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Home , 2019 Johannesburg riots, Africa Action, Allan Boesak, Apartheid, Area committee, Barbara Masekela

“The Transnational and Local Dimensions of the U.S. Anti- Movement”

Dissertation

Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in

the Graduate School of The Ohio State University

By

Robert Zebulun Larson

Graduate Program in History

The Ohio State University

2019

Dissertation Committee

Dr. Peter Hahn, Advisor

Dr. Jennifer Siegel, Advisor

Dr. Mitch Lerner

Dr. R. Joseph Parrott

Copyrighted by Robert Zebulun Larson 2019

Abstract

This dissertation analyzes the creation and cultivation of the movement to oppose South

African apartheid in the . The anti-apartheid movement is frequently cited as one of the most successful protest movements of the twentieth century, both because of its scale as well as its success in enacting sanctions against South despite a number of considerable obstacles. Less attention has been paid to how the anti-apartheid movement in the United States cultivated such a broad following. It would be a mistake to assume that because most people found apartheid to be morally repugnant, a movement capable of effectively lobbying the U.S. government was a historical inevitability. The dissertation analyzes the transnational dimensions

of the anti-apartheid movement to study how a national constituency was built. This analysis opens up facets of the anti-apartheid movement in the United States, namely its local and grassroots dimensions, as well as the ways in which transnational actors shaped national committees. This analytical approach reveals that opposition to apartheid was cast in a variety of ways: opposition to , critiques of global , organized labor struggles, anti-nuclear proliferation, and peace activism were all different facets of the U.S. anti-apartheid movement during its existence. The significance of this analysis shows how the movement was sustained for a long period of time, how it succeeded, and the legacy of the anti-apartheid movement today.

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Dedicated to Prexy Nesbitt, Jennifer Davis, and Dumisani Kumalo

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Acknowledgements

Graduate study is nothing if not a lonely endeavor; a PhD in the humanities is doubly so.

I have certainly embraced that of the solitary graduate student writing at odd hours of

the night or mumbling to themselves wherever they might be working. As I take stock of the

process, I’m struck by the extent to which this dissertation was in fact a profoundly collaborative

effort and was shaped by a great many people.

First and foremost, this dissertation exists because of the instructors and advisors that I’ve

been fortunate to have. At The Ohio State University, Peter Hahn and Jennifer Siegel offered

thoughtful feedback and supported the project from its inception, as well as being willing to

write a small flood of letters of recommendation and introduction. Robert McMahon oversaw the

research seminar where I first began to write about African liberation activism and the first draft

of my second chapter; his comments and feedback helped to shape everything that was to come.

Mitch Lerner has consistently been a source of advice and encouragement. Joe Parrott’s advice and suggestions went a long way in turning the evidence and observations I had made into a cohesive, structured dissertation that I can take a measure of pride in, as well as encouraging me to continue digging into the topic.

Scholars outside of OSU have been equally generous with their time and advice. Nicholas

Grant at the University of East Anglia generously talked with me at length, shared advice, and offered to read drafts. Manna Duah and Brian McNamara at , two fellow graduate students who read drafts of my work at conferences, and with whom I have had the good fortune to remain in contact. Bill Minter offered to read drafts of my work, and with almost alarming speed was able to give me incisive feedback both about facts that had escaped my

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attention as well as broader trends in the anti-apartheid movement. Peter Alegi at State

University advised me on certain understudied archives to approach in addition to enhancing my own understanding of the .

Researching as a historian without the support and help of archivists is an exercise in tilting at windmills. At Worcester State, the National Archives, the Amistad Archives, and the twenty institutions that I went to work in, staff patiently accommodated my numerous requests, informed me of collections I had missed or overlooked, and carefully went after boxes that had been misplaced and that I felt I desperately needed. Peter Limb at Michigan State in particular went above and beyond in suggesting people for me to interview and for archival collections to go and do work in.

Too many historians take for granted the willingness of their subjects to speak with them.

I was continually struck by the willingness of people who did not know me to not only give up their own time to be interviewed but to stay in contact with me to see how the project was coming along. A friend, Katherine Philipson, happened to know many activists and graciously introduced me to people. Prexy Nesbitt in particular spent hours willing to talk through minutiae with me, giving me dozens of names of others to consult, and encouraging me to dig deeply into the topic. Elizabeth Schmidt, Chris Root, Dave Wiley, Bill Minter, and others all gave me invaluable information, shaped my thinking, and were generous with their time and thoughts.

