resulted in Powell’s expulsion from the Shadow Cabinet, massive demonstrations for and against his position, and the entrenchment of ideas that associated UK citizenship with whiteness. A scene in ‘Blood Donor’ plays on the salience of the link between blood and citizenship. After Mike taunts Alf that no one would want his ‘tired worn out old blood’, they go to a clinic to donate blood. Sitting in the waiting room, Alf notices a black man and asks Mike, ‘[W]hat’s the coon doing here?’ Mike replies that he has also come to donate blood. Alf is perplexed and asks, ‘What you mean, for other coons like?’ Mike answers, ‘No, for anyone’. Alf is appalled: ‘What … You mean? They take his blood and hung it in anyone?’ Alf insists that donated blood should be used according to race. ‘Coon blood is only fit for coons’, he argues. He is worried that receiving blood from a black donor would eliminate his whiteness and, thus, his privilege: ‘I mean, they start banging that in white people … an who can tell what’s going to happen’d … [W]e could all turn black’. Mike laughs. From the live audience comes a single, nervous chuckle. In fact, the whole exchange garners very little laughter from the audience. When Mike suggests that Alf’s scenario would solve the ‘colour problem’, it is almost silent. The anxiety around the blurring of racial boundaries so apparent in this scene and the audience’s reaction to it also appears earlier in the episode. Introducing the subject of transplants, Else has heard, ‘[T]hey’re putting bits of people into other people’.51 Rita declares, ‘[W]hat them doctors are

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doing in South Africa is marvellous!’ Alf peers at her, incredulous: ‘Oh, we’ve changed our tune, ain’t we? I thought you two was all against South Africa … an Ian Smith … I thought you two was all after sending a gun boat out there’.52 As we have seen, the generational divide is a central source of the show’s comedy. Rita and Mike always speak in favour of progressive ideas and against the established order. Thus, Alf expects them to be opposed to apartheid. (Alf of course mixes up Rhodesia and South Africa.) For Alf, and much of the audience, the condemnation of apartheid is part of a certain urban culture53 which includes Rita’s hairstyle, which is like Twiggy’s, and Mike’s counterculture clothes. So, Alf is surprised at the couple’s praise of the work of Barnard, a white South African. In their praise lies the importance of Barnard’s work for the South African government, for the media’s fascination with Barnard’s work overshadowed negative coverage of the country and focused the world’s attention on its scientific achievements. The reporting on Barnard conveyed an image of a country belonging to the global scientific community, not of one isolated by international sanctions. The transplants marked South Africa’s modernity, progress and global connectedness.54 For bringing about this change in the country’s image, Barnard received a gold medal from the Public Relations Institute of South Africa and a personal invitation from the prime minister to a private dinner.55 Medical firsts aside, Alf reminds Mike and Rita that Washkansky did not survive the surgery. Else explains that this was because Washkansky had received a woman’s heart, adding, ‘I can’t think it’s right meself … putting a woman’s heart in a man’s body’.56 When asked why, she is uneasy; she glances over to Alf and replies, ‘Different sex, innit?’ Alf explains her discomfort, [Y]our heart is the most essential part of you, annit? … I mean, your heart is what you feel with … that’s how you get all your feelings through that … I mean, you’re gonna have woman’s feelings … an … well … I mean… Else: Alf:

‘It wouldn’t be nice, would it?’ ‘Nice? Could end up in the bloody nick you could’.

Their last comments reveal Else’s and Alf’s anxiety about same-sex relations. The subject was making headlines following the 1967 Sexual Offences Act, which decriminalized homosexual acts in private between

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consenting adult men. Like the Daily Mirror’s speculation about the size of the heart donated to Washkansky, Else’s and Alf’s concerns point to the disconcerting blurring effect of the procedure and its implications for demands for racial equality beyond South Africa. Transplants threaten what is perceived by Else and Alf (and others who share their belief) as the proper alignment of gender and race by transplanting organs into bodies regardless of the gender or race of donors and recipients. If the organs of men and women are interchangeable, then their and the period’s notions of gender upon which the unequal division of labour is based are unjustifiable. Likewise, if ‘black’ organs can function in a ‘white’ body, then the imagined biological differences that are taken to separate the races, make them unequal and ground apartheid are fabrications. For a conservative like Alf, however, heart transplantation is dangerous, for a man who receives a woman’s heart could begin to desire men, and a white man who receives a black man’s heart may become confused about his racial identity. The Garnetts’ discussion of South Africa exacerbates Alf’s fear about the transgression of such boundaries. First, Alf asserts that Washkansky may have died because his Jewish body rejected Darvall’s Christian heart ‘because it isn’t what they call Kosher’.57 Then he wonders about Blaiberg, the white dentist with a ‘coloured’ heart. He wishes him luck in his recovery but expects that Blaiberg’s ‘white’ organs are ‘not gonna want to mix with a black heart, are they?’ Moreover, even if his organs ‘accept’ the ‘black’ heart, ‘what kind of life is he going to have, eh? Living in South Africa with Apartheid … I mean he won’t know what toilet to use’.58 This monologue uses South Africa to highlight incongruity: the malfunction of an organ when it is misplaced. Dr Barnard’s heart transplants reveal that the social order in (and beyond) South Africa is based on a fabrication. The comically absurd ways that Alf and Else fear that an organ from a donor of a different gender or race will function unmask the absurdity of the apartheid project. Despite its fantasy of total separation, the regime could never police South African bodies—of any ethnic group—to the extent that its laws demanded. Alf’s concern about bathroom confusion plays on an iconic image of the racial segregation of space in the country. However, it does not convey the daily strife or the violence of the state. It ridicules the system’s absurdity, but it is not a call to arms. The ridicule distinguishes white South Africans’ fantasy of total separation and Britons’ bigotry. But in ignoring black South Africans it expresses neither empathy nor solidarity with them.

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Public Reactions to ‘Blood Donor’ The day after the Friday on which ‘Blood Donor’ was broadcast, the Daily Telegraph reported that it was the week’s most watched television programme, having been seen in 8,350,000 homes.59 The episode did not just amuse its audience. Viewers were perturbed by a dream sequence in which Alf donates blood to the Queen and, in particular, by Alf’s hurtful comments ‘over a coloured man giving blood for white patients’.60 Shaun Usher, who reported on viewers’ protests to the BBC, informed his readers, ‘BBC officials are likely to ignore the protests. They feel that since the programme goes out in adult viewing time, and it has a reputation for being controversial, viewers should know what to expect’.61 When the season ended in February 1968, the writer of Till Death, Johnny Speight, declared that he would not write another series for the BBC because of its ‘idiotic and unreasonable’ censorship.62 The corporation’s Director General denied that it had censored Till Death. Viewers’ identification with Alf, he argued, was reason enough to continue broadcasting it, despite Alf’s offensive views and language. Some journalists also championed Speight’s work and mission. Under the provocative title ‘Carry on Alf, Let ’Em Moo!’,63 the Daily Mirror ridiculed viewers who called the BBC to protest. ‘The silly old moos are on the warpath once again’, the article began: They want the balding scalp of Alf Garnett … They heard his fulminations in Friday night’s edition of the show and they reached for their telephones. They rang the BBC. They rang Fleet Street, fumed at his insistence that a Jewish heart was unsuitable to a transplant for a Gentile.64

The journalist argued, ‘What was being mocked on Friday night some three weeks after the death of heart-plant patient Louis Washkansky, was not courage, pain, bereavement. It was the insensate bigotry of the Alf Garnetts of this world’.65 Speight and his supporters believed in racial humour as a clarifying and cleansing ritual in which prejudice is excavated, exposed to the light and purged. Speight argued that he wrote his sitcoms to entertain, ‘but laughter is a good aid to education’.66 He also claimed, ‘There is a message in the series: Prejudice is laughable’.67 Maurice Wiggin at the Sunday Times conceded that Speight ‘hopes to laugh racial prejudice out of existence’,

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but he asked, ‘did not Alf Garnett confirm as many Garnetts as he confounded?’68 Speight and the actors on the show tried to straddle the line between expressing racism and educating the public against it. So, the gap between the show’s intent and its reception was a personal challenge to them. Speight was a professed Marxist who viewed racial prejudice as a mechanism to exploit the weak, both the working class and immigrants.69 He was certain that television audiences wanted comedy to contribute to substantial public debates. In an interview with the Daily Mail in 1966, he said, When TV first came along comedy went into decline in a gust of empty laughter. I believe that’s changing now. People are getting fed up with the emptiness of TV. They want to laugh at serious subjects and why not?70

Warren Mitchell, who played Alf Garnett, was the son of orthodox Jews. In contrast to Christian, God-fearing Alf, he was an outspoken atheist and a keen supporter of the British Humanist Association.71 Anthony Booth, who portrayed Mike, was a known Labour activist. (He later became the father-in-law of Labour Prime Minister Tony Blair.) It was after a Labour rally in Wembley that he met Speight, who told him of his plans for Till Death and asked him to play Mike.72 Booth continued to canvass for the Labour Party for the rest of the 1960s and remained an off-screen as much as on-screen socialist for the rest of his life. As part of their commitment to left-wing politics, the show’s actors participated as the Garnett family in the benefit concert Come Back Africa organized by the International Defence and Aid Fund (IDAF). The concert took place on 26 June 1968 at London’s Royal Albert Hall to mark the United Nations’ choice of 1968 as the International Year of Human Rights. The line-up for the event was replete with artists known for their anti-apartheid and civil rights activity, such as Sammy Davis Jr and Johnny Dankworth.73 Achkar Marof, Guinea’s ambassador to the United Nations and the chairman of its Special Committee against Apartheid, gave the opening address. Years later, the concert was remembered for the burning of an American flag during the performance of The Nice in protest of the war in Vietnam.74

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Conclusion In ‘Blood Donor’, Johnny Speight represented the body as a site of ideological and ethical concerns. As the Garnetts debated heart transplantation and its merit, the body became a site of transgression and danger. The process destabilized the body and, by extension, the social order that grew out of its perception as natural and fixed. The episode, which reached half of the adult population of Britain, helped circulate criticism of apartheid. It projected into millions of homes the critique of apartheid as an absurd project, its absurdity captured in the trope of racially designated bathrooms familiar to British viewers. However, its detailed conversations about blood donation and heart transplants also whitewashed South African apartheid and thereby weakened the episode’s potential for radical protest against it. While ‘Blood Donor’ ridiculed the logic of apartheid’s doctrine of separate development, the violence invested in maintaining it went unmentioned. The only black character on screen is a silent man, seen at the edge of the screen, an easy target for Alf’s racism. The episode equates him with the ‘coloured’ South African donor whose heart saved a white dentist. Both silent bodies are suppliers of blood and organs for white recipients rather than active agents. Ultimately, the episode reinforced the widespread perception of apartheid as ‘regrettable’ and probably ‘unworkable’ but of South Africa as a worthwhile British ally.75 The comments of viewers in response to the episode and the BBC’s reply showed that apartheid was not the salient issue of ‘Blood Donor’ or, by extension, a British preoccupation. Its real subject was domestic racism and the creation of the non-white body as a social problem.

Notes 1. Quoted from Michael Billig, Laughter and Ridicule: Towards a Social Critique of Humour (London: SAGE, 2005), 14. 2. Stuart Ward, “‘No Nation Could Be Broker’: The Satire Boom and the Demise of Britain’s World Role,” in British Culture and the End of Empire, ed. Stuart Ward (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2001), 91–110. 3. John Corner, Kay Richardson, and Katy Parry, “Comedy, the Civic Subject, and the Generic Mediation,” Television & New Media 14, no. 1 (2013): 43. 4. As Marjolein ’t Hart writes, ‘In strongly polarized settings, humour is one of the first victims’. Marjolein ’t Hart, “Humour and Social Protest: An Introduction,” International Review of Social History 52, no. 15 (2007): 2.

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5. Barry Took, Laughter in the Air: An Informal History of British Radio Comedy (London: Robson Books, 1976), 1. 6. Tal Zalmanovich, “Sharing a Laugh: Sitcoms and the Production of Post-­ Imperial Britain, 1945–1980” (PhD diss., Rutgers the State University of New Jersey, 2013), 7–8. 7. Corner et al., “Comedy,” 32–33. 8. Ibid., 43. 9. In their introduction, Kamm and Neumann detail the shifts in public perceptions of how television comedy can and should participate in social and political debates and whether and to what degree the genre should be policed to avoid offence. Jürgen Kamm and Birgit Neumann, “Introduction: The Aesthetics and Politics of British TV Comedy,” in British TV Comedies: Cultural Concepts, Contexts and Controversies, eds. Jürgen Kamm and Birgit Neumann (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), 1–37; Morgan Daniels analyses in detail the responses of politicians, broadcasters and different activists to satirical content on BBC television. See especially, 75–124. Morgan Daniels, “The Effects of ‘antiestablishment’ BBC Comedy on Politicians, the Public and Broadcasting Values c.1939–1973” (PhD diss., Queen Mary University of London, 2011). 10. The legendary American television producer Norman Lear remade Till Death for CBS as All in the Family. (CBS 1971–1979). The show was also remade for West German television under the title Ein Herz und eine Seele by West German television producer Wolfgang Menge. 11. “8,350,000 See ‘Till Death Us Do Part’,” Daily Telegraph, January 13, 1968. 12. I work here within Louise Bethlehem’s understanding of apartheid as a heuristic tool for other domestic contexts. See, for instance, Louise Bethlehem, “Restless Itineraries: Antiapartheid Expressive Culture and Transnational Historiography,” Social Text 36, no. 3 (2018): 47–69. 13. Stefan Helgesson, Louise Bethlehem, and Gül Bilge Han, “Cultural Solidarities: Apartheid and the Anticolonial Commons of World Literature,” Safundi 19, no. 3 (2018): 260–68; Louise Bethlehem, “‘Miriam’s Place’: South African Jazz, Conviviality and Exile,” Social Dynamics 43, no. 2 (May 4, 2017): 243–58; Detlef Siegfried, “Aporias of the Cultural Boycott: Anti-­Apartheid Movement, ANC and the Conflict Surrounding Paul Simon’s Album Graceland (1985–1988),” Zeithistorische Forschungen/Studies in Contemporary History, no. 13 (2016): 2–26; Shirli Gilbert, “Singing Against Apartheid: ANC Cultural Groups and the International Anti-Apartheid Struggle,” Journal of Southern African Studies 33, no. 2 (2007): 421–41. 14. Two notable exceptions are Rob Nixon, “The Devil in the Black Box: Ethnic Nationalism, Cultural Imperialism and the Outlawing of TV under

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Apartheid,” The Societies of Southern Africa in the 19th and 20th Century, 19 (1993): 120–137 and Keyan G. Tomaselli, and Bob Boster, “Mandela, MTV, Television and Apartheid,” Popular Music and Society 17, no. 2 (1993): 1–19. 15. Howard Smith, “Apartheid, Sharpeville, and ‘Impartiality’: The Reporting of South Africa on BBC Television 1948–1961,” Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television 13, no. 3 (1993): 252. 16. Lawrence Black, Redefining British Politics: Culture, Consumerism and Participation, 1954–70 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), 174. 17. Black writes that by 1959 as few as 7% of voters ‘actually saw’ local candidates face-to-face at meetings or during canvassing. Black, Redefining British Politics, 174. 18. In a nuanced essay, Rob Nixon explains the reasons why National Party politicians campaigned so vigorously for four decades against the introduction of television to the country. Nixon calls the banning of television until 1976 a drastic act of ‘cultural protectionism’ and ‘pre-emptive censorship from a regime notorious for curbing free speech’. Nixon, “Devil in the Black Box,” 120. 19. James Sanders, South Africa and the International Media 1972–1979: A Struggle for Representation (London: Frank Cass Publishers, 2000), 70. 20. In its efforts to shape the narrative about the country, the South African government itself contributed televisual products, for instance, six films to the monthly television programme Commonwealth Magazine that aired on the BBC between May 1955 and May 1957. BBC producers and managers felt that the films were ‘blatant propaganda’ and raised questions about their role in transmitting it. Smith, “Apartheid, Sharpeville,” 272. 21. Gavin Schaffer, “The Limits of the ‘Liberal Imagination’: Britain, Broadcasting and Apartheid South Africa, 1948–1994,” Past & Present 240, no. 1 (2018): 235–66. 22. Ibid., 235. 23. Sanders, South Africa, 3. 24. Ibid. 25. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) estimated in the 1990s that the apartheid regime spent about $270 million between 1978 and 1994 on various media campaigns. Ron Nixon, Selling Apartheid: South Africa’s Global Propaganda War (London: Pluto Press, 2016), viii. 26. Schaffer, “Limits,” 235. 27. Ibid., 235–6. 28. Smith, “Apartheid,” 252. 29. Ibid. 30. Ibid, 253.

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31. Tal Zalmanovich, “Screening Solidarity in Late 1960s Britain: Racism, Anti-Apartheid, and a Televised Debate,” Critical Arts 32, no. 4 (2018): 49–66. 32. Schaffer, “Limits,” 252; 254. 33. Tali Feinberg, “Louis Washkansky  – The Man with the Miracle Heart,” South African Jewish Report, December 7, 2017. 34. Maya Overby Koretzky, “‘A Change of Heart’: Racial Politics, Scientific Metaphor and Coverage of 1968 Interracial Heart Transplants in the African American Press,” Social History of Medicine 30, no. 2 (2017): 408. 35. Overby Koretzky does an excellent job documenting the American, and, in particular, the African-American, reaction to Barnard’s work. Overby Koretzky, “‘A Change of Heart’.” In her book about the British media and heart transplants in the 1960s, Ayesha Nathoo devotes two chapters to the media’s reporting on both operations. Ayesha Nathoo, Hearts Exposed: Transplants and the Media in 1960s Britain (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009). 36. Nathoo, Hearts Exposed, 58. 37. In ibid., 57. 38. Ibid., 78. 39. Ibid., 66. 40. Quoted in ibid., 73. 41. Ibid., 62. 42. Ibid., 73. There was also the ethical question of what ‘death’ meant in the context of taking the heart of the donor from his body. 43. In Overby Koretzky, “‘A Change of Heart’,” 409. 44. Nathoo, Hearts Exposed, 73–74. 45. Quoted from Overby Koretzky, “‘A Change of Heart’,” 409. 46. See, for instance, “Carry on Alf, Let ’Em Moo!,” Daily Mirror, January 14, 1968; T.C.  Worsley, “Monstrous Alf,” Financial Times, January 18, 1967; Milton Shulman, “Viewers, You Were Looking at Yourselves!,” Evening Standard, February 21, 1968; Margaret Hall and Jack Bell, “Protests Pour in as Alf Bows Out with a Bang,” Daily Mirror, February 17, 1968; James Thomas, “Verdict on Alf: It Was Suicide,” Daily Express, February 17, 1968; Graham Stanford, “Ban Alf? Surely Not,” News of the World, February 18, 1968; Sue Freeman, “That Little Bit of Alf in All of Us,” Daily Express, January 27, 1969. Recently, Gavin Schaffer has written about this debate: Gavin Schaffer, “Race on the Television: The Writing of Johnny Speight in the 1970s,” in British Culture and Society in the 1970s: The Lost Decade, eds. Laurel Forster and Sue Harper (Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2010), 107–18. 47. Shulman, “Viewers.” 48. “Blood Donor,” Till Death Us Do Part (BBC, January 12, 1968).

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49. Kathleen Paul, Whitewashing Britain: Race and Citizenship in the Postwar Era (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1997), 166–67. 50. Paul Gilroy, There Ain’t No Black in the Union Jack: The Cultural Politics of Race and Nation, 2nd ed. (London: Routledge, 2002), 66. 51. “Blood Donor.” 52. Ibid. 53. Axel Schildt and Detlef Siegfried, “Youth, Consumption, and Politics in the Age of Radical Change,” in Between Marx and Coca Cola. Youth Cultures in Changing European Societies, 1960–1980, eds. Axel Schildt and Detlef Siegfried (New York: Berghahn Books, 2005), 2. 54. Saul Dubow has explained the role of science for the apartheid regime in a recent keynote presentation: “Northern Platforms, Southern Vistas: Astronomy and Apartheid” (Perceptions of Apartheid in Western Europe 1960–1990, University of Hamburg, Germany, 14 September 2018). 55. Nathoo, Hearts Exposed, 76. 56. “Blood Donor.” 57. Ibid. 58. The African-American press raised similar concerns. The Philadelphia Tribune wondered whether now that Blaiberg had ‘a non-white man’s heart beating in his chest’ he would ‘be sent to the “coloreds” compound?’ The ironically titled article ‘Blessing of New Heart Brings Curse’ was published on 13 January 1968. Quoted in Overby Koretzky, “‘A Change of Heart’,” 421. 59. “8,350,000 See ‘Till Death Us Do Part.’” 60. Shaun Usher, “Alf (Till Death Us Do Part) Put His Foot in It on Heart Swaps,” The Daily Sketch, January 13, 1968. 61. Ibid. 62. “Shocked by the Truth,” The Sun, February 21, 1968. 63. “Carry on Alf, Let ’Em Moo!” 64. Ibid. 65. Ibid. 66. Martin Jackson, “Now Johnny Speight Gets on the Colour Kick,” Daily Express, November 14, 1969. 67. Brian Dean, “Curry and Chips Starts TV Colour Row,” Daily Mail, November 22, 1969. 68. Maurice Wiggin, “[Untitled],” Sunday Times, November 23, 1969. 69. Schaffer, “Race,” 115. 70. Barry Norman, “Seriously, It’s All a Laughing Matter For Johnny,” Daily Mail, August 3, 1966, BBC Written Archives Centre. 71. “Warren Mitchell Obituary: Alf Garnett and Much More,” BBC News, November 14, 2015, https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainmentarts-27046865. Accessed 15 May 2019.

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72. “Actor Best Known as Alf Garnett’s Son-in-Law and Tony Blair’s Father-­ in-­Law,” Irish Times, September 27, 2017, sec. Obituaries. 73. International Defence and Aid Fund, “Come Back Africa Program,” June 26, 1968, Labour History Pamphlet Box 229, Bishopsgate Institute. 74. Lawrence Meredith attended the event and kept the programme and collected newspaper clippings. Meredith wrote to the letter section of the Guardian, ‘All I can remember is that though Marlon Brando was billed, he did not appear, but an unbilled Sammy Davis Jnr did. He drew much applause by stating that he was not well known for speaking out on apartheid, but intended to do so in future’. Meredith, Lawrence, “Obituary: Letter: Brian Davison,” The Guardian, June 28, 2008, sec. Letters. 75. Saul Dubow, Apartheid 1948–1994 (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 51.

References Bethlehem, Louise. “‘Miriam’s Place’: South African Jazz, Conviviality and Exile.” Social Dynamics 43, no. 2 (2017): 243–58. ———. “Restless Itineraries: Antiapartheid Expressive Culture and Transnational Historiography.” Social Text 36, no. 3 (2018): 47–69. Billig, Michael. Laughter and Ridicule: Towards a Social Critique of Humour. London: SAGE, 2005. Black, Lawrence. Redefining British Politics: Culture, Consumerism and Participation, 1954–70. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010. Corner, John, Kay Richardson, and Katy Parry. “Comedy, the Civic Subject, and the Generic Mediation.” Television & New Media 14, no. 1 (2013): 31–45. Daniels, Morgan. “The Effects of ‘antiestablishment’ BBC Comedy on Politicians, the Public and Broadcasting Values c.1939–1973.” PhD diss., Queen Mary University of London, 2011. Dubow, Saul. Apartheid 1948–1994. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014. ———. “Northern Platforms, Southern Vistas: Astronomy and Apartheid.” Hamburg, Germany, 2018. Gilbert, Shirli. “Singing Against Apartheid: ANC Cultural Groups and the International Anti-Apartheid Struggle.” Journal of Southern African Studies 33, no. 2 (June 2007): 421–41. Gilroy, Paul. There Ain’t No Black in the Union Jack: The Cultural Politics of Race and Nation. 2nd ed. London: Routledge, 2002. ’t Hart, Marjolein. “Humour and Social Protest: An Introduction.” International Review of Social History 52, no. S15 (2007): 1–20. Helgesson, Stefan, Louise Bethlehem, and Gül Bilge Han. “Cultural Solidarities: Apartheid and the Anticolonial Commons of World Literature.” Safundi 19, no. 3 (2018): 260–68.

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International Defence and Aid Fund. “Come Back Africa Program,” June 26, 1968. Labour History Pamphlet Box 229. Bishopsgate Institute. Kamm, Jürgen, and Birgit Neumann. “Introduction: The Aesthetics and Politics of British TV Comedy.” In British TV Comedies: Cultural Concepts, Contexts and Controversies, edited by Jürgen Kamm and Birgit Neumann. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016. Nathoo, Ayesha. Hearts Exposed: Transplants and the Media in 1960s Britain. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009. Nixon, Rob. “The Devil in the Black Box: Ethnic Nationalism, Cultural Imperialism and the Outlawing of TV under Apartheid.” The Societies of Southern Africa in the 19th and 20th Century, 19 (1993): 120–137. Nixon, Ron. Selling Apartheid: South Africa’s Global Propaganda War (London: Pluto Press, 2016). Overby Koretzky, Maya. “‘A Change of Heart’: Racial Politics, Scientific Metaphor and Coverage of 1968 Interracial Heart Transplants in the African American Press.” Social History of Medicine 30, no. 2 (May 2017): 408–28. Paul, Kathleen. Whitewashing Britain: Race and Citizenship in the Postwar Era. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1997. Sanders, James. South Africa and the International Media 1972–1979: A Struggle for Representation. London: Frank Cass Publishers, 2000. Schaffer, Gavin. “Race on the Television: The Writing of Johnny Speight in the 1970s.” In British Culture and Society in the 1970s: The Lost Decade, edited by Laurel Forster and Sue Harper, 107–18. Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Pub., 2010. ———. “The Limits of the ‘Liberal Imagination’: Britain, Broadcasting and Apartheid South Africa, 1948–1994.” Past & Present 240, no. 1 (2018): 235–66. Schildt, Axel and Siegfried, Detlef. “Youth, Consumption, and Politics in the Age of Radical Change.” In Between Marx and Coca Cola. Youth Cultures in Changing European Societies, 1960–1980, edited by Axel Schildt and Detlef Siegfried, 1–35. New York: Berghahn Books, 2005. Siegfried, Detlef. “Aporias of the Cultural Boycott: Anti-Apartheid Movement, ANC and the Conflict Surrounding Paul Simon’s Album Graceland (1985–1988).” Zeithistorische Forschungen/Studies in Contemporary History, no. 13 (2016): 2–26. Smith, Howard. “Apartheid, Sharpeville, and ‘Impartiality’: The Reporting of South Africa on BBC Television 1948–1961.” Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television 13, no. 3 (1993): 151–298. Tomaselli, Keyan G, and Bob Boster. “Mandela, MTV, Television and Apartheid.” Popular Music and Society 17, no. 2 (1993): 1–19.

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Ward, Stuart. “‘No Nation Could Be Broker’: The Satire Boom and the Demise of Britain’s World Role.” In British Culture and the End of Empire, edited by Stuart Ward, 91–110. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2001. Zalmanovich, Tal. “Screening Solidarity in Late 1960s Britain: Racism, Anti-­ Apartheid, and a Televised Debate.” Critical Arts 32, no. 4 (2018): 49–66. ———. “Sharing a Laugh: Sitcoms and the Production of Post-Imperial Britain, 1945–1980.” PhD diss., Rutgers the State University of New Jersey, 2013.

‘This Peculiar Fact of Living History’: Invoking Apartheid in Black British Writing Andrea Thorpe

While the Anti-Apartheid Movement (AAM) attracted sizeable support in Britain from its inception in the early 1960s onwards, black Britons occupied an ambivalent position with regard to that organisation. In a speech delivered in 1999, Stuart Hall noted the simultaneity of AAM foundation and the ‘moment of large-scale Afro-Caribbean migration to Britain’: [T]here are sometimes perplexing questions to be asked … about the importance for the Anti-Apartheid Movement of there being an embodiment of the reminder of race in their presence actually in front of them, as Britain saw the beginnings of a society which was both multi-cultural and multi-­ ethnic. Undoubtedly there was an awareness among the black populations of the South African issue. And yet there was, in some ways, an inexplicable distance between these two movements.1

A. Thorpe (*) Department of Literary Studies in English, Rhodes University, Grahamstown, South Africa e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2021 K. Andresen et al. (eds.), Apartheid and Anti-Apartheid in Western Europe, Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-53284-0_6

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Although black Britons in the post-war period certainly felt empathy towards anti-racist and anti-colonial struggles abroad, historian Elizabeth Williams emphasises that in many cases domestic struggles against the ‘blatant racism of British society during the 1960s, 1970s and into the 1980s’ were ‘all-consuming’, particularly in the major cities.2 She cites Stuart Hall’s comments that in the face of people’s ‘daily struggles’ against racism, ‘it is not a surprise that the overwhelming political energy went into the building of resistance at a local level, rather than the building of anti-apartheid politics’.3 As Williams explains, black activists’ wariness to become involved in AAM protests was also partly due to their anxiety over the role of white activists in the British anti-apartheid struggle.4 From the 1980s onwards, however, black British activism against apartheid became more visible alongside resistance to domestic racism; for instance, the West Indian Standing Committee (WISC) prioritised anti-apartheid activism after the announcement of the visit of South Africa’s President P.W. Botha to Britain for talks with Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in 1984.5 Furthermore, apartheid frequently informed how black Britons perceived and represented themselves. Williams provides several examples of black Londoners who perceived resonances between black South Africans’ experiences of police brutality and their own clashes with police. One such activist remarked that apartheid ‘seemed to have a universal metaphor for black experience’.6 As is evident in the activist’s reference to apartheid as a ‘universal metaphor’, black British solidarity with the anti-apartheid struggle went further than specific, instrumental comparisons of experiences of racism. Williams suggests that while the suffering of black South Africans under apartheid ‘mirrored’ black Britons’ ‘struggles against the systemic racism of Britain’, this mirroring became ‘conflated into a sense of the universal struggle of black people against white oppression, which black communities saw as dating back to the beginning of the Atlantic slave trade driven largely by European avarice’.7 Black British activists perceived the racism they experienced as a lingering effect of trans-historical, global racial injustice, which both strengthened their resolve to fight domestic racism and caused them ‘to empathise with people of colour elsewhere’.8 Since the late 1970s, in particular, global black consciousness politics, drawing on the Civil Rights Movement, the Black Power movement and Pan-Africanism as much as on the South African Black Consciousness Movement, informed the ‘bold anti-racism’9 that manifested in unrest in British cities. Historians of the anti-apartheid struggle have attested that the 1980s saw the international

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anti-apartheid struggle intensify.10 Williams argues that ‘South African politics became uniquely part of the political landscape of Britain in a way that no other country had done since perhaps the Biafran war in the late 1960s and early 1970s’.11 This unique relationship was partly due to Britain’s longstanding colonial relationship with South Africa, dating back to the British take-over of the Cape Province in the late eighteenth century and extensive British settlement from 1820 onwards. British responses to South African apartheid did not frequently engage with this colonial history, however, as Stuart Hall observes.12 Given the visibility of South African issues in the British cultural and political landscape, it was inevitable that musicians, artists and writers in Britain would reference apartheid in their work. Just as the 1950s saw writers like Sam Selvon and George Lamming respond to the challenges faced by the so-called Windrush generation,13 in the 1980s and early 1990s a new generation of black British writers responded both to racism in Britain and to a growing global sense of black solidarity. Black British writers have tended to write more about ‘race’ issues than their white counterparts, with notable exceptions, such as novelist Colin McInnes, as literary scholar Susie Thomas foregrounded in her study of what she aptly calls ‘literary apartheid’ in the British post-war novel.14 Three of the most influential black writers of this period were poet and musician Linton Kwesi Johnson, novelist and essayist Salman Rushdie, and filmmaker and novelist Hanif Kureishi, whose engagements with apartheid I shall discuss. But why study literary texts as a route to determining the perceptions of apartheid on the part of black Britons? My aim in this brief study differs from that of Williams and Hall, who expand our understanding of the Anti-Apartheid Movement by exploring the frequent ‘distance’15 between black British civil society groups and the AAM, while providing evidence of the important contribution that black British people made to the struggle against apartheid. Building on scholarship about transnational anti-­ apartheid solidarities experienced and acted upon by black Britons, I wish to put the discursive and cultural dimensions of such solidarities under a microscope by focusing on literary texts, not simply to reflect perceptions of the black British community in general but to explore the textual paths that such perceptions take. If some black British activists saw apartheid as a ‘universal metaphor’, then they employed a particularly literary expression, and, as we shall see, the supposed universality and the figurative, emblematic aspects of apartheid are either reinforced or questioned by literary texts.

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Furthermore, my analysis intervenes in the growing body of research into how the concepts of apartheid and anti-apartheid attracted diverse cultural responses around the globe. Louise Bethlehem draws on Saul Dubow’s influential call to ‘defamiliarize’ apartheid, which details how apartheid ‘became politically compelling’ to ‘both its supporters and to the anti-apartheid movement’,16 and she reflects on the ‘restlessness’ of apartheid, focusing on ‘the itineracy of South African expressive cultures of resistance’.17 Literature, along with cultural forms like music and film, participated in global meaning-making around apartheid, while mediated through local contexts and paradigms. The texts I analyse are evidence of how apartheid, as a concept and as a concrete political system, became not only a focus of solidarity and protest but also an analogy, emblem or metaphor for writers to express their own experiences and subjectivities. Recent scholarship on the figuration of the Holocaust in writing and film has focused on what the literary scholar Debarati Sanyal calls the ‘political stakes of bringing together seemingly disparate memories of violence within an artwork’.18 Scholars question the ethical implications of using the Holocaust to address other global forms of oppression and racism. Invocations of apartheid in global literary texts raise similar ethical and aesthetic questions. In their introduction to a seminal volume on South African literature in late- and post-apartheid literary scholars Rosemary Jolly and Derek Attridge argue trenchantly that, while ‘the international consumer of South African culture has been encouraged to view South Africa as an ideological battleground that represents the Manichean conflict par excellence’, to insist that ‘South Africa during apartheid should be the emblem of racial struggles internationally … is both simplistic and fallacious’.19 I question whether the literary texts discussed here evince the potentially fallacious simplification raised by Jolly and Attridge, or whether these black British writers question their own invocations of apartheid, moving beyond simple comparisons to produce transhistorical, transnational critiques and to signal solidarity. Two of the texts that I discuss invoke the Holocaust in their reflections on racism in Britain and South Africa. Sanyal foregrounds ‘the Holocaust’s unmooring from its historical occurrence, its movement across space and time’, which is ‘the condition of its relevance for other histories of violation and victimization’,20 and it is also precisely the ‘unmoored’, migratory properties of apartheid that I trace by examining how as a historical moment, an experience of trauma and oppression, and an institutionalised system of segregation, apartheid travels beyond its national, temporal context to converse

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with other global experiences, such as that of Britain in the 1980s and early 1990s. Such an ‘unmooring’ of a particular historical moment participates in a broader cultural globalisation of experiences of racism in the second half of the twentieth century.

Linton Kwesi Johnson’s Poetic Solidarities When accepting an honorary doctorate from South Africa’s Rhodes University in 2017, renowned British poet Linton Kwesi Johnson traced his ‘South African connections’ to his relationship with South African writer and critic Lewis Nkosi.21 Johnson, who was active in anti-racist groups in London, was arrested in 1972 for writing down the details of policemen manhandling three young black men in Brixton, and in his speech he attributed his release to the public awareness raised by an article Nkosi had written for The Observer.22 Johnson also acknowledged that his interest in South Africa went beyond personal relationships and was caught up in a sense of diasporic black political solidarity, which he attributed to his Jamaican roots, quoting lyrics sung by the Jamaican reggae band the Twinkle Brothers: ‘If Africa noh free/ black man can’t free’. Personal encounters with South African intellectuals and activists in exile, alongside a broad sense of responsibility towards the global liberation of black people, informed the intersecting anti-racist and anti-­ apartheid networks in which Johnson was deeply involved in London. He was a member of the Black Panthers, the Race Today Collective and the Black Parents Movement (BPM), which had broadened its original focus on the education of black children in Britain to protest racism abroad. The BPM, spearheaded by Caribbean-born intellectuals, melded anti-colonial activism with protests and mobilisations against apartheid.23 Johnson was also a regular participant in the International Book Fair of Radical Black and Third World Books, founded by the BPM, which ran from 1982 to 1995. Its programmes reveal how South Africa became a key focus of the Book Fair after the mid-1980s.24 In addition to his prolific output of performance poetry set to dub-reggae, Johnson has published five collections of poems: Voices of the Living and the Dead (1974), Dread Beat an’ Blood (1975), Inglan Is a Bitch (1980), Tings an’ Times (1991) and Mi Revalueshanary Fren (2002), a Penguin Modern Classics collection. While most of Johnson’s oeuvre deals with the experiences of Britain’s black citizens, two well-known poems reference apartheid to express the transnational solidarities that he foregrounded in his speech at Rhodes

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University. ‘Mi Revalueshanary Fren’, first published in Tings an’ Times in 1991, is a response to the crumbling Eastern Bloc and its outgoing leaders, who ‘tek a tumble/ fram Hungary to Poelan to Romania’.25 The poem is a dialogue between the speaker, an older black British man, and his ‘revolutionary friend’. The speaker questions whether the shift in Eastern Europe from communism to supposed democracy will bring true ‘people powah’26 and wonders what this will mean for ‘black libahraeshan’.27 The refrain, a common element of Johnson’s poems, is his friend’s response to these concerns in the form of a litany of failed regimes: Kaydar e ad to go Zhivkov e ad to go Husak e ad to go Honnicka e ad to go Chowcheskhu e ad to go just like apartied wil av to go[.-?]28

His list of deposed and retired leaders of former communist states includes Hungary’s János Kádár, Bulgaria’s Todor Zhivkov, Czechoslovakia’s Gustáv Husák, Erich Honecker of East Germany and Nicolae Ceaușescu of Romania. Apartheid is included alongside these deposed leaders who headed up oppressive regimes. Johnson implies, through the words of his ‘revolutionary’ interlocutor, that the dissolution of the Eastern Bloc and the end of the Cold War will pave the way for the end of apartheid. Apartheid stands out in this chorus of deposed leaders because it is, of course, not a leader’s name, and because it is not a socialist regime but, rather, a racist, fascist system of government. Johnson could have written ‘just like De Klerk/ wil av to go’, but F.W. De Klerk, who became President of South of Africa in 1989, was already well known for having declared the unconditional release of Nelson Mandela and for beginning negotiations that would lead to the end of apartheid. In the absence of a vilified leader, then, Johnson personifies apartheid as a monster whose demise is inevitable. By appending apartheid to this list of failed authoritarian regimes, Johnson positions South Africa within the context of global struggles

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against oppression and totalitarianism. In his recent monograph on Johnson, David Austin offers an insightful discussion of Johnson’s understanding of socialism and the Soviet Union, noting the influence of C.L.R. James’ Notes on Dialectics on Johnson’s perception that Soviet totalitarianism was a distortion of true socialism.29 In ‘Mi Revalueshanary Fren’, the speaker asks his friend whether, in the midst of supposed reforms, when ‘everybody claim dem demacratic’, ‘noh tings like dat yu woodah call dialectic?’30 In the revolutionary friend’s refrain, Johnson expresses his hope for a more ‘genuine socialism’31 after the implosion of the Soviet Union. Austin reads in the revolutionary’s refrain ‘a sense of resignation that these regimes were totalitarian and moribund, that it was obvious that they would collapse, that similar social circumstances prevailed in South Africa and that these conditions would also lead to apartheid’s dissolution’.32 Despite expressing his desire for a more authentic and egalitarian socialism, by giving ‘apartied’ the last word of the refrain, and the poem, Johnson reinforces South Africa as an immediate focus amid global shifts of political power. He repeatedly retrains the reader’s attention from general anxieties about sham democracies and power vacuums to what in his eyes is a more immediate and important political struggle. What is important to Johnson is a sense of diasporic black solidarity, and so he represents the black British revolutionary returning time and again to apartheid as a ground for continued activism. By the end of the poem, the speaker appears partially convinced by his friend’s mantra: though he admits a ‘lack af andastandin bout di meanin a di changes in di eas/ fi di wes’ and despite his ‘rezavayshans/ bout di cansiquenses an implicashans/ esphsaally fi black libaraeshan’, he still decides to ‘agree’ with the idealistic revolutionary.33 He echoes his friend’s words, but notably alters the last two lines to ‘apartied/ soon gaan’.34 The poem therefore ends on a cautiously hopeful note, since this conversation has not entirely quelled the speaker’s ‘reservations’ about the potential outcomes of these global regime shifts. The tone of Johnson’s poem thus reflects the simultaneously optimistic and anxious global mood of the late 1980s and early 1990s, when the world watched while the ANC and the National Party embarked on fraught negotiations that would lead to democracy. ‘Mi Revalueshanary Fren’, with its punning title, ‘re-evaluates’35 the position of the black British radical activist in relation to the demise of the Soviet Union and the imminent end of apartheid. Despite his questioning of the optimism around Eastern Europe’s supposed moves towards democracy, Johnson’s

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support for ending apartheid remains unshakeable. While Britain remains out of the picture, other than as the setting of the conversation between the two friends, Johnson puts other global spaces in conversation with each other, always keeping ‘black libahraeshan’36 in mind. Alongside strident expressions of anti-apartheid solidarity in both his poetry and activism, Johnson draws on apartheid in more nuanced, meta-­ textual ways, as in his poem ‘If I Woz a Tap-Natch Poet’, which he first performed in 1994.37 In this poem, Johnson considers his place within the English literary canon, and he employs references to apartheid-era figures at crucial points. The poem begins with his tongue-in-cheek assessment of the qualities of a successful poet: if I woz a tap-natch poet like Chris Okigbo Derek Walcot ar T.S. Eliot I woodah write a poem soh dyam deep dat it bittah-sweet.38

If he does not see himself in the same category as these poetic luminaries, Johnson asserts that in the ‘meantime’ he will continue to write with his ‘ruff bass line’ and his ‘own sense of time’.39 Then follows the refrain, which, like ‘Mi Revalueshanary Fren’, is where the reference to apartheid occurs: goon poet haffi step in line caw Bootahlazy mite a gat a couple touzan but Mandela fi him touzans a touzans a touzans a touzans.40

Bearing in mind that the poem is overall a meta-textual consideration of Johnson’s own position as a writer, this reference to contemporary political figures seems at first out of place, yet is pivotal to the poem’s meaning. Violent clashes between Mandela’s ANC and Mangosuthu Buthelezi’s ethno-centric Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) between 1990 and 1994 almost threatened to undermine South Africa’s first democratic elections and resulted in a shocking number of deaths. There is some evidence that

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the National Party fuelled this destabilising violence, exploiting and deepening ethnic differences as they had throughout apartheid.41 Johnson asserts that the ‘goon poet’, either an ignorant or a thuggish writer, should bear in mind that while Buthelezi has thousands of supporters, Mandela has many thousands more, presumably including his international backers. The literary critic Robert McGill suggests that Johnson’s insistent return in the poem to ‘an explicitly political situation’, whether it is ‘support for Mandela or political division itself which provides motivation’, shows that he ‘prioritises the fight for political amelioration in South Africa over the jousting and sparring of literary debate; the canonrelated manoeuvring of artists cannot come at the exclusion of other political engagements’. McGill argues that ‘Johnson rejects the canon for another imagined community, insisting on a unity engendered by the fight for racial equality and political stability’.42 This is similar to my reading of ‘Mi Revalueshanary Fren’, in which the South African political situation is held up as a more immediate and urgent political situation, over other ideological debates. Moreover, departing from McGill’s reading, I view Johnson’s reference to South Africa as not entirely removed from the poem’s considerations of Johnson’s position as a poet in relation to literary canons and fields. The refrain’s second layer of meaning becomes clearer in the poem’s final section: still mi naw goh bow an scrape an gwaan like a ape peddlin noh puerile parchment af etnicity wid ongle a vaig fleetin hint af hawtencity like a black Lance Percival in reverse ar even worse a babbling bafoon whe looze im tongue no sah nat atall mi gat mi riddim mi gat mi rime mi gat mi ruff bass line mi gat mi own sense a time

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goon poet bettah step in line caw Bootahlazy mite a gat a couple touzan but Mandela fi him touzans a touzans a touzans a touzans.43

Johnson asserts that in order to be included in a mainstream poetic canon, he will not resort to ethnic stereotypes or ‘ape’ exoticised stereotypes of authenticity, as if he is blackface-wearing comedian Lance Percival ‘in reverse’. The ‘puerile parchment af etnicity’ that he eschews is reminiscent of the pass books that black South Africans had to carry in accordance with apartheid legislation governing the movement and residence of black people in urban areas. Johnson compares poetry limited by ‘racial’ or ‘ethnic’ stereotypes to a document that restricted the free movement of black South Africans. For Johnson, enforcing such limits on his artistry is ‘puerile’, infantilising and reductive. Johnson therefore refuses to adopt an ‘ethnic’ voice but asserts his own ‘sense of time’, his individual mode of poetic expression, which defies classification. By following this defiant disavowal of patronising exoticisation with his final reference to Buthelezi and Mandela, strengthened by ‘bettah’ instead of ‘haffi’, Johnson forges links between the ethnic stereotypes that some poets might perform and Buthelezi’s failed ethnocentric politics. Mandela has thousands more supporters, Johnson suggests, because his is a politics of inclusion, which has even travelled beyond South Africa’s borders to spark the imagination and engagement of activists and the general public worldwide. Like Buthelezi, Johnson could rely on ‘lazy’ ethnic separatism to achieve popularity, but drawing on Mandela’s example of pursuing a political course that is less narrowly defined by ethnic or even racial identity enables him to refuse such a self-diminishing strategy. I therefore agree with McGill that Johnson establishes his allegiance to a wider ‘imagined community’ committed to the fight against global racisms, but he simultaneously draws on apartheid politics in order to express his position as a black writer in Britain who rejects the racial and ethnic compartments of the segregated canon. In this complex poem, Johnson thus uses apartheid both as an international touchstone of black, anti-racist solidarity and as an analogy within a meta-textual, self-reflexive engagement with the British literary field. Several other black British writers drew on apartheid in similarly analogous and meta-textual ways, including the celebrated British-­ Indian novelist Salman Rushdie.