I have been the beneficiary of not-inconsiderable financial support to carry out research.

Without the grants and fellowships that I received, it is unlikely I could have carried out research in so many different archives and at least tried to give this dissertation the proper scope that it deserves. The Society for the History of American Foreign Relations, the Mershon Center at

OSU, the Robert W. Woodruff Library at , the LBJ Foundation, and last but

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certainly not least the History Department at OSU all gave me grants that allowed me to pursue an ambitious research program. Without their support, this dissertation could not have been written.

Supplementing the generous support I received from these funding bodies was the willingness of family and friends to house and feed me, letting me stretch my budget as far as I possibly could. Marc and Wendover Brown hosted me several times in San Francisco as I found people to interview and archives to work in. Jeanine Fairchild and Uriah Hulsey did the same for me in New Orleans, allowing me to spend a great deal of time at the Amistad Center at Tulane

University (and occasionally find time to enjoy New Orleans). The various members of the

Blackman family opened up their doors to me while I worked in at the Kennedy Library as well as their house in Madison, Wisconsin, which was the site of much of my initial research.

Geoff Wallace, Anja Matjeko, and Eliza Wood opened their doors for me during conferences and short research trips, livening up the work with good company. Too many people to remember now met me for meals in places all around the United States.

I realized early on in the process of writing that staying home to write was not conducive to my wellbeing, so I made it a habit to work in coffeeshops. A special acknowledgment must be made to the Roosevelt Coffeehouse, where I have effectively staked one seat at the bar as permanently my own little office. Whole chapters, article drafts, conference papers, and lesson plans were written over endless cups of iced rooibos tea while the staff, against their will, got to know me. A little human contact went a long way in keeping me grounded and happy.

My parents, Jon and Julie Larson, set me on this path at an early age. Their love, encouragement, and support brought me to where I am today. The same can be said for my grandparents, all of whom endlessly delighted at having a grandchild who could rattle off dates,

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events, and facts, and who supported me by encouraging me to go to graduate school when I was

still in elementary school. My parents-in-, Roland Olson and Phoebe Blackman, were equally patient and loving even as I took up space in their house and brooded over my writing.

Last but assuredly not least is my fiancée, Rose Blackman. Through it all, Rose has been unfailingly supportive: understanding and patient when I had to be gone for weeks at a time, willing to listen to me think out loud at great length and offer her own insightful feedback, and good company when I was working late at night or in the early hours of the morning (while also gently reminding me to take a break for the sake of the long haul). In every possible sense, Rose has been the best partner I could have asked for.

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Vita

June 2006……………………………………..Sunset High School May 2010……………………………………..B.A. History, Lewis & Clark College August 2012…………………………………..M.A. History, McGill University August 2014-Present………………………….Graduate Teaching Associate, Department of History, The Ohio State University

Fields of Study

Major Field: History

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Table of Contents

Abstract ...... ii

Dedication ...... iii

Acknowledgments ...... iv

Vita ...... viii

Common Abbreviations ...... x

Introduction ...... 1

Historical Context ...... 35

Chapter 1: “Person to Person Links in the Anti-Apartheid Movement” ...... 45

Chapter 2: “ACOA and the Creation of an Anti-Apartheid Movement in the United States”

...... 85

Chapter 3: “Making the Transnational Local: Grassroots Anti-Apartheid Committees” ......

...... 133

Chapter 4: “Coming Together to Pass Sanctions” ...... 180

Conclusion ...... 235

References ...... 258

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Common Abbreviations

African National Congress (ANC) Association (ASA) American Committee on Africa (ACOA) American Federation of Labor-Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) Americans for South African Resistance (AFSAR) Black Consciousness Movement (BCM) Boston Coalition for the Liberation of Southern Africa (BCLSA) Bostonians Allied for South African Resistance (BAFSAR) Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) Campaign to Oppose Bank Loans to (COBLSA) Chicago Coalition on Southern Africa (CCSA) Chicago Committee for the Liberation of , , and -Bissau (CCLAMG) Chicago Committee in Solidarity with Southern Africa (CCISSA) Churches Emergency Committee on South Africa (CECSA) Clergy and Laity Concerned (CALC) Coalition for Illinois’ Divestment from South Africa (CIDSA) Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act (CAAA) Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) Council on African Affairs (CAA) Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR) First National Bank of Boston (FNBB) Free South Africa Movement (FSAM) Mozambique Liberation Front (FRELIMO) Frontier Internship in Mission (FIM) International Defense and Aid Fund (IDAF) International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) International Olympic Committee (IOC) Madison Area Committee on Southern Africa (MACSA) Michigan State University (MSU) National Association for the Advancement of People (NAACP) National Liberation Front (NLF) National Student Christian Federation (NSCF) New World Resource Center (NWRC) Organization of African Unity (OAU) Pan-African Congress (PAC) Pan-African Liberation Committee (PALC)

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Polaroid Revolutionary Workers’ Movement (PRWM) Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) South Africa Relief Fund (SARF) South African Council of Churches (SACC) South African Non-Racial Olympic Committee (SANROC) South African Solidarity Organization (SASO) Southern Africa Committee (SAC) Southern Africa Liberation Committee-Lansing (SALC-Lansing) Southern Africa Liberation Committee-Ann Arbor (SALC-Ann Arbor) Southern Africa Support Project (SASP) Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) Southwest African People’s Organization (SWAPO) National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA) United Auto Workers (UAW) United Church of Christ (UCC) United Democratic Front (UDF) United States Information Service (USIS) (UMK) Washington Office on Africa (WOA) Washtenaw County Coalition Against Apartheid (WCCAA) World Council of Churches (WCC)

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Introduction

American interest in South Africa became one of the most vibrant foreign policy

grassroots movements in the twentieth century, and in the aftermath of the

and the , one of the largest. The first American group to dedicate itself solely to

anti-apartheid issues was founded in 1952, and until was elected president in

1994, Americans founded solidarity groups, support associations, and divestment committees to

assist those struggling against apartheid. Today, the anti-apartheid movement is regarded as the single most successful protest movement organized around a foreign issue and a model for contemporary activists.

Beyond its size, what made the U.S. anti-apartheid movement so significant is that it successfully challenged American presidents on the conduct of their foreign policy. The executive branch effectively dominated foreign relations, and in the historical literature, it has received the most attention. Yet in 1986, U.S. activists successfully lobbied for sanctions against

South Africa and then enact them over President Reagan’s veto. Doing so required senators from

the president’s party to vote against him—a rare event in the history of American foreign

relations. Within the historiography, the veto override is regarded as the anti-apartheid

movement’s most significant movement. In examining the history of the anti-apartheid movement in the United States, it is tempting to fall into the trap of seeing opposition to apartheid as a linear process toward sanctions on South Africa.

In many of the histories published up until now, the tendency is to focus on the U.S. anti- apartheid movement as driven by a few national groups such as the American Committee on

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Africa (ACOA) and TransAfrica while ignoring the movement’s grassroots dimensions, or by

focusing on one narrow dimension of the movement, such as African American support for

divestment. I argue that transnational actors were responsible for cultivating a decentralized

movement that was successful in breaking U.S. ties to South Africa. In a country as varied as the

United States, building a truly unified national movement was not possible because there were

too many audiences to meet with, meaning that there could be no single message to unify all

potential members into opposing apartheid.

To be sure, as I noted above, transnational connections were not the sole reason for the

visibility and successes of the American anti-apartheid movement. Nor was the override of

Reagan’s veto inevitable, and it faced a great many obstacles. Success for campaigns can be fickle. A burgeoning interest in human rights in the failed to sustain

anti-Pinochet groups for more than a few years. Nuclear freeze groups mobilized hundreds of thousands of people in the early 1980s and still failed to prevent the deployment of weapons to western Europe. Civil rights activists split on African liberation issues, particularly as the Cold

War deepened and southern Africa became a battleground by the superpowers. By the late 1970s and 1980s, the -based civil rights leader Reverend was encouraging

American businesses to remain in South Africa as long as they conformed to certain standards, the pacifist and activist was collaborating with the South Africa Foundation (a propaganda front of the apartheid government in the United States), and the head of the Southern

Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), Ralph Abernathy, was shepherding Jonas Savimbi on a Heritage Foundation tour of the United States.1

1 Ron Nixon, Selling Apartheid: South Africa’s Global Propaganda War, (: Pluto Press, 2016), 172.

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Even the activists themselves were surprisingly pessimistic about the prospects of change

in both South Africa and the United States. In 1979, both the leader of the Washington Office on

Africa (WOA) and ACOA despaired because of their belief that South Africa was actually

winning the propaganda war. This was combined with an extensive and well-funded public

relations campaign in the United States, one conservatively estimated to have spent $105 million

in lobbying against sanctions and divestment. The apartheid government was set on convincing

critics that it acted in the best interest of South Africa’s non-white population, often by

employing the rhetoric of and respect for different cultures. As an anti-communist

bulwark, it could count on support from conservative Americans, and moreover, the U.S.

government. Above all else, for most Americans, South Africa was a remote part of the world,

and the lack of attention paid to South Africa in American media and popular culture worked in

the apartheid government’s favor.2

This dissertation began as an inquiry into African American participation in foreign

affairs since 1965. Scholars such as Brenda Gayle Plummer and James Meriwether published

works showing that the civil rights movement had exerted considerable influence on American

policymakers through the . Penny von Eschen’s Race Against Empire noted the two

divergent streams of anticolonial thought in the United States between the 1930s and and

argued that McCarthyism effectively destroyed or silenced left-wing anticolonialism.

Concurrently, were increasingly concerned and involved in supporting

decolonization around the world, a trend reflected in works ranging from Kevin Gaines African

2 “Meeting Notes November 14, 1979,” Amistad, ACOA Addendum; Hennie van Vuuren, Apartheid, Guns, and : Jacana Press, 2017, 295. The authors arrived at this figure by tabulating the number of registered foreign lobbyists with the American Department and amounts spent between 1979 and 1994. However, they also note that it does not include all of the possible front organizations that existed, and the South African government relied extensively on fronts.

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Americans in to Seth Markle’s history dealing with and African Americans.3 In

2013, Plummer published a book that documented African American involvement up to 1974.

Nevertheless, it was as though the story came to an abrupt end with the passage of civil rights legislation in the United States, ignoring the liberation movements in southern Africa. I wanted to expand on the transnational connections as Americans went abroad, made connections, and analyze how those experiences informed subsequent activism.4

Researching and understanding this transnational movement against apartheid began with an American named Bill , who moved to Ghana in the early 1950s and then to

Tanzania in the early 1960s. Sutherland worked on behalf of the American Friends Service

Committee (AFSC) and became a kind of middleman between representatives of the liberation movements and concerned Americans. Sutherland had been responsible for introducing the secretary of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), , to of the

African National Congress (ANC). The connection between Sutherland and Houser led to the formation of an American group, Americans for South African Resistance (AFSAR), supporting the ANC in its in 1952. AFSAR became ACOA in 1954 and was staffed by a number of exiles and transnational actors throughout the years. Transnational involvement played out at the local level as well. The Madison Area Committee on Southern Africa

3 Kevin Gaines, African Americans in Ghana: Black Expatriates and the Civil Rights Era, (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2008); Seth Markle, A Motorcycle on Hell Run: Tanzania, , and the Uncertain Future of Pan-Africanism, (East Lansing, MI: Michigan State University Press, 2017). 4 See James Meriwether, Proudly We Can Be Africans: Black Americans and Africa, 1935-1961, (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2002); Brenda Gayle Plummer, Rising Wind: Black Americans and US Foreign Affairs, 1935-1960, (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1996); Penny von Eschen, Race Against Empire: Black Americans and Anticolonialism, 1937-1957, (Ithaca, NY: Press, 1997); Kevin Gaines, African Americans in Ghana: Black Expatriates and the Civil Rights Era, (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2008); Seth Markle, A Motorcycle on Hell Run: Tanzania, Black Power, and the Uncertain Future of Pan-Africanism, (East Lansing, MI: Michigan State University Press, 2017); Brenda Gayle Plummer, In Search of Power: African Americans in the Era of Decolonization, (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2012). 4

(MACSA) was made up of exiles, expats, and Americans who had spent significant amounts of

time abroad.