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Implicit Comparisons and Imaginary Homelands: Two Essays by Salman Rushdie Salman Rushdie was born in India and was educated in Britain, where he settled in the 1970s and went on to write such acclaimed novels as Midnight’s Children (1981) and The Satanic Verses (1988). Rushdie’s famous essay, ‘The New Empire Within Britain’, written for a television programme broadcast in 1982 and published in Imaginary Homelands in 1991, begins, ‘Britain isn’t South Africa’. In the opening lines of the essay, Rushdie suggests a comparison between apartheid South Africa and contemporary Britain, yet disavows this analogy. He then complicates his initial assertion by bringing in a third time and place, Nazi Germany: Britain isn’t South Africa. I am reliably informed of this. Nor is it Nazi Germany. I’ve got that on the best authority as well. You may feel that these two statements are not exactly the most dramatic of revelations. But it’s remarkable how often they, or similar statements, are used to counter the arguments of anti-racist campaigners. ‘Things aren’t as bad as all that,’ we are told, ‘you exaggerate, you’re indulging in special pleading, you must be paranoid.’ So let me concede at once that, as far as I know, there are no pass laws here. Inter-racial marriages are permitted. And Auschwitz hasn’t been rebuilt in the Home Counties. I find it odd, however, that those who use such absences as defences rarely perceive that their own statements indicate how serious things have become. Because if the defence for Britain is that mass extermination of racially impure persons hasn’t yet begun, or that the principle of white supremacy hasn’t actually been enshrined in the constitution, then something must have gone very wrong indeed.44

Rushdie’s purpose in this essay is to highlight the extent of racism in Britain and assert the urgency of reckoning with Britain’s colonial past. He introduces this argument by raising the spectre of comparisons between apartheid South Africa and 1980s Britain, and between 1980s Britain and Nazi Germany. Yet he qualifies these comparisons: Britain is, of course, not enforcing pass laws; Britain is obviously not incarcerating people in concentration camps. He argues, however, that the common defence that British racism is not as bad as the extreme forms of oppression found in apartheid South Africa and Nazi Germany reveals just how ‘serious’ racism in Britain might be. Rushdie suggests here that apartheid both stands for the apogee of racism, white supremacy and legalised oppression of the racial other, what Jacques Derrida memorably called ‘a racism par

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excellence, the most racist of racisms’,45 and is simultaneously not the only measure of racism. Apartheid is a strategic benchmark by which Britons assess their own ‘race’ relations, but racism in Britain does not have to be a recognisable simulacrum of apartheid South Africa in order to be acknowledged as pervasive and damaging. Although ‘the principle of white supremacy hasn’t actually been enshrined in the constitution’,46 it does not follow that it is not present in racist British laws in the 1980s Britain, as Rushdie highlights such policies as the quota system for the migration of UK passport-holders from overseas. In the decades following the Second World War, black migrants from Britain’s former colonies were encouraged to settle in Britain. Following the mid-1970s, however, as Rushdie points out, the British government began to limit immigration, even for former colonial subjects. One of the consequences of the 1970s immigration regulations was felt deeply and shockingly in 2018, when public awareness was raised about how clampdowns on the Windrush generation’s right to remain in the United Kingdom, intersecting in disturbing ways with Theresa May’s intentionally ‘hostile environment’ for immigrants during her time as Home Secretary, resulted in multiple deportations of black Britons who had been living and working in the United Kingdom for decades.47 In this essay, Rushdie foregrounds cultural and systemic forms of racism which are particular to 1980s Britain, while showing how they are broadly continuous with global forms of racism. After this introduction, Rushdie steers away from the apartheid comparison, to focus on a systemic racism arguably more relevant to British history, namely, colonialism. By eschewing apartheid as a benchmark for racism and instead focusing on British colonialism and its lingering effects, Rushdie underscores his claim that to use apartheid as the only measure of racism might elide other, more specifically British histories of oppression. Rushdie argues that Britain is ‘undergoing a critical phase of its post-­ colonial period’48 and that, despite the demise of the British Empire, there are still colonial ‘attitudes in operation’ in 1980s British society.49 While apartheid or Nazism are used by many as measure of British racism, turning to these historical moments might displace the memory of British colonialism. What Rushdie does not discuss is how awareness raised around apartheid may have helped deepen an understanding of the racist legacies of colonialism. In Stuart Hall’s afore-mentioned speech delivered at a symposium held at London’s South Africa House in 1999, he explained the

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AAM’s role in the ‘race-ing of Britain: the becoming aware of the question of race and racialisation and of a racialised political regime by the British public’. He explained both the irony and the necessity of this new awareness in a ‘long-time imperial country’ such as Britain. In the 1950s, when Hall first arrived in Britain, he observed a ‘very curious atmosphere’ in which ‘the principal response’ to decolonisation was ‘the deep freeze of amnesia’. Hall notes, ‘It was as if they had nothing to do whatsoever with anything that had gone on before’. This ‘amnesia’ entailed a blindness towards the colonial causes of migration of people like Hall from the Caribbean to Britain and also a blind spot when it came to South Africa: So as far as South Africa was concerned it was as though Britain had met South Africa at some point in the long distant past, had encountered it in passing, nodded as it passed and moved on. So why on earth should anything that was happening in South Africa be of internal interest to the British public? They couldn’t conceive of racialised relations as an after-effect of that long complicit involvement which Britain had with Africa as a whole, and with Southern Africa in particular.50

Uncovering these blind spots of British colonialism is likewise Rushdie’s project in this essay. As part of his discussion of colonialism, Rushdie returns to Nazi Germany as a touchstone but not to apartheid South Africa. He develops the comparison to Hitler’s Germany by suggesting that, even though ‘[t]he British Empire isn’t the Third Reich’, Britain should learn from post-war Germany’s ‘heroic attempts’ to ‘purify German thought and the German language of the pollution of Nazism’, since British society also needs to be ‘cleansed of the filth of imperialism’.51 Rushdie’s description of Germany’s ‘purification’ from the ‘pollution of Nazism’ seems to refer not only to the Allied programme of denazification in occupied West Germany in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War but also to the broader social and cultural project of Vergangenheitsbewältigung, the national struggle to come to terms with Nazism and the Holocaust, which was most prominent in the 1950s and 1960s.52 As well as somewhat foreshadowing Paul Gilroy’s concept of ‘post-­ imperial melancholia’,53 an interesting afterlife of this passage was that, despite his careful disentanglement of the British Empire and Nazi Reich, this comparison formed the basis for the public critique of Rushdie’s entire essay, as he comments in the introduction to Imaginary Homelands.54 By

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mentioning both apartheid and Nazism, he brings these historical cases of ‘racism par excellence’55 into view and suggests how West Germany’s process of coming to terms with Nazism and the Holocaust in the decades following the Second World War offered lessons for post-colonial Britain. Yet even this qualified comparison was controversial for the British public in the 1980s, suggesting a broad unwillingness to delve into issues of ‘race’ and colonialism in Britain. Rushdie does not mention any objections to his comparison between apartheid South Africa and Britain. Was the comparison between apartheid South Africa and Britain’s colonial legacy more palatable or simply more difficult to contest? Besides this important essay, Rushdie also invokes apartheid South Africa in Imaginary Homelands in a very visible but ambivalent way: in the title, and in the title essay, he plays on ‘homelands’ meaning both the country that is one’s original home and the rural areas assigned by the apartheid government to black South Africans based on ‘ethnicity’, which became ‘independent’ in the late 1970s and early 1980s, thus depriving their residents of South African citizenship.56 The first meaning prevails in the title essay, in which Rushdie reflects on the difficulties and opportunities in writing a place removed from one in time and space, ‘imaginary homelands, Indias of the mind’.57 Rushdie’s use of the term pivots in the essay’s concluding section, in which he argues that South Asian writers such as himself should grant themselves the ‘freedom’ to be ‘eclectic’ in ‘theme, setting, form’.58 He warns against the ‘adoption of a ghetto mentality’ because [t]o forget that there is a world beyond the community to which we belong, to confine ourselves within narrowly defined cultural frontiers, would be … to go voluntarily into that form of internal exile which in South Africa is called the ‘homeland’.59

Rushdie suggests that diasporic writers ‘must guard against creating, for the most virtuous of reasons, British-Indian literary equivalents of Bophuthatswana or the Transkei’.60 Rushdie employs the polysemic term, ‘homeland’, to explore his position as an Indian writer in Britain; he does not engage directly with South African politics but uses the concept in service of his argument about literary fields in Britain. Yet Rushdie suggests the extent to which the South African homelands and apartheid South Africa itself stand for self-isolation and the essentialisation of ‘racial’ difference, and thus the concept is an

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ideal vehicle for his assertions about transcending limiting categories. His use of apartheid is similar to Johnson’s invocation in ‘If I Woz a Tap-­ Natch Poet’ of Buthelezi’s failed ethnocentricism, although Johnson there uses South Africa as more than a meta-textual figure of speech, but also espouses a call to transnational solidarity, which is perhaps missing from Rushdie’s reference to the ‘homeland’. Common to Johnson’s poem and Rushdie’s essay are both writers’ border-crossing, boundary-breaking manifestos, expressions of the desire to escape exoticisation and limitations imposed by ‘racial’ or ‘ethnic’ identities. Both writers claim their place within the canons of British, English and world literatures. Such questions of self-ghettoisation were equally foregrounded in South African literary debates during the latter years of apartheid. In his well-known paper ‘Preparing Ourselves for Freedom’ (1989) lawyer and anti-­apartheid activist Albie Sachs used terms reminiscent of Rushdie’s to contest overly determined boundaries imposed on cultural expression, encouraging artists not to remain ‘trapped in the multiple ghettoes of the apartheid imagination’.61 Post-colonial theorist Shailja Sharma suggests that the concluding section of Rushdie’s essay, with its comparison between the experiences of the Indian diaspora and exiled and émigré Western writers, elides ‘the troublesome issue of race in immigration’ in service to an ‘ode to the pleasures of migrancy’.62 Appeals to a writerly world beyond ‘cultural frontiers’ risk being read as apolitical gestures. Johnson, on the other hand, eschewed ‘art for art’s sake’ and saw poetry as ‘a cultural weapon in the black liberation struggle’,63 echoing the idea of culture as a weapon of struggle, which Sachs challenged. Neither is Rushdie apolitical, as merely his essay on the ‘New Empire in Britain’ evinces, not to mention the later events of his writing career. A thin but crucial line exists between manifestos of artistic freedom and apolitical apologia. The concepts of the ‘homeland’ or ‘ghetto’ (note the echoes of the Holocaust) accrue complex resonances within debates about the role of the writer in relation to national allegiances, and towards inequality and oppression. One might ask whether Rushdie’s appeal to South African homelands centres his argument within a global fight against racism, or whether it is ethically problematic to employ real homelands, where real suffering and segregation occur, to represent a writer’s relationship to their ‘imaginary homeland’, thus emptying the term of its immediate political context. Though Rushdie’s almost casual use of the ‘homeland’ as a metaphor retains a dated veneer of

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postmodern glibness, his employment of the South African term illustrates the potency of apartheid’s spatial vocabulary within the black British imaginary.

Haunted by History: Hanif Kureishi’s ‘We’re Not Jews’ Novelist and playwright Hanif Kureishi similarly draws on the idea of the homeland and apartheid segregation to express his refusal of self-­ ghettoisation in his essay ‘The Rainbow Sign’ (1986). Kureishi rejects the Nation of Islam’s black separatism,64 asserting, ‘I wasn’t ready for separate development. I’d had too much of that already’,65 referencing the policy designed and implemented by South African Prime Minister Hendrik Verwoerd in the late 1950s, which established the South African ‘bantustans’. Later in the same essay, Kureishi describes the ‘truculent pride of the Black Panthers’ and the ‘separatism, the violence, the bitterness and pathetic elevation of an imaginary homeland’, which he suggests are ‘directly spawned by racism’.66 Kureishi was likely influenced by Rushdie in his use of the phrase ‘imaginary homeland’ since Rushdie delivered the paper on which the essay ‘Imaginary Homelands’ was based at the 1982 Festival of India, years before it was published in 1991. While Rushdie uses this apartheid trope to describe his position as a writer, Kureishi employs the term to occupy a political stance that eschews separatism and embraces hybridity, which Homi K. Bhabha describes as a state in which ‘difference’ is entertained ‘without an assumed or imposed hierarchy’.67 While he does not entirely leach ‘separate development’ or ‘homeland’ of political meaning, Kureishi nevertheless repurposes concepts associated with the oppression of black South Africans in order to critique Black Consciousness philosophies. Kureishi goes further than Rushdie in his appropriation of ‘separate development’ for rhetorical purposes, an approach markedly different from that of Johnson, who was a member of the British Black Panther Movement that Kureishi criticises. Born of a Pakistani father and white British mother, Kureishi occupies both an immersed and critical perspective towards Englishness. He is well known for his novels The Buddha of Suburbia (1990) and The Black Album (1995), both coming-of-age stories dealing with ‘race’ and identity against the backdrop of London in the 1970s and 1980s. Kureishi’s prolific short fiction, though it has veered away from these themes, at times returns to

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issues of ‘race’ and ‘ethnicity’ in Britain.68 In his short story ‘We’re Not Jews’ (1995),69 Kureishi invokes apartheid South Africa at a crucial moment in a narrative about a young British-Pakistani boy and his white British mother encountering racism in London. The temporal setting of ‘We’re Not Jews’ is unclear, but it is not contemporary, as the reference to ongoing apartheid implies. Rehana Ahmed suggests that the story is most likely set in the 1950s.70 Presumably, she bases this on the story’s references to Teddy Boys71 and a bombing site,72 but the setting can be no earlier than the late 1950s, perhaps even the early 1960s, since the Teddy Boy reference is to a character who ‘had been a Ted’,73 and the record he plays of Buddy Holly’s ‘Rave On’ was released only in 1958. These details suggest, therefore, that the story is set in the late 1950s or early 1960s, when the anti-apartheid struggle was increasingly visible in Britain. Ahmed argues that by setting this and other stories in an ‘earlier historical moment’ Kureishi ensures that ‘racial antagonism … is consigned to the past’, so that ‘contemporary Britain is established as a de-raced, or “post-race”, liberal British space’,74 which is suggestive of the ways in which contemporary forms of racism might be obfuscated and displaced by historical moments of oppression. Yet, by choosing to write about the intersection of different racisms in 1995, the high point of post-apartheid euphoria in South Africa, Kureishi foregrounds less visible histories of racism, particularly in Britain, which still need to be uncovered and remembered, even if he does not provide a similar treatment of contemporary racism. ‘We’re Not Jews’ follows British-Pakistani Azhar and his white mother, Yvonne, who are accosted by their racist white neighbours, Big Billy and his son Little Billy, while on the bus home from a school meeting to discuss Little Billy’s incessant bullying of Azhar. At the height of the two Billys’ abuse of Azhar and Yvonne on the bus Big Billy expresses disgust at Yvonne for marrying a Pakistani immigrant and Yvonne declares, ‘We’re not Jews’.75 This outburst follows her unspoken rejection of the term ‘immigrant’ to describe her husband, ‘since in her eyes it applied only to illiterate tiny men with downcast eyes and mismatched clothes’.76 Yvonne disavows her husband’s designation as ‘immigrant’ by displacing this descriptor onto migrants occupying a supposedly different class position. These dual disavowals can be read as Yvonne struggling to come to terms with the pervasiveness of racism in her native London and her shock at being targeted by a racist Londoner, because of her relationship with an immigrant and her two ‘mixed-race’ children. On another level however,

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the reference to ‘Jews’ stands for an archetype of discrimination and oppression. This link is made explicit by Azhar’s father’s description of ‘gassing’ that happened ‘not long ago’: ‘Neighbour had slaughtered neighbour, and such evil hadn’t died. Father would poke his finger at his wife, son and baby daughter and state, “We’re in the front line!”’77 Thus, Yvonne’s invocation of Jews reflects her desire, one perhaps not unlike Big Billy’s, to deflect fear and threat onto a ‘racial’ other. But she simultaneously invokes a historical moment of violent oppression to describe her family’s experience of discrimination. As in Rushdie’s essay ‘The New Empire Within Britain’, a comparison between Britain and Nazi Germany is both invoked and disavowed. In ‘We’re Not Jews’, references to anti-­ Semitism and the Holocaust intersect with the invocation of apartheid so that different global racisms are made to speak to each other. After Yvonne has made, and then repeated, her assertion, ‘We’re not Jews’, Kureishi takes us into the consciousness of young Azhar. Overall, the third-person narrative is filtered through the perspective of Azhar, but there are certain sections that provide insight into Yvonne’s thoughts. From this point on, however, Azhar’s viewpoint is foremost. And thus we are provided with the following passage detailing his thought process: Azhar wasn’t sure what she meant. In his confusion he recalled a recent conversation about South Africa, where his best friend’s family had just emigrated. Azhar had asked why, if they were to go somewhere – and there had been such talk – they too couldn’t choose Cape Town. Painfully she replied that there the people with white skins were cruel to the black and brown people who were considered inferior and were forbidden to go where the whites went. The coloureds had separate entrances and were prohibited from sitting with the whites. This peculiar fact of living history, vertiginously irrational and not taught in his school, struck his head like a hammer and echoed through his dreams night after night. How could such a thing be possible? What did it mean? How then should he act?78

Azhar’s memory of this conversation about apartheid South Africa is evoked by his mother’s abstruse statement, ‘We’re not Jews’ for two reasons. First, by asserting what they are not, Yvonne provides Azhar with an uncomfortable reminder of how he might be marked by his ‘race’ or ‘ethnicity’, which Azhar then relates to apartheid’s system of racial classification and segregation. Significantly, Kureishi uses the word ‘coloureds’, presumably articulating a word from Yvonne’s vocabulary, which is

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ambivalently either a reference to the derogatory British term, or a slippage into the classificatory language of apartheid, in which ‘mixed-race’ Azhar would indeed be designated as ‘coloured’. Secondly, Azhar’s vague understanding of the connection between Jews and his father’s talk of ‘gassing’ brings to mind the systemic racism of apartheid, which he finds ‘irrational’ and not ‘possible’ to assimilate into his experience of the world and his understanding of himself. In this passage, Kureishi suggests how legalised, bureaucratised racism in apartheid South Africa, with its ‘separate entrances’ and bars against ‘sitting with the whites’, is both very different from and continuous with racism in Britain. Azhar’s thoughts about apartheid South Africa are invoked in a passage in which Londoners of different ‘races’ are sitting together, on a bus, and we learn that ‘Big Billy lived a few doors away from them’.79 What seems ‘irrational’ and implausible to Azhar about apartheid is therefore not the fact of racism itself—since this moment occurs during an experience of hateful racial abuse—but its stark visibility through the segregation of space, so that ‘black and brown people … were forbidden to go where the whites went’.80 Since, as Rushdie puts it, in Britain the ‘principle of white supremacy hasn’t actually been enshrined in the constitution’81 and racist aspects of British society may not be so visible as a literal ‘whites-only’ sign above an entrance, Azhar sees apartheid as something removed from his experience, ‘a peculiar fact of living history’.82 Many of Kureishi’s narratives are semi-autobiographical, drawing on his own experiences of growing up as the son of a Pakistani immigrant father and a white English mother in the outer suburbs of London in the 1960s. In ‘The Rainbow Sign’, he writes that he was ‘racially abused every day’ since the age of five.83 Kureishi thus draws on personal experience to explore how a young second-generation British-Pakistani child responds to racism near and far. That Azhar regards apartheid as ‘peculiar’ indicates how he has not fully recognised or come to terms with the racism that he and his family have experienced in London. Is apartheid so ‘peculiar’ when he and his father regularly experience racism? Furthermore, the phrase ‘living history’ suggests that apartheid appears to him to be out of place in the contemporary world. A point argued by human rights activists: apartheid was presented as a late holdover of global forms of institutionalised discrimination. While Azhar assigns apartheid to ‘history’, he is nevertheless haunted by the presence of this ‘peculiar fact’ in the present, as well as its implications for his own life, and the ‘fact’ of apartheid leads him to ask himself how he should ‘act’.84

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Far from distancing London from South Africa, then, Kureishi suggests that thinking of apartheid puts British racism into relief and provides a haunting possibility of the extreme versions of oppression and violence to which racism can lead. Just as the Holocaust is the historical moment through which Azhar’s father expresses his fear at the consequences of racism, so apartheid ‘echo[es]’ through Azhar’s ‘dreams night after night’,85 serving as a cipher and measure of his own daily experiences of racism at school and in his London neighbourhood. Threats of violence and even annihilation permeate the story. At the climax of the story, Little Billy pelts a marble at Yvonne and Azhar, narrowly missing them, to which Yvonne’s telling reaction is to scream, ‘We’ll be murdered!’86 Apartheid South Africa is a crucial touchstone in this story, an uncanny ‘fact’ of ‘living history’ that haunts the subconscious of the young protagonist, inexactly but disturbingly mirroring his own position in British society. We must return to the publication date of this text. If apartheid is seemingly anachronistic but inescapably relevant in 1950s or 1960s Britain, then does it still speak to Britain in 1995? In ‘The Rainbow Sign’, Kureishi writes that a series of racist incidents in London in the early 1980s made him ask himself, ‘who wants to be British anyway?’,87 and he challenges the myth of ‘tolerant’ Britain, which he argues ‘does not apply’, especially ‘from the point of view of thousands of black people’.88 Although written a decade after ‘The Rainbow Sign’, by returning to a depiction of racism in the past, ‘We’re Not Jews’ sees Kureishi once more questioning the existence of a mythical golden age of British tolerance. As Kureishi troubles the image of a multicultural present in 1995 by unearthing past histories of racism, apartheid South Africa provides a powerful focal point for his cross-temporal considerations of ‘race’.

Conclusion Linton Kwesi Johnson, Salman Rushdie and Hanif Kureishi engage with apartheid in diverse but intersecting ways, drawing on the individual background and positionality of each writer. Such a selected analysis of literary texts does not purport to convey how black Britons broadly perceived apartheid, but builds on research about black British involvement in the anti-apartheid struggle and suggests how apartheid served as an important, but sometimes submerged and shifting, reference point in writers’ engagement with ‘race’ and racism in Britain. Apartheid may have raised an awareness of ‘race’ amongst mostly white Britons, as Hall argues, but

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black Britons, who were frequently committed to global movements against racism, including the anti-apartheid struggle, did not need to look far to find reminders of the ‘racedness’89 of Britain. While black British writers’ postmodern ‘unmooring’90 of apartheid from its geopolitical context raises questions about the ethics of using apartheid metaphorically or metonymically, invoking apartheid also opens up conversations about being black in Britain that are as relevant now, in a contemporary political climate haunted by pro-Brexit racism, as they were in the tumultuous 1980s and 1990s.

Notes 1. Stuart Hall, “The AAM and the Race-ing of Britain,” accessed September 8, 2018, http://www.sahistory.org.za/archive/aam-and-race-ing-britain 2. Elizabeth M.  Williams, The Politics of Race in Britain and South Africa: Black British Solidarity and the Anti-Apartheid Struggle (London: I.B. Tauris, 2015), 34. 3. Ibid. 4. Ibid., 2; 132. 5. Ibid., 2. 6. Ibid., 135. 7. Ibid., 5. 8. Ibid., 126. 9. Ibid., 3. 10. Håkan Thörn, Anti-Apartheid and the Emergence of a Global Civil Society (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), 120. 11. Williams, Politics of Race, 4. 12. Hall, “AAM.” 13. See Colin Grant, Homecoming: Voices of the Windrush Generation (London: Random House, 2019). 14. Susie Thomas, “Literary Apartheid in the Post-war London Novel: Finding the Middle Ground,” Changing English 12, no. 2 (2005): 309–25. 15. Hall, “AAM.” 16. Saul Dubow in Louise Bethlehem, “Restless Itineraries: Antiapartheid Expressive Culture and Transnational Historiography,” Social Text 36, no. 3 (2018): 47. 17. Bethlehem, “Restless Itineraries,” 48. 18. Debarati Sanyal, Memory and Complicity: Migrations of Holocaust Remembrance (New York: Fordham University Press, 2015), 3. 19. Derek Attridge and Rosemary Jolly, “Introduction,” in Writing South Africa: Literature, Apartheid and Democracy 1970–1995, eds. Derek

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Attridge and Rosemary Jolly (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 3–4. 20. Sanyal, Memory, 3. 21. Linton Kwesi Johnson, “Acceptance Speech. Rhodes University Honorary Doctorate,” April 2017, accessed September 8, 2018, https://www.ru.ac. za/graduationgateway/honorarydoctorates/2017/lintonkwesijohnson/ 22. See also Maya Jaggi, “Poet on the Front Line,” The Guardian, May 4, 2002, https://www.theguardian.com/books/2002/may/04/poetry.books 23. Williams, Politics of Race, 167. 24. See Sarah White, Roxy Harris and Sharmilla Beezmohun, eds., The International Book Fair of Radical Black and Third World Books: A Meeting of the Continents: History, Memories, Organisations and Programmes 1982–1995 (London: New Beacon Books, 2005). 25. Linton Kwesi Johnson, “Mi Revalueshanary Fren,” 1991, reprinted in Linton Kwesi Johnson, Mi Revalueshanary Fren. Selected Poems (New York: Ausable Press, 2002), 65, ll. 5–6. 26. Ibid., l.61. 27. Ibid., l.87. 28. Ibid., ll. 11–22. 29. David Austin, Dread Poetry and Freedom: Linton Kwesi Johnson and the Unfinished Revolution (London: Pluto Press, 2018), 159. 30. Johnson, “Mi Revalueshanary Fren,” l. 64. 31. Austin, Dread Poetry, 177. 32. Ibid., 175. 33. Johnson, “Mi Revalueshanary Fren,” l. 84. 34. Ibid., ll. 104–105. 35. Robert McGill, “Goon Poets of the Black Atlantic: Linton Kwesi Johnson’s Imagined Canon,” Textual Practice 17, no. 3 (2003): 565. 36. Johnson, “Mi Revalueshanary Fren,” l. 87. 37. McGill, “Goon Poets,” 566. 38. Linton Kwesi Johnson, “If I Woz a Tap Natch Poet,” 1994, reprinted in Linton Kwesi Johnson, Mi Revalueshanary Fren. Selected Poems (New York: Ausable Press, 2002), 92, ll.1–7. 39. Ibid., ll. 19–23. 40. Ibid., ll. 24–27. 41. See, for instance, Adrian Guelke, Rethinking the Rise and Fall of Apartheid: South Africa and World Politics (London: Macmillan, 2004), 182. 42. McGill, “Goon Poets,” 571. 43. Johnson, “If I Woz a Tap Natch Poet,” ll. 77–94. 44. Salman Rushdie, Imaginary Homelands (London: Granta Books, 1991), 129.

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45. Jacques Derrida, “Racism’s Last Word,” trans. Peggy Kamuf, Critical Inquiry 12, no. 1 (1985): 291. 46. Rushdie, Imaginary Homelands, 129. 47. See “It’s Inhumane: the Windrush generation who have lost jobs, homes and loved ones,” The Guardian, April 20, 2018, https://www.theguardian. com/uk-news/2018/apr/20/its-inhumane-the-windrush-victims-whohave-lost-jobs-homes-and-loved-ones 48. Rushdie, Imaginary Homelands, 129. 49. Ibid., 130. 50. Hall, “AAM.” 51. Rushdie, Imaginary Homelands, 131. 52. See Wulf Kansteiner, “Mandarins in the Public Sphere: Vergangenheitsbewältigung and the Paradigm of Social History in the Federal Republic of Germany,” German Politics & Society 17, no. 3 (52) (1999): 84–120. 53. Paul Gilroy, After Empire: Melancholia or Convivial Culture (London: Routledge, 2004), 98. 54. Rushdie, Imaginary Homelands, 5. 55. Derrida, “Racism’s Last Word,” 291. 56. Leonard Thompson, A History of South Africa: Revised Edition (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995), 191. 57. Rushdie, Imaginary Homelands, 10. 58. Ibid., 20. 59. Ibid., 19. 60. Ibid. 61. Albie Sachs, “Preparing Ourselves for Freedom.” In Writing South Africa. Literature, Apartheid and Democracy 1970–1995, eds. Derek Attridge and Rosemary Jolly (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 239. 62. Shailja Sharma, “Salman Rushdie: The Ambivalence of Migrancy,” Twentieth Century Literature 47, no. 4 (2001): 604. 63. Johnson in Austin, Dread Poetry, 19. 64. The Nation of Islam is an African-American religious and political group that was founded by Wallace B. Fard Muhammad in 1930. Since 1977, it has been led by Louis Farrakhan. The group espouses a black nationalist and black separatist ideology. Black separatism ‘rejects inclusion’ within the (white-dominated) nation and ‘seeks the creation of a new homeland’ (Robert A. Brown and Todd C. Shaw, “Separate Nations: Two Attitudinal Dimensions of Black Nationalism,” The Journal of Politics 64, no. 1 (2002): 27). 65. Hanif Kureishi, My Beautiful Laundrette and The Rainbow Sign (London: Faber & Faber, 1986), 14. 66. Ibid., 30.

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67. Homi K. Bhabha, The Location of Culture (New York: Routledge, 1994), 4. 68. See Rehana Ahmed, “Occluding Race in Selected Short Fiction by Hanif Kureishi,” Wasafiri 24, no. 2 (2009): 27–34. 69. “We’re Not Jews” was first published in the London Review of Books in March 1995, before its publication in the collection In a Blue Time in 1997. 70. Ahmed, “Occluding Race,” 30. 71. Hanif Kureishi, “We’re Not Jews,” 1995, reprinted in Hanif Kureishi, Collected Stories (London: Faber & Faber, 2010), 42. 72. Ibid., 49. 73. Ibid., 42. 74. Ahmed, “Occluding Race,” 30. 75. Kureishi, “We’re Not Jews,” 45. 76. Ibid., 44. 77. Ibid., 45. 78. Ibid. 79. Ibid., 42. 80. Ibid., 45. 81. Rushdie, Imaginary Homelands, 129. 82. Kureishi, “We’re Not Jews,” 45. 83. Kureishi, “The Rainbow Sign,” 12. 84. Kureishi, “We’re Not Jews,” 45. 85. Ibid. 86. Ibid., 47. 87. Kureishi, “The Rainbow Sign,” 36. 88. Ibid., 37. 89. Hall, “AAM.” 90. Sanyal, Memory, 3.

References Ahmed, Rehana. “Occluding Race in Selected Short Fiction by Hanif Kureishi.” Wasafiri 24, no. 2 (2009): 27–34. Attridge, Derek, and Rosemary Jolly. “Introduction.” In Writing South Africa: Literature, Apartheid and Democracy 1970–1995, edited by Derek Attridge and Rosemary Jolly, 1–13. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998. Austin, David. Dread Poetry and Freedom: Linton Kwesi Johnson and the Unfinished Revolution. London: Pluto Press, 2018. Bethlehem, Louise. “Restless Itineraries: Antiapartheid Expressive Culture and Transnational Historiography.” Social Text 36, no. 3 (2018): 47–69. Bhabha, Homi K. The Location of Culture. New York: Routledge, 1994.

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Brown, Robert A., and Todd C.  Shaw. “Separate Nations: Two Attitudinal Dimensions of Black Nationalism.” The Journal of Politics 64, no. 1 (2002): 22–44. Derrida, Jacques. “Racism’s Last Word.” Translated by Peggy Kamuf. Critical Inquiry 12, no. 1 (1985): 290–9. Dubow, Saul. Apartheid, 1948–1994. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014. Gilroy, Paul. After Empire: Melancholia or Convivial Culture. London: Routledge, 2004. Grant, Colin. Homecoming: Voices of the Windrush Generation. London: Random House, 2019. Guelke, Adrian. Rethinking the Rise and Fall of Apartheid: South Africa and World Politics. London: Macmillan, 2004. Hall, Stuart. “The AAM and the Race-ing of Britain.” Paper presented at symposium on the Anti-Apartheid Movement: A 40-year Perspective, South Africa House, London, 25–26 June 1999. Accessed September 8, 2018. http:// www.sahistory.org.za/archive/aam-and-race-ing-britain. Johnson, Linton Kwesi. “Acceptance Speech. Rhodes University Honorary Doctorate.” April 2017. Accessed 8 September 2018. https://www.ru.ac.za/ graduationgateway/honorarydoctorates/2017/lintonkwesijohnson/ Johnson, Linton Kwesi. Mi Revalueshanary Fren. Selected Poems. New  York: Ausable Press, 2002. Kansteiner, Wulf. “Mandarins in the Public Sphere: Vergangenheitsbewältigung and the Paradigm of Social History in the Federal Republic of Germany.” German Politics & Society 17, no. 3 (1999): 84–120. Kureishi, Hanif. Collected Stories. London: Faber & Faber, 2010. Kureishi, Hanif. My Beautiful Laundrette and The Rainbow Sign. London: Faber & Faber, 1986. McGill, Robert. “Goon Poets of the Black Atlantic: Linton Kwesi Johnson’s Imagined Canon.” Textual Practice 17, no. 3 (2003): 561–574. Rushdie, Salman. Imaginary Homelands. London: Granta Books, 1991. Sachs, Albie. “Preparing Ourselves for Freedom.” In Writing South Africa. Literature, Apartheid and Democracy 1970–1995, edited by Derek Attridge and Rosemary Jolly, 239–48. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998. Sanyal, Debarati. Memory and Complicity: Migrations of Holocaust Remembrance. New York: Fordham University Press, 2015. Sharma, Shailja. “Salman Rushdie: The Ambivalence of Migrancy.” Twentieth Century Literature 47, no. 4 (2001): 596–618. Thomas, Susie. “Literary Apartheid in the Post-war London Novel: Finding the Middle Ground.” Changing English 12, no. 2 (2005): 309–25. Thompson, Leonard. A History of South Africa: Revised Edition. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995.

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Thörn, Håkan. Anti-Apartheid and the Emergence of a Global Civil Society, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006. White, Sarah, Roxy Harris, and Sharmilla Beezmohun, eds. The International Book Fair of Radical Black and Third World Books: A Meeting of the Continents: History, Memories, Organisations and Programmes 1982–1995. London: New Beacon Books, 2005. Williams, Elizabeth M. The Politics of Race in Britain and South Africa: Black British Solidarity and the Anti-Apartheid Struggle. London: I.B. Tauris, 2015.

Anti-apartheid and the Politicisation of Pop Music: Controversies Around the Mandela Concert in 1988 Detlef Siegfried

What a success! A sold-out Wembley Stadium, television coverage in 67 countries, 600 million viewers worldwide. With the concert on 11 June 1988 for celebrating Nelson Mandela’s 70th birthday, the Anti-Apartheid Movement (AAM) in Britain achieved unprecedented success by making the demand for Mandela’s release from prison the cause of a global media event that electrified people all over the world.1 Then, a year and a half later, the demand was met, so that at the follow-up concert on 16 April 1990 Mandela himself addressed a similarly large audience. In this way, many people felt that they were participants in world politics, for they had contributed a little to Mandela’s release, even if only as television viewers. Mike Terry, the AAM’s Executive Secretary, had ‘no doubt’ that the 1988 concert ‘played a decisive role in making this happen’.2 And, yet, it seems that, as David Toulson recently noted, a depoliticisation of pop music

D. Siegfried (*) University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2021 K. Andresen et al. (eds.), Apartheid and Anti-Apartheid in Western Europe, Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-53284-0_7

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began soon after what the music journalist Robin Denselow called the ‘biggest political pop show in history’.3 So, in what follows I deconstruct this somewhat teleological narrative of politicisation and success and problematise some of its features. Specifically, the success story conceals three problems that had arisen in the British anti-apartheid movement and its boycott politics. One was the failure of the total cultural boycott of South Africa, which the discussions about Paul Simon’s album Graceland and the ban of Johnny Clegg from the concert in Wembley Stadium had made clear. Another was the disintegrative consequences of professionalisation and a changed understanding of politics in the AAM. The third was the increasing differences in size, strategy and internal changes among the anti-apartheid movements in Europe. To what extent did the concert in 1988 raise public awareness of apartheid in Western Europe? There are numerous indications that some people did not realise that Nelson Mandela was a political prisoner in South Africa but thought that he was a pop star who would perform at the concert. For example, one ticket-buyer asked if Mandela was the headliner and when he would appear on stage; the receptionist at a London hotel asked a journalist to be patient while she found out if Mandela had already checked in and Pat, a teenager in the audience, was certain that Mandela ‘is an African political star and will appear here later’.4 Of course, such impressions are not representative, but they do show that mediasation introduced people to the name ‘Mandela’ in a completely new way. Other sources indicate that the AAM’s Freedom at 70 campaign for the release of Mandela on his 70th birthday had raised people’s awareness of the problem of apartheid.5 A Gallup survey of the British public commissioned by the AAM in the summer of 1988 found that 92% had heard the name ‘Mandela’, 77% knew he was in South Africa and/or in prison and 70% supported demands for his release.6 According to an opinion poll conducted in the Federal Republic of Germany in May 1990, 89% of those questioned had heard of apartheid, 77% had heard of the name ‘Nelson Mandela’ and associated him with South Africa and 93% knew of his release.7 The international public had become more aware of the apartheid conflict than it had been in the 1980s because Freedom at 70 and other anti-apartheid campaigns had personalised it.

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Old and New Forms of Anti-apartheid Protest In 1970, the influential West German intellectual Hans Magnus Enzensberger wrote, ‘Events like the Woodstock Festival, the concerts in Hyde Park, on the Isle of Wight and in Altamont, California, generate a mobilising force that the political left can only envy’.8 At the time, a connection between pop music and left-wing politics was not obvious. Many leftists criticised pop as a business or even a form of American cultural imperialism, and concertgoers were not especially political. Still, a connection was vaguely recognised in that pop music was regarded as ‘speechless protest’, especially in virtue of the counterculture of the 1960s.9 In the course of the 1970s and 1980s, numerous experiments fusing pop and politics were made by charity concerts, initiatives like Rock Against Racism and the inclusion of political themes even in Schlager music. Thus, the Mandela Festivals in 1988 and 1990 were part of a ‘new synthesis … between mass culture industry and political-moral communication’.10 By this time, pop music was only vaguely countercultural; it had become the public’s preference. And its politics were no longer leftist, having moved to the centre with its new interest in human rights. The fusion of pop and politics peaked in the context of the era’s new social movements, and pop music negotiated almost every social issue of the 1980s in front of large audiences: hunger in Africa, the nuclear arms race, environmental protection, the family farming crisis in the US, AIDS, homelessness and many more. But this is not to deny that there was tension between musicians’ political interests and recording companies’ commercial ones. Freedom at 70 did not really break with earlier AAM campaigns, though pop music had come to play a greater role in mobilising supporters than it had previously. The organisation had staged concerts before, but they were primarily to raise money; as a political instrument, music played only a marginal role.11 In June 1983, it staged the African Sounds Festival in Celebration of Nelson Mandela’s Birthday in London with mostly South African jazz musicians. The concert five years later showcased the cream of international pop music and attracted much more attention. Still, it was the success of the 1983 concert that showed the AAM that a fertile ground for further work was opening up here—not only in the negative sense of cultural boycott, but as a positive instrument for getting more people involved in anti-apartheid action: Activities of this sort … reach the public in a very different and often more powerful way than more conventional forms of communication.