The U.S. anti-apartheid movement has few works with varying amounts of coverage.

Robert Massie’s Loosing the Bonds is the best overview of this period of history and of relations

between the United States and South Africa. Massie focuses on the broad contours of the anti-

apartheid movement, but because his overview is nearly encyclopedic, he is unable to delve into

substantive depth into local movements or the motivations of the actors. Another important

overview of U.S.-South African relations is Piero Gleijeses’ Visions of Freedom. While the book

is focused first and foremost on the in Angola, it is a useful window into Pretoria’s

foreign policy during this period as well as its connections to the U.S. administration of Ronald

Reagan.5

In terms of activist histories, there are several works looking at American groups. Donald

Culverson’s Contesting Apartheid: U.S. Activism 1960-1987 was written in the late 1980s and

provides an overview of the important national groups in the United States: ACOA, AFSC, and

TransAfrica. However, it does not address the end of the anti-apartheid movement, nor does it

engage with the city and state solidarity movements that made the history of the North American

movement so distinctive. David Hostetter’s Movement Matters: American Anti-Apartheid

Activism and the Rise of Multicultural Politics focuses on the same groups, but is able to advance the study to the fall of apartheid. Like Culverson’s book, Hostetter’s history is top-down. Francis

Nesbitt’s Race For Sanctions studies the role of African Americans in the anti-apartheid

5 Robert Massie, Loosing the Bonds: The United States and South Africa in the Apartheid Years, (New York: Doubleday, 1997); Piero Gleijeses, Visions of Freedom: Havana, Washington, Pretoria and the Struggle for Southern Africa, (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2013).

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movement. Nesbitt’s book addresses the important contributions made by civil rights groups and

TransAfrica in the movement, particularly their role in passing sanctions against South Africa.6

Studies of the global anti-apartheid movement are useful in shedding light on the U.S.

movement as well. Simon Stevens’ dissertation “ and Sanctions against South Africa:

An International History, 1946-1970” is useful especially in understanding that the trajectory of

the anti-apartheid movement was not inevitable. Stevens’ argues that by the 1970s, anti-apartheid activists in the west had lost faith in the peaceful defeat of apartheid. They embraced divestment out of a belief that it would build a constituency opposed t armed intervention on behalf of South

Africa during the guerilla war that the ANC and PAC planned to wage. This dissertation argues that the tactics which worked for the anti-apartheid movement in the United States were tried along a host of ideas that ultimately produced no groundswell of public action, and activists adopted a philosophy of trying different things until they worked. In writing elsewhere about the anti-apartheid movement in Britain, Stevens notes that the anti-apartheid movement there offered a wide variety of points of entry for activists of varied political persuasions. Tactical diversity was an important recruiting tool for activists, as it won over people of wide-ranging political persuasions or interests.7

My work builds on what has been previously written by incorporating the work of these

groups but in a more holistic fashion. All of the national groups studied by Hostetter and

Culverson struggled to find the appropriate strategies to target apartheid, with varying levels of

6 Donald R. Culverson, Contesting Apartheid: U.S. Activism 1960-1987, (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1999); David Hostetter, Movement Matters: American Anti-Apartheid Activism and the Rise of Multicultural Politics, (New York: Routledge, 2009); Francis Nesbitt, Race For Sanctions: African Americans Against Apartheid, (Bloomington, IN: University Press, 2004). 7 Simon Stevens, “Boycotts and Sanctions against South Africa: An International History, 1946-1970,” (PhD Diss., , 2016), 299; 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, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014), 224.

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success, and all of them ultimately depended on being able to channel energy at regional levels toward sanctions and divestment. My work brings a grassroots perspective to the anti-apartheid movement and shows the interplay between national and regional committees, showing how they worked together as well as how they influenced each . Nesbitt’s focus on African

Americans is useful as well, but does not reveal the interplay between white and African

American activists. African American activists in predominantly white groups were significant actors, but are largely overlooked in the historical literature.