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The AAM is convinced that there is a basis within the artistic community for much more activity in this field.12 Consequently, the AAM invested ‘much more consistent work’ in making use of music. That included cooperating with musicians and the music industry, which led to records like the Special A.K.A.’s single ‘Free Nelson Mandela’ in 1984 and the collaboration album Sun City in 1985. On the cover of ‘Free Nelson Mandela’, the band asked buyers to support the AAM, which led to hundreds of enquiries and numerous new members. In its annual report for 1983/1984, the AAM stated: A significant part of the campaign has been the attempt not only to persuade artists not to perform in South Africa, but also to persuade them to use their talent to inform and educate their audiences about apartheid.13 The Freedom at 70 campaign was not just a concert; it combined old and new forms of protest in three components. The concert kicked off the campaign; next was a protest march from Glasgow to London and, third, was a rally in London’s Hyde Park. Marches and rallies were proven forms of protest, and protest concerts had become familiar, but a venue like Wembley Stadium and a worldwide television broadcast raised the form to a whole new level. Nevertheless, Mike Terry announced at the end of March 1988 that the rally in Hyde Park on 17 July ‘will be the high point of the campaign’.14

A Changed Understanding of Politics Live Aid, the charity concert Bob Geldof staged in 1985, is often considered the model for the AAM’s Mandela concerts. It was, as far as the quantitative dimensions of combining an enormous concert audience and a television broadcast are concerned, but the Mandela concerts were much more political than Geldof’s. Live Aid was criticised as a charity event, for following Margaret Thatcher’s neoliberal agenda by asking for private donations,15 and for voicing no political demands. But the Mandela concerts were clearly in the tradition of political protest. The BBC planned to broadcast the 1988 Mandela concert, which would entitle it to sell broadcast rights internationally. Because of the concert’s politics, the plan angered the right wing of the Tory Party and the South African embassy. They complained that the broadcast would violate the network’s principle of non-partisanship, and they claimed that the net revenue would go to the ANC to fund its armed struggle. The decisive factor in the BBC’s decision to proceed as planned was that Allan Yentob,

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the 39-year-old new controller of BBC 2, wanted to attract new audiences and thought that the concert and the foreseeable political controversy would do that.16 The 1980s saw a change in the role of the artist, who was no longer only an entertainer but also expected to demonstrate political commitment. This made political commitment considerably easier for the audience: ‘All we have to do is support them’, said the journalist John Leland.17 But the television broadcast complicated matters for the AAM.  It had originally envisioned just a concert, not a global media event, but the journalist Mark Perryman noted that with the participation of big stars the AAM ‘had to find its way in the new world of show business’—a challenge to which its response was mixed.18 Disputes within the AAM arose over fundamental differences in the willingness to lower the importance of the political message in favour of entertainment value. Jerry Dammers, one of the founders of Artists Against Apartheid (AAA), had convinced the concert promoter Tony Hollingsworth to organise the show. Hollingsworth was known for organising leftist musical events, having managed the Glastonbury Festival and the large music festivals of the Labour Party–dominated Greater London Council (GLC). The historian David Toulson summed up the difference between the GLC’s events and traditional concerts: Whilst the 1960s folk concerts had relied on a closed circle of politically like-minded musicians from the Topic label, the GLC mixed overtly political musicians, such as [Billy] Bragg, with less obviously political, if not sympathetic, acts such as Madness or The Smiths.19 After the BBC had agreed to broadcast the first Mandela concert, Hollingsworth wanted to reduce its political content in order to maximise sales to international stations and thus make it a global television event. However, the AAM had imposed three conditions on the concert: its focus had to be on all of the political prisoners in South Africa, not on Mandela alone; its name had to express that it was in opposition to the apartheid system and it had to demand sanctions against South Africa.20 Hollingsworth argued that television stations would buy a birthday concert for Mandela but not a political event and that if pop music was to realise its full potential as a political instrument it had to radiate positive feelings: ‘The message would work best if the atmosphere was “happy” and “celebratory” rather than “angry”’.21 Thus, Hollingsworth rejected the AAM’s conditions, and in the end it capitulated to the demands of mass culture. However, this did not resolve their basic conflict. Again and

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again, they argued over issues surrounding the tension between politics and mass appeal, between happiness and protest. Hollingsworth did not invite musicians well known for their politics, such as Billy Bragg, to perform, and the Fox Broadcasting Company, the network commissioned to broadcast the concert in the US, instructed the artists not to make political statements. However, Whoopi Goldberg undermined the instruction by announcing it on stage. In fact, in addition to performing songs that were really political statements, many of the musicians openly declared their strong support for the concert’s political aims. Simple Minds, one of the more political bands, threatened to quit because Hollingsworth had booked Whitney Houston and George Michael to take some of the ‘grit’ out of the show. However, the two superstars were crucial for him: ‘We needed their pop audience – the audience that was not so likely to know about Mandela and apartheid. We needed to get across the message to them’.22 He also needed them to ensure the American broadcast. Having professionalised its organisation in the mid-1980s, the AAM was well prepared for the concert. The relationship that it began with AA Enterprises, which was founded in 1986 and responsible for the ‘producing and marketing of anti-apartheid fund-raising merchandise and products from South-African Frontline States’, had been an important step in the AAM’s adoption of advanced methods of communication.23 It had also set up Freedom Productions Ltd. to handle the concert’s financial and contractual issues, and it hired an outside company to handle the public relations.24 The planning of the Freedom at 70 campaign strictly defined the responsibilities of the AAM, AA Enterprises and Freedom Productions. But it was marketing, for example, selling buttons and T-shirts in bookshops and fashion outlets, that shows most clearly how far the AAM had moved from traditional ideas of protest politics: [T]here are many who shop that would not go anywhere near a political meeting  – yet  – who can first be approached through merchandise. This is the Marxism today approach to politics, and it is sensible as long as it remains but one approach behind a coherent program.25 ‘Marxism today approach’ referred to Stuart Hall’s concept that people conduct a kind of micro-politics in their everyday lives, far below the level of political parties and parliaments, in the form of their cultural preferences, for example, their purchases of, and refusals to buy, products and services. Hall was closely associated with Marxism Today, the journal of the Communist Party of Great Britain, which had developed into a

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pluralist organ of the left in the UK. In looking back on the anti-apartheid movement, Hall emphasised his conception of how people incorporate a political message into their lives: Perfectly ordinary folk, with a variety of other commitments, felt that there was something they could do; that unimportant as they were, they had a role in sustaining a struggle, the centre of which was somewhere else, that they had a pivotal role in keeping it going. This was one of the AAM’s most important achievements and it was a very delicate political job.26 The Freedom at 70 campaign was also about finding a way to make opposition to apartheid accessible en masse, discovering ‘how to make the hitch’, as Hall put it. The campaign’s focus on Mandela was decisive in the concert’s success. Making it a 70th birthday party for him made it a non-political event that everyone could join in. At the same time, Mandela’s birthday was very political and therefore interesting for activists. However, there was a tension in this strategy of attracting as many people as possible while not diluting the political message, and numerous conflicts revolved around the question of how to make this tension productive. It could be made productive only if the concert’s organisers involved themselves in the pop music world, and how best to do that was controversial. It helped that artists’ previous anti-apartheid initiatives in the US and Great Britain had attracted numerous musicians. Also, the political potential of British pop music, which had existed for a long time, had become increasingly apparent in the 1970s and 1980s with the popularity of reggae and its clear political content, the Rock Against Racism movement and the founding concert of Artists Against Apartheid, which drew an audience of 250,000 to Clapham Common in 1986.27 Professionalisation created tension in the AAM, for it collided with the organisation’s do-it-yourself attitude, and the considerations of professionals diluted its political ideals. Hiring Tony Hollingsworth to organise the concert made important actors feel marginalised. Artists Against Apartheid feared that he would not represent their role appropriately. Among other reasons, the coordination office referred artists to Hollingsworth, so that Chandra Sekar and Jerry Dammers, the founders of AAA, said that people would wonder whether AAA ‘has anything to do with the concert’.28 They spoke with the AAM’s president Trevor Huddleston about being ‘undermined’ and asked him to ensure that AAA was prominently represented in the advertising and stage design as

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supporters of the concert’s opposition to apartheid. Sekar and Dammers even suggested that performers wear AAA T-shirts to underline their ‘personal commitment to the abolition of Apartheid’ ‘and that no other t-shirts be used to jeopardise this aim’. In the end, there were no AAA T-shirts, but Dammers got the name that he had pushed Hollingsworth for: ‘Nelson Mandela 70th Birthday Tribute with Artists Against Apartheid in support of the Anti-Apartheid Movement’.29 Grassroots members of the AAM expressed concerns about the concert’s ability to get the AAM’s political message to the mainstream. One member complained about the high ticket prices: It seems to me that the pricing policy will lead to a position where the middle-class liberals will take the opportunity to pay their conscience money, and many who have put time, energy and enthusiasm into campaigning on the issue will be left (frustrated) at the sidelines.30 Another criticised the concert as an ‘over-publicised, self-indulgent, hyped-up pat on the back for whites and blacks alike living outside South Africa, easing their consciences by “being good enough” to appear under a tribute’ to Mandela: Is this the way to invite sympathy for the true politics and issues of the South African people through the self-congratulatory songs and mouths of a people whose words and music could have been equally attributed to any other situation or event?31

Erosion of the Cultural Boycott The increasing difficulty in maintaining the total cultural boycott of South Africa and the success of the Mandela birthday concert are connected in that they show how the centre of society responded to different anti-­apartheid strategies. The Freedom at 70 campaign targeted this broad apolitical, middle-class audience with new pop-cultural methods and some traditional ones.32 But the prerequisite for success was abandoning its sole focus on boycotts, especially the total cultural boycott of South Africa, which was increasingly difficult to maintain. It had been most appropriate in the 1960s and early 1970s, when the opposition to apartheid in South Africa was weak and only external pressure could make a difference.33 And it was an effective countermeasure to the regime’s tactic of bringing internationally renowned performers to Sun City, the luxury resort in the homeland of Bophuthatswana, to counteract its isolation. But the name and shame strategy that the UN’s Centre Against Apartheid employed with its register of boycott violators

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was not an effective policing method because the Centre removed a name from the list if the performer apologised for the violation. The music agent Ian Flooks, whose clients included The Clash, the Eurythmics, The Pretenders and Talking Heads and who had produced the Rainbow Warrior albums for Greenpeace, complained about the removal of Status Quo from the register, for the band had simply said that it would not perform in South Africa again, which, Flooks said, ‘made a complete mockery of all the artists that contributed’ to the boycott of Sun City.34 Though it had raised public awareness of apartheid, the cultural boycott’s inflexibility had made it counterproductive since the mid-1980s, when artists in South Africa began to seek greater international visibility. The controversy over Graceland made this particularly clear.35 Though leaders of the AAM and AAA criticised Paul Simon’s album Graceland for breaking the boycott, the mainstream pop audience liked it, and many AAM members appreciated its musical plea against racial segregation. The AAM’s concept for the concert corresponded to the ANC’s new strategy of mobilising South African musicians behind the cause of gaining greater access to a world audience instead of limiting their possibilities for development. However, remnants of its old tactics were visible in Wembley in 1988. Miriam Makeba and Hugh Masekela, the best-known South African artists in exile, who had fallen into disrepute among anti-apartheid activists as a result of their partisanship with Paul Simon, appeared only briefly. Johnny Clegg, a musician who lived in South Africa but also performed in Great Britain, was not allowed on stage at all. The British Musicians Union (BMU), which defended the total boycott, had accused him of damaging the union and expelled him in June 1988. So, his appearance was out of the question for the AAM, despite the fact that he had a letter of recommendation from the United Democratic Front (UDF), which meant that his performance had the blessing of the democratic movement in South Africa. Steven van Zandt criticised the AAM and the BMU for being ‘out of touch … with the movement on this’.36 ‘This guy’s a hero’, said Van Zandt, ‘[h]e’s done more than 99 percent of the whole anti-apartheid Movement’. However, the BMU was not out of touch with the AAM, which supported the total boycott, even though the ANC no longer did. Wreck Sony was another example of this sort of inconsistency. Sony was a white South African musician who played with his band Kalahari Surfers in the Netherlands and at the Beat! Apartheid Festival of the West German Trade Union Youth in 1987,37 but no one in either country complained of his violating the boycott.

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Criticism of Commercialisation The controversy over Graceland illustrates the extent to which the AAM’s embrace of pop culture collided with its earlier tactics. That controversy included the criticism that record companies put out political pop music to make money. The view of the AAM and the anti-apartheid movements in many other countries was that big record companies, many of which had participated in the Botha regime’s efforts to break the boycott, now wanted to make money from the anti-apartheid struggle. Thus, the commercial potential of anti-apartheid music made its mass appeal problematic for the AAM: Big record companies that have always flouted the cultural boycott seek to cash in on the growing popularity of African music and all things ‘anti-­ apartheid’. In these conditions the cultural boycott must be defended and sustained with greater consistency than ever.38 In following Hollingsworth’s advice for the concert, the AAM had partly abandoned this attitude, but the commodification argument convinced others. In many of Western Europe’s anti-apartheid movements, fear of working with the recording industry was widespread; among the causes were companies’ motives, their political opportunism and their dilution of political content. The left and the right, both of which participated in many of the new social movements, criticised music’s commercialism. It was ‘not about music at all, but only about business’, wrote Martin Brem, editor of the West German magazine Musikexpress/Sounds, and Der Spiegel included the Mandela concerts in its series ‘The Great Profit’ criticising charity concerts.39 The magazine quoted Al Teller, the president of CBS Records, who, commenting on the political activism of pop stars, said, ‘The music industry is always strongest when there is a good shot of social criticism in the works of our artists’.40 As early as 1988, but even more so in 1990, when none of the proceeds were given for charitable purposes anymore, it was not least about money, according to the prominent Danish jazz critic Jørgen Siegumfeldt. One of his illustrations was that Warner Music had asked music retailers to use Mandela’s name and image in advertising the album of the 1990 concert to boost sales.41 The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung described that concert as a ‘commercially exaggerated concert event’ and wrote that the worldwide broadcast of Mandela’s first public appearance was an ‘irresistible temptation for the industry’.42

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At the same time, the concert’s political message was so clear that it was almost impossible for broadcasters to present the event as an apolitical pop show. Even Fox’s censored US broadcast did not quite succeed. It aired a five-hour version with the indifferent title ‘Freedomfest’, from which it had edited out almost all of the performers’ political comments, contrary to its promise to the organisers. Steven Van Zandt suspected that Coca-­ Cola, the broadcast’s sponsor, was to blame. Coke, which had economic interests in South Africa, paid for no fewer than five commercials per hour. A carefully edited 90-minute video of the concert was to be produced, which, Van Zandt announced, would not be a ‘snappy music video’ but would communicate the concert’s political spirit.43 However, that turned out not to be easy. Elephant House, Hollingworth’s production company, put together the video, which Jerry Dammers criticised for conveying far too little information, making no reference to the AAM, filling the credits with mentions of Elephant House and crediting the AAM and AAA far too briefly at the end. Dammers demanded the inclusion of detailed information on the AAM, the statements that Van Zandt had made about Shell Oil and Thatcher, a comprehensive version of ‘Free Nelson Mandela’.44 Unlike Live Aid, the Mandela concerts featured numerous non-white artists. However, the mostly white audience made its preferences among the performers clear. The journalist Wilfried Wiegand observed, ‘Of the various dance and music groups from sub-Saharan Africa, … none scored more than a politely applauded success’.45 However, Robert von Lucius, reporting from the University of the Western Cape, near Cape Town, on a screening of the concert video—the concert was not broadcasted on South African television—with a predominantly black audience, wrote: Sting and George Michael are not able to unsettle them. When the name of a young coloured Cape Town singer, Jonathan Butler – he now lives in exile – is mentioned, a little movement appears. It gets lively when a group of black musicians and dancers from Langa perform at Wembley Stadium, where people clap and cheer. … When one of these singers speaks of ‘our greatest leader Nelson Mandela’, many clap again.46 In addition to political music’s history in Britain, artists in the 1980s were also mobilised by Red Wedge and its initiative supporting the Labour Party in the run-up to parliamentary elections in 1987.47 Taking its name from El Lissitzky’s poster ‘Beat the Whites with the Red Wedge’ in 1919, the group attacked the conservative bloc in Parliament under Thatcher that had been dismantling the welfare system and busting labour unions since 1979. Red Wedge included some of the most popular British artists

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of the time, such as Billy Bragg, Style Council, The Communards and Elvis Costello. More leftist bands criticised the alliance for its support of the Labour Party, but almost all of the music press promoted it and other left-wing music projects, like Rock Against Racism. After the conservative victory in 1987 and the subsequent dissolution of Red Wedge, this history was an important stimulus for a single-issue movement like Artists Against Apartheid to mobilise once again numerous musicians behind an issue for which there was now a relatively broad social consensus. On the other hand, it is significant that hardly any of the artists involved in Red Wedge performed at Wembley.

The Anti-apartheid Movement and Pop Music in Scandinavia, the Netherlands and West Germany As in Britain, pop musicians in other Western European countries were also political and sought to bridge the gap between political and commercial rock music in the 1980s. Many Scandinavian musicians took part in initiatives against apartheid. In 1986, the Norwegian Cape to Cape campaign, which imagined a symbolic bridge between the North Cape and the Cape of Good Hope, included more than 20 concerts across the country. It was followed by the Festival of Southern Africa in 1987. Similar to the British model Artists Against Apartheid groups had formed in Norway, Sweden and Denmark. Unlike the organisations in Great Britain and the US, the majority of their members were not musicians; in Sweden, most were painters and sculptors. And some of the concerts they sponsored featured less pop music than in Great Britain and more jazz or ANC groups such as Amandla. But it is remarkable that in some countries pop music played a role in the anti-apartheid context at the same time as or even before it did in Britain. On 13 June 1981, the Dutch anti-apartheid movement organised the Beat Apartheid! Festival in Amsterdam, which featured reggae, punk and new wave stars like Peter Tosh, The Slits and Gruppo Sportivo and drew an audience of 2500.48 With this line-up, it appealed to political listeners who rejected the commercialism of the charts. On 12 May 1985, organisers took a step towards finding a mass audience with the Radio Freedom Festival, which presented an ‘orchestra’ of the cream of Dutch pop musicians’ and was broadcast live on television.49

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On 29–30 November 1985, led up by a series of local concerts, the Swedish ANC Gala in Gothenburg brought together some of the greatest names of Swedish rock music before an audience of 25,000. The Gala followed the strategy, which Hollingsworth tried later in Britain, of not limiting anti-apartheid action to boycotts and making use of music’s potential to reach a larger audience. The rock musician Mikael Wiehe, who was the driving force behind the concert, explained: In Sweden music and politics have been connected since the musical movement fifteen years ago. … We must bring the positive force of the struggle to the fore. Solidarity work knits [people] together. It is voluntary and it’s damned fun.50 According to Tomas Ledin, one of Sweden’s top ten stars, the concert was about building a ‘bridge’ between political and commercial rock music. Inspired by Gothenburg, the Danish Sydafrikakomiteen staged similar concerts, culminating in the biggest anti-apartheid event in the country, Rock mod apartheid, on 6 June 1986 in Copenhagen with more than 100 musicians and an audience of 15,000.51 Because Danish and Swedish television would broadcast video of the concert, organisers booked commercially successful artists. Still, there seems to have been more political musicians in the Dutch and Scandinavian concerts than appeared later at Wembley, where well-known political artists were excluded to enhance mass appeal. Therefore, these concerts exhibit more clearly than Wembley the fusion of pop and protest in the 1980s. West Germany, where scepticism towards mass culture was traditional and the anti-apartheid movement did not embrace pop music, shows that things could be quite different. Leaders of the Anti-Apartheid Bewegung (AAB) were aware of the conflict between the ANC and the AAM over the boycott but kept out of it and, so, refrained from organising concerts,52 despite West Germany’s many political festivals pertaining to issues from the arms race to nuclear power to the East–West conflict. There had also been numerous musical events against apartheid since the mid-1980s. In 1986 alone, there was the Open Ear Festival in Mainz, the very political Youth Festival that the Socialist German Workers Youth and the Marxist Student Association Spartacus held in Dortmund, the 12th Tübingen Folk Festival and a women’s festival in Hamburg. In the following year, the Trade Union Youth organised the Beat! Apartheid Festival, but the AAB was not among the organisers.53 Ingeborg Wick, its managing director, tried to convince rock star Udo Lindenberg to appear at an anti-­ apartheid demonstration in Bonn on 29 November 1986, but she could

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not even pay his travel costs,54 as was customary for performers at charity events. Thus, nothing came of her efforts, and, in the end, no big name performed for the 12,000 demonstrators.55 So, while Britain’s AAA was a significant contributor to the anti-apartheid movement, especially on the part of musicians, the AAB was still only trying, with inadequate means, to recruit pop musicians to increase the draw of its political events. Participation in the West German anti-apartheid movement boomed in 1988 and 1989, when it peaked at just under 1200 and then declined.56 In Great Britain, by contrast, the AAM doubled its membership in 1987/1988 to around 18,000, due mainly to the Freedom at 70 campaign.57 However, membership declined drastically after the spring of 1989, which indicates that popularity is as volatile in politics as it is in pop music. Wick later remarked self-critically that the AAB had had ‘a strongly conventional character: seminars, congresses, conferences, legal campaigns, public relations work with the media, etc.’; thus, the AAB’s image was of a ‘serious, intellectual working organization’ with no mass appeal.58 Since the early 1970s, West German pop musicians had been growing more political, and this was reflected in Rock gegen Rechts (Rock against the Right), West Germany’s version of Great Britain’s Rock Against Racism, in the 1970s, in the peace movement in the 1980s and to a certain extent in the anti-apartheid movement. For example, in 1987 the band Alphaville, which had played at Live Aid, donated the proceeds from the auction of its gold record ‘Forever Young’ to the ANC and Radio Mandela.59 But, in contrast to Great Britain’s down-to-earth New Musical Express, the attitude of West Germany’s sophisticated pop music journalism was condescendingly intellectual, and it set the tone of the political discourse.60 This explains why Spex, the most political magazine of the pop press and the organ of pop theorists, paid no attention at all to the Mandela concerts. Spex was decidedly left wing, but it also cultivated disdain towards mass movements like the peace movement and the alternative milieu and all of the music associated with them, which they, in turn, regarded as depoliticising and ridiculous. Their concerts featured mostly older musicians and ignored the new styles, especially punk. Jürgen Stark wrote in the alternative newspaper taz that any such concert would be ‘a joke’ in England.61 Musik Express/Sounds justified its failure to cover the Wembley concert by saying that its timing had not fit the magazine’s publishing schedule.62 Rolf Paasch, taz’s correspondent in London, explained the lack of interest in terms of the two countries’ different attitudes:

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While in the Federal Republic pessimistic, purist attitudes towards the use of trivial pop(ular) culture for political purposes prevail, the British have little problem with entertainment for a good cause. A party with a nice day out can’t be bad.63 But he also found it ‘embarrassing’ that the organisers treated the concert as an ‘apolitical birthday serenade’, and he criticised the banality of its political message. Only the apolitical teen magazine Bravo took note of the Wembley concert. It reported on it approvingly and popularised the demand for the release of the ‘freedom fighter’ Mandela with its readers,64 which demonstrates that the concert’s political effects outside of Great Britain also went far beyond the usual circles. This picture of West Germany is confirmed by the fact that 1988 saw numerous political events in the Federal Republic on the occasion of Mandela’s birthday but only a few concerts and celebrations.65 Those that did take place, such as in Nuremberg, Bochum and Frankfurt, were only local.66 In contrast, the live broadcast of the Wembley concert on West German television’s Third Networks on 11 June drew a large audience of young people to the screen. It was politicised by the fact that Günther von Lojewski, the conservative editor of the news magazine Report, hosted Bayerischer Rundfunk’s broadcast of a version edited for political content that included the warning ‘One should bear in mind that the ANC, which is advertised here, supports armed violence’.67 Well aware of the national differences, the AAB celebrated the Wembley concert as a sign of the ‘mass anchoring of the anti-apartheid theme and the AAM in Great Britain’ and as an ‘incentive’ for itself.68 While previously the boycott had been at the very centre of cultural work, whose primary aim was the termination of the German-South African Cultural Agreement, the Wembley concert, and the Culture in Another South Africa (CASA) conference in Amsterdam in December 1987, made it clear that: the arts in all their various forms can be a catalyst, generating an enormous wave of solidarity and support for international AA-work and the cause of the people in South Africa and Namibia.69 However, the realisation had no practical consequences, as the AAB’s response to Mandela’s release in 1990 illustrated. Though Ingeborg Wick led a delegation that attended the second Wembley concert celebrating the event,70 the AAB’s newsletter made no mention of it.71 Again, hard politics dominated the AAB’s concerns. And some voices in the AAB

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condemned the focus on Mandela, as in the Wembley concerts, as a ‘cult of personality’.72 In contrast, two commercial concerts were held in West Berlin—Berlin Celebrates Mandela on 7 April and Mandela Night Part II on 8 April— which the Berlin Anti-Apartheid Coordination condemned as an ‘abuse of Nelson Mandela’s name for purely commercial purposes’.73 A few weeks later, on 25 May 1990, the Catholic and Protestant youth organisations put on the Rock Power for a Free South Africa concert in West Berlin. The anti-apartheid movement was not involved in any of the three.74 And when Mandela visited West Germany in June 1990, he did not stop at the headquarters of the AAB, where people were waiting for him; he visited the Social Democratic Party, where Willy Brandt hosted a lively reception with a musical programme. The pop singer Herbert Grönemeyer performed, the rock musician Wolfgang Niedecken gave a speech, the band Bläck Fööss played Ladysmith Black Mambazo’s ‘Homeless’, accompanied by a South African theatre ensemble, and Mandela sang ‘Nkosi Sikelel’ iAfrika’ with them with his fist raised.75 So, pop music and politics did not fuse much in the West German anti-­ apartheid movement, and the fusion that did occur was relatively short-­ lived; politics soon ignored music again, and pop music returned to its commercial pursuits. In contrast to Britain and Sweden, the West German anti-apartheid movement was never able to persuade West Germany’s pop musicians to commit themselves to its cause. Thus, no real conflict over the daring step into pre-political politics could arise.

Conclusion If, like Håkan Thörn, one understands the anti-apartheid movement as an ‘imagined community of solidarity activists’, one which was led in its last phase in the 1980s by young activists schooled in the social movements of that and the previous decades, then it makes sense to ask more precisely about the significance of pop culture in this final phase and, thus, about the influence of processes of major social change.76 Because the decade’s ‘increasing emphasis on culture and symbolic action, sometimes highly media-oriented’, influenced those young activists, music was more important for their ‘shared sense of community’ than it had been ever before.77 Thus, the fusion of politics and lifestyles was essential to the anti-apartheid activism of the 1980s. If we define ‘consumer’ as one who uses material and immaterial goods and services beyond the satisfaction of need, then

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the public sphere is part of a consumer society, and this enables its choices, creates culture and opens it for political intervention. In former decades, anti-apartheid activism was characterised by ascetic protests and often associated with folk and jazz music, but in the 1980s it became part of a politically reflective alternative everyday ‘society of experience’ that consumed commercial pop music.78 As the Wembley concerts combined political awareness and popular culture, they can be analysed as a showcase of how Western European societies tackled the media’s increasing global coherence. The Wembley concerts were great successes, especially the first one, but they were also exceptions. Three facts explain their success. First, the social consensus against apartheid was so broad at the end of the 1980s that the opposition of the conservative minority only strengthened it. Second, their organisers responded to the demands of the global media by reducing their political content, marketing the first concert as a birthday celebration and featuring, among others, pop stars not known for their politics. However, third, the concert’s political message was still so clear that it satisfied even those for whom the fight against apartheid was a priority. The ‘optimism and hedonism’ that, according to David Toulson, characterised the ‘apolitical culture’ of the following years fit Tony Hollingsworth’s credo ‘rather happy than angry’.79 Thus, to a certain extent the Wembley concerts paved the way for this change, although Hollingsworth’s binary terms are not adequate for characterising the concept of lifestyle politics, whose political content is manifested in supposedly apolitical actions. The Wembley concerts were exceptions to Western European anti-­ apartheid activism, which succeeded only because of the British AAM: its size and professionalism, its position at the geographical centre of global pop culture and its involvement with pop musicians. But even in Great Britain, the anti-apartheid movement was divided over criticism of its professionalisation, depoliticisation and involvement with the music business. The anti-apartheid movements in other Western European countries also tried to mobilise musicians for their cause, with mixed results. In essence, the kinds of musicians recruited depended on activists’ political orientations and musical tastes: jazz, ANC ensembles, rock, new wave or, as in Sweden in the second half of the 1980s, top 40. However, the mobilisation was unsuccessful in West Germany, where the anti-apartheid movement’s persistently traditional political orientation is most striking. The methods of West German anti-apartheid activism included demonstration,

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civil disobedience and boycott. This does not contradict the thesis that politics and lifestyles are connected, as has been typical of post-industrial societies since the late 1970s. But it does point to numerous differences and it explains why the thorough fusion of political movement and mass culture, as in Great Britain, was an exception. Social movements and the media have their own dynamics, which, though they sometimes converge, can manifest a certain degree of structural incompatibility, especially when social movements pursue anti-capitalist goals. Thus, the Wembley concerts were not typical of the anti-apartheid movement. The AAM’s relationship to pop culture presents a contrast between the idealised image of a unified global movement and its ‘amorphous and multipolar’80 reality.

Notes 1. Cf. Elihu Katz and Daniel Dayan, Media Events: The Live Broadcasting of History (Harvard: Harvard University Press, 1992); Friedrich Lenger and Ansgar Nünning, eds., Medienereignisse der Moderne (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2008). 2. Quote: Peter Elman, “Tony Hollingsworth Nelson Mandela 70th Birthday Tribute”, accessed August 8, 2018, http://tonyhollingsworth.com/?q= content/nelson-mandela-70th-birthday-tribute 3. Robin Denselow, When The Music’s Over: The Story of Political Pop (London: Faber, 1990), 274; David Toulson, “Culture is a Weapon: Popular Music, Protest and Opposition to Apartheid in Britain” (PhD diss., University of Warwick, 2016), 258 f., 266 f. 4. Stern, June 15, 1988, 25; unspecified press clipping in Bodleian Library, Oxford (BLO), MSS AAM 1930. 5. Cf. the brief overview at Roger Fieldhouse, Anti-Apartheid. A History of the Movement in Britain (London: Merlin, 2005), 120–123. 6. Gallup Poll Nelson Mandela, 29 June – 5 July 1988, BLO, MSS AAM 1932. 7. Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann and Renate Köcher, eds., Allensbacher Jahrbuch der Demoskopie 1984–1992 (München et al.: Saur, 1993), 1003ff. However, this did not mean that the West German citizens had joined the demands of the anti-apartheid movement. Only a quarter were in favour of a ban on imports of South African goods, and more than half said that this would mainly be to the detriment of black workers. 8. Hans Magnus Enzensberger, “Baukasten zu einer Medien-Theorie,” Kursbuch 20 (1970): 173. 9. Dieter Baacke, Beat – die sprachlose Opposition (München: Juventa, 1968). 10. Sigrid Baringhorst, Politik als Kampagne. Zur medialen Erzeugung von Solidarität (Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag, 1998), 50.

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11. Benjamin Möckel, “‘Free Nelson Mandela’: Popmusik und zivilgesellschaftlicher Protest in der britischen Anti-Apartheid-Bewegung,” Lied und populäre Kultur 60/61 (2015/16): 187–205. 12. This and the following quotation: The British Contribution to the Cultural Isolation of South Africa and Mobilisation of Cultural Forces in Support of the South African Freedom Struggle, February 1984, BLO, MSS AAM 1463. 13. Quoted from Möckel, “‘Free Nelson Mandela’,” 197. 14. AAM (Mike Terry) to Steve Waterhouse, 28.3.1988, BLO, MSS AAM 1929. 15. Cf. Benjamin Möckel, “Empathie als Fernsehereignis: Bilder des Hungers und das Live-Aid-Festival 1985,” Nebulosa. Figuren des Sozialen 8 (2015): 83–93; Toulson, Culture, 234ff. 16. Robert Keating, “Anatomy of a Cause Concert,” Spin (September 1988): 31 and 72. 17. John Leland, “Talkin‘ ’Bouta Revolution. Rock’s Summer of Conscience,” Spin (September 1988): 27. 18. Quoted after the German translation of the text in Informationsdienst südliches Afrika 7 (1988): 5. 19. Toulson, Culture, 226. Cf. Denselow, When the Music’s Over, 227. 20. Elman, “Mandela.” 21. Peter Elman, “Tony Hollingsworth. Summary Biography,” accessed August 8, 2018, http://tonyhollingsworth.com/?q=content/tonyhollingsworths-biography 22. Hollingsworth quoted after ibid. 23. Roger Harris and Margaret Ling, Nelson Mandela 70th Birthday Commemorative Merchandise, 2.2.1988, BLO, MSS AAM 1929. Cf. the contribution of Benjamin Möckel in this volume and on the wider context Benjamin Möckel, “The Material Culture of Human Rights. Consumer Products, Boycotts and the Transformation of Human Rights Activism in the 1970s and 1980s,” History Culture Modernity 6, no. X (2018): 76–104. 24. Anti-Apartheid Movement, Annual Report October 1987 – September 1988, 13, online: https://www.aamarchives.org/archive/reports.html?start=24 25. [AAM], Mandela Merchandise  – some thoughts and guidelines, [early 1988], BLO, MSS AAM 1929. 26. Stuart Hall, The AAM and the Race-ing of Britain (London: Anti-­Apartheid Archives Committee, 1999), accessed July 20, 2018, http://sahistory.org. za/sites/default/files/library-resources/officialdocs/anti-apartheidmovement/aam-britain.htm 27. Denselow, When the Music’s Over, 122ff., 203ff.; Toulson, Culture, 152ff., 213ff.

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28. This and the following in Chandra Sekar/Jerry Dammers to Trevor Huddleston, 13.5.1988, BLO, MSS AAM 1929. 29. Jerry Dammers to Tony Hollingsworth, 9.5.1988, MSS AAM 1929. 30. Steve Waterhouse to Huddlestone, o.D., BLO, MSS AAM 1929. 31. Rebecca Kemp to AAM, 12.6.1988, BLO, MSS AAM 1929. 32. Cf. Mark Perryman, “The Mandela Moment,” Marxism Today (September 1988): 28–30. 33. Cf. Rob Nixon, Homelands, Harlem and Hollywood. South African Culture and the World Beyond (New York: Routledge, 1994), 164 f. 34. Ian Flooks to Tony Hollingsworth, 23.3.1988, BLO, MSS AAM 1929. 35. Cf. Detlef Siegfried, “Aporien des Kulturboykotts. Anti-Apartheid-­ Bewegung, ANC und der Konflikt um Paul Simons Album ‘Graceland’,” Zeithistorische Forschungen/Studies in Contemporary History 13, no. 2 (2016): 254–279. English version: https://zeithistorische-forschungen. de/file/4173/download?token=3lCKxDjz. 36. This and the following quote after Mary Keating, “Prisoner of Rock,” Spin (September 1988): 30. 37. Vrij Nederland, April 18, 1987; Informationsdienst südliches Afrika 7 (1988), 17 f. 38. AAM, Paul Simon and the Anti-Apartheid Cultural Boycott. What is the Problem?, o.D., BLO, MSS AAM 1473. 39. Cit. after Die Zeit, July 10, 1987; Der Spiegel 36, September 3, 1990, 265. 40. Der Spiegel 48, 1985, 261. 41. Berlingske Tidende, April 15, 1990. 42. FAZ, April 17, 1990. 43. Keating, “Anatomy,” 72. 44. Notes from Jerry Dammers, o.D., BLO, MSS AAM 1929. 45. FAZ, June 13, 1988, 28. 46. FAZ, July 18, 1988, 3. 47. John Street, “Red Wedge. Another Strange Story of Pop’s Politics,” Critical Quarterly 3, no. 3 (1988): 79–91; Jeremy Tranmer, “Political Commitment of a New Type? Red Wedge and the Labour Party in the 1980s,” Revue Française de Civilisation Britannique 22, no. 3 (2017): 1–17; Daniel Rachel, Walls Come Tumbling Down, The Music and Politics of Rock Against Racism, 2 Tone and Red Wedge (London: Picador, 2017). 48. Sources in International Institute of Social History, Amsterdam (IISH), ARCH03105/341. 49. Sources in IISH, ARCH03259/51. 50. Cit. after Tor Sellström, Sweden and National Liberation in Southern Africa Volume II. Solidarity and Assistance 1970–1994 (Uppsala: Nordiska Afrikainstitutet, 2002), 763.

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51. See also John Hansen, “Rock mod apartheid. Danske musikere stiller op,” in Aktivister mod Apartheid - dansk Solidaritet med Sydafrika, eds. Morten Nielsen et al. (Copenhagen: Sydafrika Kontakt, 2004), 93–95. 52. Paper delivered by the anti-apartheid-movement of the Federal Republic of Germany and West Berlin on occasion of the Symposium on “Culture Against Apartheid” by the UN Special Committee Against Apartheid, Athens, 2–4 September 1988, IISH, COLL0266/426. 53. Anti-Apartheid-Nachrichten 4, no. 0 and 5 (1986); Informationsdienst südliches Afrika 7 (1988): 17 f. 54. Anti-Apartheid-Bewegung (Ingeborg Wick) to Udo Lindenberg, 7.11.1986, Archiv für alternatives Schrifttum, Duisburg (AfaS), AAB 244, Teil 2. 55. Pressemitteilung, 26.11.1986, AfaS, AAB, 244, Teil 2. 56. Jürgen Bacia and Dorothée Leidig, ‘Kauft keine Früchte aus Südafrika’. Geschichte der Anti-Apartheid-Bewegung (Frankfurt am Main: Brandes Apsel, 2008), 294. 57. Fieldhouse, Anti-Apartheid, 303. 58. Ingeborg Wick, “Bilanz und Perspektiven. Gedanken zur Anti-Apartheid-­ Bewegung,” Informationsdienst südliches Afrika 3 (1991): 37. 59. Holger Stürenburg, Forever Young. Die Klänge der kühlen Dekade (München: Stürenburg, 2001), 91 f. 60. Alexa Geisthövel, “Böse reden, fröhlich leiden: Ästhetische Strategien der punkaffinen Intelligenz um 1980,” in Das schöne Selbst. Zur Genealogie des modernen Subjekts zwischen Ethik und Ästhetik, ed. Jens Elberfeld (Bielefeld: Transcript, 2009), 367–399; Nadja Geer, “‘If you have to ask, you can’t afford it.’ Pop als distinktiver intellektueller Selbstentwurf,” in Popgeschichte, vol. 2: Zeithistorische Fallstudien 1958–1988, eds. Bodo Mrozek, Alexa Geisthövel and Jürgen Danyel (Bielefeld: Transcript, 2014), 337–357. 61. taz, May 24, 1986. 62. Musik Express/Sounds, August 1988, 63. 63. taz, June 13, 1988. 64. Bravo, June 23, 1986, 8–9. 65. taz, July 15, 1988; Flugblatt Bund für Geistesfreiheit, Konzert für Nelson Mandela in Nürnberg, AfaS, AAB 144. 66. Cf. Mara Müller, ‘Freiheit für Nelson Mandela’. Die Solidaritätskampagne in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland (München: Allitera, 2014), 102. 67. FAZ, June 13, 1988. 68. Anti-Apartheid-Nachrichten, July 1988, 1. 69. Paper delivered by the anti-apartheid-movement of the Federal Republic of Germany and West-Berlin on occasion of the Symposium on “Culture Against Apartheid” by the UN Special Committee Against Apartheid, Athens, 2–4 September 1988, IISH, COLL0266/426.

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70. AAB (Wick) to Nelson Mandela International Reception Committee, 29.3.1990, AfaS, AAB, 140, Teil 2; International Reception Committee FRG and West Berlin, Delegation to London 15th/16th of April 1990, AfaS, AAB, 140, Teil 2. 71. In Anti-Apartheid-Nachrichten, July 1988, 1. 72. Cf. Müller, “‘Freiheit für Nelson Mandela’,” 112. 73. Anti-Apartheid-Koordination, Presseerklärung, 4.4.1990, University of Western Cape (UWC), Mayibuye Archive, MCH 220-1. 74. Flyer in UWC, Mayibuye Archive, MCH 203. 75. FAZ, June 13, 1990; taz, June 30, 1990; Paroli 2 (1990), 10–11. Cf. Bacia/Leidig, “Kauft keine Früchte,” 242. 76. Håkan Thörn, Anti-Apartheid and the Emergence of a Global Civil Society (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), 69. 77. Ibid, 193, 196. 78. Gerhard Schulze, Die Erlebnisgesellschaft. Kultursoziologie der Gegenwart (Frankfurt am Main: Campus, 1992). 79. Toulson, Culture, 267. 80. Simon Stevens, “The External Struggle against Apartheid: New Perspectives,” Humanity 7, no. 2 (Summer 2016): 300.

References Baacke, Dieter. Beat – die sprachlose Opposition. München: Juventa, 1968. Bacia, Jürgen, and Dorothée Leidig. „Kauft keine Früchte aus Südafrika“. Geschichte der Anti-Apartheid-Bewegung. Frankfurt am Main: Brandes Apsel, 2008. Baringhorst, Sigrid. Politik als Kampagne. Zur medialen Erzeugung von Solidarität. Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag, 1998. Denselow, Robin. When The Music’s Over: The Story of Political Pop. London: Faber, 1990. Enzensberger, Hans Magnus. “Baukasten zu einer Medien-Theorie.” Kursbuch 20 (1970): 159–186. Fieldhouse, Roger. Anti-Apartheid. A History of the Movement in Britain. London: Merlin, 2005. Geer, Nadja. “‘If you have to ask, you can’t afford it.’ Pop als distinktiver intellektueller Selbstentwurf.” In Popgeschichte, Volume 2: Zeithistorische Fallstudien 1958–1988, edited by Bodo Mrozek, Alexa Geisthövel and Jürgen Danyel, 337–57. Bielefeld: Transcript, 2014. Geisthövel, Alexa. “Böse reden, fröhlich leiden: Ästhetische Strategien der punkaffinen Intelligenz um 1980.” In Das schöne Selbst. Zur Genealogie des modernen Subjekts zwischen Ethik und Ästhetik, edited by Jens Elberfeld, 367–99. Bielefeld: Transcript, 2009.

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Hall, Stuart. The AAM and the Race-ing of Britain. London: Anti-Apartheid Archives Committee, 1999. Hansen, John. “Rock mod apartheid. Danske musikere stiller op.” In Aktivister mod Apartheid  - dansk Solidaritet med Sydafrika, edited by Morten Nielsen et al., 93–5. Copenhagen: Sydafrika Kontakt, 2004. Katz, Elihu, and Daniel Dayan. Media Events: The Live Broadcasting of History. Harvard: Harvard University Press, 1992. Keating, Mary. “Prisoner of Rock.” Spin (September 1988a): 30. Keating, Robert. “Anatomy of a Cause Concert.” Spin (September 1988b): 31 and 72. Leland, John. “Talkin‘ ’Bout a Revolution. Rock’s Summer of Conscience.” Spin (September 1988): 27. Lenger, Friedrich, and Ansgar Nünning, eds. Medienereignisse der Moderne. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2008. Möckel, Benjamin. “Empathie als Fernsehereignis: Bilder des Hungers und das Live-Aid-Festival 1985.” Nebulosa. Figuren des Sozialen 8 (2015a): 83–93. Möckel, Benjamin. “‘Free Nelson Mandela’: Popmusik und zivilgesellschaftlicher Protest in der britischen Anti-Apartheid-Bewegung.” Lied und populäre Kultur 60/61 (2015b): 187–205. Möckel, Benjamin. “The Material Culture of Human Rights. Consumer Products, Boycotts and the Transformation of Human Rights Activism in the 1970s and 1980s.” History Culture Modernity 6, no. X (2018): 76–104. Müller, Mara. ‘Freiheit für Nelson Mandela’. Die Solidaritätskampagne in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland. München: Allitera, 2014. Nixon, Rob. Homelands, Harlem and Hollywood. South African Culture and the World Beyond. New York: Routledge 1994. Noelle-Neumann, Elisabeth, and Renate Köcher, eds. Allensbacher Jahrbuch der Demoskopie 1984–1992. München et al.: Saur, 1993. Perryman, Mark. ‘The Mandela Moment.’ Marxism Today (September 1988): 28–30. Rachel, Daniel. Walls Come Tumbling Down, The Music and Politics of Rock Against Racism, 2 Tone and Red Wedge. London: Picador, 2017. Schulze, Gerhard. Die Erlebnisgesellschaft. Kultursoziologie der Gegenwart. Frankfurt am Main: Campus, 1992. Sellström, Tor. Sweden and National Liberation in Southern Africa. Volume II: Solidarity and Assistance 1970–1994. Uppsala: Nordiska Afrikainstitutet, 2002. Siegfried, Detlef. “Aporien des Kulturboykotts. Anti-Apartheid-Bewegung, ANC und der Konflikt um Paul Simons Album ‘Graceland’.” Zeithistorische Forschungen/ Studies in Contemporary History 13, no. 2 (2016): 254–79. English version: https://zeithistorische-forschungen.de/file/4173/download? token=3lCKxDjz

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Stevens, Simon. “The External Struggle against Apartheid: New Perspectives.” Humanity 7, no. 2 (Summer 2016): 295–314. Street, John. “Red Wedge. Another Strange Story of Pop’s Politics.” Critical Quarterly 3, no. 3 (1988): 79–91. Stürenburg, Holger. Forever Young. Die Klänge der kühlen Dekade. München: Stürenburg, 2001. Thörn, Håkan. Anti-Apartheid and the Emergence of a Global Civil Society. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006. Toulson, David. “Culture is a Weapon: Popular Music, Protest and Opposition to Apartheid in Britain.” PhD diss., University of Warwick, 2016. Tranmer, Jeremy. “Political Commitment of a New Type? Red Wedge and the Labour Party in the 1980s.” Revue Française de Civilisation Britannique 22, no. 3 (2017): 1–17. Wick, Ingeborg. „Bilanz und Perspektiven. Gedanken zur Anti-Apartheid-­ Bewegung.“ Informationsdienst südliches Afrika 3 (1991): 37–9.

Dutch Dialogues with Afrikaners: The Netherlands and the Cultural Boycott Against the Apartheid Regime in the 1980s Vincent Jurg and Vincent Kuitenbrouwer

In 1987, the Dutch writer Willem Frederik Hermans (1921–1995) gave a lecture at the cultural centre De Balie in Amsterdam. This event was quite extraordinary in two ways. First, the city council had declared Hermans a persona non grata in Amsterdam the previous year, and he had consciously decided to ignore its ruling. Second, Hermans’s lecture was interrupted soon after he had started by a bomb threat. After the police searched the building without finding anything, Hermans resumed his talk, but the incident shook him severely.1 Both the hostile attitude of the city officials and the bomb scare were prompted by a trip that Hermans had made to South Africa in 1983. There was a great outcry over the trip in the Dutch media that year, as a number of opinion-makers accused Hermans of ignoring the UN General Assembly’s call for a cultural boycott of South Africa. They also vilified Hermans for several statements he had made,

V. Jurg (*) • V. Kuitenbrouwer (*) University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, Netherlands e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2021 K. Andresen et al. (eds.), Apartheid and Anti-Apartheid in Western Europe, Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-53284-0_8

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which many saw as proof of his sympathy for the apartheid regime. This chapter takes the Dutch media’s polemics against Hermans’s South African trip as a case study to reflect on the wider nature of the Dutch attitudes towards South Africa and, particularly, the notion of a cultural boycott in the late apartheid era. At first sight, the media’s intense outcry over Hermans’s trip seems to show that the public widely supported the anti-apartheid movement in the Netherlands. In his extensive study of the history of Dutch anti-apartheid organisations, Roeland Muskens argues that they conducted the Netherlands’ most successful Third World solidarity movement and that because of their work in the 1970s and 1980s ‘a large part of the Dutch population felt connected with what was happening in South Africa’.2 Because of its remarkable size, the Dutch anti-apartheid movement was a prominent node in the transnational network of Western sister organisations that formed, in Håkan Thörn’s words, ‘a global civil society’.3 In line with Thörn’s assessment, Barbara Henkes argues that ‘the Anti-Apartheid Movement in the Netherlands was part of a global process of democratisation, secularisation, decolonisation, and a growing interest in human rights and respect for Black Power in the second half of the twentieth century’.4 In contrast, Muskens considers the movement’s mobilisation of grassroots support a national phenomenon.5 We shall argue that the Dutch public debate over apartheid engaged with transnational idealism and action strategies, and, at the same time, it was affected by national factors arising from the Netherlands’ and South Africa’s shared history, which went back to the colonial age. This shared history raises questions about the nature of the Dutch anti-­ apartheid movement and the relationships between colonial and post-­ colonial thought. Generally, historians see the history of the Dutch anti-apartheid movement in the context of the late twentieth century when, according to many, the public embraced progressive values, particularly anti-racism.6 This view echoes the attitude of left-wing progressives in the 1970s that the Netherlands was a ‘model country’ (gidsland) in terms of Third World issues.7 In recent years, a number of authors have criticised this view. One of the most important is the cultural scholar Gloria Wekker, who coined the term ‘white innocence’ in arguing that the progressive self-image of the Dutch obscures persisting patterns of racial exclusion caused by the ‘cultural archive’ of colonialism.8 Wekker does not address the anti-apartheid movement in her book, but Muskens notes, in passing, that it is remarkable that all of the leading activists in the main

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organisations were ‘white’ and suggests that researchers should try to explain what is a curious feature for a movement that was committed to anti-racism.9 Though we do not offer that explanation for this issue either, we do note the prominence of white voices in the debate we analyse. This seems to have been a key feature of the Dutch anti-apartheid movement, and it suggests that the movement was influenced by the ‘cultural archive’ of colonialism to which Wekker has drawn attention. The discussion of the cultural boycott clearly illustrates the multi-­ levelled character of the Dutch debate that was the outcome of the geographical and historical entanglements of the Netherlands mentioned above. The boycott was conceived in Great Britain in the 1950s, and debates in the United Nations’ General Assembly gave the idea international momentum that resulted in the adopting of a resolution in 1981.10 Dutch anti-apartheid organisations embraced the initiative and energetically lobbied for the imposition of a cultural boycott of South Africa. Although the movement created a lot of noise around the issue, as the polemics against Hermans’s visit to South Africa illustrate, it achieved only limited results. The explanation is largely that the Dutch government did not sign the UN’s boycott resolution, for its policy was to avoid official sanctions as much as possible. Muskens argues that in this way Dutch anti-­ apartheid organisations failed to translate broad public and political support for their cause into a significant influence on policy. As we show in the first section, their failure can be explained in terms of the history that the Netherlands and South Africa shared, which fostered a sense that the Dutch and the Afrikaners had a special relationship that originated in the colonial age. In the second section, we analyse the media debate over Hermans’s visit to South Africa in 1983 on the basis of material collected from the Dutch online newspaper databank Delpher.11 An n-gram model shows various peaks in occurrences of the keyword culturele boycot (‘cultural boycott’), one of which is around the time of Hermans’s visit in 1983, which shows its importance in the public debate (see Fig. 1.). After analysing the fierce polemics that followed Hermans’s remarks on the political situation in South Africa as a largely national phenomenon, we turn to the debate over the cultural boycott, which transcended national considerations. We argue on the basis of that debate’s general features that it included certain tropes about the kinship between the Dutch and Afrikaners from an earlier time. In this way, the public debate

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Fig. 1  N-gram graph of the term culturele boycot in digitalised Dutch newspapers. (Source: www.delpher.nl)

in the Netherlands over the cultural boycott of South Africa was a dialogue with the Afrikaners.

The Cultural Boycott of South Africa in a Dutch Historical Perspective The initiative for a cultural boycott to pressure the apartheid regime originated in an international context. In 1969, the General Assembly of the United Nations called to isolate South Africa politically, economically and culturally, and in 1974, it passed an official resolution to that effect. In the early 1980s, the resolution received a further impulse, in the context of the UN year of sanctions against South Africa in 1982, when the UN created a Cultural Register to record the names of artists who performed in South Africa, beginning in 1983.12 In Great Britain, where activists had been discussing a cultural boycott since the 1950s, these steps had far-­ reaching consequences. For one, the influential actors’ union Equity, which counted also many musicians amongst its members, decided to impose fines for members who performed in South Africa.13 The union focussed on the Sun City resort, built by hotelier Sol Kerzner in the apartheid-­ created homeland, Bophuthatswana, and called for putting Queen and Elton John, who had both played there, on the Cultural Register. Subsequently these artists promised never to perform in South Africa again and the measures were dropped.14 The boycott was widely accepted in principle, but there was disagreement over a blanket boycott,

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which would cut all cultural ties with South Africa, and a selective boycott, which would permit cultural contact that supported the anti-apartheid movement.15 In Great Britain, the discussion reached its climax in 1986 when Paul Simon, an outspoken critic of apartheid, released the Graceland album, which he had recorded with black artists from South Africa.16 In the Netherlands, the discussion in the 1980s about boycotting South Africa occurred against the background of these international precedents. The main anti-apartheid organisations, the Anti-Apartheid Beweging Nederland (AABN) and the Komité Zuidelijk Afrika (KZA), considered the UN’s cultural boycott and the installation of the Cultural Register useful to their cause. In 1982, the KZA set up the Stichting VN-jaar voor de sancties tegen Zuid-Afrika (Foundation UN-year for the sanctions against South Africa) to raise public awareness of the cultural boycott in the Netherlands.17 In the years that followed, the Stichting applauded Equity’s actions against Elton John and Queen, arguing that the Cultural Register, which it called a ‘black list’, was effective at preventing such famous artists from going to South Africa.18 Although no Dutch artists ever played (or were invited) at Sun City, several singers, for example, the pop singer Hein ‘Heintje’ Simons and the opera singer Elly Ameling, planned to tour South Africa. Both artists received telegrams from the Stichting VN-jaar informing them that it had requested the UN to add their names to the Cultural Register.19 These actions against these artists received far less media attention than the controversies in Great Britain about world-­ famous pop-stars, which suggests that the cultural boycott had less public effect in the Netherlands than in Great Britain. The biggest public outcry about violating the cultural boycott was over the South African visit of Willem Frederik Hermans, an elderly novelist. To understand it, one must understand the historical ties between the Dutch and the Afrikaners. The relationship between Dutch and Afrikaners intensified in 1880 because of the Transvaal War. The general population in the Netherlands supported the inhabitants of the Boer republic in their fight against the British Empire,20 and many opinion-makers claimed that the Dutch shared a kinship, which they called Stamverwantschap, with the Afrikaners.21 Their arguments were eclectic. Some premised cultural and historical ties. They hailed the Afrikaners as the descendants of West European colonists who had begun to settle on the Cape in the seventeenth century. Some stressed the Dutch attitude towards liberty and described the Great Trek of the 1830s as the escape of freedom-loving pioneers from the tyranny of the British Empire. Importantly, the language of the Transvaal and Orange

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Free State in the late nineteenth century was ‘High Dutch’, making it one of the few places outside the Netherlands and its colonies where the language was an official medium. In addition to historical and lingual ties, the notion of Stamverwantschap had a strong racial aspect. Various late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Dutch sources on South Africa have a strong sense that the white minority should rule the black majority, which fit the wider contemporary colonial discourse in the Netherlands. Moreover, some argued that the ‘Dutch race’ was better equipped than the British to ‘civilise’ South Africa. Inspired by the ideal of Stamverwantschap, several thousand well-educated Dutchmen emigrated to Transvaal to help make it a modern state. However, their ‘kinsmen’ in South Africa did not always welcome them and often considered them arrogant. Several scholars who study the remnants of the idea of Stamverwantschap in the twentieth century have pointed out that a complex pattern emerges, with apparent discontinuities but also with continuities. The annexation of the Boer republics by the British Empire after the South African War (1899–1902) cooled Dutch enthusiasm for the Afrikaners. But the appeal of its underlying ideals continued, as later literature shows. Until the 1960s, Dutch school children read South African adventure stories with Afrikaner heroes.22 At first sight, much changed in the wake of the Second World War. After the trauma of the Nazi occupation, ‘racism’ became a tainted word. And the equally traumatic decolonisation of Indonesia in the late 1940s initiated a sea change in thinking about colonialism; progressive opinion-makers and politicians increasingly saw the country’s colonial past as shameful.23 At the same time, the election victory of the National Party in 1948 put South Africa on a new course. Some in the Dutch press expressed shock over the election result and criticised the openly racist apartheid laws, which some pundits compared to the Nazis’ persecution of Jews.24 Public disapproval of South Africa’s increasing segregation under the Afrikaner regime did not mean that the old feelings of kinship disappeared. In many ways, the two countries grew closer in the 1950s. In part, this was because of an increase in emigration from the Netherlands to South Africa, which both governments supported.25 Also, the signing of a bilateral cultural treaty in 1951 officially acknowledged the relationship of Dutch and Afrikaans (which had been recognised as a separate language in 1925). The treaty aimed at strengthening ties between the two countries by promoting exchanges and collaborations of students, researchers and media.26

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The Dutch government remained at a distance from these programmes, handing their implementation to the pro-Afrikaner Nederlands Zuid-­ Afrikaanse Vereniging (NZAV).27 The NZAV publicly disapproved of the apartheid laws, but it argued that the most effective way to change them was to start a ‘critical dialogue’ by increasing cultural ties to South Africa.28 As the Dutch public outcry against apartheid grew after the Sharpeville Massacre in 1960, Stamverwantschap became more and more controversial. In the decade that followed, several new anti-apartheid organisations began to mobilise Dutch public opinion against apartheid by calling for the isolation of South Africa, for example, with a consumer boycott of Outspan oranges.29 In the mid-1970s, anti-apartheid organisations secured government funding from the ruling left-wing coalition with which they built a strong grassroots movement that reached out to the Dutch public. However, their effect on government policy was limited. Public pressure on the government to impose sanctions, including a cultural boycott, grew after the murder of Steve Biko in 1977. In response, the left-wing government suspended the cultural treaty, and the new right-wing government revoked it in 1981. These measures angered the apartheid regime and dismayed members of the NZAV, who lamented that the situation would lead to growing ‘cultural differences’ between the Dutch and Afrikaners.30 But in effect, the impact of the end of the cultural treaty was quite limited, as it merely took away some financial stimuli and did not prevent Dutch figureheads from visiting South Africa. Despite the pressure of the strong anti-apartheid lobby and members of Parliament, the Dutch government refused to sign the UN resolution calling for a cultural boycott. And it imposed no other sanctions on South Africa.31 In this context, the appeal for a cultural boycott of South Africa in the Netherlands was completely moral and had no legal implications for those who ignored it. The official Dutch reluctance to sever ties with South Africa shows an ongoing sense of Stamverwantschap. In the mid-1980s, the Minister of Foreign Affairs formulated a ‘two-track policy’ that aimed at both ‘increasing the international political and economic pressure on the South African government’ and, at the same time, ‘supporting social developments which are meant to peacefully change South Africa in a meaningful way’. Though the government never used the term ‘critical dialogue’, these words show that people at the highest levels of government believed that the Dutch should stay in contact with the Afrikaners to help them reform.32 Some members of anti-apartheid organisations, especially Christians, also

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continued to believe in Dutch-Afrikaner kinship.33 The historian Gerrit Schutte, who himself was a leading member of the NZAV in the 1980s, has provocatively characterised the sense of historical responsibility for South Africa that many Dutch felt as a form of ‘cultural imperialism’.34 His view is exaggerated, for the Netherlands made no systematic attempt to influence South Africa in that era. But Schutte has also argued that many Dutch felt a special affinity for South Africa and, just as during the South African War, saw the opposition to apartheid as a struggle of right against wrong.35 The message that apartheid—and racism—was an evil that had to be combatted became a trope in Dutch literature in the last quarter of the twentieth century. Poets were especially active in the anti-apartheid movement. Wilfred Jonckheere has noted that their texts mainly expressed a condemnation of the apartheid regime, for which reason he has characterised it as ‘a dialogue with the Afrikaners’, whom they saw as ‘old fashioned and provincially narrow-minded’.36 One of the most outspoken publications was an essay by Hilbert Kuik, who visited South Africa in 1969, entitled ‘Black Does Not Exist’ (Zwart bestaat niet). In it, Kuik sneered at Afrikaners as ‘outsiders in an alien world’ (wereldvreemden in een vreemde wereld) who were interested only in their ‘own people … and their own culture’.37 In contrast, there was warm attention for dissident writers from South Africa amongst Dutch men and women in literary circles who were active in anti-apartheid organisations and wrote in magazines and newsletters affiliated to these groups. In these publications, which did not reach large audiences, they reflected on the work of black and coloured authors, such as Bessie Head, Mazisi Kunene, Alex La Guma, Lewis Nkosi and Sipho Sepamla, whose work was banned in South Africa. However, white Afrikaner writers who opposed apartheid, such as Breyten Breytenbach and André Brink, became much more famous in the Netherlands and regularly contributed to Dutch mainstream media.38 In light of the historical background, apartheid was an emotionally charged subject in Dutch literature, which explains why the Dutch debate over the cultural boycott of South Africa focussed on high literature rather than pop culture. For a writer like Hermans, who was known for his love of polemic, this provided an opportunity to stir controversy.

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The Cultural Boycott and the Polemics Against Hermans Aside from a short story from 1965, Hermans did not write about South Africa. Still, he readily accepted the invitation of the publishing house Human & Rousseau, which had published his major novels with annotations in Afrikaans, to make a four-week lecture tour of South Africa’s main universities in March 1983. Muskens has argued that Hermans’s motivation was ‘mere provocation’.39 That was undoubtedly one factor, but it cannot be the full explanation for his decision. After a thoughtful reading of his oeuvre, the historian Ronald Havenaar has suggested that Hermans, who had a deeply fraught relationship with the Dutch colonial past, was moved by a deeper motivation. In several novels, Hermans portrayed the decolonisation of Indonesia as a great loss for the Netherlands, and he cared little about the remnants of the Dutch empire in the Caribbean, ‘the last bits of tropical Netherlands’, as he disparagingly called them. However, Hermans was greatly interested in Holland’s cultural ties with South Africa, which were founded on the old sense of ‘lingual and historical kinship’ that Dutch society after the 1960s was quickly losing.40 He had moved to Paris in the 1970s to flee the progressive ideals of many Dutch writers, and the tour of South Africa seemed to him a way to relive the grandeur of Dutch culture in the colonial age. Hermans was aware of the tour’s potential for controversy, for he and his mixed-race Surinamese wife Emmy decided against her accompanying him for fear of the propaganda the apartheid regime might make of her presence.41 However, Hermans was not averse to causing controversy at home and he made several inflammatory statements in the Dutch press about the political situation in South Africa. Hennie Serfontein, an Afrikaner in South Africa who explicitly criticised the apartheid regime in the 1980s, wrote the most interesting article to appear in the Dutch press during Hermans’s tour. South Africa often denied Dutch journalists visas, but Serfontein worked for media outlets in the Netherlands like the newspaper Trouw and the television and radio broadcaster IKON.42 Though a vocal opponent of apartheid, Serfontein opposed the cultural boycott. Ten days before Hermans arrived, he had written in an article in Trouw based on interviews with South African writers and academics that anti-apartheid activists, including the writer André Brink, opposed the boycott, for it blocked white South Africans’ exposure to ‘new ideas’. According to Brink, ‘attempting to change views is one of

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the most effective ways to bring about change. Keeping ideas away will only worsen the situation instead of improving it. A cultural boycott is shallow and impractical.’ Serfontein also wrote that many Afrikaners thought the Dutch stance was ‘arrogant’, echoing the sentiments of the Boers a century before. Moreover, he argued that Hermans could not be a racist as his wife was from Suriname. And he stressed that Hermans was going to lecture at universities that were open to ‘coloureds’, contrary to the widespread rumour that only whites would be allowed to attend his lectures.43 In light of these sentiments, it is likely that Serfontein sought in Hermans an ally against the cultural boycott, but his attempt to work with him backfired. In Serfontein’s interview with him for Trouw, Hermans did call the boycott ‘repulsive and insane’ and said that the Dutch did not have the right to ‘mingle’ in the affairs of other countries. However, he also commented on South African politics. He stated that though apartheid was ‘not nice’, the principle of ‘one man, one vote’ in South Africa would mean ‘the end of the country’, though he did not explain how. In addition, Hermans attacked progressive anti-racist intellectuals in the Netherlands and stated that the Netherlands’ multicultural society was a failure. Referring to post-colonial immigration from Indonesia in the 1950s, he argued that non-Western ethnic groups ‘should have been segregated’ to prevent social tensions. One could have known from the ‘mixing of races’ in South Africa and the United States that this would be ‘a disaster’, according to Hermans.44 The interview in Trouw was the turning point in the public debate over Hermans’s tour. Before its publication, only a few newspapers had published editorials and opinion pieces on the trip, most notably the Communist De Waarheid and the right-wing De Telegraaf.45 Afterwards, more newspapers became involved, and fuming anti-apartheid activists, mostly members of the Stichting VN-jaar, launched a fierce polemic against Hermans. They published a statement accusing the writer of supporting ‘a system that discriminated against people on the basis of the colour of their skin’ and ridiculing his remarks against racial mixing, given that he had a Surinamese wife.46 In a more personal letter to the editors of Trouw, the chairperson of the Stichting VN-jaar, A.H. van den Heuvel, expressed himself even more furiously. He condemned Hermans’s ‘dangerous twaddle’, calling him a ‘lackey of a police state’ and Serfontein an ‘idiot’. He also denounced ‘liberal’ white South Africans for using Hermans’s visit as an opportunity to speak out against the cultural

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boycott.47 Van den Heuvel’s intensity underlines the emotions that South Africa raised in Dutch literary circles. After returning from South Africa, Hermans continued to give interviews in which he stated his views on apartheid, intensifying the controversy. On 13 April 1983, the writer Adriaan van Dis’s televised interview with Hermans generated a new round of controversy. Though a vocal critic of the apartheid regime, Van Dis, who was fluent in Afrikaans and had studied at Stellenbosch University in 1973, was ambivalent about South Africa and the Afrikaners,48 which made his relationship with the Dutch anti-apartheid movement complicated and in some ways problematic.49 Throughout the interview, Van Dis expressed his love-hate relationship with the Afrikaners. Early on, he described the Afrikaners ‘in jest’ as ‘a sort of white tribe in Africa: an isolated, quite isolated community’.50 Later, Hermans said that Afrikaans was a complex and highly evolved language, to which Van Dis replied in Afrikaans ek weet (‘I know’).51 Hermans was visibly annoyed with these frivolities about South African culture, but their real clash was over the political situation in South Africa. The pattern of the interview was similar to that of Serfontein’s, which started off neutrally but ended highly agitated. Van Dis first provoked Hermans by asking him about his motives in making his South African trip, which he suggested was a ‘conditioned reflex’ as no ‘sane person’ in the Netherlands would visit the home of apartheid. Answering politely, Hermans spoke of his ‘humble intentions’, which had nothing to do with politics. As a former geography professor, he was interested in South Africa’s geography, and being a ‘simple novelist’ he had been ‘honoured’ by Human & Rousseau’s invitation to lecture there. He claimed that the Afrikaners who read his books were part of an ‘advanced cultural elite’ that rejected apartheid52 and said that Dutch media were ‘biased’ in their reports of South Africa. Later in the interview, Hermans complained about the coverage of his trip in the Dutch press, claiming that the journalists to whom he had spoken, including Serfontein whom he called a ‘liar’, had misquoted him; for example, he had never said that he objected to ‘racial mixing’. By this point, the tone of the interview had changed after the conversation had turned to the ‘petty apartheid’ (the segregation laws affecting daily life of black South Africans). Hermans downplayed several apartheid laws, arguing, for example, that interracial marriage was only illegal in theory, ‘except for Communists, of course’. When Van Dis asked him if he did not feel the need to speak out against apartheid, he replied that he did

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not think it was necessary to ‘state the obvious’.53 Eventually Hermans acknowledged that petty apartheid was ‘not nice’, but he also made several statements in support of apartheid as a political project. For example, when Van Dis said that the ‘one man, one vote’ principle would ensure the most righteous political solution for South Africa, for the population would be able to choose how they wanted to rule their country, Hermans answered that the black majority was not capable of forming a peaceful government: It can be argued that it [the black population] has no intention at all. [Gasps from the audience]. The black population, what are you talking about? What are you talking about? There are seven tribes, at least, and those have seven different intentions. Do you not know that in Rhodesia [sic] the Shona are exterminating the Matabele [sic]. [Van Dis interrupts] What would you think will happen in South Africa [Van Dis interrupts] when the white policeman is gone?54 In these remarks, Hermans reproduced several tropes of the apartheid regime to legitimise its rule, but the interview had already descended into such chaos that Van Dis could not formulate a coherent counter-­argument. Seizing the initiative, Hermans shifted the conversation to his favourite target, Dutch progressives, whom he criticised for their hypocrisy towards immigrants from Indonesia. The explosive interview did not go unnoticed in the Dutch media. Most of the reactions acknowledged the entertainment value of the interview but condemned many of Hermans’s statements. The day after the interview, Frits van Veen, a journalist for de Volkskrant, wrote in an ironic commentary that many people had probably enjoyed Hermans’s performance as a television spectacle but had probably not really understood what they had heard. For if they had, they would have realised how completely outlandish Hermans’s statements, such as his downplaying of apartheid as ‘not nice’, were. Van Veen sarcastically proposed that Hermans be ‘sentenced to a life-long stay in his Dutch tribal land’.55 Although people continued to discuss Hermans in the weeks, and indeed the years, after his notorious interview with Van Dis, the focus of the debate moved to the usefulness of the cultural boycott. This meant that opponents of a cultural boycott, who were not always as outspoken as Hermans, joined the discussion. One group of journalists condemned Hermans’s statements about apartheid, but pointed out that the cultural boycott had few implications in the Netherlands. For example, Harry van Wijnen, the editor of Het Parool, wrote that many people ‘misunderstood’

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the revoking of the cultural treaty in 1981, believing that it was the boycott. However, even though the government no longer promoted cultural and academic ties with South Africa, it did not prohibit individuals from visiting South Africa.56 In this article, Van Wijnen did not pick a side against or in favour of apartheid; rather, he questioned the legal meaning of the cultural boycott. But that raised questions of international law, which transcended the strictly national character of the Hermans controversy. Also in other ways, the debate touched upon issues in the international debate about the cultural boycott. Dissident Afrikaner writers mingled in the Dutch debate over the cultural boycott, arguing that it would not improve the situation in South Africa, or would even be counterproductive. Referring to these authors, Hans Ester, a lecturer in South African culture at Nijmegen University, wrote that both Hermans and boycott advocates had ‘stereotypical’ views of South Africa and did not know the country well enough to say anything meaningful about it. According to Ester, the latter’s judgements of South Africa were too often based on emotion, and the former gave ‘stereotypical’ answers to ‘commonplace’ questions.57 Like white South African dissident writers, he doubted the effectiveness of a cultural boycott. Instead, the Netherlands should have ‘flooded’ South Africa with progressive ideas, a strategy that Serfontein and Brink had also proposed.58 Other South African dissident writers did support a cultural boycott in principle, but they struggled with the question what form it should take. One of these was the poet Breyten Breytenbach, who many Dutch writers saw as a martyr after his arrest by the apartheid regime in 1975.59 Breytenbach engaged with the Hermans controversy in a speech to the Dutch branch of the writers’ organisation PEN, which the NRC Handelsblad newspaper published.60 He condemned Hermans’s trip to South Africa on moral grounds but said that it had hardly been noticed ‘outside of the bubble of Afrikaner academia’ and South African authorities had probably been unaware of it. So, Dutch critics of Hermans exaggerated the importance of the trip, which was hardly worth mentioning in terms of cultural exchange. On the question of a cultural boycott, Breytenbach supported ‘the suspension of all cultural ties and every exchange between the Netherlands and institutions that are official, unofficial or tolerated by the South African government’, for he opposed the principle of ‘keeping the channels open in order to influence the thoughts and behaviour of racists’.

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However, he thought that a total cultural boycott would be ‘politically stupid’. He called for the forging of ‘new bonds to strengthen the real voices of resistance in the country’. Thus, Breytenbach advocated a particular interpretation of a selective cultural boycott over a total boycott. He argued that the Dutch should not waste time thinking about how to flood South Africa with progressive ideas in order to modernise the apartheid regime. They should help the resistance to overthrow the regime. This idea became the main force behind Culture in Another South Africa (CASA), a music festival in December 1987, subsidised by the city of Amsterdam and organised by the AABN, that featured South African musicians opposed to apartheid.61 CASA was a new tactic for the AABN. Previously, it had called for a total boycott of South African products and art. In 1987, the festival showcased South African art, in accord with Breytenbach’s ideas about a selective boycott. The festival’s combination of local government sponsorship (Amsterdam paid for much of the fl. 2,000,000 budget) and commercial success (most theatres hosting CASA events were sold out) supports Muskens’s claim that by the late 1980s the Dutch favoured a selective boycott over a total one.62 However, in 1986, a year before the festival, there was another flare-up in the Dutch boycott debate. Again, it involved Hermans, who was added to the UN’s Cultural Register on the request of the KZA. Subsequently, Amsterdam’s city council ruled that people on the ‘black list’ were not welcome in the city, and the mayor declared him a persona non grata. The symbolic declaration could not prevent Hermans from visiting Amsterdam, as he did on several occasions. For example, he attended the opening of a photography exhibition that he had curated at the prestigious Stedelijk Museum in September 1986, prompting calls to boycott the museum.63 In the wake of the new controversy, the NRC Handelsblad newspaper published an interview with Barbara Masekela, the ANC’s cultural secretary and a main contact for Western boycott movements, who was in the Netherlands in November 1986.64 She was one of the few black people, if not the only one, to comment on the Hermans case in Dutch newspapers. Asked by NRC’s interviewer about the controversy, she said that the ANC did not chose to decide who could and could not go to South Africa. Moreover, critics’ argument that Hermans had reinforced attitudes of white South Africans was baseless, for the students of the universities where Hermans lectured were progressive Afrikaners. If Hermans had wanted to change something, he should have spoken to the far-right Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging (AWB) organisation, she remarked. She

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also rejected the idea of many in the Netherlands that Dutch intellectuals could change the thinking of pro-apartheid Afrikaners by entering into dialogue with them. If you start thinking like that, everybody thinks he can contribute to a change in mentality … There will be requests for exceptions constantly. That doesn’t work, if we leave the door open, a flood of people will come in and that will undermine the boycott. That is why a cultural boycott has to be total.65

Conclusion The fact that Masekela commented on the Hermans case, in a statement about the cultural boycott, three and a half years after the writer’s trip to South Africa shows us that he was still an issue in the Dutch public debate over the boycott. On the one hand, this debate was a part of the transnational ‘global civil society’ of anti-apartheid activists. The idea of a cultural boycott of South Africa had emerged in Great Britain, and it, was formally adopted in a resolution of the UN’s General Assembly, resulting in the Cultural Register. Primary sources also reveal the engagement with international issues in that several Dutch opinion-makers referred to the high-­ profile controversies around the visits of British and American pop stars to South Africa. Finally, the participation of several South Africans in the Dutch debate shows that it was not purely national. Rather, the Dutch debate over whether the boycott should be selective or total is comparable to the British debate over Paul Simon’s Graceland album. On the other hand, the fact that the Dutch debate did not focus on a pop artist but on an elderly novelist indicates that it also differed from the discussions in other countries. We have argued that to understand its peculiarities one has to consider the historical ties between the Netherlands and South Africa and, particularly, the Stamverwantschap that the Dutch felt for the Afrikaners, that go back to the end of the nineteenth century. Firstly, these sentiments explain why the Dutch government did not impose any official boycott of South Africa, which entailed that the appeal for a cultural boycott by anti-apartheid activists was a moral statement without any legal consequences. In addition, the feeling of Stamverwantschap was part of a wider ‘cultural archive’ of colonialism in the Netherlands. For many Dutch, Stamverwantschap was based on the close relationship between Dutch and Afrikaans, and it produced a rich literary tradition in which many writers reflected on their relationships

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with South Africa. Although most Dutch writers in the late twentieth century vilified the Afrikaners for their ‘backward’ views, Wilfred Jonckheere has pointed out the continuities that their work had with earlier literature. For Hermans, who held traditional ideas about linguistic and cultural kinship, progressive Dutch writers’ attitudes towards South Africa was one of the reasons to visit the country in 1983. Although he repeatedly stated that the purpose of his lecture tour was strictly cultural, he made it clear in several interviews that he agreed with the system as a whole. Although these statements did not have any legal consequences they caused an uproar in the Dutch media in 1983. When it died down, the public debate shifted to the question of whether a cultural boycott of South Africa should be implemented. The public debate did not result in any new measures and the idea of a cultural boycott continued to be informal. As an echo of the older notion of kinship, the Dutch seemed to think that they should keep in touch with South African dissidents. This was the idea behind the CASA festival. In the meantime, Hermans served as a scapegoat as was shown by the emotional reactions to visits to Amsterdam in 1986 and 1987. On the latter occasion, he was even the target of a bomb threat, as we mentioned at the beginning of this contribution. Hermans swore to never set foot in the Dutch capital again, but after the city council repealed the decision to declare him persona non grata in 1993 he returned to present a new novel.66 With Nelson Mandela no longer in prison and apartheid all but abandoned, the time had come for the city council to rethink its position on the issue of a cultural boycott. On first sight, this might seem like a logical conclusion to the Dutch anti-­ apartheid movement, for as apartheid disappeared so did the public outcry against it. However, we have argued that the Netherlands and South Africa had had a shared history since the late nineteenth century. Although the Dutch anti-apartheid movement had wide public appeal in the last decades of the twentieth century, the sense that the Dutch had a special relation with the Afrikaners in light of that history is clearly present in primary sources from the period. In Jonckheere’s words, the Dutch anti-apartheid movement was part of an ongoing ‘dialogue with the Afrikaners’. This insight can help us to understand the transnational connections and the national peculiarities of the Dutch anti-apartheid movement.

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Notes 1. Ronald Havenaar, Muizenhol. Nederland volgens Willem Frederik Hermans (Amsterdam: G.A. van Oorschot, 2003), 49. 2. Roeland Muskens, “Aan de goede kant. Een geschiedenis van de Nederlandse anti-apartheidsbeweging 1960–1990” (PhD diss., University of Amsterdam, 2013), 315. Available via UvA Dare, accessed October 1, 2019, https:// dare.uva.nl/search?identifier=25a0eedd-82bc-4f08-af77-74e3335763ba 3. Håkan Thörn, Anti-Apartheid and the Emergence of a Global Civil Society (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006); see also: Wouter Marchand, “In navolging van de grote ‘Grensoverschrijder’. Jan Buskens, John Collins en de vroege anti-apartheidsbeweging als onderdeel van een global civil society, 1956–1965,” in Maar we wisten ons door de Heer geroepen. Kerk en apartheid in transnationaal perspectief, eds. Caspar Dullemond, Barbara Henkesa and James Kennedy (Hilversum: Uitgeverij Verloren, 2017), 23–42. 4. Barbara Henkes, “Shifting Identifications in Dutch-South African Migration Policies (1910–1961),” South African Historical Journal 68, no. 4 (2016): 668. 5. Muskens, “Aan de goede kant,” 19–22. 6. Ibid., 342. 7. Alfred Pijpers, Europese politiek in Nederlands vaarwater: kronieken en commentaar (Assen: Van Gorcum, 2005), 33. 8. Gloria Wekker, White Innocence. Paradoxes of Colonialism and Race (Durham/London: Duke University Press, 2016). 9. Muskens, “Aan de goede kant,” 12; 154–6. 10. Thörn, Anti-Apartheid, 62. 11. See official Delpher website, accessed December 23, 2019, https://www. delpher.nl/nl/kranten 12. Detlef Siegfried, “Aporias of the Cultural Boycott. Anti-Apartheid Movement, ANC and the Conflict Surrounding Paul Simon’s Album Graceland, 1985–1988,” Zeithistorische Forschungen/Studies in Contemporary History 13, no. 2 (2016):1–26; 5; Muskens, “Aan de goede kant,” 135. 13. Michael Drewett, “The Cultural Boycott Against Apartheid South Africa. A Case of Defensible Censorship?” in Popular Music Censorship in Africa, eds. Martin Cloonan and Michael Drewett (Routledge: London/New York, 2006), 24; 28; Rob Skinner, “The Moral Foundations of British Anti-Apartheid Activism, 1946–1960,” Journal of Southern African Studies 35, no. 2 (2009): 412. 14. Drewett, “Cultural Boycott,” 27.

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15. Ibid., 25. 16. Siegfried, “Aporias of the Cultural Boycott,” 11–13; 15. 17. Sietse Bosgra, “Webdossier Nederland tegen apartheid, jaren 1980 (1),” accessed December 23, 2019, http://archive.niza.nl/detail_page. [email protected]&password=9999&groups=NIZA&wor kgroup=&&text10=80erjaren1&nav=n2i 18. Muskens, “Aan de goede kant,” 145. 19. Willem Otterspeer, De zanger van de wrok. Biografie deel II (1953–1995) (Amsterdam: De Bezige Bij, 2015), 783. 20. This paragraph is based on Vincent Kuitenbrouwer, War of Words. Dutch Pro-Boer Propaganda and the South African War (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2012), chapters 1 and 2. 21. Verwantschap means kinship. The word stam can be interpreted either as ‘tree’, a metaphor for the Dutch people, who sprouted new branches in various parts of the world, or as ‘tribe’, which suggests the presence of biological racism in the Netherlands. For further discussion, see Barbara Henkes, “Stamverwantschap and the Imagination of a White, Transnational Community. The 1952 Celebrations of the Jan van Riebeeck Tercentenary in the Netherlands and South Africa,” in Imagining Communities. Historical Reflections on the Process of Community Formation, eds. Gemma Blok, Vincent Kuitenbrouwer and Claire Weeda (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2018), 176–7. 22. Wilfred Jonckheere, Van Mafeking tot Robbeneiland. Zuid-Afrika in de Nederlandse literatuur 1896–1996 (Nijmegen: Van Tilt, 1999), 96. 23. Maarten Kuitenbrouwer, De ontdekking van de derde wereld. Beeldvorming en beleid in Nederland, 1950–1990 (Den Haag: SDU, 1994), 248–50. 24. Ibid., 213–4. 25. Henkes, “Shifting Identifications”; Kuitenbrouwer, De ontdekking, 215. 26. Sophia van der Watt, “Die opsegging van die kultuurverdrag Nederland/ Suid-Afrika: ‘n kritiese ontleding” (MA diss., University of the Orange Free State, 1992), 31. 27. Wayne Hendricks, “Die betrekkinge tussen Nederland en Suid-Afrika, 1946–1961” (PhD diss., University of the West Cape, 1984), 74–7. 28. Gerrit Schutte, De roeping ten aanzien van het oude broedervolk. Nederland en Zuid-Afrika, 1960–1990 (Amsterdam: NZAV, 1993), 33. 29. Muskens, “Aan de goede kant,” 69–70. 30. Schutte, De roeping, 52–5. 31. Kuitenbrouwer, De ontdekking, 224; Stefan de Boer, Van Sharpeville tot Soweto. Nederlands regeringsbeleid ten aanzien van apartheid, 1960–1977 (Den Haag: SDU, 1999), 403–5. 32. Schutte, De roeping, 45–6. 33. Kuitenbrouwer, De ontdekking, 229.

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34. Gerrit Schutte, “Geschiedenis Nederlands-Zuid-Afrikaanse betrekkingen. Stamverwantschap als imperialisme,” in Apartheid, Anti-apartheid, Postapartheid. Terugblik en evaluatie, ed. Wim Couwenberg (Budel: Damon, 2008), 19. Compare with Henkes, “Shifting Identifications”, 668–9. 35. Gerrit Schutte, Nederland en de Afrikaners: adhesie en aversie (Franeker: T. Wever, 1986), 205. 36. Jonckheere, Van Mafeking, 181. 37. Quoted in: ibid. 38. Jonckheere, Van Mafeking, 210. 39. Muskens, “Aan de goede kant,” 144. 40. Havenaar, Muizenhol, 44–8. 41. Sonja Barend, ed., De honderd beste tv-interviews (Amsterdam: De Leeuw, 2011), 48. 42. Anli Serfontein, “Onze man in Zuid-Afrika,” 2Doc (Hilversum: IKON), November 10, 2015, https://www.npostart.nl/2doc/10-11-2015/ VPWON_1247114 43. Hennie Serfontein, “Anti-apartheidsmensen tegen culturele boycot. Zuidafrikanen vinden geestelijke isolatie vernietigend voor hun land,” Trouw, March 14, 1983. 44. Hennie Serfontein, “W.F. Hermans op bezoek in Zuid-Afrika. Apartheid enige oplossing, mits menselijk toegepast,” Trouw, March 8, 1983. 45. Elsbeth Etty, “De smakeloze ironie van W.F.  Hermans,” De Waarheid, March 5, 1983; “W.F.  Hermans tilt niet zwaar aan ophef over reis Z.-Afrika,” De Telegraaf, March 4, 1983. 46. “Hermans ziet wel wat in ‘menselijke’ apartheid,” Het Vrije Volk, March 9, 1983. 47. A.H. van den Heuvel, “Gevaarlijke borrelpraat,” Trouw, March 26, 1983. 48. Jonckheere analyses this ambivalence in the 1990 travel narrative Het beloofde land (the promised land). Jonckheere, Van Mafeking, 195. 49. Jonckheere, Van Mafeking, 194; Muskens, “Aan de goede kant,” 114. 50. Barend, De honderd beste, 47. 51. ‘Hier is… Adriaan van Dis’, minute 4:00, accessed December 23, 2019, https://zoeken.beeldengeluid.nl/program/urn:vme:default:progra m:2101608040029492731?q=Van+Dis+AND+Hermans 52. Barend, De honderd beste, 46. 53. Ibid., 51. 54. Ibid., 61–2. 55. Frits van Veen, “Hermans’ ideeën over apartheid van het betere huiskamerniveau,” De Volkskrant, April 14, 1983. 56. Harry van Wijnen, “W.F.  Hermans had weer gelijk,” Het Parool, April 13, 1983.