Prior histories and documentaries tend to focus on one factor to the exclusion of others, such as race, and they cast the movement in isolation from external factors. Apart from the obvious participation of exiles and expatriates in the North American movement (and the British and Irish movements as well), at an ideological level the broader movement was part of a global discourse. For some activists, the anti-apartheid movement was part of a global struggle against racism and , whether in North American or southern Africa. As some activists noted, conversations about apartheid in South Africa also became a way to raise the issue of poverty and racism at home. Others imagined it as a broader struggle against the forces of imperialism, and they saw an alliance between the governments of the northern hemisphere and the apartheid government. Solidarity with South Africa became a way of maintaining struggle at home, especially in an era of increasing political in the United States.8

Considering that the decentralized nature of the anti-apartheid movement in the U.S. is its best remembered aspect, there has been strikingly little research done on its local dimensions.

The best grassroots history of the anti-apartheid movement remains No Easy Victories, a collaborative volume written by William Minter, Charles Cobb, Jr., and Sylvia Hill, all of them

8 Interview with Neva and Zeph Makgetla, June 4, 2017.

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former activists in the United States. Widely-ranging, it nevertheless studies a large number of

activists, many of them transnational actors. It notes the important role played by labor unions,

churches, universities, and civil rights organizations at a grassroots level. However, it aims to

capture recollections from noteworthy actors and is not a comprehensive study of the anti- apartheid movement.9

As a historiographical intervention, this dissertation points to the global nature of the

anti-apartheid movement. Hakan Thorn’s Anti-Apartheid and the Emergence of a Global Civil

Society has been extremely influential on my own work. Thorn contends that the struggle against apartheid was made up of two interdependent struggles: the movement inside South Africa, and

the campaign in the rest of the world. The fight against apartheid rested on the development of transnational activists and networks that could build support for anti-apartheid groups outside of

South Africa. Thorn focuses primarily on Great Britain and , but the United States is largely omitted from his narrative. His interest is more in the size of the movement, and in those two countries, anti-apartheid causes ultimately motivated more people as well as eliciting more direct aid, which was less prominent coming from the United States. My dissertation applies

Thorn’s framework to the United States to show how this developing civil society contributed to the passage of sanctions.10

Explaining the mentality of many of these activists, there is a surprising wealth of

historiography examining Africa as a site of activism in the 1960s. Kevin Gaines African

Americans in Ghana notes the interest of many Americans in Ghana as a place of study and

activism for liberation across the globe. On a smaller level, Jean Allman’s article “Nuclear

9 Minter, William, Charles Cobb, Jr., and Gail Hovey, eds. No Easy Victories: African Liberation and American Activists Over a Half Century, 1950-2000, (Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, 2007). 10 Hakan Thorn, Anti-Apartheid and the Emergence of a Global Civil Society, (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), 4.

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Imperialism and the Pan-African Struggle for Peace and Freedom” examines the nuclear freeze

movement in Ghana, noting the hopes of many that newly-independent societies could be a kind of utopia in the era of decolonization. George Roberts’ thesis “Politics, Decolonisation and the

Cold War in Dar-es-Salaam, c. 1965-1972” illustrated the importance of Dar-es-Salaam as a place for people the whole world over, particularly those interested in liberation activism, and the city became a hub and headquarters for liberation groups. Seth Markle’s A Motorcycle on Hell

Run looks at the links between Black Power activists from the United States and Tanzania and the effect that travel had on Pan-Africanism.11

This dissertation complements the burgeoning histories around human rights in

diplomatic history. Early opposition to apartheid was critical to the development of human rights

as an issue. Carol Anderson’s Bourgeois Radicals, Brenda Gayle Plummer’s Rising Wind, and

Penny von Eschen’s Race Against Empire all belong to a section of African American

internationalism that linked human rights issues to anticolonialism. These earlier histories are

most strongly concentrated in the 1950s and 1960s, at a time when human rights is often written

off as nonexistent or marginal.12

Mark Philip Bradley’s The World Reimagined is a bottom-up view of interest in human rights in the United States. Bradley argues that U.S. interest in human rights issues was stimulated by concepts coming from the non-western world. The 1970s were fertile years for the reintroduction of human rights after it had briefly become a topic following World War II

because of global shifts in capital, migration, and technology. While some of the processes

11 Jean Allman, “Nuclear Imperialism and the Pan-African Struggle for Peace and Freedom,” Souls 10: (2008), 83- 102; George Roberts, “Politics, Decolonisation, and the in Dar-es-Salaam, c. 1965-1972,” (PhD Diss., University of Warwick, 2016). 12 Carol Anderson, Bourgeois Radicals: The NAACP and the Struggle for Colonial Liberation, 1941-1960, (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2014); Brad Simpson, “Bringing the Non-State Back In: Human Rights and Since 1945,” in America in the World: The Historiography of American Foreign Relations Since 1941, ed. Frank Costigliola and Michael Hogan, (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2014), 264.