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57. Hans Ester, “Een strijdkreet met nuance schijnt niet te klinken,” Trouw, April 23, 1983. 58. Hennie Serfontein, “Anti-apartheidsmensen tegen culturele boycot. Zuidafrikanen vinden geestelijke isolatie vernietigend voor hun land,” Trouw, March 14, 1983. 59. Jonckheere, Van Mafeking, 171–9. 60. Breyten Breytenbach, “Nieuwe banden smeden om werkelijke stemmen van verzet te laten horen. Culturele boycot Zuid-Afrika een nobele zaak,” NRC Handelsblad, April 11, 1983. 61. Muskens, “Aan de goede kant,” 153. 62. Ibid. 63. Ibid., 144. 64. Siegfried, “Aporias of the Cultural Boycott,” 9. 65. Martin Sommer, “Barbara Masekela. Boycot van Zuid-Afrika moet totaal zijn,” NRC Handelsblad, November 6, 1986. 66. Muskens, “Aan de goede kant,” 144; Frenk Der Nederlanden, “W.F. Hermans is weer welkom,” Het Parool, January 16, 1993.

References Barend, Sonja, ed. De honderd beste tv-interviews. Amsterdam: De Leeuw, 2011. Boer, Stefan de. Van Sharpeville tot Soweto. Nederlands regeringsbeleid ten aanzien van apartheid, 1960–1977. Den Haag: SDU, 1999. Bosgra, Sietse. “Webdossier Nederland tegen apartheid, jaren 1980 (1).” Accessed December 23, 2019. http://archive.niza.nl/detail_page.phtml?&username= [email protected]&password=9999&groups=NIZA&workgroup=&&text10=80e rjaren1&nav=n2i. Drewett, Michael. “The Cultural Boycott Against Apartheid South Africa. A Case of Defensible Censorship?” In Popular Music Censorship in Africa, edited by Martin Cloonan and Michael Drewett, 23–38. Routledge: London/New York, 2006. Havenaar, Ronald. Muizenhol. Nederland volgens Willem Frederik Hermans. Amsterdam: G.A. van Oorschot, 2003. Hendricks, Wayne. “Die betrekkinge tussen Nederland en Suid-Afrika, 1946–1961.” PhD diss., University of the West Cape, 1984. Henkes, Barbara. “Shifting Identifications in Dutch-South African Migration Policies (1910–1961),” South African Historical Journal 68, no. 4 (2016): 641–69. Henkes, Barbara. “Stamverwantschap and the Imagination of a White, Transnational Community. The 1952 Celebrations of the Jan van Riebeeck Tercentenary in the Netherlands and South Africa.” In Imagining Communities. Historical Reflections on the Process of Community Formation, edited by Gemma

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Blok, Vincent Kuitenbrouwer and Claire Weeda, 173–95. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2018. ‘Hier is… Adriaan van Dis.’ Accessed December 23, 2019. https://zoeken. beeldengeluid.nl/program/urn:vme:default:program:210160804002949273 1?q=Van+Dis+AND+Hermans. Jonckheere, Wilfred. Van Mafeking tot Robbeneiland. Zuid-Afrika in de Nederlandse literatuur 1896–1996. Nijmegen: Van Tilt, 1999. Kuitenbrouwer, Maarten. De ontdekking van de derde wereld. Beeldvorming en beleid in Nederland, 1950–1990. Den Haag: SDU, 1994. Kuitenbrouwer, Vincent. War of Words. Dutch Pro-Boer Propaganda and the South African War. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2012. Marchand, Wouter. “In navolging van de grote ‘Grensoverschrijder’. Jan Buskens, John Collins en de vroege anti-apartheidsbeweging als onderdeel van een global civil society, 1956–1965.” In Maar we wisten ons door de Heer geroepen. Kerk en apartheid in transnationaal perspectief, edited by Caspar Dullemond, Barbara Henkes and James Kennedy, 23–42. Hilversum: Uitgeverij Verloren, 2017. Muskens, Roeland. “Aan de goede kant. Een geschiedenis van de Nederlandse anti-apartheidsbeweging 1960–1990.” PhD diss., University of Amsterdam, 2013. Otterspeer, Willem. De zanger van de wrok. Biografie deel II (1953–1995). Amsterdam: De Bezige Bij, 2015. Pijpers, Alfred. Europese politiek in Nederlands vaarwater: kronieken en commentaar. Assen: Van Gorcum, 2005. Schutte, Gerrit. “Geschiedenis Nederlands-Zuid-Afrikaanse betrekkingen. Stamverwantschap als imperialisme.” In Apartheid, Anti-apartheid, Post-­ apartheid. Terugblik en evaluatie, edited by Wim Couwenberg, 11–9. Budel: Damon, 2008. Schutte, Gerrit. De roeping ten aanzien van het oude broedervolk. Nederland en Zuid-Afrika, 1960–1990. Amsterdam: NZAV, 1993. Schutte, Gerrit. Nederland en de Afrikaners: adhesie en aversie. Franeker: T. Wever, 1986. Serfontein, Anli. “Onze man in Zuid-Afrika,” 2Doc (Hilversum: IKON), November 10, 2015. https://www.npostart.nl/2doc/10-11-2015/ VPWON_1247114. Siegfried, Detlef. “Aporias of the Cultural Boycott. Anti-Apartheid Movement, ANC and the Conflict Surrounding Paul Simon’s Album Graceland, 1985–1988.” Zeithistorische Forschungen/Studies in Contemporary History 13, no. 2 (2016): 1–26. Skinner, Rob. “The Moral Foundations of British Anti-Apartheid Activism, 1946–1960.” Journal of Southern African Studies 35, no. 2 (2009): 399–416. Thörn, Hakan. Anti-Apartheid and the Emergence of a Global Civil Society. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006.

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Watt, Sophia van der. “Die opsegging van die kultuurverdrag Nederland/Suid-­ Afrika: ‘n kritiese ontleding.” MA diss., University of the Orange Free State, 1992. Wekker, Gloria. White Innocence. Paradoxes of Colonialism and Race. Durham/ London: Duke University Press, 2016.

PART III

Transnational Entanglements in Politics and Churches

Conflicting Solidarities: The French Anti-apartheid Movement and the Liberation Struggle in South Africa, Circa 1960–1991 Namara Burki

On 29 March 1988, Dulcie September, the Chief Representative of the African National Congress (ANC) in France, Switzerland and Luxembourg, was shot dead as she entered the ANC’s small office on the Rue des Petites Écuries in the 10th arrondissement of Paris. Considered to have been orchestrated by South Africa, the murder prompted international condemnation of the regime, and that same evening the French Communist Party (PCF) organized a massive protest in Paris in which more than 20,000 mourners carried banners proclaiming ‘Dulcie was our friend’.1 However, in an interview with Radio Monte-Carlo a few days after her assassination, the socialist President François Mitterrand announced that he would not break off diplomatic relations with South Africa.2 His announcement was symptomatic of the unofficial military collaboration between the French and South African governments, which the

N. Burki (*) Sciences Po, Paris, Paris, France e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2021 K. Andresen et al. (eds.), Apartheid and Anti-Apartheid in Western Europe, Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-53284-0_9

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conservative President Charles de Gaulle (1959–1969) had instigated soon after the end of the Second World War. Their collaboration deepened when, following the departure of South Africa from the Commonwealth in 1961, Pretoria sought to establish further diplomatic and economic relations with other European powers, particularly France. As a result, the two countries entered into an informal agreement according to which South Africa exchanged strategic minerals, particularly gold and uranium, for French military and nuclear technology.3 It was in response to this collaboration that the anti-apartheid solidarity movement emerged in France. Although the historiography of the global anti-apartheid movement has grown since the 1990s, studies of transnational solidarity networks have tended to focus on national and regional movements, particularly in Great Britain and the United States4 in virtue of the significant involvement of South African exiles in their anti-apartheid movements. Because there were relatively few South African exiles in France, owing to the language barrier, participants in its movement were mostly French, primarily militant leftists who had supported previous anti-colonial struggles. However, the schism between socialists and communists during the Cold War divided the Left’s support of the anti-apartheid cause,5 which became a battleground for the ideologies of a Left in crisis, narrowing its scope of action. As a result, the French anti-apartheid movement is a fruitful subject for analysing the dynamics of anti-apartheid solidarity activism during the Cold War and Western leftist support for anti-colonial and anti-imperialist struggles. In this chapter, I address two questions. (1) How did the French anti-apartheid solidarity movement figure in a larger debate over the significance and relevance of the French Left from the 1960s to the 1990s? (2) To what extent did it fall prey to the sort of disputes characteristic of French militant political culture? The chapter has three parts. In the first, I focus on the early forms of anti-apartheid solidarity in France in the 1960s and their emergence in the context of ‘Third World’ solidarity. The second concerns the solidarity movement’s consolidation in the 1970s and the ideological divisions that pervaded it. Finally, I examine how the cultural manifestations of support for the anti-apartheid struggle in the 1980s provided a new arena for anti-­ apartheid activity, and how their crystallization around the figure of Nelson Mandela progressively side-lined other major forces in the historiography of the South African liberation movement. In this way, the chapter opens new perspectives in the study of the elements that constituted

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the transnational anti-apartheid movement and, in doing so, raises questions about the place of the French movement in it.

The Stirrings of French Anti-apartheid Solidarity: 1960–1974 In March 1960, in response to the Sharpeville and Langa massacres, in which a total of 104 protesters lost their lives, Alioune Diop, the Senegalese intellectual and founder (in 1947) of the journal Présence Africaine, established the Comité pour la justice et l’égalité en Afrique du Sud, which brought the South African question to the forefront in French militant circles. The committee, whose members came from various immigrant student organizations, received messages of support from eminent personalities, such as Josephine Baker, Léopold Sedar Senghor and Philibert Tsiranana.6 Although it was dissolved after its first meeting, the committee was an early attempt to raise public awareness of the South African question, and it illustrates how anti-colonial and Pan-African activists first stirred anti-apartheid sentiment in France.7 Popular mobilization initiated by temporary ad hoc committees was characteristic of the cultural and political contexts in post-war France, where such committees were often platforms for the expression of anti-fascist and anti-colonial milieus.8 Following a report in October 1963 by the United Nations Special Committee against Apartheid (which was established on 6 November 1962) that revealed an arms deal between South Africa and France, popular French condemnation of South Africa grew, which led to an increasing number of initiatives against the apartheid system. In February 1964, the Ligue de l’Enseignement9 organized a conference on apartheid, which numerous religious authorities attended, notably canon Aubert of Pax Christi International10 and Rabbi Schille of the Israelite Central Consistory of France.11 The participation of Christian associations in these early manifestations of French anti-apartheid sentiment raised the question of the role of Christianity in the solidarity movement.12 Influenced by Christian theology and its belief in collective responsibility, many anti-apartheid committees included Christian activists, such as the Comité de liaison contre l’apartheid (1964–1976), whose ranks included Protestant activists like Jean-Jacques de Félice, Elisabeth Mathiot, Pastor Jacques Lochard and Elisabeth Labrousse.13

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Furthermore, the French Left’s belief in collective responsibility and the moral imperative to oppose apartheid motivated its increasing criticism of neo-colonialism, and apartheid came to symbolize a global system of inequality for the Left. Accordingly, the anti-apartheid movement’s publications tended to focus on apartheid’s social and economic injustices. For example, Jean-Paul Sartre described it as a cancer and equated its economic oppression to slavery.14 In light of apartheid’s violence and ruthless repression, the movement considered the South African regime a part of global fascism,15 which, in the wake of the Second World War, resonated with the European intellectual community. As Sartre claimed: If we were to fail … to draw the majority of the public into this struggle, with a profound and sincere commitment, we would be responsible (and accessories), through our passiveness, for an intolerable and virulent strain of neo-Nazism which, originating in South Africa, will infect even Europe. … Mark well what this means: if such practices are tolerated, if we continue to tolerate them, then South Africa, which is today the hub of fascism, will send the Fascists back to us to teach us a painful lesson.16

Nationally, the movement’s main objective was to inundate the public with information on the situation in South Africa and thereby pressure the government to support the United Nations’ sanctions and end all diplomatic and economic relations with Pretoria. It used various forms of action to achieve this end and interacted with diverse social milieus, notably politicians, university professors, publishers and student organizations, such as the Union nationale des étudiants de France (UNEF) and the Fédération des étudiants d’Afrique noire en France (FEANF). It frequently organized protests in front of the South African embassy to denounce the collaboration of the two governments, to demonstrate support for political prisoners and to condemn the regime’s political repression and violation of human rights.17 On the international front, the movement actively attempted from the 1960s onwards to forge ties with other anti-apartheid solidarity movements and networks in Europe, most importantly Great Britain, where the ANC in exile had set up its main office. For instance, Canon John Collins, the president (from 1956 to 1982) of the International Defence and Aid Fund (IDAF), participated in the first meetings of the Comité anti-­ apartheid and the Comité de liaison contre l’apartheid.18 And because of the cultural and linguistic similarity of France and Francophone

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Switzerland, by 1965 the Comité de liaison contre l’apartheid was cooperating closely with the anti-apartheid movement in Geneva. As a result of such ties, the French anti-apartheid movement became a part of the transnational European movement. The Comité anti-apartheid sent the documentation that it compiled on circumstances in South Africa to its Swedish and German counterparts, and French activists translated publications of the British Anti-Apartheid Movement (AAM) organization and the ANC in exile.19 The French movement disseminated this information to the French public, which grew more critical of South Africa. However, this initial mobilization of French public opinion was derailed by events of the Cold War, particularly the media’s increasing attention to the Vietnam War (1965–1973). The Comité de liaison contre l’apartheid attempted to redirect public attention by convening the first European conference on apartheid in Paris in May 1967, in which representatives of the South African and Japanese anti-apartheid movements participated.20 But the attempt failed, and the fragmented nature of this initial French movement, in which so many different committees participated, marginalized it. In 1970, the Mouvement contre le racisme et pour l’amitié entre les peuples (MRAP) created its own anti-apartheid structure, the Comité special de lutte contre l’apartheid en Afrique australe, which focused on cultural aspects of solidarity. For example, it hosted a conference on racism in sports in accord with the UN’s call in 1968 for a sports boycott of South Africa, and it cooperated with Présence Africaine in organizing a week of events in Paris dedicated to South African culture.21 However, generational and ideological conflicts hindered the different anti-­apartheid solidarity committees from jointly organizing actions, which eventually side-lined them. In 1962, following the end of the Algerian War (1954–1962) and the controversies surrounding the French government’s repression and use of torture,22 the traditional Left experienced a schism that made room for a new generation of activists committed to solidarity with the ‘Third World’. The notion of the Third World had been popularized by the Bandung conference in 1955, Sartre’s writings on Cuba and Frantz Fanon’s Wretched of the Earth (1961). The events of May 1968 crystallized this generational schism within the Left, which was marked by the radicalization of its youth who rallied in support of the liberation struggles of the Portuguese colonies and the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa. As a result, the anti-apartheid committees were split between the ‘old leftist intellectuals’ and the younger generation of militants.23

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Thus, early forms of anti-apartheid solidarity in France emerged in a context in which the population was slowly coming to terms with the outcome of the Algerian War and the social and political reconfigurations it entailed. Against the background of the memory of the not-so-distant Second World War and the rise of ‘Third World’ solidarity, a new generation of activists and intellectuals began to organize in opposition to apartheid and laid the groundwork for the mobilizations of the 1970s and 1980s.

A Movement Divided Along Ideological Lines: 1974–1988 Inspired by the Dutch Boycott Outspan Action (Boykott Outspan Aktie, BOA) against South Africa’s Outspan fruit company,24 the Comité d’organisation de campagnes d’information sur l’Afrique australe (COCIAA), commonly known as the Campagne anti-Outspan (CAO), formed at the end of 1974 and began a campaign to inform the public about the situation in South Africa and the government’s support of the regime. The campaign used Outspan oranges to symbolize the exploitation of black South African workers and the commercial interests that linked South Africa with European countries, particularly France.25 The CAO produced powerful images to depict apartheid’s violence and published articles in magazines to inform the public about the racist regime. In its report ‘Pour une action politique contre l’apartheid et contre le soutien français au régime fasciste de Vorster’, published in April 1975, the CAO explained the campaign’s strategy as follows: Start with what people know: the existence of Outspan oranges. – Associate this product, through an adequate commercial campaign, in people’s minds with the words OUTSPAN = SOUTH AFRICA = RACISM. – Ask people to choose not to buy South African products: by putting this choice before them, they will feel more concerned and will more readily ask, or simply accept, to be informed on South Africa.26

The campaign’s two objectives were (1) to saturate the public with information about the dire situation of South African workers and the need to express its solidarity with the liberation movement by boycotting South African products and (2) to counter the South African government’s European tour of publicity caravans that summer promoting Outspan oranges.27

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Throughout the course of the solidarity movement, Pretoria conducted a series of elaborate propaganda campaigns in France to justify apartheid. For instance, taking advantage of the economic crisis in 1974, the South African embassy paid for advertisements in local newspapers announcing ‘job guaranteed, high salary’ for unemployed workers willing to move to South Africa.28 In response, the CAO tried to get the rural population to join the movement by adding to its campaign the claim that the boycott of South African oranges would strengthen French agriculture. Recognizing that its anti-Outspan campaign would have only a limited economic impact on South Africa, the CAO emphasized its psychological effect on the French population. Indeed, what is most important about boycott campaigns is that they offer people opportunities for everyday participation in solidarity actions. In so doing, the CAO made possible what Håkan Thörn called (in paraphrasing Anthony Giddens) ‘life politics’. According to Thörn, ‘an important part of life politics is that it politicizes consumption through the notion that the individual can perform a political action not just as a citizen, but also as consumer, as in the boycott’.29 This in turn made it possible for the boycott campaign to incorporate ‘a new relation between individual and collective political action’30 that, according to Stuart Hall, ‘cut across issues of clear class and party and organisational allegiances’31 by involving people in day-to-day acts of solidarity. But, despite the CAO’s initial success, mobilizing the masses required the movement to present a united front, which French politics made hard to do. In 1972, the Association française d’amitié et de solidarité avec les peuples d’Afrique (AFASPA) was created, and its communist platform attracted anti-colonialists and communists who supported the struggles of the ANC and the South West Africa People’s Organization (SWAPO).32 Two years later, the Mouvement anti-apartheid (MAA) emerged as an off-­ shoot of the CAO. Close to the Socialist Party, the MAA recognized the plurality of liberation organizations in South Africa and supported, in addition to the ANC, the Pan-Africanist Congress (PAC) and, to a lesser extent, the Black Consciousness Movement (BCM).33 However, the Cold War and its intensifying anti-communist rhetoric caused deep ideological tensions between the AFASPA and the MAA. Jacqueline Dérens, a prominent AFASPA militant, later recalled, ‘In France, at that time, the Left defined itself around two close enemies, the Socialist Party and the Communist Party; once you were in one camp, you had to stay there’.34 This friction led the AFASPA and the MAA to conduct separate

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campaigns, dividing the anti-apartheid movement, weakening it and narrowing its outreach. Because of the ANC’s alliance with the South African Communist Party (SACP), French communists recognized it as South Africa’s only authentic liberation movement and saw the PAC as anti-­ communist and, thus, a source of division in the struggle. François de Massot, who was a member of the Fourth International, later recalled these tensions: Our peculiarity was that we recognized the plurality and diversity of the national movement, which didn’t limit itself to the ANC. And that made all the difference, because I won’t say all but for most of the organizations on the French Left  – either directly, in the case of the Communist Party, or indirectly, for others – the movement against apartheid was the ANC and the coalition that existed around the ANC, specifically the South African Communist Party. And let’s say that they either ignored or pretended to ignore anything that related to the Black Consciousness Movement or anything that related to Pan-Africanism. They saw them as dividers in the most pejorative sense, and, in any case, they didn’t matter.35

As such, Cold War rhetoric caused sectarianism in the movement, which in turn hindered the extent of its factions’ participation and scope of action. This ultimately limited the movement’s growth and without a united front, the issue of South Africa was often relegated to specific moments of mobilization, brought upon by one political group or the other. One event that drew a lot of public attention was the widely covered Albertini case. In March 1987, the 27-year-old French citizen Pierre-­ André Albertini, a student at the University of Fort Hare with close contacts in the United Democratic Front (UDF), was arrested in the South African homeland of Ciskei for refusing to testify against five people accused of terrorism for assisting the ANC.36 He was tried for terrorism and sentenced to four years’ imprisonment. The case provoked public uproar, which the PCF organized into a mass demonstration.37 It came during a peculiar time in French politics (1986–1988), when President Mitterrand and Prime Minister Chirac disagreed on France’s stance towards South Africa. The presidential election was scheduled for April and May 1988, and South Africa was a central subject of debate in the campaign, particularly after nine representatives from right- and far right-­ wing parties returned from a trip to South Africa in July 1987 and declared

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that France should support the Botha government.38 Their announcement was met with indignation, but it highlighted the ‘lepéniste poison’39 and the growing power of the far right. While governments’ negotiations for Albertini’s release were taking place, the PCF-led mobilization proved problematic as it drew the public’s interest away from the situation in South Africa. As Maurice Cukierman, who had been a member of the AFASPA, recalls, ‘At one point, we talked more about Albertini than we did about South African political prisoners. But, then again, that’s what mobilized people’.40 In September 1987, Albertini was freed in a prisoner exchange with the South African army’s Major Wynand du Toit, who had been captured in Angola in 1985,41 and the PCF was quick to take credit. Georges Marchais, the Party’s Secretary General, claimed that Albertini’s release was ‘a resounding defeat of apartheid, credited to the courage of Pierre-André and his parents and to the immense movement of solidarity that the communists are honoured to have propelled in France’.42 So, though the Albertini case ended in a clear success for the communist side of the anti-apartheid movement, it also illustrates how international events could distract the public from apartheid and solidarity with its opponents. The funeral of Dulcie September crystallized these tensions. Members of SOS Racisme, an association founded in 198443 and closely allied with the Socialist Party, and of the Jeunesse Communistes brawled over the coffin.44 Horst Kleinschmidt, who was director of the International Defence and Aid Fund at the time, attended the funeral and recalls the unfortunate event: It was unseemly in many ways, that funeral, because the coffin was fought over by the French socialist and communist anti-apartheid activists. And, at any rate, it was one of these tragic fights that had more to do with France, and it had everything to do with the South African struggle being victim to the Cold War.45

One year later, in June 1989, the MAA sent to the ANC’s offices in Britain its ‘Survey of the French political situation in regard to anti-­apartheid solidarity’, which denounced the antagonism plaguing the French movement and claimed: That people fighting against the same evil, devoted to the same fundamental values, undergoing similar campaigns, supporting the same legitimate

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r­ epresentatives of the South African people’s struggle, can resort to physical violence between themselves during a ceremony of mourning for an ANC dignitary … proves the point of the absurdity of never-ceasing Franco-­ French [sic] political quarrels.46

To put an end to such hostility, Marcel Trignon, the mayor of Arcueil, and Jacqueline Dérens had launched an umbrella organization for the anti-­ apartheid movement in 1984, the Rencontre nationale contre l’apartheid (RNCA), of which Dulcie September was a member..47 But the MAA considered it ‘the instrument of the PCF’s political will to drive and control the action against apartheid’48 and refused to join. In that respect, the French movement was condemned to remain polarized, with its different factions counting their victories in their separately led campaigns.

Culture as Protest, a New International Strategy and Persisting Ideological Tension As the social and political struggle raged in South Africa in the 1980s, widespread international boycotts and other protests bolstered global anti-apartheid rhetoric. On 5 December 1979, the theatre company Les Quatre Chemins opened its production of L’île prison at the Théâtre de l’Essaïon in the 4th arrondissement of Paris.49 Written by the South African playwright-actors Athol Fugard, John Kani and Winston Ntshona in 1973 and originally entitled The Island, it was a tribute to South African freedom fighters and denounced what its authors saw as the ‘conspiracy of silence’50 into which the regime’s repression had forced South Africans. Internationally, art had become a medium for expressing the ideal of liberation and opposing apartheid, and in the 1970s solidarity movements congregated around South Africans in exile, particularly artists. In 1973, the famous English director Peter Brook, who was then working in Paris at the Bouffes du Nord theatre, took his company to London to see The Island. As Kani recalls: In 1973, we were performing The Island in the West End, and Peter Brook brought the entire theatre company from Paris. And Peter Brook said, ‘We’ve been doing method, we’ve been doing avant-garde, we’ve been doing convention. I’m taking you to London to see two men on the stage, who use the space with their voices, with their bodies, and hide the painful truth within their performance, but it is louder than the fact that it is hidden.’51

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The London production of The Island was still enjoying international renown six years later, when Catherine de Seynes directed her company, Les Quatre Chemins, in the French translation L’île prison at the Théâtre de l’Essaïon. Each performance was accompanied by a brochure with a description of the play, the playwrights’ biographies and information provided by the MAA on the situation in South Africa and its on-going liberation struggle. Thus, despite the South African embassy’s campaign of propaganda to counter information seeping out of the country,52 theatrical and other artistic denunciations of apartheid reached segments of the French population that were not receptive to demonstrations and other traditional militant tactics. In that sense, the arts provided new platforms, different from political parties’ traditional protests, from which to condemn apartheid. In December 1981, Artistes du monde contre l’apartheid was founded, and it launched an international campaign calling on intellectuals and artists to publicly affirm their support for ‘liberty and human dignity’.53 Ninety-five artists, including Roy Lichtenstein and Pierre Soulages, answered the call, and each donated a work to support the struggle. Following this first initiative, the Fondation culturelle contre l’apartheid was formed in November 1983 and counted among its board members such prominent intellectuals as Jacques Derrida, Susan Sontag and Olof Palme.54 In 1985, Artists Against Apartheid (AAA) was launched in Britain to consolidate the cultural boycott movement there. Moreover, the engagement of intellectuals and artists in the French anti-apartheid solidarity movement coincided with the emergence of the new international strategy of making Nelson Mandela the face of the struggle. The Free Nelson Mandela campaign, propelled by the British band The Special A.K.A.’s 1984 song ‘Nelson Mandela’, showed the effectiveness of making Mandela the symbol of international opposition to apartheid. As John Kani recalls: The world began to see the centre of that struggle in the face of Mandela. We then, as artists, exploited that, that it would be easier when I speak to the French to mention Nelson Mandela than if I would say Walter Sisulu or [Andrew] Mlangeni. It was easy to talk to the French in the UN about the release of Nelson Mandela. So, Nelson Mandela then assumed the face of the struggle on the international front.55

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Like artists, intellectuals focused on the figure of Mandela. In 1986, Pour Nelson Mandela, a collaboration that included contributions by Jacques Derrida, Nadine Gordimer and Maurice Blanchot, was published. The volume was the result of Derrida’s and Dominique Lecoq’s initiative of uniting artists and writers who supported Nelson Mandela’s release and ‘the original Africa he symbolizes’.56 Their project gathered prominent intellectuals without regard to their political party affiliations. However, one other consequence of the new strategy was that the public perceived the ANC as the sole entity fighting for emancipation. Another was that the international anti-apartheid movement focused entirely on Mandela’s release from prison and was no longer concerned with broader issues of justice in South Africa, like the return of land confiscated by the government. According to Marcus Solomon, a UDF activist, the history of the struggle was increasingly perceived as the history of an individual, whereas it ‘is above all the history of peoples’.57 Solomon’s claim about a shift in the public’s perception of the anti-­ apartheid struggle from a movement to that of an individual raises questions about whether or not the new strategy led to misunderstand the multiple histories of South Africa’s liberation movements, and, in particular, the contributions of the Pan-Africanist Congress, the Black Consciousness Movement and others. In the words of the Azanian People’s Organization (AZAPO) militant Sadecque Variava: Black Consciousness is set as a footnote on this history, just a little point. … But people forget to see that the influence, the ideological influence, the awakening that started a renaissance was the Black Consciousness movement. This had the most significant impact. This is what really stirred South Africa to where we are today; it was the uprisings in the 70s.58

Nevertheless, the new strategy’s cultural and symbolic actions did much to raise the public’s awareness of apartheid by providing information that seemed unbiased by political ideology, and the mobilization of artists and intellectuals in the struggle cemented transnational and cross-cultural contacts. The release of Nelson Mandela in 1990, after 27 years in prison, marked the final, symbolic phase of the transnational anti-apartheid movement. Under the direction of the Nelson Mandela International Committee, European anti-apartheid solidarity organizations set up national committees to organize Mandela’s visits to their countries. In France, it was the

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Comité français Nelson Mandela libre, which also had the task of regrouping the more than 70 organizations that had taken part in one way or another in the anti-apartheid effort. However, this project re-crystallized tensions between the movement’s socialist and communist factions. ‘[E]verybody asserted that they had been the best in the struggle against apartheid’,59 and the French solidarity movement remained polarized.

Conclusion In this study, I have explained the many divisions that plagued the French anti-apartheid solidarity movement, situating it within the framework of the transnational anti-apartheid movement. This leads one to reassess the role of the Left in France’s political culture at the time. The mobilization by French anti-apartheid organizations was progressively extended and incorporated into the discourses of political parties, with the result that the Left’s various factions framed their solidarity with the South African liberation movement differently. However, intellectuals and artists participating in the cultural movement of the 1980s created new platforms from which they expressed solidarity with the struggle and in so doing created an alternative to the Left’s traditional sort of political anti-apartheid mobilization. Though the ‘Mandelafication’ of the struggle erased from the French public’s consciousness the multiple histories of the South African liberation movement, in particular the histories of the Black Consciousness Movement and the Pan-Africanist Congress, the movement ultimately forged transnational links of mutual influence, which make broader historical and theoretical considerations relevant to historians’ study of French anti-apartheid solidarity.

Notes 1. Hennie van Vuuren, Apartheid Guns and Money: A Tale of Profit (Johannesburg: Jacana Media, 2017), 211. 2. Jacques Amalric, “La preparation du premier tour de l’élection présidentielle: M. François Mitterrand refuse de rompre avec l’Afrique du Sud,” Le Monde, April 4, 1988. https://nouveau-europresse-com.acces-distant.sciencespo.fr/Search/ResultMobile/0 3. Siestse Bosgra, Jacqueline Dérens, and Jacques Marchand, “France-South Africa,” in The Road to Democracy in South Africa, Vol. 3, International Solidarity, Part 1, ed. SADET (Pretoria: Unisa Press, 2008), 668.

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4. See, for instance, Rob Skinner, The Foundations of Anti-Apartheid: Liberal Humanitarians and Transnational Activists in Britain and the United States, c. 1919–64 (Palgrave Macmillan: New York, 2010). 5. Håkan Thörn offers an analysis on how the anti-apartheid struggle was divided along the conflict lines that constituted the Cold War. See Håkan Thörn, “Solidarity Across Borders: The Transnational Anti-Apartheid Movement,” Voluntas 17, no. 4 (2006). 6. Anna Konieczna, “La France, l’Afrique du Sud et les solidarités transnationales: l’activité du premier mouvement anti-apartheid français (1960–1974),” in Les nouvelles formes de contestations, eds. Emma Bell and Jean-Marie Ruiz (Savoie: Université de Savoie, Laboratoire de Langages, Littératures, Sociétés, Études Transfrontalières et Internationales 2017), 127. 7. Ibid., 126. 8. Ibid. 9. Originally founded in 1866 by the journalist and educator Jean Macé, the Ligue de l’Enseignement temporarily dissolved in 1942 and was refounded in 1945 as a secular movement for public education. To this day, it regroups approximately 30,000 associations across the French territory. For more information, see their website: https://laligue.org/qui-sommes-nous/. Accessed on 30 March 2019. 10. Pax Christi International, founded in Europe in 1945, is an international Catholic peace movement committed to ensuring peace, the respect for human rights and the ideals of Justice and Reconciliation in the world. For more information, see their website: https://www.paxchristi.net/, accessed March 30, 2019. 11. “Divers moyens de lutte contre l’apartheid ont été envisagé au cours des journées d’étude organisées à Paris,” Le Monde, March 3, 1964, https:// nouveau-eur opr esse-com.acces-distant.sciencespo.fr/Sear ch/ ResultMobile/0 12. For a specific analysis of the role of Christians in the anti-apartheid solidarity movement in France, see Christelle Ortolland, “Les chrétiens français et l’apartheid en Afrique du Sud (1960–1990): ‘Nous’ et ‘Eux’” (PhD diss., Université Lumière Lyon 2, 2009). 13. Konieczna, “La France,” 133. 14. Jean-Paul Sartre, “Those who are confronting apartheid should know they are not alone”, statement at a press conference of the Comité de liaison contre l’apartheid, 9 November 1966, Paris. Accessed March 30, 2019, http://www.sahistory.org.za/archive/those-who-are-confronting-apartheid-should-know-they-are-not-alone-jean-paul-sartre 15. Konieczna, “La France,” 133–4. 16. Sartre, “Those who are confronting apartheid,” 1966.

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17. Konieczna, “La France,” 136. 18. Ibid. 19. Ibid. 20. “La conférence européenne sur l’apartheid préconise la suspension de fournitures militaires à Pretoria”, Le Monde, May 9, 1967, https://nouveau-europresse-com.acces-distant.sciencespo.fr/Search/ResultMobile/0 21. Konieczna, “La France,” 137. 22. For more information on the military relations of South Africa and France throughout this period, see Victor Moukambi, “Relations between South Africa and France with special reference to military matters, 1960–1990” (PhD diss., Stellenbosch University, 2008). 23. Konieczna, “La France,” 138. 24. For more information on the Outspan: Bouwstenen voor apartheid (‘Outspan: Building Bricks for Apartheid’) campaign, see Esau du Plessis ‘The story of Outspan oranges in the Netherlands (NL) and the campaign of the Boycott Outspan Action (BOA)’, accessed March 30, 2019, http:// www.sadet.co.za/docs/THE%20STORY%20OF%20OUTSPAN%20 ORANGES.pdf 25. Archives nationales du monde du travail, Mouvement anti-apartheid (1955–1992), 2000-057-MAA-001, COCIAA/CAA, ‘La campagne anti-­ Outspan’, (1977), 1. 26. Archives nationales du monde du travail, Mouvement anti-apartheid (1955–1992), 2000-057-MAA-001, Centre d’Étude Anti-Impérialistes [CEDETIM], ‘Pour une action politique contre l’apartheid et contre le soutien français au régime fasciste de Vorster’, (1975), 4. 27. Ibid. 28. Archives nationales du monde du travail, Mouvement anti-apartheid (1955–1992), 2000-057-MAA-001, ‘La campagne anti-Outspan: Pour informer l’opinion publique français sur l’Afrique du Sud, l’apartheid et l’exploitation des travailleurs noirs’, (1975), 2. 29. Håkan Thörn, Anti-Apartheid and the Emergence of a Global Civil Society. (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), 201. 30. Ibid. 31. Stuart Hall, “The AAM and the Race-ing of Britain,” paper presented at symposium on the Anti-Apartheid Movement: A 40-year Perspective, South Africa House, London, 25–26 June 1999, http://www.sahistory. org.za/archive/aam-and-race-ing-britain 32. Maurice Cukierman, interview by Namara Burki, Paris, 13.12.17. 33. Archives nationales du monde du travail, Mouvement anti-apartheid (1955–1992), 2000-057-MAA-001, COCIAA/CAA, ‘La campagne anti-­ Outspan’, (1977), 1

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34. Jacqueline Dérens, Nous avons combattu l’apartheid (Paris: Non lieu, 2006), 31. 35. François de Massot, interview by Namara Burki, Paris, February 23, 2018 [own translation]. 36. Ibid. 37. Van Vuuren, Apartheid, 246. 38. “Après les déclarations de députés de droite et d’extrême droite invites par Pretoria, indignation quasi générale en France,” Le Monde, July 14, 1987. https://nouveau-europresse-com.acces-distant.sciencespo.fr/Search/ ResultMobile/2 39. “Afrique du Sud et cohabitation,” Le Monde, July 16, 1987. https://nouveau-europresse-com.acces-distant.sciencespo.fr/Search/ResultMobile/3 40. Maurice Cukierman, interview by Namara Burki, Paris, December 13, 2017 [own translation]. 41. Van Vuuren, Apartheid, 246. 42. “M. Jean-Bernard Raimon: le résultat d’une ‘politique de dialogue”’, Le Monde, September 7, 1987, https://nouveau-europresse-com.acces-distant.sciencespo.fr/Search/ResultMobile/24 43. For more information about the history of the association, see their website: https://sos-racisme.org/histoire-des-mobilisations-de-sos-racisme/, accessed March 30, 2019. 44. Horst Kleinschmidt, interview by Namara Burki, Cape Town, February 1, 2018. 45. Ibid. 46. Historical Papers Research Archive, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, Oliver Tambo Papers, C2.20.2, Box 62, ‘France’, Mouvement anti-apartheid, ‘Survey of the French political situation in regard to anti-­apartheid solidarity’, (June 1989), 2. 47. Today, the RNCA has become the Rencontre nationale avec les peoples d’Afrique (RENAPAS). For more information, see their website: http:// renapas.rezo.net/spip.php?article24, accessed March 30, 2019. 48. Historical Papers Research Archive, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, Oliver Tambo Papers, C2.20.2, Box 62, ‘France’, Mouvement anti-apartheid, ‘Survey of the French political situation in regard to the anti-­apartheid solidarity’, (June 1989), 2. 49. UWC-Robben Island Museum Mayibuye Archives, MCH 132, “Afrique du Sud Apartheid”, n.d. 50. John Kani, interview by Namara Burki, Johannesburg, January 16, 2018. 51. Ibid. 52. Archives Nationales du Monde du Travail, Mouvement Anti-Apartheid (1955–1992), 2000-057-MAA-001, “La campagne anti-Outspan: Pour

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informer l’opinion publique français sur l’Afrique du Sud, l’apartheid et l’exploitation des travailleurs noirs”, Paris, October 1975, 2. 53. Archives départementale de la Seine-Saint-Denis, Archives de l’AFASPA, 67J 141, ‘Afrique du Sud, Rencontre Nationale Contre l’Apartheid, Historique’, 1940–1995. 54. Ibid. 55. Kani, interview. 56. Dominique Lecoq, ed., Pour Nelson Mandela (Paris: Éditions Gallimard, 1986), 11. 57. Marcus Solomon, interview by Namara Burki, Cape Town, February 1, 2018. 58. Sadecque Variava, interview by Namara Burki, Johannesburg, January 1, 2018. 59. Jacqueline Dérens, Nous avons combattu l’apartheid, 104.

References Bosgra, Siestse, Dérens, Jacqueline and Marchand, Jacques, “France-South Africa,” In The Road to Democracy in South Africa, Vol. 3, International Solidarity, Part 1, edited by SADET, 667–77. University of South Africa, Pretoria, 2008. Dérens, Jacqueline. Nous avons combattu l’apartheid. Paris: Non lieu, 2006. Du Plessis, Esau. “The Story of Outspan Oranges in the Netherlands (NL) and the Campaign of the Boycott Outspan Action (BOA).” http://www.sadet.co.za/ docs/THE%20STORY%20OF%20OUTSPAN%20ORANGES.pdf. Giddens, Andrew. Modernity and Self-Identity: Self and Society in the Late Modern Age. Cambridge: Polity Press, 1991. Gurney, Christabel. “‘A Great Cause’: The Origins of the Anti-Apartheid Movement, June 1959-March 1960.” Journal of Southern African Studies 26, no. 1 (2000): 123–144. doi: https://doi.org/10.1080/030570700108414. Hall, Stuart. “The AAM and the Race-ing of Britain.” In The Anti-Apartheid Movement: A 40-year Perspective. Symposium Report, London, 2000. http:// www.sahistory.org.za/archive/aam-and-race-ing-britain. Konieczna, Anna. “La France, l’Afrique du Sud et les solidarités transnationales: l’activité du premier mouvement anti-apartheid français (1960–1974).” In Les nouvelles formes de contestations, edited by Emma Bell and Jean-Marie Ruiy, 123–142. Savoie: Université de Savoie, Laboratoire de Langages, Littératures, Sociétés, Études Transfrontalières et Internationales, 2017. Lecoq, Dominique. Pour Nelson Mandela. Paris: Éditions Gallimard, 1986. Moukambi, Victor. “Relations between South Africa and France with special reference to military matters, 1960–1990.” PhD diss., Stellenbosch University, 2008. Ortolland, Christelle. “Les chrétiens français et l’apartheid en Afrique du Sud (1960–1990): ‘Nous’ et ‘Eux’.” PhD diss., Université Lumière Lyon 2, 2009.

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Sartre, Jean-Paul, “Those who are confronting apartheid should know they are not alone”, statement at a press conference of the Comité de liaison contre l’apartheid, November 9, 1966, Paris. http://www.sahistory.org.za/archive/ those-who-are-confronting-apartheid-should-know-they-are-not-alone-jeanpaul-sartre Thörn, Håkan. Anti-Apartheid and the Emergence of a Global Civil Society. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006. Van Vuuren, Hennie. Apartheid Guns and Money: A Tale of Profit. Johannesburg: Jacana Media, 2017.

Re-centring the Apartheid Discourse: Strategic Changes in South African Propaganda in West Germany Andreas Kahrs

In the summer of 1984, South African Prime Minister P.W. Botha made his first official visit to West Germany and was received by Chancellor Helmut Kohl. In public, the West German government demonstrated a distinctly distanced attitude towards the highest representative of the apartheid state. In an internal note, however, South African diplomats were positive: ‘We see the value of the visit primarily in the fact that it took place at all’.1 In fact, their assessment was quite too reserved, for meetings took place behind the scenes with sympathetic members of parliament from the ruling party, and Botha was given the opportunity to explain South Africa’s foreign policy for its neighbouring countries to the influential German Council on Foreign Relations (DGAP) and almost 200 invited guests.2 So, Botha’s visit was a diplomatic success for the apartheid regime. It was also the result of an intensive public relations and propaganda

A. Kahrs (*) Berlin, Germany e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2021 K. Andresen et al. (eds.), Apartheid and Anti-Apartheid in Western Europe, Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-53284-0_10

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campaign. In the preceding years, South African diplomats and propagandists had established a network of partners in West German politics, media and business who defended the regime’s insincere reform efforts and worked to prevent South African elections on the basis of ‘one man, one vote’. It was only the work of this network that made such a state visit possible, given the recent escalation in apartheid repression and its international condemnation. The apartheid state’s use of propaganda dated back to 1948, when the National Party (NP) took power. The propaganda bureaucracy was continuously expanded and restructured in the following three decades, and its budget rose from R 50,000 to a peak of R 13.8 million in 1976.3 Its operations experienced a temporary setback in 1978 with the Muldergate scandal, named after Information Minister Connie Mulder, who was dismissed when the government’s illegal use of tax money for propaganda became public. Contemporary and past analyses of the history of South Africa’s apartheid propaganda have two shortcomings. They often focus on its projects in the US and Great Britain and ignore important efforts elsewhere in Europe, thus providing an incomplete picture.4 And they often stop with the Muldergate affair; analyses of projects in the 1980s are rare.5 This chapter addresses both shortcomings. In particular, it shows how the Botha administration’s resumption of propaganda work after Muldergate reconceptualized and substantially expanded it. The work of the West German public relations agency Hennenhofer PR illustrates the apartheid state’s changes in propaganda strategy in its last decade. Those changes created the new framework necessary for political initiatives like Botha’s visit in 1984. The new strategy was to shift the spectrum of positions in the West German debate over South Africa so that apartheid’s radical opponents and reactionary supporters became the extremes and Botha’s reforms constituted the new centre. In practice, this meant that Hennenhofer included in its propaganda the views of moderate South African and West German critics of apartheid and juxtaposed them with the radical anti-apartheid demand for ‘one man, one vote’ to make it seem unrealistic. A closer look at South Africa’s activities in West Germany shows that what Deborah Posel called the ‘language of legitimation’ and analysed as a tool of the Botha regime in South Africa’s internal apartheid debate was also central in its international communication.6 That is, it shows that the Botha government’s aim was not just to defend its policy of ‘separate development’ but to re-centre the

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apartheid discourse. Thus, my explanation of South Africa’s propaganda strategy in the 1980s supports Saul Dubow’s conclusion that a major goal of the regime’s international politics in the 1980s was to form an ‘antianti-­apartheid’ front.

Origins of South African Propaganda and Early Activities in West Germany (1961–1971) South Africa began a major propaganda campaign immediately after the Sharpeville massacre in 1960. As a result of harsh international criticism and a new level of international protest, foreign investment fell noticeably in the short term, and the government in Pretoria was put on the defensive. Officials undertook diplomatic missions to important countries. Foreign Minister Eric Louw travelled to the US to condemn the worldwide criticism. As he later said, ‘Never, except in a state of war, had there been such concentrated opposition against a state’.7 South Africa expanded its small-scale propaganda operations to counter the criticism. It initially focused on the US, an important trading partner and home to the UN, the source of the strongest criticism.8 Pretoria’s propagandists broke new ground by hiring the New York public relations firm the Hamilton Wright Organization to rehabilitate South Africa’s image.9 They also developed a network cooperating media agencies and began the practice of taking journalists on trips to South Africa. The South Africa Foundation (SAF), founded in 1959 by South African business circles, already hosted foreign journalists, but government agencies would now do the same. All of these projects were to be kept secret.10 Prime Minister Hendrik Verwoerd underlined how important it was to the government of the newly independent Republic of South Africa to control news and information by establishing the Department of Information (DOI) in 1962.11 The DOI’s first successes were in convincing American journalists, business representatives and conservatives in the US Senate that the Republic played the central role in stabilizing a volatile Southern Africa to be a bulwark against communism there. Its propaganda also portrayed South Africa as a safe harbour for foreign investment. Using the DOI’s work in the US as a model, South Africa developed propaganda to improve its relations with other countries and influence their debates on apartheid. One of these was the Federal Republic of Germany.

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South Africa had a tradition of good relationships with West German politics, business and media. Its Afrikaner community valued good relations with West Germany for the historical reason that many of Southern Africa’s first European settlers had come from German-speaking countries.12 Tens of thousands of citizens of South Africa and Namibia, a former German colony under South African control since 1915, regarded themselves as the ‘German minority’, and most supported the ruling NP.13 After World War II, economic relations between the two countries improved particularly quickly. The German-South African Chamber of Commerce and Industry was established in 1952 to promote trade between them.14 Their economic relationship incorporated South African strategic raw materials and the growing role of West German finance in South Africa’s public and private sectors.15 Although various West German politicians had made it clear on several occasions that they accepted the legitimacy of the white government, political relations developed much more slowly than did economic cooperation. After the Sharpeville massacre, the government in Bonn feared that relations with black African states would deteriorate if their leaders thought that the Federal Republic was too close to the apartheid state. So, the foreign office adopted a policy of reducing official ties, though its diplomats in Pretoria warned against it.16 Although it realized that West Germany’s economic interests would prevent it from turning completely away, the policy caused Pretoria concern. The South African government saw any form of restraint on the part of its strategic partners as a potential step towards international isolation. So, it wanted to overcome the Federal Republic’s reservations. The DOI’s propaganda officials sought individualized solutions to South Africa’s problems with other countries adapted to their special circumstances. For West Germany, the SAF and the DOI jointly set up a binational organization, the German-South African Society (DSAG), in 1965. (They established bilateral associations in France, Belgium and the Netherlands at the same time.) The DSAG soon had an active membership of over 3000, which made it the largest of West Germany’s binational associations. The DSAG’s generous funding made possible a nationwide programme of evening lectures to disseminate selected information about the situation in Southern Africa. To counter the growing anti-apartheid movement in the late 1960s and early 1970s, its members disrupted events that criticized South Africa and wrote letters to newspaper editors and politicians.17 Following the example of the SAF’s work in the US and Great Britain,

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propaganda managers in Pretoria also instructed the association to develop top-level contacts in West German business, politics and media.18 The project focussed on inviting prominent opinion-makers on ‘information tours’ to South Africa and Namibia, a technique that had proved successful in other strategically important states. The aim was to create a group of ‘experts’ on South Africa who could intervene in political and media debates on the side of the regime. As few West German politicians had been to South Africa in the 1960s and 1970s, being able to say that one had seen the situation there with one’s own eyes enhanced the credibility of one’s opinion in the debate over apartheid. One of the DSAG’s first prominent guests was Franz Josef Strauß in 1966. A member of the Christian Social Union (CSU) party, the Bavarian counterpart of the conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) party, and previously the Minister of Nuclear Affairs, Strauß would be appointed the Minister of Economics a few months after his tour.19 He followed this first trip to Southern Africa with a dozen more over the next 20 years in the course of which Strauß became one of South Africa’s staunchest defenders in West Germany. By the early 1970s,20 a dozen or so West German politicians had accepted invitations from the SAF and DSAG, most of whom returned to support the government in Pretoria and gloss over the details of apartheid. Almost all of those invited came from very conservative milieus. Even before their visit, they were favourably disposed towards the South African government, and what they saw on their carefully orchestrated trips confirmed their opinions. The travel programme made no inroads into critical political circles, as nobody from these circles was willing to accept an invitation to visit South Africa. As early as the 1960s, South Africa’s propaganda work in West Germany was being complemented by special trips offered to German journalists. These were organized by a German media agency (PRO International) and brought more than a dozen journalists to South Africa.

Extending Propaganda Projects (1971–1978) At the beginning of the 1970s, South African propaganda policy underwent a fundamental restructuring with the appointment of Connie Mulder, the influential leader of the NP in the Transvaal, as Minister of Information in 1971. One year later, he appointed Eschel Rhoodie to be the Department’s Secretary, and under his guidance South African propaganda reached a new height in terms of budget and scope of activities.21

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More than anybody else, Rhoodie was responsible for the new strategy in the apartheid state’s information policy.22 Prior to his appointment, he had been an attaché in various South African embassies, most recently in the Netherlands, and returned to South Africa in 1971, first working as an editor of the magazine To the Point, which was later revealed to be one of the regime’s new propaganda projects.23 In his 1969 book The Paper Curtain, he had elucidated his vision for a new South African propaganda strategy and criticized the ‘double standards’ in the international debate on South Africa.24 In 1972, Rhoodie began to put this strategy into practice. He wanted no longer to respond only to international criticism but to dominate the portrayal of the apartheid state in international politics and media. Rhoodie convinced Prime Minister John Vorster of his five-year plan for 180 projects worldwide from 1974 to 1979.25 Only a small circle around Vorster, Connie Mulder and Finance Minister Nico Diederichs was privy to the plan. For an estimated expenditure of R 85 million, he would expand the programme of information tours, secretly purchase US-American newspapers and publish South Africa’s own secretly financed magazines and newspapers.26 In a speech in parliament in October 1974, Mulder announced the start of a new phase of propaganda: ‘I have said before that my department will not remain on the defensive  – we have now gone over to the offensive’.27 None of the projects was divulged to the public and the financing remained secret. Many of the new projects were directed at Great Britain and the US, but other countries, especially on the African continent, became new targets.28 Projects in West Germany were significantly expanded, reflecting the country’s growing importance to the Republic of South Africa. This initially consisted in West Germany’s new international status after both German states’ entry into the UN in September 1973. West Germany also became more economically important to South Africa in the 1970s with German partners in key South African industries, German banks securing loans for South African companies and Pretoria hoping for German technical assistance in its nuclear power program. Key figures in the DOI felt that anti-apartheid politics and the new anti-apartheid movement, with its close ties to the Churches, threatened these interests. As the DOI’s annual report for 1974 summarized the situation, ‘Several churches and church organizations, particularly in the USA, Britain, Holland and West Germany, are now in the forefront of the boycott-and-isolate South Africa

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brigade’.29 Thus, West Germany was one of the countries singled out for special attention. Convinced that a West German public relations agency would have better access to West German opinion-makers and a better understanding of West German audiences, Eschel Rhoodie repeated what had worked so well in the US 13 years before and hired locally.30 It took the same costly step only in the US and Great Britain, which suggests that the three were equally important. The DOI chose the Hennenhofer agency, which had been producing and distributing South Africa’s propaganda films for West Germany since 1969.31 In 1975, Hennenhofer became the West German representative of the Foreign Affairs Association (FAA). The FAA was a front organization, which South Africa had recently set up, that posed as a think tank advocating reform-oriented Afrikaner nationalism. Its official aim was ‘to contribute to an informed understanding of South Africa’s role and position in world politics and international relations’.32 In the 1970s, the FAA evolved into one of South Africa’s most important shadow-financed institutions for propaganda work in the US and the UK. However, Hennenhofer planned and implemented its projects independently. Broadening the pool of potential guests of information trips was high on South Africa’s agenda when Hennenhofer’s director, Gerd Hennenhofer, took the job. As Hennenhofer, the former editor of the political magazine Der Stern and well connected with people in the media and politics, formulated his agency’s assignment, ‘The general task of our PR work is to improve the relationships of the trade unions, the politicians at the federal and state level, the two Churches, industry and the political parties to the South African Republic’.33 Hennenhofer’s early draft of a presentation of one of the problems the agency had to solve shows that he knew how to satisfy his client: Many Germans unreflectingly adopt the opinion of often ideologically determined and influential groups who believe that integration and the principle of ‘one man  – one vote’ could be realized in South Africa without serious disadvantages for the white minority, who would then be dominated by the black population groups. From the wrong opinion about the policy of separate development, that is, about the alleged oppression of black South Africans, further false opinions develop automatically, such as, for example, that South Africa is an undemocratic police state.34

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The draft included some of Hennenhofer’s thoughts on transforming the programme of information trips. One of his innovations was to hold discussions between West German opinion-makers and carefully selected South Africans in West Germany in order to ‘personify South African politics and the South African economy in Germany’.35 This accorded with Rhoodie’s goal of wresting control of South Africa’s image away from its Western critics. Thus, Hennenhofer’s campaign began, in the summer of 1976, with a discussion programme for a visiting delegation of high-­ ranking South African politicians that included a hand-picked group of NP members, who later held important offices in the apartheid state, among them Louis Nel, Dawie de Villiers, Jan Marais and F.W. de Klerk, who would become the country’s president.36 Gerd Hennenhofer put together a discussion programme for the delegation that impressed his client. However, South Africa’s bloody crackdown on student protests in Soweto during the delegation’s visit interfered with Hennenhofer’s plans for media coverage. Nevertheless, the agency had taken a first step towards a new kind of South African propaganda in West Germany. A short time later, five members of parliament from the conservative CDU/CSU opposition bloc accepted Hennenhofer’s invitation for a ‘return visit’ to South Africa and Namibia. That delegation was easy to put together, but later it took several attempts to interest a group from the ruling coalition’s Free Democratic Party (FDP) in going to South Africa.37 The two trips were ground-breaking successes, for previous propaganda efforts had not been able to address such a number of high-ranking politicians. The parliamentarians were very open to the message of their South African interlocutors, who included representatives of the supposedly independent homeland of Transkei. After their return, the CDU’s and CSU’s MPs contacted South Africa’s diplomats in West Germany to obtain more information on the situation in Southern Africa to use in parliamentary debates. Through the DOI’s choice of the Hennenhofer agency, Rhoodie greatly enhanced the effectiveness of South African propaganda in West Germany in just a few years. However, the new success cannot be explained solely in terms of the work of the agency and its talented director. Shortly after South Africa engaged the firm in the summer of 1975, two events sharpened the interest of West German politicians, especially conservatives, in Southern Africa. The first was the Soweto uprising in 1976, which made apartheid a significant issue in world politics; the second was Foreign Minister Hans-­ Dietrich Genscher’s participation in the international initiative of the

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Group of Five to negotiate with South Africa over its withdrawal from Namibia, which it had illegally occupied.38 The Hennenhofer agency’s programmes were the supply to meet the new demand, as a letter from the MP Peter Petersen (CDU) thanking Gerd Hennenhofer made clear: The trip with you was very important. At the moment, the dispute in the federal government over South West Africa is fully inflamed, and along the way we received substantial arguments to use. South Africa will, of course, continue to concern us for a very long time to come.39

Many of the conservative bloc’s parliamentary initiatives originated with former participants in Hennenhofer’s first programmes, which the South African embassy in Bonn noticed raised the number of conservative MPs asking it for information. A contentious debate began in parliament in spring 1977 over the Foreign Ministry’s plan to close the consulate in Windhoek, which the CDU/CSU bloc sharply criticized much to the delight of South African officials. From then on, the South African embassy spoke of the ‘CDU/ CSU contact group’ in its communications with the DOI. As the embassy’s Counsellor noted with satisfaction: Mr. Petersen has now approached me in writing with a further series of questions. He regards the answers as of importance to the Bundestag debate on 2 June [when] the opposition plans to advance criticism and questions concerning German support of the terrorist’s movements in Southern Africa.40

It also became possible for the DOI to bypass the Hennenhofer agency and invite well-minded West German politicians to Pretoria officially. In the summer of 1978, it paid for a high-ranking CDU delegation to travel to South Africa, where it was officially received by Information Minister Connie Mulder.41 However, South Africa’s secret propaganda work did not succeed much longer. Only a few weeks later, it collapsed in the Muldergate scandal over its illegal funding. In the summer of 1977, the Rand Daily Mail’s journalists Mervyn Rees and Chris Day began, with the help of an internal informant, investigating the government’s secret financing of its propaganda projects, and they published their findings in a series of articles beginning in October of 1977. In May of that year, Mulder had tried to quell the first rumours in a parliamentary address. But the revelations that came to light

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over the following months could not be explained away. Rhoodie was the first official dismissed. In July 1978, the DOI was dissolved.42 Soon, Mulder and Prime Minister Vorster resigned, and the former defence minister P.W. Botha became the new prime minister. In other countries, extensive debates broke out over their institutions’ involvement in South African propaganda, but in West Germany the scandal’s repercussions were surprisingly limited. The first round of media coverage hardly mentioned the propaganda’s connections to the Federal Republic.43 After the FAA was dissolved as a consequence of the scandal, Gerd Hennenhofer maintained in interviews that he had been unaware of its connection to the DOI and that he had intended only to further the rapprochement between West Germany and South Africa. The reporting became more detailed in October 1979, when Der Spiegel republished an article that Rhoodie had written for the Dutch magazine Elsevier44 in which he revealed the precise amounts paid to the Hennenhofer agency. But Hennenhofer, protected by his allies in parliament, faced almost no repercussions.

Renewal of Propaganda After Muldergate (1978–1987) The Hennenhofer agency was unscathed by the scandal. An internal memorandum shows how much effort that took. In it Gerd Hennenhofer explained that the revelation of the FAA being a front organization had ‘required weeks of extensive activities to rehabilitate the agency and ensure its continued acceptance … in connection with South Africa’.45 Former travel guests encouraged Hennenhofer to continue his efforts on behalf of West German-South African relations, and they told South African officials that they were in favour of the country continuing to work with the agency. They did resume their relationship after the Muldergate affair had blown over. But the agency and its client had to develop a new business arrangement, which they agreed on after long discussions. The new arrangement reflected both the consequences of Muldergate and South Africa’s reorientation of its international propaganda The Botha administration’s collaboration with Hennenhofer is one of the clearest examples of how South Africa conducted its propaganda after Muldergate. As far as can be ascertained from South African archival sources, the collaboration was unique at the start of the 1980s; there was

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no comparable relationship with any other country. Both this fact and the growing annual propaganda budget for Hennenhofer, which was more than 1.5 million DM mid-decade, indicate Germany’s significance to South Africa. In the new arrangement, the agency changed its name to Hennenhofer PR and worked under an official contract with the South African government. Following the dissolution of the DOI, the new Department for Foreign Affairs and Information was responsible for propaganda,46 and its minister, Pik Botha, made all of the important decisions regarding the agency’s work.47 Hennenhofer’s draft contract initially contained a paragraph on the independence of the agency in order to maintain its credibility. But South African officials were afraid of losing control and insisted on their final approval.48 The clause finally read, ‘Hennenhofer PR undertakes this information work in the interest and to the benefit of all people in South Africa and totally independent of the views or directives of the South African Government’.49 The parties also agreed on the official statements the government would make about its use of funds for public relations programs in case of questions from the South African Parliament.50 Finally, the contract specified the new strategy that the agency’s communications were to focus on the Botha government’s supposed reform of apartheid. As part of the agency’s pretence to be a neutral information broker, clear advocacy of apartheid policies disappeared from its productions. It even used the new rhetoric in internal memoranda. Hennenhofer followed an approach that it had formulated in its first drafts for Rhoodie, which Muldergate had prevented it from employing, namely, targeting areas of society other than politics. By the end of the 1970s, churches, businesses and universities were involved in the debate over apartheid; so, Hennenhofer PR extended its information tours to Church officials, business and media representatives and scholars. Some figures illustrate the dimensions of its propaganda projects. According to Hennenhofer, by 1984 ‘103 Germans had been invited to South Africa/Namibia and 105 South Africans to the Federal Republic of Germany’ on ‘more than 60 information trips’.51 Based on an average of DM 12,500 for a two-week trip, the project cost more than DM 2.5 million.52 To that one must add the costs of the agency’s other propaganda activities and additional services. The new approach pleased Pretoria, for it helped to sell the government’s new ‘reform’ policy. The Botha regime insisted that apartheid’s ‘problems’ were ‘technical’, not ‘political’,53 and offered supposedly

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scientific justifications for its pseudo-reform. Different research institutes had conducted preparatory studies purportedly showing that Botha’s restructuring of apartheid was feasible, and on that basis government commissions drew up legislative proposals to implement Botha’s policies.54 Deborah Posel has shown how this process created a ‘language of legitimation’ for the reform project in the domestic debate.55 Hennenhofer PR’s work for the Botha administration shows how it also used this language in its international relations. The South Africans that the agency invited to its conversations with West German guests regularly criticized circumstances in South Africa while at the same time explaining the country’s ‘difficult situation’ and assuring their interlocutors of the Botha government’s commitment to reform, the central message that Hennenhofer PR was to convey. Incorporating the criticisms of South African theologians, economists and political scientists enhanced the credibility of the reform agenda that the agency’s information programmes propagandized. On the newly conceived trips to South Africa, small groups of up to four people spent two weeks in South Africa and Namibia, where they met individuals from a broad spectrum of society—science and academia, the Church, business and politics—who provided the guests with a supposedly objective image of South Africa. In particular, conversations over dinner and in private settings were intended to give guests the impression that they were getting a glimpse behind the curtain. Additional leisure activities in South Africa’s famous national parks were intended to amplify their positive impressions. Agency documents demonstrate how thoroughly it discussed the options with Pretoria in developing the programmes. For the information tours, the Foreign Affairs Department wanted a ratio of speakers of at least 2:1 in favour of the government’s reform program in order to give guests the impression that the country was seriously looking for an alternative to the existing system.56 The objective was to incorporate the loyal opposition into the discussions but exclude apartheid’s radical opponents. Visiting South African delegations were now a regular part of the work and met with representatives of institutions who would never have accepted an invitation to South Africa but were willing to talk with South Africans in West Germany. Thus, Hennenhofer PR brought the new message to a wider circle than previously. It portrayed the Botha government as playing a constructive role in the search for a solution to the ‘apartheid problem’. The portrayal was credible only if it included voices that were critical, though within clearly drawn limits. And their presence justified

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including participants speaking on behalf of the government as a matter of presenting ‘both sides’. The result was that moderate criticism of continuing apartheid and apartheid reform, which, advocates emphasized, would take time and should not be jeopardized by sanctions, were made the two centrist positions in the discourse, and apartheid’s radical opponents and ultraconservative defenders were cast as extremists. Pretoria intended this re-centring to take the radically anti-apartheid position of universal suffrage off of the international agenda. At receptions on information tours of South Africa, selected academics gave presentations on different approaches to apartheid reform. They included Professor Gerrit Olivier of Rand Afrikaans University and the German-born Director of the Africa Institute, Gerhard Leistner, both of whom were close to the regime, and Professors Sampie Terreblanche and Willie Esterhuyse of Stellenbosch University. The latter two turned against the regime in the mid-1980s, and Esterhuyse became renowned for his role in the negotiations with the ANC in exile. But in the first half of the decade, their inclusion in the tours greatly enhanced the propaganda’s credibility, especially after the publication of Esterhuyse’s widely read book Apartheid must Die.57 Hennenhofer chose people like Esterhuyse because their criticism of apartheid came from within the system. In his records for 1984, he mentioned the importance of such scholars in influencing West German interlocutors. Referring to the two Stellenbosch University professors specifically, he said they even were discussing possibilities ‘to commercially exploit their consulting activities … outside the university’, adding that ‘Professors Esterhuyse, Terreblanche…, in particular, have been continuously called upon as discussion partners for foreign visitors and as advisors for the government’.58 Hennenhofer’s access to appropriate interlocutors was not a matter of course. The inclusion of such prominent South Africans in the programme illustrates the importance that the South African government attached to agency’s work. Gerd Hennenhofer was also able to work so effectively in South Africa because over the years he had cultivated friendly relations with reformist NP politicians and with some members of parliament of the Progressive Federal Party. Like many of the conservative politicians in his network in West Germany, he acknowledged that apartheid involved ‘unnecessary discrimination’ and at the same time was convinced that South Africa needed white rule. With their combination of apartheid criticism and support for reform, Hennenhofer PR’s information tours are a good example of what Saul

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Dubow has called the ‘anti-anti-apartheid’ strategy, whose ‘emphasis was on deflecting, confusing and denouncing anti-apartheid narratives’.59 So was its inclusion of selected black politicians, businessmen and media representatives in delegations travelling to West Germany. The inclusion of black interlocutors in both South African delegations visiting West Germany and the programmes for West Germans’ trips to South Africa was entirely strategic. They often represented black homelands businesses and media institutions integrated in the apartheid system. Reporting to Pretoria about a visit of South African journalists to Bonn, the South African ambassador said, ‘Hennenhofer is disappointed by the fact that there is no black person among the guests and emphasizes that all other groups include … persons from all population groups in South Africa’.60 Gerd Hennenhofer said of the participation of blacks that it was the ‘only chance that the delegation members can act as authentic speakers from South Africa’,61 and he believed that they could show West Germans that there were ‘black positions’ other than the ANC’s. The black participants chosen presented their views as part of South Africa’s debate over its future, and, though often critical of the government, they rejected the demands of the radical apartheid opposition. Speaking of one such mixed group of South African journalists touring West Germany, an employee of Hennenhofer PR noted, ‘to hear a black person argue in favour of government policy brought a special touch to many conversations’.62 In that group, the journalist and poet Meshack Mabogoane, founder of African Impact Magazine, joined a number of white reporters and editors who were supporters and moderate critics of the government’s policy to reform apartheid. He was critical of the government’s reforms but also against sanctions. The group was an example of how Hennenhofer used black participants instrumentally to create the mistaken impression that apartheid’s radical opponents misrepresented the position of the black majority.63 Though Gerd Hennenhofer wanted delegates to criticize the South African government in conversations with West Germans, he also wanted to decide which criticisms were permissible and which were not. The agency added symposia and conferences to its West German programme to counter the growing number of conferences organized by churches, labour unions and other groups from across the spectrum of West German opponents of apartheid. South Africa found a trustworthy partner in the International Institute Haus Rissen in Hamburg, where Hennenhofer organized an annual conference as ‘a continuous event once a year for comprehensive and balanced information on the latest

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developments in South Africa’.64 According to Hennenhofer, the conference was ‘the only institutionalized event in which South Africa’s efforts to overcome its problems can be presented in a factual and detailed manner’.65 Participating South African academics included Gerhard Leistner, Director of the Africa Institute in Pretoria, and Ben Vosloo, a political scientist who worked closely with the NP, of whom Hennenhofer said that he was ‘convinced that Prof. Vosloo is excellently suited … to give a European audience an objective overview of the political conditions and development opportunities in South Africa’.66 For each of the five conferences it hosted between 1979 and 1985, South Africa paid DM 150,000, which included the institute’s remuneration, travel costs and the supplementary programme for South African guest-speakers.67 They helped to legitimize Botha’s reforms. This was particularly true of the conference in 1983, where, two months before the constitutional referendum, ‘speakers of the various population groups’ portrayed the proposed re-organization of the parliament as a ground-breaking step toward the abolition of apartheid.68 The success of Hennenhofer’s strategy as he implemented it in information trips, the discussion programme and symposia and conferences can be seen in the fact that many of the arguments in the contemporary German public debate in support of Botha’s reform programme can be traced directly to the firm’s propaganda and their proponents were often those it had targeted. For one example, at the end of 1982 Erika Kimmich, a member of the Evangelical Church Council and a frequent attendee of Hennenhofer’s conferences and seminars on South Africa, joined one of his information tours of South Africa. Upon her return, she said, ‘the so-­called “petty apartheid” seemed to be completely abolished’,69 and she, together with others, mobilized opposition to Evangelical Churches’ contacts with the West German anti-apartheid movement and the South African opposition to apartheid. For another, speaking in Johannesburg to businessmen from Berlin, Rolf Rauschenbach, the head of BASF’s South Africa division and a long-time official of both the German-South African Chamber of Commerce and Industry and the SAF, expressed his conviction that: Prime Minister P.W. Botha and with him the majority of his ministers … have the firm and unshakable intention of reducing discrimination, eliminating the inequality of opportunity for non-whites and, finally, finding a constitutional solution that does not necessarily give all sections of the population one man  - one vote. I would also consider this to be too far-reaching.70

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Third, an analysis of media coverage of the public debate in West Germany over Botha’s reform policy showed that a spectrum of conservative outlets regularly portrayed ‘the planned changes as an essential step in the right direction’ and ‘concentrated their reporting particularly on Botha personally’.71 Finally, in one of the few debates in the Bundestag specifically on the reforms the arguments of supportive MPs who had participated in Hennenhofer PR’s programmes came directly from the regime’s propaganda. For example, Volkmar Köhler (CDU) stated, ‘I believe that Mr Botha has seriously and emphatically initiated progress’.72 And Hans Stercken (CDU), one of the central players in the conservative bloc, emphasized the need for an ‘evolutionary process’ and stressed, ‘Prime Minister Botha … deserves support for his policies, not dissociation and indifference’.73 These examples show how well the regime’s propaganda had imposed its framework on the terms of the German debate. It was this framework that made Botha’s state visit to West Germany in 1984 possible. One year earlier, Foreign Minister Pik Botha had travelled to West Germany, where he praised South Africa’s policy for Southern Africa at a conference at the CSU-backed Hanns Seidel Foundation. Both visits were built upon South Africa’s contacts with the CDU/CSU parliamentary faction, which shows their value for Pretoria. The conservative-­ led coalition that began to govern in 1982 rejected sanctions of South Africa longer than any other government in Western Europe.

Conclusion This discussion of the Hennenhofer agency’s more than 12 years of work for South Africa’s propaganda institutions has also described the developments and transformations of South Africa’s propaganda strategy. After a cautious beginning, information trips became central in South Africa’s programme to convince West German opinion-makers of the regime’s policy for reforming apartheid. Employing local agencies was characteristic of the regime’s propaganda strategy at a crucial time, and the Hennenhofer agency’s work was fundamental to the regime’s achieving its post-Muldergate propaganda goals. In the period between P.W. Botha’s election in 1978 and the institution of the new constitution in 1984, Hennenhofer PR, the regime’s West German agent, portrayed Botha’s reforms as worthy of support and used his political allies to counter criticism. This made it difficult for critics in the Bundestag to enact sanctions, which gave the regime time to stabilize the apartheid system.

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Their generous budgets and the minister-level of responsibility make it reasonable to conclude that the Botha regime’s propaganda projects in West Germany were of comparable importance to those in Great Britain and the US, which are more often the focus of research. The discussion has also explained how South Africa changed its strategy and the Hennenhofer agency applied its expertise to developing corresponding new approaches. South Africa’s strategy shifted over the years from responding to apartheid’s international critics to ‘anti-anti-apartheid’ propaganda for the government’s supposed reforms, which countered the narratives of apartheid’s radical opponents. And Gerd Hennenhofer understood the Botha administration’s use of the ‘language of legitimation’ in the South African discourse and employed similar language in its work. However, the propaganda’s argumentation was continually less credible with the escalating violence against protests in the townships in the mid-1980s. In the end, it could no longer distract attention from the real situation in South Africa. But the regime’s collapse should not obscure its earlier successes or the willingness of West German actors to work on its behalf. The Hennenhofer agency ended its association with the regime before it fell, when Gerd Hennenhofer died unexpectedly in 1987. Before his death, he complained to his clients in Pretoria that they were not making the best use of their West German supporters. For a long time, they had looked for ways to secure reformed white rule. But because of South Africa’s unwillingness to institute genuine reforms in the second half of the 1980s, its political allies, many of whom had been outspoken in their defence of it, had fewer and fewer arguments to offer in defence of South African policy. The fact that the Federal Republic enacted sanctions only in 1988, and only because of pressure from other European countries, shows that the regime collapsed because of its own policies, not for lack of international support. Hennenhofer’s work exemplifies how serious South Africa’s efforts to create this support in West Germany were.

Notes 1. “Samevattende Verslag oor Besoek van sy Edele die eerste Minister in Geselskap aan Wes-Duitsland”, 18.06.1984, ARCA, PV 203 P5 12/27/1 [Translation AK]. 2. “Arbeitsbesuch von PM Botha in der BR Deutschland”, vom 08.05.1984, PA AA, Zwischenarchiv, Bd. 138.147. 3. Barbara Rogers, “‘Sunny South Africa’: A Worldwide Propaganda Machine,” Africa Report 22 (1977): 2–7.

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4. That is, the latest publication of Ron Nixon, Selling Apartheid. South Africa’s Global Propaganda War (Pretoria: Pluto Press, 2015). 5. An exception, however, still not very deep in analysis: James Barber, “BOSS in Britain,” African Affairs 82 (1983): 311–328. With a focus on propaganda projects in the context of financing the regime see Henni van Vuuren, Apartheid, Guns and Money: A Tale of Profit (Johannesburg: Jacana Media, 2017). 6. Deborah Posel, “Language, Legitimation and Control: The South African State After ’78,” Social Dynamics 10, no. 1 (1984): 1–16. 7. Quoted after Nixon, Selling Apartheid, 33. 8. Vernon McKay, “South African Propaganda: Methods and Media,” Africa Report 11 (1966): 41–46; for initial activities, see: James Sanders, South Africa and the International Media, 1972–1979: A Struggle for Representation (Abingdon: Routledge, 2000): 54. 9. McKay, Propaganda, 44. 10. Nixon, Selling Apartheid, 34. 11. Sanders, International Media, 55. 12. Ulf Engel, Die Afrikapolitik der Bundesrepublik Deutschland 1949–1999 (Münster/Hamburg/London: Lit-Verlag: 2000), 37. 13. Reinhard Rode, Die Südafrikapolitik der Bundesrepublik Deutschland (München: Kaiser, 1975), 28 and 48. 14. Ibid., 26. 15. Ulrich van der Heyden, Zwischen Solidarität und Wirtschaftsinteressen: Die „geheimen“ Beziehungen der DDR zum südafrikanischen Apartheidregime (Münster: Lit-Verlag, 2005), 32; Rode, Südafrikapolitik, 27. 16. Tilmann Dedering, “Ostpolitik and the Relations between West Germany and South Africa,” in Ostpolitik, 1969–1974. European and Global Responses, ed. Carole Fink and Bernd Schaefer (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 215. 17. Rode, Südafrikapolitik, 72. 18. “Letter Blohm to Friedrich“, 26.07.1968, ADA, ACC 38, Box 25. 19. „Programm RSA Reise von Dr. Franz Josef Strauß + Frau und Dr. H. Germani“, ACSP, NL Strauß Fam 391. 20. The political guests of SAF are listed in the communication with CSU politician Richard Jaeger; see “Information zur Reisevorbereitung“; “Letter from von Roedern to Jaeger“, 13.09.1971, ACSP, NL Jaeger R:46/1. 21. Christoph Marx, “‘Muldergate’. Außenpolitische Propaganda und interne Machtkämpfe in Südafrika Ende der 1970er Jahre,” Geschichte in Wissenschaft und Unterricht 69, no. 1/2 (2018): 55; Allister Sparks, The Sword and the Pen. Six Decades on the Political Frontier (Jeppestown: Jonathan Ball, 2016), 360–371. 22. In the conceptual planning Eschel Rhoodie also involved his two brothers Nic and Deneys. For an analysis of the foundations of their work see:

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André de Bruyn, “Apartheid Defensive Propaganda and the Rhoodie Brothers as Practitioners of Justification during the 1970s – 1980s” (Pretoria: unpublished Dissertation thesis University of Pretoria, 2019). 23. William A.  Hachten/C.  Anthony Giffard, The Press and Apartheid: Repression and Propaganda in South Africa (London: Macmillan, 1984), 235. 24. Eschel Rhoodie, The Paper Curtain (Johannesburg: Voortrekkerpers. 1969). 25. James Sanders, Apartheid’s Friends. The Rise and Fall of South Africa’s Secret Service (London: John Murray 2006), 96. 26. After his dismissal, Rhoodie himself provided a very subjective but nevertheless detailed account of the propaganda activities. Eschel Rhoodie, The Real Information Scandal (Pretoria: ORBIS, 1983) 64. Rhoodie’s longtime assistant also provided insights into his work: Les de Villiers, Secret Information (Cape Town: Tafelberg, 1980). Also about the projects: Marx, “‘Muldergate’,” 76. 27. Quoted in: Derrick Knight, Beyond the Pale. The Christian Political Fringe (Lancashire: Leigh, 1982), 105. 28. See: Roger Pfister: Apartheid South Africa and African States. From Pariah to Middle Power, 1961–1994 (London; New  York: Tauris Academic Studies, 2005). 29. “Department of Information Report for the Period: 1 Jan 1974–31 Dec 1974”, SAHA, AL 2457 A4.1. 30. See “Department of Information: Report for the Period 1 Jan.–31 Dec. 1974”, 12, SAHA, AL 2457 A.4.1. 31. “Aktennotiz PR für die südafrikanische Republik”, 30.07.1975, SfS-­ Archiv: I.06.HPR, Nr. 136. 32. Cas de Villiers, Human Rights and Homelands (= FAA: FOCUS. Comment on Topical Issues, No 8/May 1979), 13, SfS-Archiv: I.06.HPR, Nr. 194; see also: Hachten/Giffard, The Press and Apartheid, 254; Julian Burgess, The Great White Hoax, (London: Africa Bureau 1977) 32. 33. “Gerd Hennenhofer: Erweiterung der Public Relations-Arbeit für die Republik Südafrika in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland. August 1975”, 1, SfS-Archiv: I.06.HPR, Nr. 42 I. [Translation AK]. 34. Ibid., 1 [Translation AK]. 35. Ibid., 8 [Translation AK]. 36. “Besuch von südafrikanischen Politikern in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland”, SfS-Archiv: I.06.HPR, Nr. 42 I. 37. “Endgültiges Programm der Informationsreise in die Republik Südafrika, Transkei und nach Südwestafrika für Herrn Peter Petersen”, SfS-Archiv: I.06.HPR, Nr. 69; the liberal party was partner in a coalition with the social democrats under Chancellor Helmut Schmidt at this time.

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38. Hans-Joachim Vergau, “Die Rolle Deutschlands bei der Lösung der Namibia-Frage im Rahmen der Vereinten Nationen,” in Die deutsche UN-Politik 1973–2003, ed. Hans-Joachim Vergau (Potsdam: Universitätsverlag Potsdam, 2003), 51–63. 39. “Letter Peter Petersen to Gerd Hennenhofer,” 30.07.1977, SfS-Archiv: I.06.HPR, Nr. 69 [Translation AK]. 40. “Telex RSA Embassy to DOI”, 12.05.1978, DIRCO 1/154/3, Vol. 16. 41. “Memo Department of Information Dr. Gerstenmaier an Geselskap,” NASA, MNL/INL Vol. 20. 42. For detailed information see: Mervyn Rees/Chris Day, Muldergate. The Story of the Info Scandal (Johannesburg: Macmillan, 1980); Marx: Muldergate, 54; Sanders: South Africa and the International Media, S. 54–73; O’Meara: South Africa’s Watergate; Van Vuuren: Guns and Money, 45–65. 43. “Spitze des Eisbergs,” Der Spiegel, 46 (1978); “Broedertwis,” Der Spiegel, 52 (1978); “Muldergate,” Frankfurter Rundschau, March 23, 1979. 44. “50.000 Gulden im Kopfkissen des Premierministers,” Der Spiegel, 42 (1979). 45. “Aktennotiz Gerd Hennenhofer an Uwe Jaensch”, 26.03.1980, SfS-­ Archiv: I.06.HPR, Nr. 84 [Translation AK]. 46. Department of Foreign Affairs after renewed restructuring in 1983. 47. “Memorandum Onderwerp: Hennenhofer PR”, 13.09.1979, DIRCO, 38/903 Vol. 1. 48. “(geheim) Memorandum: Geheime Projek. Onderwerp: Dr. G. Hennenhofer”, 28.03.1979, DIRCO, 38/903 AJ 1979 DEEL 2. 49. “Contract between the South African Government, represented by the Director General, Information Service of South Africa and Hennenhofer PR und Partner GmbH & Co. KG, Public Relations,” 07.05.1979, SfSArchiv: I.06.HPR, Nr. 102. 50. “Aktennotiz Gespräch mit Herrn Delport und Herrn Grobbler,” 16.03.1979, SfS-Archiv: I.06.HPR, Nr. 102. 51. “(streng vertraulich) 1. Entwurf. Die Arbeit der Hennenhofer PR für Südafrika,” 21.02.1984, SfS-Archiv: I.06.HPR, Nr. 207. 52. For the standard group size of four persons, DM 50,000 was usually charged for flight, transfer and accommodation at a high level. For example, see the first annual budget: FAA-Account 1977“, 08.03.1978, SfSArchiv: I.06.HPR, Nr. 46 II. 53. Aletta Norval, Deconstructing Apartheid Discourse (London/New York: Verso, 1996), 214. 54. Hierzu zählten die Schlebusch-Kommission (Verfassung), die Riekert-­ Kommission (Gesellschaftspolitik), die Steyn-Kommission (Presse) und die Wiehan-Kommission (Arbeitsbeziehungen). See Dan O’Meara, 40 Lost

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Years: The Apartheid State and the Politics of the National Party (Randburg: Ravan Press, 1999), 172. 55. See Posel, Language; Saul Dubow, Apartheid, 1948–1994 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 203. 56. “Telex RSA Botschaft an Hennenhofer PR,” 15.02.1982, SfS-Archiv: I.06.HPR, Nr. 152 III. 57. Willie Esterhuyse, Apartheid must die, (Cape Town: Tafelberg, 1981). 58. “Aktennotiz RSA Bericht über die Reise von vier Professoren der Politischen Wissenschaft nach Südafrika und Namibia,” 25.09.1984, SfS-­ Archiv: I.06.HPR, Nr. 81 [Translation AK]. 59. Saul Dubow, “New Approaches to High Apartheid and Anti-Apartheid,” South African Historical Journal 69, no. 2 (2017): 319. 60. “Schreiben RSA Botschaft an Generaldirektor DFA,” 26.05.1981, DIRCO, 38/903 Vol. 4, 3 [Translation AK]. 61. Ibid. 62. Ibid., 5. 63. “Aktennotiz Bericht zur Reise der vier südafrikanischen Journalisten,” 20.05.1983, SfS-Archiv: I.06.HPR, Nr. 131. 64. “Schreiben Gerd Hennenhofer an Botschafter van Heerden,” 04.12.1981, SfS-Archiv: I.06.HPR, Nr. 28. 65. “Schreiben Gerd Hennenhofer an Botschafter van Heerden“, 04.12.1981. SfS-Archiv: I.06.HPR, Nr. 28. 66. “Aktennotiz Gespräch mit Prof. W.B. Vosloo“, vom 09.04.1980, SfS-­Archiv: I.06.HPR, Nr. 27 II. 67. For accounting, planning and correspondence between Hennenhofer PR and Haus Rissen, see: SfS-Archiv: I.06.HPR, Nr. 28 & Nr. 27. 68. “Haus Rissen: Südafrika 1983  – Probleme, Perspektiven  – Hamburg 1983”; “7. International Conference South Africa 1983  – Latest Developments, Problems, Perspectives. Additional Programme for speakers from South Africa,” SfS-Archiv: I.06.HPR Nr. 3. 69. “Kritik an Südafrikareise ‘unfair und wenig informiert’,” idea-spektrum 50 (1982) [Translation AK]. 70. Rolf Rauschenbach, “Südafrika – Und seine Bedeutung für die westliche Welt” [Lecture held before the Association of Berlin Merchants and Industrialists, 21.04.1980], ACDP, NL Geldern, 01-503-070/2 [Translation AK]. 71. Rolf Annas, Zur Darstellung Südafrikas in der überregionalen Presse der Bundesrepublik Deutschland (Pretoria: unpublished manuscript, 1986) 25. 72. Deutscher Bundestag, Stenografische Berichte, 8. WP, 197. Sitzung, 18.01.1980, 15733. 73. Ibid., 15694.