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Bradley describes were at work in the 1950s and 1960s, the forces he describes make clear why

anti-apartheid organizing took off at a grassroots level in the 1970s. Bradley argues that

American activists found ways to adopt human rights into local “vernaculars,” a process I trace at some length. However, Bradley asserts that the language of human rights was not applied to issues in the United States. This dissertation suggests that issues around apartheid became a way to discuss phenomena that were at play in both the United States and South Africa.13

Beginning with the 1970s, much of the historiography of human rights activism has focused on European case studies. Among the best examples include the writing of the Helsinki

Accords in 1975, which governed the member states and provided a legal basis of critique for human rights activists there, and of which the best book on the subject is Sarah

Snyder’s Human Rights Activism and the End of the Cold War. Snyder notes that the signing of the Helsinki Accords created a transnational network monitored how signatory governments observed the accords and place pressure on those governments. This brand of human rights activism aligns to domestic issues as well, but for conservatives and members of the Republican party who formed solidarity with persecuted religious groups to oppose communist governments.

Carl Bon Tempo has drawn attention to Freedom House’s alignment with Republican goals for

smaller government and religious freedom, underlining the fact that multiple definitions of

human rights existed simultaneously and could be used by groups for different purposes. My

dissertation builds on and contributes to this other wing of scholarship by demonstrating the wide

variety of ways that human rights issues can be mobilized for domestic issues and by broadening

human rights scholarship to include Africa.14

13 Mark Philip Bradley, The World Reimagined: Americans and Human Rights in the Twentieth Century, (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2016), 7, 125. 14 Sarah Snyder, Human Rights Activism and the End of the Cold War: A Transnational History of the Helsinki Network, (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 8; Carl Bon Tempo, “From the Center Right:

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This dissertation also draws on the scholarship of Samuel Moyn’s two books The Last

Utopia and Not Enough. The Last Utopia argues that while most anticolonial struggles were

rooted in a faith in and not human rights, opposition to apartheid was different (at

least in its later stages) for its human rights connections. This notion that opposition to apartheid

superseded nationalism and involved other factors is one that I have incorporated in explaining

the eventual success of anti-apartheid organizing. Not Enough argues that as a framework,

human rights have been unable to challenge the growing tide of globally or

even discuss it in a meaningful fashion. I challenge this interpretation in certain respects, as anti-

apartheid activists often framed opposition to apartheid in economic terms, including equality of

pay, access to decent housing, and support for unions. Nevertheless, Not Enough is useful in

considering the limitations of the anti-apartheid movement globally and in the United States, as

South Africa’s worsening economic inequality made it difficult to ameliorate many of the

lingering consequences of apartheid. The more ambitious goals of some anti-apartheid activists

failed to come to fruition.15

In the scholarship of U.S. foreign relations, this dissertation builds on an aspect of politics that Campbell Craig and Fredrik Logevall call “intermestic,” a portmanteau of

international and domestic. They were not the first to use this term, but their use of it to

understand the Cold War is useful in remembering that issues rarely exist in isolation from other

issues: the idea of rolling back instead of containing it was formed in no small part

to appeal to an electorate in the midst of McCarthyite anticommunism. They noted that virtually

Freedom House and Human Rights in the 1970s and 1980s,” in The Human Rights Revolution: An International History, ed. Akira Iriye, Petra Goedde, and William I. Hitchcock, (New York: University Press, 2012), 224. 15 Samuel Moyn, The Last Utopia: Human Rights in History, (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Press, 2010); Samuel Moyn, Not Enough: Human Rights in an Unequal World, (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2018).