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References Annas, Rolf. “Zur Darstellung Südafrikas in der überregionalen Presse der Bundesrepublik Deutschland.” Pretoria: unpublished manuscript, 1986. Barber, James. “BOSS in Britain.” African Affairs 82 (1983): 311–328. Burgess, Julian. The Great White Hoax. London: Africa Bureau, 1977. de Bruyn, André. “Apartheid Defensive Propaganda and the Rhoodie Brothers as Practitioners of Justification during the 1970s – 1980s.” Pretoria: unpublished Dissertation thesis University of Pretoria, 2019. Dedering, Tilmann. “Ostpolitik and the Relations between West Germany and South Africa.” In Ostpolitik, 1969–1974. European and Global Responses, edited by Carole Fink and Bernd Schaefer, 206–231. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009. Dubow, Saul. “New Approaches, New Approaches to High Apartheid and Anti-­ Apartheid.” South African Historical Journal 69, no. 2 (2017): 304–329. ———. Apartheid, 1948–1994. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014. Engel, Ulf. Die Afrikapolitik der Bundesrepublik Deutschland 1949–1999. Münster/Hamburg/London: Lit-Verlag, 2000. Esterhuyse, Willie. Apartheid must Die, Cape Town: Tafelberg, 1981. Hachten, William A., and C. Anthony Giffard. The Press and Apartheid: Repression and Propaganda in South Africa. London: Macmillan, 1984. Knight, Derrick. Beyond the Pale. The Christian Political Fringe. Lancashire: Leigh, 1982. Marx, Christoph. “Zukunft durch Apartheid? Verwoerds Rassenideologie, Südafrikas Außenpolitik und der Westen.” Zeithistorische Forschungen/Studies in Contemporary History 13, no. 2 (2016): 210–230. ———. “‘Muldergate’. Außenpolitische Propaganda und interne Machtkämpfe in Südafrika Ende der 1970er Jahre.” Geschichte in Wissenschaft und Unterricht 69, no. 1/2 (2018): 51–66. McKay, Vernon. “South African Propaganda: Methods and Media.” Africa Report 11 (1966): 41–46. Nixon, Ron. Selling Apartheid. South Africa’s Global Propaganda War. Pretoria: Pluto Press, 2015 O’Meara, Dan. 40 Lost Years: The Apartheid State and the Politics of the National Party. Randburg: Ravan Press, 1999. Posel, Deborah. “Language, Legitimation and Control: The South African State After ’78.” Social Dynamics 10, no. 1 (1984): 1–16. Rees, Mervyn and Day, Chris. Muldergate. The Story of the Info Scandal. Johannesburg: Macmillan, 1980. Rhoodie, Eschel. The Real Information Scandal. Pretoria: ORBIS, 1983. ———. The Paper Curtain. Johannesburg: Voortrekkerpers, 1969.

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Rode, Reinhard. Die Südafrikapolitik der Bundesrepublik Deutschland. München: Kaiser, 1975. Rogers, Barbara. “‘Sunny South Africa’: A Worldwide Propaganda Machine.” Africa Report 22 (1977): 2–8. Sanders, James. South Africa and the International Media, 1972–1979: A Struggle for Representation. Abingdon: Routledge, 2000. ———. Apartheid’s Friends. The Rise and Fall of South Africa's Secret Service London: John Murray, 2006. Sparks, Allister. The Sword and the Pen. Six Decades on the Political Frontier. Jeppestown: Jonathan Ball, 2016. van der Heyden, Ulrich. Zwischen Solidarität und Wirtschaftsinteressen: Die ‘geheimen’ Beziehungen der DDR zum südafrikanischen Apartheidregime. Münster: Lit-Verlag, 2005. van Vuuren, Henni. Apartheid, Guns and Money: A Tale of Profit. Johannesburg: Jacana Media, 2017. Vergau, Hans-Joachim. “Die Rolle Deutschlands bei der Lösung der Namibia-­ Frage im Rahmen der Vereinten Nationen.” In Die deutsche UN-Politik 1973 – 2003, edited by Hans-Joachim Vergau, 51–63. Potsdam: Universitätsverlag Potsdam, 2003. de Villiers, Les. Secret Information. Cape Town: Tafelberg, 1980.

Overcoming Apartheid Through Partnership? ‘Glocal’ Relationships Among Christians in West Germany, South Africa and Namibia: 1970s–1990s Sebastian Justke

Beginning in the late 1960s, Christian Churches both in and outside of South Africa were important participants in the apartheid conflict. In 1968, the World Council of Churches’ (WCC) Assembly in Uppsala paved the way for its Programme to Combat Racism (PCR),1 and the South African Council of Churches (SACC) published ‘A Message to the People of South Africa’ criticising apartheid.2 The opposition of various Churches culminated in the 1980s, with several declaring apartheid a heresy3 and the SACC calling for international sanctions and disinvestment since the middle of the decade4 and eventually declaring that the apartheid regime was illegitimate.5

S. Justke (*) Research Centre for Contemporary History in Hamburg (FZH), Hamburg, Germany e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2021 K. Andresen et al. (eds.), Apartheid and Anti-Apartheid in Western Europe, Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-53284-0_11

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These discourses shaped the relationships that West German Churches had with South African and Namibian Churches. Protestant Churches in particular had close relationships with Churches in Southern Africa,6 which were rooted in the history of colonialism, imperialism and German emigration in the nineteenth century.7 Growing international criticism of apartheid put these relationships to the test in West Germany and in South Africa. Apartheid challenged Christians’ understanding of faith and ecclesiology on both sides, and the discussion of how to continue their relationships reached from grassroots movements to the top of Church administrations. In the second half of the 1970s, these discussions began to focus on the meaning of the terms ‘partnership’ and ‘covenant’. This was due to prior changes in the global ecumenical movement. In the 1960s, decolonisation and the new independence of mission churches profoundly transformed ecumenical organisations, such as the WCC, the Lutheran World Federation (LWF) and the World Alliance of Reformed Churches (WARC), as more and more delegates from those former mission churches attended their assemblies and gave a voice to the Churches of the Global South. The resulting ‘self-criticism of paternalistic mission practices’ in the Protestant Churches ‘led to new mission theories of “partnership”’.8 In this context, the controversy over apartheid magnified the differences in power between the churches of West Germany and those of South Africa and Namibia, between Christians in the Global North and those in the Global South, between former missionaries and those who had been missionised, and put their relationships into question. This chapter examines the phenomenon of Christian partnership between West German and South African and Namibian congregations and other Christian groups as it occurred on the local, or ‘glocal’, level as a Western European reaction to apartheid. The concept of glocalisation applies to developments at the local level that reflect processes of globalisation.9 The period investigated covers the mid-1970s to South Africa’s transition phase in the early 1990s. I discuss two examples. The first involves a black pastor from Namibia who served as a minister to a West German congregation for several years in the 1970s. His experiences led him to question partnerships between Christians in West Germany and those in South Africa and Namibia. The second example is the Covenant Project (Aktion Bundesschluss), which consisted of local partnerships between West German and South African Christians in the 1980s and early 1990s. As I explain in my discussion of these examples, these

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partnerships show how West German Christians perceived and responded to the situation in South Africa and Namibia in the late apartheid era.

A Black Namibian Pastor in Detmold: New Forms of Partnership in the 1970s Since the early 1970s, apartheid had been on the agenda of West German Protestant churches. This was mostly due to controversies over the WCC’s funding of its Programme to Combat Racism. The intensity and length of these controversies are attributable to the complex relations that German Protestants had had with Southern Africa since the nineteenth century. In that period, German Lutheran missionaries founded churches for their indigenous converts, and German emigrants began their own. In the 1950s and 1960s, these congregations founded several independent and racially segregated Evangelical Lutheran Churches. However, they all maintained relationships with West Germany, which provided personnel and financial support. These transnational church relationships began to change in the 1960s as a result of decolonisation and the subsequent changes in the ecumenical movement. It was mainly Christians in the ‘Third World’, but also some in West Germany, who contested the traditional relationship as paternalistic and out-dated. One development that challenged established relationships was what can be called ‘missions in reverse’. The WCC had already instituted ‘multi-­ directional missions’ in 1963 under the motto ‘mission in six continents’. As the historian and missiologist Dana Roberts concludes, the ‘idea of partnership in mission developed multiple meanings over the succeeding decades’.10 One meaning of ‘partnership in mission’ was missions in reverse. For example, clergy from the Global South were sent to West Germany as ‘ecumenical workers’ to serve as pastors for limited periods. Exchanging the roles of what in missionary terminology are called ‘sending’ or ‘giving’ and ‘receiving’ countries reversed the classical model of Christian secondment. In West Germany, the first mission in reverse began in Detmold, a small town in North Rhine-Westphalia, in 1975, when the local church welcomed Ngeno-Zacharias Nakamhela, a minister from Namibia, who would be their pastor for the next two years. In Namibia, Nakamhela belonged to the Evangelical Lutheran Church in South West Africa (Rhenish Mission) (ELC). Once a mission church run by the Rhenish

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Missionary Society, it was re-founded independently of the Society in 1957,11 but it still depended on West Germany for personnel and financial support. Nakamhela arrived with his family at the Reformed church of Detmold-Ost early in the year. His mission was organised by the Church of Lippe, a member of the Evangelical Church in Germany (EKD); the United Evangelical Mission (UEM) in Wuppertal, the successor of the Rhenish Missionary Society, and the ELC in Namibia.12 It attracted the attention of national and international press and television,13 for he was the first black African pastor to work in West Germany.14 During his stay, Nakamhela wrote two reports, both published in the UEM’s monthly magazine In die Welt, für die Welt, in which he shared his experiences with readers and compared his time in West Germany to his life under apartheid in Namibia. He praised the freedom of movement; he did not have to live in a township without electricity or running water; the trains and buses did not have segregated seating; and he and his family could eat in any restaurant and stay in any hotel. It was a new experience for him and his family to entertain white guests in their home, who could even stay overnight.15 According to Nakamhela, the contrast between Namibia and West Germany could not have been greater. He described the same contrast in his pastoral work: Here I preach to whites and administer Holy Communion to whites. The Christians in Namibia and South Africa, I mean the black and white ones, cannot pray together. Here I baptise white children, marry white couples, bury whites and have pastoral conversations with whites.16

In Namibia, white Christians would not consider themselves so ‘inferior’ as to have a ‘Kaffir preacher’.17 The general principle of equality among people was an important and repeated motif in Nakamhela’s reports. In addition to his many positive impressions of the Federal Republic, Nakamhela criticised some of the behaviour and attitudes of his congregation and the inhabitants of Detmold. He was disappointed by the fellowship of the congregation, whose interactions were ‘stiff’ in comparison to his community in Namibia. And he complained about the ‘Leistungsdruck’, the pressure on him to perform as the ‘solo entertainer’ responsible for everything.18 In West Germany, people were acknowledged only for their achievements, and there was little appreciation for someone ‘as a person, simply as a person’.19 Nakamhela posed the fundamental ecclesiological question of the meaning of the Church. The EKD was a ‘powerful, stable’

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and ‘prosperous’ Church whose greatest obligation, he exaggeratedly said, was to ‘donate’, but it did not provide him a committedly Christian life. In his church in Namibia, the congregation ‘suffered’ but also joined together to ‘fight against injustice’. The struggle against apartheid was a central motif of Nakamhela’s pastoral work. As he had made clear at the beginning of his service in Detmold, he had come to West Germany ‘not only to pray the gospel’ but to ‘enlighten’ his congregation about the oppression of Namibians under apartheid.20 That is, he revealed himself as a minister with a socio-political understanding of the Church. Not everyone in the West German Churches liked this. The relationship between state and Church, between politics and religion, had been a central issue of the apartheid discourse in the Protestant Churches of West Germany, South Africa and Namibia since at least the early 1970s.21 Nakamhela acknowledged that West German Church officials had warned him against preaching ‘politics’, which ‘would cause trouble’,22 but he defended his understanding of Christianity. He preached the gospel, not politics, but to accept ‘Jesus Christ as King and Lord of the world’ certainly had ‘political consequences’.23 His views were probably influenced by the open letter that the ELC and the Evangelical Lutheran Ovambo-Kavango Church (ELOC) had sent to South Africa’s prime minister B. J. Vorster in December 1971.24 Nakamhela’s understanding of faith and his criticism of apartheid drew objections in Namibia and the Federal Republic. In February 1977, he participated in a Church conference on Namibia, organised by the Protestant Academy of Rhineland Westphalia, that Church officials from Namibia and the Federal Republic attended. At the conference, Nakamhela spoke about letters that West German and white Namibian readers had written in response to his first report in In die Welt, für die Welt. For example, one reader had written to the magazine’s editors that black people in South Africa and Namibia were better off than those in other African countries, which was a standard apology for apartheid at that time. As he angrily explained: I do not see myself living only from the abundance of the white man, only because I am exploited and because he discriminates against me and does not let me become independent. … That bores me and I am fed up with it. I want to become free of it. … We are not dolls but autonomous human beings.25

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Behind this condemnation was Nakamhela’s desire that white people see him as an equal human being, in Namibia and West Germany. He expressed regret that only ‘a few here in the Federal Republic’ understood the struggle of Namibia’s oppressed majority for ‘freedom, human dignity and justice’.26 In his reports in In die Welt, für die Welt, Nakamhela also described various forms of everyday racism that he encountered in West Germany, from which he concluded that ‘Africans’ were not welcome ‘as permanent residents in Germany’.27 For example, he had been addressed with the N-word, which, as he explained to German readers, was an insult. He and his family also had to confront racism regarding their food and dress.28 And he described the unnatural friendliness and sympathy with which some West Germans had treated them, attitudes that made him feel that he was ‘not taken very seriously’.29 Criticising the circumstances of his service, he explained how the West German Church officials who had organised it did not treat him as the equal of West German ministers. They had labelled his pastorship an ‘experiment’30 and imposed special conditions on it. Nakamhela was entrusted with far less work and responsibility than his West German colleagues, having been assigned only a small part of the Detmold-Ost parish.31 He considered this discriminatory and criticised officials’ misunderstanding of partnership, explaining that no real partnership was possible as long as his service was an experiment. And he argued that his ‘white brothers’ should be ‘liberated’ from their belief that a white minister’s service was more significant than a black’s, who also had the right ‘to give shape to this world and creation’.32 Nakamhela’s reports offered a different understanding of partnership. Instead of an experiment, a partnership involved ‘two-way traffic’, and it began from ‘below’, not ‘above’. His idea of partnership incorporated an understanding of church and faith that was the result of decolonisation and the transformation of the ecumenical movement. It had come to fruition in Nakamhela’s pastoral work in Detmold, especially with the congregation’s young people, who had overcome their prejudice through their interactions with him.33 Nakamhela stressed that in his work in West Germany he observed the principle of reciprocity in order not to fall into the traditional missionary imbalance between giving and taking. The pastor advised African Churches to adopt his understanding of partnership and to partner with each other in order to ‘counteract the colonial-­ patriarchal and dependent “partnership” with the Western Churches’.34 Ideas from liberation theology and black theology echoed in this advice.35

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Sending black pastors from South Africa or Namibia to West German congregations remained the exception. A few years after Nakamhela, Pastor Andreas Ruben Khosa from South Africa served in the Federal Republic for several years,36 but no other cases are known. Nakamhela and Khosa were probably the only South African and Namibian black ministers serving a mission in reverse in West Germany during the apartheid era. But they attracted the attention of the church-affiliated public, and they challenged the classical dichotomy of mission and church and, thus, old forms of Christian partnership. Because it advocated living life communally, not in segregation, this new form of partnership can be seen as a countermodel to apartheid in South Africa and Namibia.

The Covenant Project and Aktion Bundesschluss On December 10, 1983, Human Rights Day, Ulrich Duchrow received an urgent telephone call from his friend Wolfram Kistner. At that time Duchrow was the regional coordinator for mission and ecumenical affairs of the Evangelical Regional Church in Baden.37 Kistner was born in South Africa in 1923 as the son of a German missionary couple from the Hermannsburg Mission Society. After studying history and theology at universities in South Africa, the Netherlands and West Germany, he headed the Hermannsburg Mission in South Africa from 1965 to 1969 and then worked as a parish minister in the West German village of Neuenkirchen until 1972. After an interim stay as a lecturer at the University of Natal in Pietermaritzburg, he was appointed director of the Division of Justice and Reconciliation of the SACC in January 1976, a post he held until 1988.38 During the telephone call in December 1983, Kistner informed Duchrow about the impending forced resettlement of the community of Mogopa, a small village 100 miles northwest of Johannesburg. The villagers planned to flee to the South African Bantustan of Bophuthatswana rather than be moved to the resettlement site, and they needed 180,000 Deutschmarks, which Kistner asked Duchrow to raise. Duchrow appealed to the Ecumenical Network for Justice, Peace and Integrity of Creation, which the two theologians had set up in Baden in May of that year.39 Under the slogan ‘300 families from Baden help 300 families from Mogopa’,40 the Network raised more than 100,000 Deutschmarks in donations within a few weeks.41 This solidarity campaign was the forerunner of the Aktion Bundesschluss, which became known in South Africa as the Covenant Programme or Covenant Project.

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An important theological justification for the Covenant Project was the conciliar process for justice, peace and the integrity of creation (JPIC) initiated at the WCC’s General Assembly in Vancouver in 1983. At this Assembly, the debate over partnership and covenant, and their implications for South Africa, in which the ecumenical movement had been increasingly engaged since the mid-1970s, reached its climax.42 Apartheid was a central topic of discussion, as in previous years, but the new presence of the African National Congress (ANC) demonstrated its importance to the ecumenical movement. ANC President Oliver Tambo had requested WCC General Secretary Philip Potter to attend the assembly in advance. Potter welcomed the ANC participation.43 As in previous years, the Assembly adopted a resolution on South Africa.44 More important for the subject of South African and West German partnership was the discussion of the JPIC process, in which the Assembly engaged because it was gripped by concerns about the escalation of the Cold War and the subsequent threat of nuclear war.45 As the theologian and long-time General Secretary of the WCC Konrad Raiser later put it, the discussion ‘became a crystallization point for ecumenical cooperation in the period until 1990’.46 According to the historian Melanie Duguid-­ May, it articulated the ‘integral connection of commitment to social justice and to the visible unity of the church … with renewed clarity’.47 The result of the discussion was that the Assembly’s Programme Guideline Committee called on the WCC’s member churches to engage ‘in a conciliar process of mutual commitment (covenant) to justice, peace and the integrity of all creation’.48 During the Assembly, the working group Struggling for Justice and Human Dignity intensively discussed the meaning of the term ‘covenant’ in the context of the conciliar process. In its report, the group recommended that ‘churches at all levels – congregations, dioceses, synods, networks of Christian groups and base communities  – together with the WCC enter into a covenant in a conciliar process’, for by doing so they would ‘resist the demonic powers of death inherent in racism, sexism, class domination, caste oppression and militarism’.49 Some delegates thought the proposal went too far. For example, a representative of the EKD criticised its ‘militant language’ and ‘apocalyptic imagery’. For this reason, it was not included in the Assembly’s official statement though it was frequently quoted later.50 One delegate who defended the ‘language of struggle and conflict’ was Ulrich Duchrow.51 In the months leading up to Vancouver, he had discussed the idea of the conciliar process with Raiser,

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then the WCC’s Deputy General Secretary, and Heino Falcke, a prominent theologian in the GDR’s Federation of Protestant Churches.52 After the Assembly, SACC officials in Johannesburg continued to discuss the idea of the covenant for/in the conciliar process, seeing in the forming of covenants a chance to expand their anti-apartheid struggle. Duchrow’s and Kistner’s friendship probably played a role in this discussion. The SACC set up the Covenant Project in 1984. One pressing reason was the South African government’s intensification of its programme of forced removals.53 The purpose of the Covenant Project was to put South African communities threatened with forced removal in touch with Christian congregations and initiatives in Western Europe and the United States that would provide grassroots-level support for their resistance.54 Joe Seremane, a fieldworker and liaison officer for the Covenant Project, noted in 1986 that the Project ‘makes it possible for Christian communities on different continents to exchange experiences’. The resulting partnerships are ‘a sign of the covenant that God made with all his people. Through the process of forming this covenant, new steps are being taken locally in the commitment to justice, peace and the integrity of creation’.55 The local was central for the Covenant Project.56 It was designed to bring communities of the Global South and the Global North into conversation on the local, that is, the ‘glocal’ level. To Kistner and the Covenant Project’s other originators, it seemed pragmatic to integrate it into the SACC’s anti-apartheid activities. Theologically, integration would have the benefit of ‘emphasizing the collaborative dimension of the confession of Christ’, for, as Kistner argued, biblical covenants were ‘about the people of God as a community as a whole’.57 On the basis of this theological argument, the originators publicly declared that the Project was a programme to counter apartheid’s social order. But they also saw it as a more appropriate alternative to the status confessionis imposed by the LWF on Lutheran Churches in South Africa in 1977,58 which had framed the debate over apartheid in the ecumenical movement.59 The status confessionis was exclusionary because it forced Christians to decide to be for or against apartheid, but the Covenant Project was inclusive in emphasising interpersonal cooperation. Although the Covenant Project also established contacts between communities in South Africa and churches and Christian groups in Canada, the United States, Switzerland and the Netherlands,60 it was mainly West German groups that entered into such covenants. By 1986, 14 West

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German Christian groups and congregations had done so.61 The Project kept the guidelines for partnerships open, but they tended to be similar. How and through which intermediaries were covenants created? In the Federal Republic, interested Christian groups contacted the coordinators of Aktion Bundesschluss,62 who forwarded their interest to the SACC’s office in Johannesburg. The SACC’s fieldworkers informed the office about South African communities that had been targeted for forced removal. In the mid-1980s, fieldworkers worked with many local, regional and national organisations63 to address the needs and concerns of communities in ‘crisis areas throughout SA’,64 and they informed such communities about the Covenant Project’s offer to put them in contact with overseas groups interested in partnership. The decision to enter into a covenant was up to the community.65 If it wanted to proceed, the SACC forwarded its request to an interested congregation or organisation in the Federal Republic, which made the first contact. If the partner on the West German side was a congregation, it formally established the partnership in a church service.66 What did a covenant entail, that is, to what did the partners commit themselves? Two commitments were necessary: anti-apartheid protest and ‘lived fellowship’. Regarding the first, when the forced removal was imminent, the Project alerted the community’s partner ‘as soon as possible’, ideally by telephone. The partner would then alert the public through the media and initiate ‘concrete ad hoc support measures’ for the community.67 Since the apartheid regime sometimes acted very suddenly, a rapid communication was essential to informing the public in time.68 One form of immediate ad hoc support was to demonstrate in front of the South African embassy or a consulate.69 Because of their personal contacts in South Africa, partners could give demonstrators the names of people who lived in threatened communities.70 By identifying victims by name, protestors made their imminent suffering concrete enough to affect other West German citizens. When time was less pressing, other actions were setting up of information booths at weekly farmers markets, street festivals and churches, and letter-writing campaigns aimed at authorities in the Federal Republic and South Africa. Partners often worked with local activists concerned with ‘Third World’ issues.71 In September and October of 1989, covenant groups that were members of the North Elbian Evangelical Lutheran Church mounted Aktion Hoffnungswanderung (Action Hope Walk),72 a 30-day hike through northern West Germany, to draw the public’s

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attention to South Africa. About 600 people took part, though only a few completed the more than 400 kilometres.73 Because covenant groups networked with other anti-apartheid groups,74 Aktion Bundesschluss can be seen as a part of the West German anti-­ apartheid movement.75 However, the second required commitment, to lived fellowship between Christians in West Germany and South Africa, distinguished it from typical groups in the movement. Lived fellowship consisted in following the principle of mutual regard. It should bring together people in West Germany and South Africa who felt connected by their shared faith. The creators of the Covenant Project were convinced that in the ‘ecclesiastical and secular anti-apartheid movement’ ‘mutual learning’ did ‘not find a specific role, as it does in the Covenant Project’.76 They saw the Project as offering the ‘promise’ of ‘mutual connectedness’ and mutual learning, which went beyond the traditional solidarity and support of the anti-apartheid movement.77 From the beginning, personal interaction and mutuality were key elements in Covenant Project and reflected in the logo of Aktion Bundesschluss. The logo is circular. Its upper arc is a rainbow. Under the rainbow is a cross, below which are two hands—one black, one white— reaching out to each other and the name ‘Aktion Bundesschluss’. The slogan ‘Gemeinsam für Gerechtigkeit’ (‘Together for Justice’) forms the lower arc of the circle. The rainbow is the symbol of the covenant God made with Noah after the Flood.78 The cross is the central symbol of Christianity. The hands symbolise Christian fellowship across the boundary of race, which anti-apartheid Christians accepted as an obligation of their faith and of the personal contact that shared Christian faith made possible. ‘Together for Justice’ expresses community and the socio-­ political understanding of Christianity that lay behind the WCC’s commitment to the JPIC process. According to a leaflet that the Association of Protestant Churches and Missions in Germany (EMW) published in 1984, the ‘first priority’ of Aktion Bundesschluss was ‘direct contact between Christians in the Federal Republic and South Africa’.79 The group’s organisers hoped that through direct contact West Germans would empathise with South Africans oppressed by the apartheid regime.80 The aim was to ‘share each other’s hopes and suffering in order to be able to take on the Christian responsibility for each other in prayers, thoughts and concrete actions’.81 For black South Africans threatened with forced removal, the Covenant Project forged ‘a particularly concrete link’ to their white ‘brothers and

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sisters’82 in Western Europe, a link that they had probably never had with white South Africans. For West German partners, direct contact was a manifestation of lived fellowship, which they understood to be the rejection of traditional one-way solidarity work.83 This concept of partnership paralleled contemporary criticism of traditional development aid.84 How did contacts and exchanges in the Covenant Project work? Exchanges of letters and reciprocal visits were the most obvious features of its partnerships, but there were other ways in which fellowship was to be lived. The first covenant, which began in December 1984 between the community of Kwa-Ngema and a collection of congregations and initiatives in Essen,85 illustrates a partnership’s lived fellowship. At regular church services in Essen, congregations prayed for the residents of Kwa-­Ngema. The partners also raised money for lawyers. And both sides exchanged letters, photos and cassette tapes.86 In other covenants, congregations maintained contact by telephone and fax.87 West Germans also went to the Project’s headquarters in Johannesburg to work as ‘facilitators’ for 3–12 months.88 Reciprocal visits by South African individuals and delegations illustrated lived fellowship especially well.89 The West German partners provided financial support for the visits. They also often paid the salaries of the Project’s South African fieldworkers with donations from covenant groups, individual Churches and ‘church programmes’.90 They did not ask for any documentation on the use of funds sent to South Africa, for that would have contradicted their post-paternalist understanding of solidarity.91 They wanted to build truly equal partnerships without the old dilemma of financial dependency,92 and their way out of the dilemma was compensation for historical guilt, which made West German financial support legitimate. Against the background of the North-South divide and the history of colonialism, members of Aktion Bundesschluss considered it more than fair for the partners in the Federal Republic to bear most of the costs. Therefore, Christians in the ‘rich “first world”’ were invited to share their ‘financial resources’ along with their ‘ideas and hopes’.93 One cannot understand the insistence on lived fellowship without understanding the Covenant Project’s political context. It targeted its idea of ‘partnership’ at Christians with a particular political understanding of their faith. As Joe Seremane explained in 1986, the Covenant Project not only clarifies the ecumenical dimension of the church, but also has a missionary function—in South Africa as well as in Germany—in demonstrating that the Bible is not to be misused as an instrument of oppression.94

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The organisers of Aktion Bundesschluss saw matters the same way. From their perspective, covenants combined ‘important elements of both political solidarity work and church partnership work in a new form of solidarity partnership’.95 Through their exchanges with South African communities, West German Protestants sought to influence their own Church. That is, they saw the covenant movement as a ‘part of the Church’ that promoted ‘in a special way a culture of solidarity and engagement in political and ecumenical contexts’.96 Therefore, a lived Christian partnership was distinctly political. However, participants in the Covenant Project understood its political assumptions in different ways. For instance, Wolfram Kistner, who did not want the Project to be too left-wing, stressed the theological basis of its partnerships. He also emphasised the focus on individuals and the local.97 In contrast, some of the organisers of Aktion Bundesschluss stressed their intention to criticise capitalism. They saw it as a ‘counter-model’ to a system in which the ‘power of capital’ was decisive: ‘If we treat each other equally in it and “share who we are and what we have”, we are living an alternative to the power structure of “divide and rule”’.98 In their eyes, the Covenant Project was the flagship in the struggle of progressive Christians for peace and justice and against ‘racism, sexism, class rule, caste oppression and militarism’.99 According to Joe Seremane, the Covenant Project was located at the crossroads of different anti-apartheid groups. Though it was too ‘apolitical’ for many ‘long time activists’, the anti-apartheid-­ movement was too ‘political’ for ‘many people in the churches’, and, as a result, the Covenant Project was able to recruit many ‘newcomers’ to anti-­ apartheid protest.100 Black South Africans received support from West German Christians through the Covenant Project, but what did West Germans hope to receive from their partners in South Africa? Among other things, they wanted to learn from them and raise their consciousness.101 According to Joe Seremane, it was: clear that Germans have a lot to learn. Many of them are deeply concerned about the nuclear threat and environmental pollution, but there is a sense of resignation and helplessness about these issues. In South Africa oppression and threats against individuals are much more direct, but at the same time the hope that the forces of evil will be overcome is much greater.102

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At the Covenant Project’ annual meeting in Johannesburg in February 1993, John Lamola, Kistner’s successor as the SACC’s Director of the Division of Justice and Reconciliation, stated, ‘South African communities would teach their partners to distinguish the essential from the insignificant in this world’.103 The local was especially significant in this learning process: By getting to know a village of only a few thousand inhabitants, people are made acutely aware of the extent of the systematic oppression in South Africa. The intensive engagement with a single community gives the entire apartheid policy a sharper focus which clearly shows up the injustice of the system as a whole.

West Germans said that partnerships with South Africans had taught them to ‘question their own attitudes and preconditions’ and better perceive ‘hidden structures of paternalism’104 and helped them to distance themselves from their ‘reality’ and see alternatives to their ‘personal and social lifestyle’.105 They also learned to question the wealth of the West.106 Some participating Protestants claimed to have realised through the Project that their prosperity was the result of Western imperialism. They were probably influenced by contemporary discussions of the Global North-South divide, the dependency theory107 or the Brandt Report, which was published in February 1980.108 Some Christians in the Federal Republic claimed that they themselves were complicit in the situation in South Africa and other countries of the Global South, for they believed they were the heirs of an imperial power109 and citizens of a country whose ‘economic, political, military and cultural entanglements’110 made it co-responsible for the injustice in South Africa. According to one delegate to Aktion Bundesschluss’s national conference in Saarbrucken in May 1992, ‘When accusing white South Africans, we accuse ourselves. They are the reflection of our own history’.111 It was the recognition of German colonialism, among other things, that motivated some West Germans to take part in the Covenant Project. However, they referred to this history only in vague, general terms. This is consistent with historians’ findings that the crimes that Germans committed in the colonial period did not play a significant role in public debates in Germany until the early 2000s.112 It is noteworthy that in the mid-1970s Ngeno-Zacharias Nakamhela, the Namibian pastor serving in Detmold, pointed out colonial Germany’s genocide of the Herero.113

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The topos of a new and better way to live appeared repeatedly in the reports of West German covenant partners. They hoped that the South African communities that taught them to work ‘for justice’ and ‘what ultimately matters in the world’114 would also teach them new lifestyles and forms of ecclesial community that would relieve their feelings of crisis. The sense of crisis, which was widespread in West German society in the early 1980s, was a reaction to, for example, the intensification of the Cold War, Waldsterben and social processes of individualisation. Historian Katharina Kunter characterised it as ‘enormous civil pessimism’.115 A covenant’s long-term relationship stood in contrast to the increasing complexity and accelerating pace that globalisation was initiating in the 1980s. The Covenant Project challenged existing power structures and social inequalities through the interaction of people from the West and the Global South. In South Africa, these were the power structures of the apartheid regime. The Covenant Project encouraged its participants to engage with each other’s lifestyles. As a result, West Germans questioned their own lifestyles and through that global power structures. The Project thus combined political protest with the questioning of personal lifestyles. South Africa’s transition from apartheid to democracy in the early 1990s was the turning point for the Covenant Project. Though the state’s forced removals came to an end,116 relocated communities continued to struggle with the consequences. The Covenant Project tried to help them return to their original locations and rebuild their infrastructure.117 However, this kind of solidarity work needed the public’s attention, but the public was losing interest in South Africa, for one reason because of the events that followed the revolutions in Central and Eastern Europe in 1989.118 At the same time, the turning point was an opportunity to assess whether or not the Covenant Project had been a success. Looking back over the past years in a workshop in Johannesburg in 1993, Wolfram Kistner concluded that ‘ecumenical church services at the local level’ had been the Project’s most important contribution.119 He also considered its ‘public advocacy work’ and the solidarity it had forged great successes. However, the South African communities had often failed to live up to the obligations of lived fellowship, for they had only rarely offered the exchanges that their West German partners had desired. For one reason, they were usually not as homogeneous as the West German congregations and groups in covenants with them. For another, the uncertain situation of communities threatened with forced removal hindered their

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engagement. Also, because many of the participating South Africans worked in cities and returned home at irregular times, meetings could take place only irregularly. And as the members of the communities belonged to different denominations, it was difficult for them to make binding commitments.120 Kistner pointed out that cultural differences also interfered with the principle of mutuality. For example, life in those communities did not always make it possible to write letters, and ‘Africans’ generally preferred communicating orally to writing. Furthermore, people who had never left their country found it difficult to imagine the lives of their partners, ‘a real obstacle to writing letters’.121 There had also often been complicated arguments over who in the community would make a visit overseas, arguments that the South Africans hid from outsiders, including the Covenant Project’s staff.122 But, despite Kistner’s pessimistic assessment of the lived partnerships, some covenants continued into the postapartheid era, some to the present day.

Conclusion Beginning in the 1970s, new forms of transnational Christian partnership challenged West German Protestants to reflect on their churches’ historical entanglements with South African and Namibian churches and their country’s entanglement with apartheid. These new forms of partnership were in part the result of earlier debates in worldwide Christianity about the relationship between ‘mission and church’ and churches’ political and societal responsibilities, as expressed in the Conciliar Process for Justice, Peace and the Integrity of Creation. They were also the result of discourses about the North-South divide and the East-West conflict, which influenced West German Christians’ perception of apartheid. A black Namibian’s service as the minister of a West German congregation caused uncertainty for all involved. Personal contact with him and the reports he published gave West German Protestants insight into life under apartheid. At the same time, his reversed mission made racism in West Germany visible. The partnerships that West German congregations and Christian initiatives maintained with communities in South Africa threatened with forced removals were a part of the anti-apartheid movement in West Germany. They belonged to the alternative Christian milieu that had developed through the 1970s and received new impetus from the ‘Third World’ and peace movements in the 1980s. But they were also a new form of personal

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contact and interaction between Christians of the Global North and South, which relieved West Germans’ feelings of crisis that were triggered by globalisation and the intensification of the Cold War in the early 1980s.123 Localness and directness in protest and in fellowship were central elements of these partnerships.

Notes 1. See Baldwin Sjollema, “Combating Racism: A Chapter in Ecumenical History,” The Ecumenical Review 56, no. 4 (2004): 470–479. 2. John W. de Gruchy and Steve de Gruchy, The Church Struggle in South Africa (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2005), 115. 3. The debate over whether apartheid was a heresy was initially led by Reformed churches in the early 1980s. See Neville Richardson, “Apartheid, Heresy and the Church in South Africa,” Journal of Religious Ethics 14, no. 1 (1986): 1–21; John W. de Gruchy, “Grappling with a Colonial Heritage. The English-speaking Churches under Imperialism and Apartheid,” in Christianity in South Africa. A Political, Social and Cultural History, eds. Richard Elphick and Rodney Davenport (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), 168. 4. Peter Walshe, “Christianity and the Anti-Apartheid Struggle. The Prophetic Voices within Divided Churches,” in Christianity in South Africa. A Political, Social and Cultural History, eds. Richard Elphick and Rodney Davenport (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), 390. 5. Bernard Spong and Cedric Mayson, Come Celebrate! Twenty-five Years of Work and Witness of The South African Council of Churches (Johannesburg: Communications Department of The South African Council of Churches, 1993), 88. 6. See Hanns Lessing et al., eds., The German Protestant Church in Colonial Southern Africa. The Impact of Overseas Work from the Beginnings until the 1920s (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2012). 7. See Christian Hohmann, Auf getrennten Wegen: Lutherische Missions- und Siedlergemeinden in Südafrika im Spannungsfeld der Rassentrennung. 1652–1910 (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2011); Harald E. Winkler, “The Divided Roots of Lutheranism in South Africa. A Critical Overview of the Social History of the German-speaking Lutheran Missions and the Churches Originating from their Work in South Africa” (Master thesis, University of Cape Town, 1989). 8. Dana L.  Robert, Christian Mission: How Christianity became a World Religion (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009), 71.

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9. For a brief discussion of the term ‘glocalization’ in the context of religion and the uniformity of its use, see Ugo Dessì, “Religion. Globalization and Glocalization,” in The Routledge Handbook of Transregional Studies, ed. Matthias Middell (Abingdon, Oxon, New  York, NY: Routledge, 2019), 475–81. 10. Robert, Christian Mission, 72. 11. See G. L. Buys and Shekutaamba V. V. Nambala, History of the Church in Namibia. 1805–1990. An Introduction (Windhoek: Gamsberg Macmillan, 2003), 163–64. 12. See Ngeno-Zacharias Nakamhela, “Erfahrungen eines afrikanischen Pfarrers in Deutschland,” In die Welt, für die Welt, no. 10 (1976): 172. 13. See ibid., 174. 14. See “Ngeno-Zacharias Nakamhela,” Der Spiegel, January 27, 1975, 116. 15. Nakamhela, “Erfahrungen,” 177. 16. Ibid., 178. This and all further quotes from German sources are translated by the author. 17. Ibid. 18. Ibid., 176. 19. Ibid. 20. “Ngeno-Zacharias Nakamhela,” 116. 21. See John W. de Gruchy, “The Church and the Struggle for South Africa,” Theology Today 43 (1986): 229–243; Sebastian Justke and Sebastian Tripp, “Ökonomie und Ökumene. Westdeutsche und südafrikanische Kirchen und das Apartheid-System in den 1970er- und 1980er-Jahren,” Zeithistorische Forschungen/Studies in Contemporary History 13, no. 2 (2016): 301. 22. Nakamhela, “Erfahrungen,” 174. 23. Ibid., 175 Nakamhela’s politicisation is also seen in his becoming one of the leaders of his church in Namibia who publicly opposed apartheid in the 1980s. See Peter L. Kjeseth, “The Church and Politics in Namibia,” Africa Today 36, no. 1 (1989): 19; Buys and Nambala, History, 227. 24. Following a report by the International Court of Justice from June 21, 1971, condemning South Africa’s presence in Namibia as illegal, the ELC and the ELOC published an open letter to South African Prime Minister Vorster. Dated June 30, 1971, the church leaders demanded the full implementation of human rights in Namibia and its independence. See Paul Isaak, “The Lutheran Churches’ Open Letter of 1971. The Prophetic Voice of Church and Society,” in Umstrittene Beziehungen: Protestantismus zwischen dem südlichen Afrika und Deutschland von den 1930er Jahren bis in die Apartheidzeit, ed. Hanns Lessing et al. (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2015), 389.

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25. Ngeno-Zacharias Nakamhela, “Als Namibianer in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland,” in Die Mitverantwortung der Kirchen für das zukünftige Namibia. Tagung in Verbindung mit dem Ausschuss für kirchlichen Entwicklungsdienst der Evangelischen Kirchen im Rheinland. 3. bis 5. Februar 1977, ed. Ilse Peters (Mühlheim an der Ruhr, 1977), 31–2. 26. Ibid., 32. 27. Nakamhela, “Erfahrungen,” 175. 28. Ibid., 177. 29. Ibid., 176. 30. “Ngeno-Zacharias Nakamhela,” 116. 31. See Nakamhela, “Erfahrungen,” 175. 32. Ibid. 33. Ngeno-Zacharias Nakamhela, “Partnerschaft, Einheit und Versöhnung,” In die Welt, für die Welt, 8/9 (1977): 147. 34. Ibid. 35. Black theology was introduced to South Africa and Namibia by the Protestant church leader Manas Buthelezi, who had studied in the United States in the 1960s. James Kenokeno Mashabela, “Buthelezi, Manas,” accessed November 23, 2020, https://dacb.org/stories/southafrica/ buthelezi-manas/. Black theology was also discussed in the Institute of Contextual Theology, founded in 1981 and headed by Frank Chikane, who later became vice-president of the United Democratic Front (UDF) and General Secretary of the SACC. Spong and Mayson, Come Celebrate, 90; Brian Stanley, Christianity in the twentieth century: A World History (Princeton, Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2018), 253. 36. Khosa published a book about his experiences in the Federal Republic. Andreas R. Khosa, Die Ahnen fliegen mit. Sechs Jahre im Lande Luthers (Erlangen: Verlag der Ev.-Luth. Mission, 1989). 37. Ulrich Duchrow, “Biblical and Theological Perspectives,” The Ecumenical Review 36, no. 1 (1984): 50. 38. Georg Scriba, “Wolfram Kistner,” accessed November 23, 2020, https:// dacb.org/stories/southafrica/kistner-wolfram/ 39. Ulrich Duchrow, “Mogopa - Land is Life, and Land is Justice,” in Being (the Church) beyond the South-North-Divide: Identities, Othernesses and Embodied Hermeneutics in Partnership Discourses South Africa – Germany, eds. Andrea Fröchtling and Ndanganeni Phaswana (Münster: Lit, 2003), 252. 40. Leaflet “Aktion Bundesschluss zwischen Ortsgemeinden und kirchennahen Aktionsgruppen in Deutschland und Gemeinschaften in Südafrika, die von Zwangsumsiedlung bedroht sind,” ed. Evangelisches Missionswerk (EMW) [1984], 2. 41. Duchrow, “Mogopa,” 253.

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42. See Wolfram Kistner, “Vergangenheit, Gegenwart und Zukunft des südafrikanischen Bundesschluss-Projektes,” in Wolfram Kistner. Gerechtigkeit und Versöhnung; Theologie und Kirche im Transformationsprozess des neuen Südafrika. Sammelband mit Beiträgen aus den Jahren 1985 bis 2006, ed. Rudolf Hinz et al. (Hannover: Luth. Verl.-Haus, 2008), 287–9; Dirk J.  Smit, “Covenant and Ethics? Comments from a South African Perspective,” The Annual of the Society of Christian Ethics 16 (1996): 272; Philip A.  Potter, “Called To Be a Covenant Fellowship,” The Ecumenical Review 28, no. 4 (1976): 396–406. 43. Thembeka D.  Mufamadi, “The World Council of Churches and its Programme to Combat Racism: The Evolution and Development of their Fight against Apartheid. 1969–1994,” (PhD Diss., UNISA, 2011), 190. 44. See “Statement on Southern Africa,” in Gathered for Life. Official Report. VI Assembly World Council of Churches, Vancouver, Canada 24 July – 10. August 1983, ed. David Gill (Geneva, Grand Rapids: WCC Publications; Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1983), 151–6. 45. See Emilio Castro, “Introduction,” in Vancouver to Canberra. 1983–1990. Report of the Central Committee of the World Council of Churches to the Seventh Assembly, ed. Thomas F.  Best (Geneva: WCC Publications, 1990), x; Katharina Kunter, Erfüllte Hoffnungen und zerbrochene Träume. Evangelische Kirchen in Deutschland im Spannungsfeld von Demokratie und Sozialismus (1980–1993) (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2006), 44. An immediate trigger was the imminent deployment of American Pershing II missiles in West Germany in autumn 1983. See Ulrich Duchrow, “Im Bund mit Jesus Christus, dem Leben der Welt, für Gerechtigkeit, Frieden und Bewahrung der Schöpfung,” Ökumenische Rundschau 33, no. 1 (1984) 83. 46. Konrad Raiser, “Fifty Years after the Second Vatican Council. Assessing Ecumenical Relations from the Perspective of the World Council of Churches,” The Ecumenical Review 67, no. 2 (2015): 289. 47. Melanie A.  Duguid-May, “The Ecumenical Movement,” in History of Christianity in the 20th century, ed. Jens H. Schjørring, Norman A. Hjelm and Kevin Ward (Leiden, Boston: Brill, 2018), 172. 48. “Report of the Assembly’s Programme Guidelines Committee,” in Gathered for Life. Official Report. VI Assembly World Council of Churches, Vancouver, Canada 24 July – 10. August 1983, ed. David Gill (Geneva, Grand Rapids: WCC Publications; Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1983), 255. 49. “Issues for the Churches and the WCC.  Struggling for Justice and Inhumanity,” in Gathered for Life. Official Report. VI Assembly World Council of Churches, Vancouver, Canada 24 July – 10. August 1983, ed.

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David Gill (Geneva, Grand Rapids: WCC Publications; Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1983), 89. 50. See “Statement on Peace and Justice,” in International Affairs at the Sixth Assembly, World Council of Churches. With Director’s Introduction in English, plus official translations of Statements, Resolutions and Minutes in German, French and Spanish, ed. Commission of the Churches in International Affairs, World Council of Churches (Geneva, 1983), 18. 51. See ibid., 83. 52. Stephen Brown, Von der Unzufriedenheit zum Widerspruch. Der konziliare Prozess für Gerechtigkeit, Frieden und Bewahrung der Schöpfung als Wegbereiter der friedlichen Revolution in der DDR (Frankfurt am Main: Lembeck, 2010), 66. 53. Report of the Federal Conference of the Aktion Bundesschluss, 1993, Kistner Collection, Item KC 2298, Documentation Centre for African Studies Accession 421, Unisa Archives. 54. See Ulrich Duchrow and Gerhard Liedke, Shalom. Biblical Perspectives on Creation, Justice & Peace (Geneva: WCC Publications, 1989), 188. 55. Joe Seremane, “The Covenant Project,” The Ecumenical Review 38, no. 3 (1986): 341. 56. See “Annual report: Division of Justice and Reconciliation,” Ecunews, August 1985, 36. 57. Kistner, “Vergangenheit,” 292. 58. At the LWF Assembly in Dar es Salaam in 1977, delegates imposed a ‘status confessionis’ on South Africa. A status confessionis is a decision situation in which Christians are called to confess their faith. In the case of South Africa, Christians were called upon to make a confession against apartheid. See Scriba, Georg and Gunner Lislerud, “Lutheran Missions and Churches in South Africa,” in Christianity in South Africa. A Political, Social and Cultural History, ed. Richard Elphick and Rodney Davenport (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), 193. 59. See Kistner, “Vergangenheit,” 290–92. 60. See Aktion Bundesschluss, “Gemeinschaften in Südafrika und kirchennahe Gruppen aus der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, der Schweiz und Nordamerika verbinden sich, um gemeinsam für Gerechtigkeit einzustehen. Selbstdarstellung,” March 1995, Kistner Collection, Item KC 3808, Documentation Centre for African Studies Accession 421, Unisa Archives, 50–53; Susanne Müller, “Die Aktion Bundesschluß,” in Südafrika: Die Konflikte der Welt in einem Land. Kirchen - Anwälte für Gerechtigkeit und Versöhnung, ed. Rudolf Hinz and Rainer B.  Kiefer (Hamburg: Dienste in Ubersee, 1994), 225. Before the end of apartheid, a few covenants were added, but no more than 20 can be identified. 61. Vgl. Seremane, “Covenant,” 337.

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62. In 1986, a national committee headed by a coordinator was formed in West Germany. See Karin Saarmann, “Aktion Bundesschluss  – Covenanting for Justice, Peace and the Integrity of Creation. Northern Perspectives on an Ecumenical Journey,” in Being (the Church) beyond the South-North-Divide: Identities, Othernesses and Embodied Hermeneutics in Partnership Discourses South Africa – Germany, eds. Andrea Fröchtling and Ndanganeni Phaswana (Münster: Lit, 2003), 179. 63. Eddie Makue, “The Covenant and Land Programme. Southern Perspectives on an Ecumenical Journey,” in Being (the Church) beyond the South-North-Divide: Identities, Othernesses and Embodied Hermeneutics in Partnership Discourses South Africa – Germany, eds. Andrea Fröchtling and Ndanganeni Phaswana (Münster: Lit, 2003), 170. 64. “SACC appoints fieldworkers in crisis,” Ecunews, August 1985, 9. 65. Seremane, “Covenant,” 338. 66. See, for example, the ‘Bundesschlußgruppe Ruhr’. Aktion Bundesschluss, “Gemeinschaften,” 47. 67. Leaflet “Aktion Bundesschluss,” 8–9. 68. See Makue, “Covenant,” 171. 69. Kistner, “Vergangenheit,” 296. 70. For example, in November 1985 Helga Hansi, the regional coordinator of Aktion Bundesschluss for Braunschweig, was able to inform the West German public about the burning down of the house of the black evangelist Hoffman Ghaleng during a raid by the South African police in Huhudi in the township of Vryburg. See Joachim Tröstler, “‘Aktion Bundesschluß’ – ein Bündnis für das Leben,” in Südafrika. Gruppen und Aktionen, ed. Evangelisches Missionswerk im Bereich der Bundesrepublik Deutschland und Berlin West e.V. (EMW) (Hamburg, 1986), 14. 71. See Aktion Bundesschluss, “Gemeinschaften,” 33. 72. See Aktion Bundesschluss, ed., Hoffnungswanderung für Südafrika. 9.9. bis 8.10.1989. Auswertung, Erinnerung, Dokumentation (Hamburg, 1989). 73. However, this campaign probably did not receive the same attention as the Monday demonstrations that were taking place simultaneously in the German Democratic Republic and which contributed to the Peaceful Revolution in 1989–1990. 74. For example, in Lübeck and the Ruhr area, Aktion Bundesschluss, “Gemeinschaften,” 31, 47. 75. Members of Aktion Bundesschluss saw themselves partly as part of this movement, but they also tried to preserve their independence. See Leaflet “Aktion Bundesschluss,” 6. 76. Seremane, “Covenant,” 339. 77. Report of the Federal Conference of the Aktion Bundesschluss, 1993, 1.

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78. God had made a covenant with Noah and all the inhabitants of the earth after the Flood. The rainbow was chosen as a warning sign for this covenant. See Genesis 9: 8–17. See Makue, “Covenant”, 171; Report of the Federal Conference of the Aktion Bundesschluss, 1993, 1. 79. Leaflet “Aktion Bundesschluss,” 6. 80. Ibid., 7. 81. Ibid. 82. Seremane, “Covenant,” 338. 83. Vgl. Müller, “Aktion,” 226. 84. See Claudia Lepp, “Zwischen Konfrontation und Kooperation: Kirchen und soziale Bewegungen in der Bundesrepublik,” Zeithistorische Forschungen/Studies in Contemporary History 7 (2010) 376; 1950–1983, http://www.zeithistorische-forschungen.de/16126041-Lepp-3-2010 85. Seremane, “Covenant,” 339. 86. See Tröstler, “Aktion,” 14. 87. Aktion Bundesschluss, “Gemeinschaften,” 41. 88. See Müller, “Aktion,” 225–7; Saarmann, “Aktion,” 182–3. 89. Aktion Bundesschluss, “Gemeinschaften,” 7. 90. See Saarmann, “Aktion,” 183–84. A ‘financial basis was laid by a donation from the Deutsche Evangelische Kirchentag (German Protestant Church Convention) which handed the offering of a closing service over to Aktion Bundesschluss in 1985’. See ibid., 184. 91. See Leaflet “Aktion Bundesschluss,” 9. This was analogous to practices of the WCC, which since the early 1970s had not demanded proof of the use of funds allocated to racially oppressed groups in the Global South through the Special Fund of the PCR. See Sjollema, “Combating Racism,” 474. 92. At a conference of national delegates in Aurich in May 1994, the Aktion Bundesschluss decided that financial contributions were not ‘at the centre of the connection, as is the case with conventional development partnerships’ and that they should ‘at most’ be understood as ‘one sign among others’. See Aktion Bundesschluss, “Gemeinschaften,” 9. 93. See Leaflet “Aktion Bundesschluss,” 9. 94. Seremane, “Covenant,” 339. 95. Kerstin Moeller and Adelheid Wiedenmann, “Die Aktion Bundesschluß. Notwendigkeit und Schwierigkeit von Solidaritätsarbeit,” EPK. Entwicklungspolitischer Korrespondenz 24, no. 2 (1993): 35. 96. KC 3808, pdf 8. 97. “Annual Report: Division of Justice and Reconciliation,” Ecunews, August 1985, 36. 98. Aktion Bundesschluss, “Gemeinschaften,” 7. 99. Leaflet “Aktion Bundesschluss,” 4.

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100. Seremane, “Covenant,” 340. 101. The concept of consciousness raising is closely linked to Paulo Freire’s liberation pedagogy and appeared repeatedly in the self-representations of Aktion Bundesschluss. See, for example, Leaflet “Aktion Bundesschluss,” 6. 102. Seremane, “Covenant,” 339. 103. Report of the Federal Conference of the Aktion Bundesschluss, 1993, 3. 104. See Aktion Bundesschluss, “Gemeinschaften,” 7. 105. Ibid., 9. 106. See ibid., 11. 107. The dependence theory originated in South America in the 1950s and 1960s and was based on the assumption that the lack of development and modernisation in South America and other countries of the Global South was the result of colonialism and dependence on Western developed countries. See James Mahoney and Diana Rodríguez-Franco, “Dependency Theory,” in The Oxford Handbook of the Politics of Development, ed. Carol Lancaster and Nicolas van de Walle (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2018), 22–42. 108. Willy Brandt, North-South. A Programme for Survival. Report of the Independent Commission on International Development (London: Pan Books, 1980). 109. In this context, some West Germans saw support for South African communities as ‘reparation work’ (‘Wiedergutmachungsarbeit’). See “Landreform und Rücksiedlungsbewegung in Südafrika und die Aktion Bundesschluss. Entwicklungen in Südafrika und Schritte unserer Arbeit hier. Referat auf der Bundesdelegiertenkonferenz der Aktion Bundesschluss in Saarbrücken vom 8.-10. Mai 1992“, 6, Kistner Collection, Item KC 2131, Documentation Centre for African Studies Accession 421, Unisa Archives. 110. Leaflet “Aktion Bundesschluss,” 5. 111. “Landreform und Rücksiedlungsbewegung,” 5. 112. See Reinhart Kößler, Namibia and Germany: Negotiating the Past (Windhoek: University of Namibia, 2015). 113. See Nakamhela, “Erfahrungen,” 178. 114. Müller, “Aktion,” 226. 115. Kunter, Hoffnungen, 165. 116. Vgl. Moeller and Wiedenmann, “Aktion,” 34–5. 117. Müller, “Aktion,” 229. 118. “Landreform und Rücksiedlungsbewegung,” 1; Kistner, “Vergangenheit,” 299. 119. Ibid., 294.

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120. Ibid., 294–5. 121. Ibid. 122. Ibid., 297. 123. See Kunter, Hoffnungen, 167.

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Index1

A AA Enterprises (AAE), 71–85, 144 Abend, Gabriel, 50 Activism, 10, 12, 50, 59, 63, 71–85, 114, 117, 119, 120, 148, 154, 155, 188 Afrikaners, 5, 7, 9, 163–178, 208, 211 Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging (AWB), 176 African National Congress (ANC), 6, 15, 30, 39, 52, 53, 74, 76, 81, 84, 119, 120, 142, 147, 150–153, 155, 176, 187, 190, 191, 193–196, 198, 217, 218, 236 in exile, 6, 15, 190, 191, 217 Ahmed, Rehana, 129 Aktion Bundesschluss, 230, 235–244, 250n62, 250n75, 251n92, 252n101, 252n109 Albertini, Pierre-André, 194, 195

Algerian War, 191, 192 Alphaville, 152 Altamont, 141 Amandla, 150 Ameling, Elly, 167 Amsterdam, 150, 153, 163, 176, 178 Angola, 27, 77, 82, 195 Anti-apartheid, 3, 5, 6, 9, 10, 12, 14, 16n10, 18n36, 28, 49–63, 71–77, 79, 80, 82–85, 88n63, 95, 104, 114–117, 120, 127, 129, 132, 133, 139–156, 164, 165, 167, 169–172, 177, 188–192, 195–199, 200n5, 200n12, 206, 210, 217, 237–239, 241 Anti-apartheid movement (AAM) Anti-Apartheid Beweging Nederland (AABN), 167, 176 Anti-Apartheid Bewegung (AAB), 151–154

 Note: Page numbers followed by ‘n’ refer to notes.

1

© The Author(s) 2021 K. Andresen et al. (eds.), Apartheid and Anti-Apartheid in Western Europe, Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-53284-0

259

260 

INDEX

Anti-Apartheid (cont.) Anti Apartheid Movement (AAM), 10, 49, 50, 53–59, 63n5, 71–81, 84, 95, 96, 113–115, 125, 139–149, 151–153, 155, 156, 161, 164 Mouvement Anti-Apartheid (MAA), 193, 195–197 Anti-apartheid movement (general), 2, 3, 5, 6, 8–10, 12–14, 28, 29, 55, 60, 63, 85, 96, 116, 140, 145, 148, 150–152, 154, 156n7, 164, 165, 167, 170, 173, 178, 188–191, 194–196, 198, 199, 208, 210, 219, 239, 241, 244 Anti-Apartheid News, 73, 80 Anti-colonial, 14, 114, 117, 188, 189 Anti-communist, 6, 193, 194 Anti-fascist, 189 Apartheid “Grand,” 36 “petty,” 8, 173, 174, 219 Arcueil, 196 Artistes du monde contre l’apartheid, 197 Artists Against Apartheid (AAA), 78, 143, 145–147, 149, 150, 152, 197 Association française d’amitié et de solidarité avec les peuples d’Afrique (AFASPA), 193, 195 Attridge, Derek, 116 Austin, David, 119 Australia, 80 Australian Business Review Weekly, 56 Azanian People’s Organization (AZAPO), 198 B Bacon, Francis, 93 Baden, 235

Baker, Josephine, 189 Banks Barclays, 52–55, 73 Chase Manhattan Bank, 51 Riksbank, 37 Bantustan, 128, 235 Barnard, Christiaan, 97–99, 101, 102, 108n35 Bayrische Motorenwerke (BMW), 36, 38 Berlin, 154, 219 Bethlehem, Louise, 106n12, 116 Beyond the Fringe, 93 Biko, Steve, 8, 169 Black British Writing, 113–133 Black Consciousness Movement (BCM), 114, 193, 194, 198, 199 Bläck Fööss, 154 Black Parents Movement (BPM), 117 Black Power movement, 114 Blaiberg, Philip, 97, 102, 109n58 Blanchot, Maurice, 198 Blohm, Heinrich, 34 ‘The Blood Donor’ (Till Death Us Do Part), 94 Bochum, 153 The Body Shop, 79 Bophuthatswana, 126, 146, 166, 235 Botha, Pieter Willem, 9, 61, 83, 114, 148, 195, 205, 206, 214–216, 219–221 Botha, Pik, 215, 220 Boycott consumer, 12, 28, 49, 51, 55, 63, 63n5, 80, 169, 193 cultural, 140, 141, 146–148, 163–178, 197 economic, 2 Bragg, Billy, 143, 144, 150 Brandt, Willy, 29, 154 Brem, Martin, 148 Breytenbach, Beryten, 170, 175, 176

 INDEX 

Brink, André, 170, 171, 175 British Anti-Apartheid Movement (AAM), 5, 140, 191 British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), 95–97, 103, 105, 106n9, 107n20, 142, 143 British Empire, 124, 125, 167, 168 British Musicians Union (BMU), 147 Brook, Peter, 196 Bundesverband der deutschen Industrie (BDI), 35, 36, 38, 41n2 Business International Conference, 51, 64n17, 68n123 Business organisations South Africa, 6, 9 Sweden, 6, 28 West Germany, 6, 25, 28, 33 Buthelezi, Mangosuthu, 120–122, 127 Butler, Jonathan, 149 C Campagne anti-Outspan (CAO), 192 Campaign, 9, 26–28, 36, 49–63, 72, 73, 77–79, 81–84, 96, 107n25, 140–142, 144–146, 150, 152, 192–197, 206, 207, 212, 235, 238, 250n73 Campkin-Smith, Dale, 31 Canada, 237 Canon Aubert, 189 Cape to Cape, 150 Cape Town, 52, 97, 98, 130, 149 Ceaușescu, Nicolae, 118 Champion, George, 51 Chase Manhattan Bank, 51 Chile, 27 Chirac, Jacques, 194 Christian Concern for Southern Africa (CCSA), 53

261

Christlich Demokratische Union (CDU), 209 Christlich Soziale Union (CSU), 212, 213, 220, 222n20 Churches Evangelical Church in Germany (EKD), 232, 236 Lutheran World Federation (LWF), 230 North Elbian Evangelical Lutheran Church, 238 South African Council of Churches (SACC), 229, 235, 237, 238, 242 World Alliance of Reformed Churches (WARC), 230 World Council of Churches (WCC), 11, 229–231, 236, 237, 239 Ciskei, 194 City Limits, 83 Civil rights movement, 8, 114 Clapham Common, 78, 145 The Clash, 147 Clegg, Johnny, 140, 147 Coca-Cola, 149 Code of conduct, Kodex Ethicus, 30 Coffee, 77, 81, 82, 89n63 Cold war, 3, 7, 8, 94, 118, 188, 191, 193–195, 200n5, 236, 243, 245 Collaboration, 53, 82, 142, 168, 187, 188, 190, 198, 214 Collins, Canon John, 190 Colonialism/colonial, 4, 7, 8, 27, 82, 115, 123–126, 164, 165, 168, 171, 177, 230, 240, 242, 252n107 Come Back Africa, benefit concert, 104 Comedy, 93, 94, 97, 98, 101, 104, 106n9

262 

INDEX

Comité anti-apartheid, 190, 191 Comité de liaison contre l’apartheid, 189–191 Comité d’organisation de campagnes d’information sur l’Afrique australe (COCIAA), 192 Comité français Nelson Mandela libre, 199 Comité pour la justice et l’égalité en Afrique du Sud, 189 Comité special de lutte contre l’apartheid en Afrique australe, 191 Commonwealth, 56, 96, 188 The Communards, 150 Communist Party of Great Britain, 144 Communists, 118, 188, 193–195, 199 Concerts, 1, 12, 13, 58, 78, 85, 104, 139–156 audiences, 142, 143 Conciliar Process, 236, 237, 244 Constructive engagement, 26, 38, 52, 54, 58, 59 Consumption, 10, 12, 76–79, 83, 193 consumer products, 76–79 Copenhagen, 151 Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), 13 Costello, Elvis, 150 Covenant, 230, 236–241, 243, 244, 249n60 Covenant Project, 230, 235–244 Crane, David, 59 Critical dialogue, 6, 26, 169 Cultural boycott, 140, 141, 146–148, 163–178, 197 Cultural Register, 166, 167, 176 Culture in Another South Africa (CASA), 153, 176, 178

D The Daily Mail, 97, 104 Daily Mirror, 98, 99, 101, 103 Dammers, Jerry, 143, 145, 146, 149 Dankworth, Johnny, 104 Darvall, Denise, 97, 98, 102 Davis, Sammy Jr, 104, 110n74 Day, Martin, 56 De Balie, 163 de Félice, Jean-Jacques, 189 de Gaulle, Charles, 188 De Klerk, F. W., 59, 118, 212 de Massot, François, 194 de Seynes, Catherine, 197 De Telegraaf, 172 de Villiers, Dawie, 212 de Volkskrant, 174 De Waarheid, 172 Decolonisation, 125, 164, 168, 171, 230, 231, 234 Democracy, 3, 12, 13, 38, 52, 59, 93, 118, 119, 243 Denmark, 9, 35, 150 Denselow, Robin, 140 Department of Information (DOI), 96, 207 Department of Foreign Affairs, 224n46 Dérens, Jacqueline, 193, 196 Derrida, Jacques, 123, 197, 198 Detmold, 231–235, 242 Diop, Alioune, 189 Dortmund, 151 du Toit, Major Wynand, 195 Dubow, Saul, 6, 109n54, 116, 207, 217 Duchrow, Ulrich, 235–237 Durban, 61 Dutch Boycott Outspan Action (Boykott Outspan Aktie, BOA), 192

 INDEX 

E Ecumenical movement, 11, 230, 231, 234, 236, 237 Embargo, 52–57, 59 End Loans to Southern Africa (ELTSA), 56 Enzensberger, Hans Magnus, 141 Equity, 166, 167 Essen, 240 Ester, Hans, 175 Esterhuyse, Willie, 217 European Community (EC), 6, 9, 13, 34, 35, 37–40 European Economic Community (EEC), 53, 56 European Political Co-operation (EPC), 6, 35 Eurythmics, 147 Evening Standard, 99 Everywoman, 81 Executives, management, 27 F Fair trade movement, 77, 81, 88–89n63 Falcke, Heino, 237 Fanon, Frantz, 191 Fédération des étudiants d’Afrique noire en France (FEANF), 190 Festivals (music) African Sounds Festival, 141 Beat Apartheid! Festival, 147, 150, 151 Clapham Common Festival, 78 Come Back Africa, 104 Glastonbury Festival, 81, 143 Live Aid, 78, 142, 149, 152 Nelson Mandela’s 70th Birthday Tribute Concert, 10, 58 Woodstock, 141 Flooks, Ian, 147

263

Folkhemment (the people’s home), 28 Fondation culturelle contre l’apartheid, 197 Forced removals, 237–239, 243, 244 Forced resettlement, 235 Foreign Affairs Association (FAA), 211, 214 Fourth International, 194 Fox Broadcasting Company, 144 France, 3, 6, 7, 9, 28, 187–190, 192–195, 198, 199, 200n12, 208 Frankfurt, 153 Freedom Productions Ltd, 144 Freie Demokratische Partei (FDP), 212 French anti-apartheid, 187–199 French anti-apartheid solidarity, 188–192, 197, 199 French Communist Party (PCF), 187, 194–196 French Left, 188, 190, 194 Friedman, Milton, 50 Fugard, Athol, 196 Fundraising, 73, 77–80 G Garnett, Alf (Till Death Us Do Part), 94, 99–105 Garnett, Else (Till Death Us Do Part), 94, 99–102 Garnett, Rita (Till Death Us Do Part), 94, 99–101 Geldof, Bob, 142 General Motors, 34 Genscher, Hans-Dietrich, 36, 37, 212 German-South African Chamber of Commerce, 34, 37, 208, 219 German-South African Society (DSAG), 34, 44n47, 208, 209

264 

INDEX

Germany Federal Republic of Germany/West Germany (FRG), 7, 9, 26, 35, 46n74, 140, 207, 215 German Democratic Republic (GDR), 250n73 “Third Reich,” 125 Giddens, Anthony, 193 Gilroy, Paul, 100, 125 Glasgow, 142 Globalisation, 117, 230, 243, 245 Global South, 3, 4, 7, 11, 12, 15, 230, 231, 237, 242, 243, 252n107 Glocalization, 230, 246n9 Goldberg, Whoopi, 144 Gonomo, John, 38 Gordimer, Nadine, 198 Gothenburg, 31, 151 Graceland, 140, 147, 148, 167, 177 Great Britain, 6, 7, 9, 28, 29, 95, 99, 144, 145, 147, 150, 152, 153, 155, 156, 165–167, 188, 190, 206, 208, 210, 211, 221 Great Trek, 167 Greenpeace, 147 Grönemeyer, Herbert, 154 Gruppo Sportivo, 150 The Guardian, 29, 59, 110n74 H Hall, Stuart, 113–115, 124, 125, 132, 144, 145, 193 Hallström, Mats, 32 Hamburg, 151, 218 Hanns Seidel Foundation, 220 Haringey, 56 Harris, Roger, 73–75, 78, 79, 84 Haupt, Clive, 97, 98 Havenaar, Ronald, 171

Head, Bessie, 170 Heart transplants, 94, 97–98, 102, 105 Henkes, Barbara, 164 Hennenhofer, Gerd, 206, 211–215, 217–221 Hennenhofer PR, 206, 215–218, 220 Herero, 242 Herero and Nama genocide, 242 Hermans, Emmy, 171 Hermans, Willem Frederik, 163–165, 167, 170–178 Hermannsburg Mission Society, 235 Het Parool, 174 Holland Committee on South Africa, 52 Hollingsworth, Tony, 143–146, 148, 151, 155 Holmes, Peter, 54 Homelands, 123–128, 146, 166, 194, 212, 218 Honecker, Erich, 118 Houston, Whitney, 144 Huddleston, Trevor, 96, 145 Human & Rousseau, 171, 173 Human rights, 3, 5, 9, 12, 14, 15, 27, 28, 40, 41, 51, 61, 77, 131, 141, 164, 190 Human Rights Day, 235 Husák, Gustáv, 118 Hyde Park, 141, 142 I IKON, 171 Immigration (Britain), 124 Imperialism/imperial, 99, 100, 125, 141, 230, 242 Imperial Oil Company SA (Ltd.), 52 In die Welt, für die Welt, 232–234 Indonesia, 168, 171, 172, 174 Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP), 120

 INDEX 

The Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility (ICCR), 60 Interkerkelijke Omroep Nederland (IKON), 171 International Book Fair of Radical Black and Third World Books, 117 International Council of the Swedish Economy, 31 International Defence and Aid Fund (IDAF), 104, 190, 195 International Institut Haus Rissen, 218 Investment disinvestment, 26, 38, 54–57, 60–62, 229 divestment, 9, 13, 49, 52, 54, 55, 63n2 investment ban, 32 Isle of Wight, 141 Israelite Central Consistory of France, 189 J James, C.L.R., 119 Japan, 80 Jeunesse Communistes, 195 Johannesburg, 31, 34, 37, 219, 235, 237, 238, 240, 242, 243 John, Elton, 166, 167 Johnson, Linton Kwesi, 115, 117–122, 127, 128, 132 Joint Action Against Apartheid (JAAA), 56 Jolly, Rosemary, 116 Jonckheere, Wilfred, 170, 178 K Kádár, Jáno, 118 Kairos, 52, 54, 57

265

Kalahari Surfers, 147 Kani, John, 196, 197 Katzin, Donna, 60 Khosa, Ruben, 235 Kimmich, Erika, 219 Kistner, Wolfram, 235, 237, 241–244 Kleinschmidt, Horst, 195 Kline, John M., 27, 51 Koerber, Eberhard, 36 Kohl, Helmut, 205 Köhler, Volkmar, 220 Komité Zuidelijk Afrika (KZA), 167, 176 Kommerskollegium (National Board of Trade, Sweden), 31 Kuik, Hilbert, 170 Kunene, Mazisi, 170 Kureishi, Hanif, 115, 128–132 Kwa-Ngema, 240 L La Guma, Alex, 170 Labour Party, 104, 149, 150 Labour Reforms in South Africa, 38 Labrousse, Elisabeth, 189 Ladysmith Black Mambazo, 154 Lamming, George, 115 Lamola, John, 242 Langa, 54, 149, 189 Lecoq, Dominique, 198 Ledin, Tomas, 151 Left, 35, 57, 96, 141, 145, 146, 148, 152, 188, 190, 191, 193, 199, 244 Leistner, Gerhard, 217, 219 Leland, John, 143 Les Quatre Chemins, 196, 197 Liberal party of Germany (FDP), 223n37

266 

INDEX

Liberation movement, 4, 8, 11, 14, 15, 28, 81, 85, 188, 192, 194, 198, 199 Lichtenstein, Roy, 197 Lifestyle(s), 10, 12, 13, 83, 154–156, 242, 243 Ligue de l’Enseignement, 189, 200n9 Lindenberg, Udo, 151 Ling, Margaret, 73–75, 77–79, 84 Lissitzky, El, 149 Live Aid, 78, 142, 149, 152 Lochard, Pastor Jacques, 189 London, 51–53, 56, 62, 72, 73, 75, 80, 83, 117, 124, 128, 129, 131, 132, 140–142, 152, 196, 197 Borough of Camden, 74 Los Angeles Sentinel, 98 Louw, Eric, 207 M Mabogoane, Meshack, 218 Magnusson, Ǻke, 30, 32 Mail-order catalogue, 73, 75, 76, 85 Mainz, 151 Makeba, Miriam, 1, 147 Mandela, Nelson, 1, 10, 58, 59, 78, 79, 84, 85, 118, 120–122, 139–156, 178, 188, 197–199 Mann, Siegfried, 25 Manufacturing sector, 33 Marais, Jan, 212 Marchais, Georges, 195 Maritime Unions Against Apartheid, 53 Marketing, 73–76, 78, 144, 155 Marof, Achkar, 104 Marxism Today, 80, 144 Masekela, Barbara, 176, 177 Masekela, Hugh, 147 Mathiot, Elisabeth, 189 May, Theresa, 124

McGill, Robert, 121, 122 McInnes, Colin, 115 Media, 1, 2, 4, 10, 12, 55, 71, 77, 78, 83, 95, 96, 98, 139, 143, 152, 155, 156, 163, 165, 167, 168, 170, 171, 174, 178, 206–212, 214, 215, 218, 220, 238 Merchandise, 13, 72, 75–84, 88n63, 144 Michael, George, 144, 149 Mission Rhenish Missionary Society, 231, 232 United Evangelical Mission(UEM), 232 Mitterrand, François, 187, 194 Mlangeni, Andrew, 197 Mogopa, 235 Monty Python and the Flying Circus, 93 Mouvement anti-apartheid (MAA), 193, 195–197 Mouvement contre le racisme et pour l’amitié entre les peuples (MRAP), 191 Mozambique, 76, 77, 81, 82, 85 Mulder, Cornelius (Connie), 206, 209, 210, 213, 214 Muldergate, 206, 213–220 Multinational companies, 5, 10, 26, 39–41 Music festivals (see Festivals (music)), 143 folk music, 143, 155 jazz, 155 pop music, 71, 139–156 press; Bravo, 153; Musik Express/ Sounds, 152; New Musical Express, 152; punk, 150, 152; Spex, 152 Muskens, Roeland, 5, 164, 165, 171, 176

 INDEX 

N Nakamhela, Ngeno-Zacharias, 231–235, 242 Namibia, 7, 52, 53, 57, 83, 84, 153, 208, 209, 212, 213, 215, 216, 229–245 National Party (NP), 8, 96, 107n18, 119, 121, 168, 206, 208, 209, 212, 217, 219 National Union of Students (NUS), 50, 81 Nederlands Zuid-Afrikaanse Vereniging (NZAV), 169, 170 Nel, Louis, 212 Nelson Mandela International Committee, 198 Nelson Mandela’s 70th Birthday Tribute Concert, 10, 58 Neo-colonialism, 190 The Netherlands, 3, 5, 7, 9, 147, 150–154, 163–178, 208, 210, 235, 237 Neuenkirchen, 235 New social movements, 141, 148 New Statesman, 81 New strategy, 30, 32, 147, 198, 206, 210, 215 Nicaragua, 82 Niedecken, Wolfgang, 154 Nijmegen, 175 Nkosi, Lewis, 117, 170 Norway, 150 NRC Handelsblad, 175, 176 Ntshona, Winston, 196 Nuremberg, 153 O O’Donovan, Sean, 56 Olivier, Gerrit, 217

267

Orange Free State, 167 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), 60 Organization of African Unity (OAU), 52 Outspan boycott, 169 Oxfam, 75, 79 P Paasch, Rolf, 152 Pagan International, 57 Palme, Olof, 197 Pan-African, 189 Pan-Africanism, 114, 194 Pan-Africanist Congress (PAC), 193, 194, 198, 199 Paris, 15, 171, 187, 191, 196 Parti communiste français (PCF), 187, 194–196 Partnership, 11, 229–245 Pax Christi International, 189 Pelikan, 36 Percival, Lance, 122 Perryman, Mark, 143 Pietermaritzburg, 235 Potter, Philip, 236 Présence Africaine, 189, 191 The Pretenders, 147 Pretoria, 37, 60, 96, 188, 190, 193, 207–210, 213, 215–221 Programme to Combat Racism (PCR), 11, 18n36, 229, 231, 251n91 Progressive Federal Party, 217 Propaganda, 8, 15, 16n14, 95, 96, 171, 193, 197, 205–221 Protest, 10, 16n10, 55, 56, 59, 71–73, 77, 83, 94, 96, 103–105, 114, 116, 117, 141–142, 144, 151, 155, 187, 190, 196–199, 207, 212, 221, 238, 241, 243, 245

268 

INDEX

Q Quambusch, Liesel, 38, 39 Queen (band), 166, 167 R Rabbi Schille, 189 Race relations (Britain), 95, 99, 124 Race Today Collective, 117 Racism, 2, 4, 5, 7, 8, 10, 13–14, 26, 27, 40, 95, 104, 105, 114–117, 122–124, 127–133, 168, 170, 180n21, 191, 234, 236, 241, 244 Radio, 171 Radio Freedom, 150 Radio Mandela, 152 Raiser, Konrad, 236 Ramaphosa, Cyril, 38 Rauschenbach, Rolf, 219 Record companies, 148 Red Wedge, 149, 150 Reform, Botha reform, 215, 219, 220 Rencontre nationale contre l’apartheid (RNCA), 196 Rhoodie, Eschel, 209–212, 214, 215 Rock Against Racism, 141, 145, 150, 152 Rock gegen Rechts, 152 Rowe, David, 51 Royal Dutch Petroleum Company, 52 Royal Dutch Shell, 52, 53, 56 Rushdie, Salman, 115, 122–128, 130–132 S Saarbrucken, 242, 252n109 Sachs, Albie, 127 Sampson, Anthony, 51 Sanctions, 6, 25–41, 52, 54, 61, 80, 82, 101, 143, 165–167, 169, 190, 217, 218, 220, 221, 229

Sanyal, Debarati, 116 Sartre, Jean-Paul, 190, 191 Save the children, 79 Scandinavia, 150–154 Schmücker, Toni, 36, 37 Schutte, Gerrit, 170 Second World War, 4, 124–126, 168, 188, 190, 192 Seidman, Gay, 50, 62 Sekar, Chandra, 145, 146 Selvon, Sam, 115 Senghor, Léopold Sedar, 189 Sepamla, Sipho, 170 September, Dulcie, 15, 195, 196 Seremane, Joe, 237, 240, 241 Serfontein, Hennie, 171–173, 175 Sethi, S. Prakash, 51 Sharma, Shailja, 127 Sharpeville, 3, 7, 54, 169, 189, 207, 208 Shell, 49–63 Shell Company of South Africa Limited, 52 Shell Nederland, 58 Shell Transport and Trading Company, 52 Shipping Research Bureau, 52 Siegumfeldt, Jørgen, 148 Simon, Paul, 140, 147, 167, 177 Simons, Hein “Heintje”, 167 Simple Minds, 1, 144 Sisulu, Walter, 197 Skilled labour, 27, 39 The Slits, 150 Sluyterman, Keetie, 61 Socialist, 29, 104, 118, 188, 195, 199 Socialist Party (France), 193 Solidarity, 4, 8, 10, 13, 32, 36, 56, 71, 72, 75–77, 80–85, 102, 114–122, 127, 151, 153, 154, 164, 187–199, 235, 239–241, 243 Solomon, Marcus, 198

 INDEX 

Sontag, Susan, 197 Sony, Wreck, 147 SOS Racisme, 195 Soulages, Pierre, 197 South Africa, 2, 25–41, 49, 73, 94, 115, 140, 164, 187–199, 206, 229–245 South Africa Act (Sydafrikalag, Sweden), 32, 40 South Africa Committee (Swedish Parliament), 37 South Africa Foundation (SAF), 95, 207–209, 219, 222n20 South African business, 27, 30, 34, 39, 40, 207 South African Communist Party (SACP), 194 South African Employers’ Association, 34 South African liberation movement, 15, 188, 199 South African War (1899–1902), 7, 168, 170 South West Africa People’s Organization (SWAPO), 53, 74, 76, 81, 84, 193 Soweto, 8, 61, 212 Sparks, Stephen, 56 Special A.K.A., 142, 197 Speight, Johnny, 93, 98, 103–105 Stamverwantschap, 9, 167–169, 177 Stark, Jürgen, 152 Status confessionis, 237, 249n58 Status Quo, 147 Stedelijk Museum, 176 Stellenbosch, 173, 217 Stercken, Hans, 220 Stern, Lord Nicholas, 49 Stichting VN-jaar voor de sancties tegen Zuid-Afrika, 167 Sting, 149

269

Strauß, Franz Josef, 209 Style Council, 150 Subsidiaries, 6, 9, 27–31, 33, 37, 39, 40, 52–54, 56–58, 61, 76 Sullivan, Leon, 34, 35 Sullivan Principles, 34, 45n49 The Sun, 98 Sun City, 142, 146, 147, 166, 167 The Sunday Telegraph, 98 Sunday Times, 103 Svenska Kullagerfabriken (SKF), 31, 33 Sveriges Industriförbundet (Swedish National Federation of Industry), 30 Sweden, 3, 6, 7, 9, 15, 26–34, 36–40, 42n6, 46n74, 150, 151, 154, 155 Swedish Employers’ Association, 29, 30 Switzerland, 187, 191, 237 Sydafrikakomiteen Denmark, 151 T Die tageszeitung (taz), 152 Talking Heads, 147 Tambo, Oliver, 236 Tanzania, 82 Telemacque, Piers, 50 Television, 1, 13, 93–105, 123, 139, 142, 143, 149–151, 153, 171, 174, 232 Teller, Al, 148 Terreblanche, Sampie, 217 Terry, Mike, 139, 142 Thatcher, Margaret, 15, 78, 114, 142, 149 Théâtre de l’Essaïon, 196, 197 “Third World,” 13, 77, 164, 188, 191, 192, 231, 238, 244 This Was the Week that Was, 93

270 

INDEX

Thomas, Susie, 115 Thörn, Håkan, 2, 5, 14, 28, 50, 73, 85n4, 154, 164, 193, 200n5 Till Death Us Do Part, 94, 98, 103, 104, 106n10 Time Out, 83 Tomorrow’s World, 97 Took, Barry, 94 Tookey, Richard, 55, 56, 66n56 Tosh, Peter, 150 Toulson, David, 139, 143, 155 Trade unions Metalworkers’ Union; Sweden, 32; West Germany, 38 Traidcraft, 75, 79 Transkei, 126, 212 Transnational anti-apartheid movement, 189, 198, 199 Transvaal, 167, 168, 209 Trignon, Marcel, 196 Trouw, 171, 172 Tsiranana, Philibert, 189 The Twinkle Brothers, 117 TWIN Trading, 79 U Uitenhage, 38 Union nationale des étudiants de France (UNEF), 190 United Democratic Front (UDF), 147, 194, 198, 247n35 United Kingdom (UK), 3, 6, 49, 54, 65n35, 77, 82, 84, 85, 86n26, 93, 95–97, 99, 100, 105, 113–117, 120, 122–126, 129–133, 139, 145, 149–152, 154, 195, 197, 210, 211 United Nations (UN) Global Compact, 60

Special Committee against Apartheid, 104, 189 United States of America (USA), 6, 15, 17n20, 26, 28, 34, 35, 80, 141, 144, 145, 149, 150, 172, 188, 206–208, 210, 211, 221, 237 University of Fort Hare, 194 University of the Western Cape (UWC), 149 V van den Bergh, Erik, 54, 57, 62 van den Heuvel, A.H., 172, 173 van Dis, Adriaan, 173, 174 van Veen, Frits, 174 van Wijnen, Harry, 174, 175 Van Zandt, Steven, 147, 149 Vancouver, 236 Variava, Sadecque, 198 Vergangenheitsbewältigung, 125 Verwoerd, Hendrik, 128, 207 Vietnam War, 191 Volkswagen (VW), 34, 36, 38, 44n47 von Lojewski, Günther, 153 von Lucius, Robert, 149 Vorster, Balthazar Johannes (John), 96, 210, 214, 233, 246n24, 247n35 W Wärneby, Olle, 31 War on Want, 53, 56, 65n35 Washington, D.C., 57 Washkansky, Louis, 97, 98, 101–103 Watkins, Desmond, 51, 57, 62 Weekly Mail, 61 Wekker, Gloria, 164, 165

 INDEX 

Wembley Stadium, 78, 85, 139, 140, 142, 147, 149 West Indian Standing Committee (WISC), 114 Wick, Ingeborg, 151–153 Wiegand, Wilfried, 149 Wiehahn, Nic, 38 Wiehe, Mikael, 151 Williams, Elizabeth, 114, 115 Williams, Oliver F., 51 Wilson, John, 53, 54, 60–62 Windrush generation, 115, 124 Wolfsburg, 34

Woodstock, 141 Working Group Kairos, 52, 54 The World Bank, 49 Y Yentob, Allan, 142 Z Zhivkov, Todor, 118 Zimbabwe, 76, 77, 82

271