11

all diplomatic historians agreed that domestic politics had some effect on the conduct of foreign

policy, and yet the subject remained poorly studied. This dissertation tries to understand intermestic politics at the grassroots level and especially in Congress, which was where much of the fight to break U.S.-South Africa ties took place. In doing so, this work reconsiders the place of Congress in understanding foreign policy and in diplomatic history.16

Transnationalism

Transnational actors, whether they were Americans who had spent substantial amounts of

time in southern Africa or expatriate South Africans, proved to be adept at building groups that

tailored their messages to specific audiences. In employing the term “transnational,” I define

transnational actors as those who because of prior experience with South Africa found ways to

link apartheid to other issues in the United States. I draw on the work of Sidney Tarrow, specifically Tarrow’s understanding about what makes an actor transnational. Tarrow views cosmopolitanism as central to transnationality: individuals who familiarize themselves with foreign places, travel regularly, and work in some capacity abroad are referred to as “rooted

cosmopolitans.” For Tarrow, cosmopolitans are those who mobilize domestic and foreign

resources in support of or in opposition to external factors. Activists are a subgroup whose goals

are political and usually controversial; they are distinguished in part because of their ability to

between different groups and levels of activity. Tarrow’s description captures many of the

activists in this dissertation, who moved between places and contexts fluidly. Not all Americans

could be activists using Tarrow’s framework because they lacked the mobility to do so, but

committed activists or cosmopolitans could impart much of what they knew to other people.17

16 Campbell Craig and Fredrik Logevall, America’s Cold War: The Politics of Insecurity, (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2009), 10, 141. 17 Sidney Tarrow. The New Transnational Activism, (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 29, 35.

12

The transnational perspective is useful for better understanding one of the most important

but also the most understudied facet of North American anti-apartheid activism: the grassroots and local levels. The familiarity of these activists with both the United States and South Africa meant that they could accurately speak to the facts of the latter while also connecting it most effectively to conditions in the United States, whether that was racism in both countries or a critique of American capitalism. In national committees such as ACOA, activists shifted the focus away from a national perspective to a local perspective. It was through the work of these activists and their networks that sanctions were passed over President Reagan’s veto, a rare usurpation of executive control of foreign policy.

Other transnational scholarship has been useful in better understanding the anti-apartheid movement in the United States. In Activists Beyond Borders, Margaret Keck and Kathryn

Sikkink examine what they term “transnational advocacy networks,” which are units of people who can reach across civil society and states to form pressure groups. Their work speaks to the importance of information, as they note that nonstate networks function as alternate sources of information and often compete with the statements of a government. Critically, they also observe that states like the United States cannot be understood as monolithic entities and need to be seen as complicated aggregated units often in competition with each other. The value of studying transnational activism is that it makes it clear that the state is not a unitary construct.18

The significance of the transnational perspective is that it properly contextualizes the

broad appeal anti-apartheid activism eventually enjoyed and how it came to be. Prior histories of

the U.S. anti-apartheid movement have either focused on race as the critical factor or have been

narrowly constructed top-down analyses that ignore the grassroots dimension of liberation

18 Margaret Keck and Kathryn Sikkink, Activists Beyond Borders: Advocacy Networks in International Politics, (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1998), 1-2, 19, 32.

13

activism. I do not ignore these national groups but rather contextualize them into the movement,

noting that transnational actors did a great deal to reorient the national committees by pushing

them in more radical directions, and to work at a grassroots level instead of trying reorient

foreign policy by appealing to the federal government. The transnational dimensions of the

movement help make clear what made the movement popular outside of specific demographics.

Ascribing the interest of Americans to concern for human rights or any one cause runs the risk of being too narrow, and it is more instructive to focus on how apartheid could be a stand-in for a variety of causes and issues. This plasticity accounts for the levels of support liberation activism enjoyed by the 1980s. Transnational actors contributed to these discourses because their cosmopolitanism, to borrow Tarrow’s formulation, meant that they were familiar with the issues.

It is paradoxical that one can better understand the local dimensions of the anti-apartheid movement by examining its transnational dimensions. The local dimension of the anti-apartheid movement were ultimately the most significant, however, only because it would have been impossible to pass sanctions without support across the country. Activists at the time came to understand, in part through and error, that grassroots activism held the best possibilities for success. In 1969 or 1970, met with activists in Boston to discuss using ILWU members to stage a picket of ships carrying Rhodesian chrome.19 This tactic kept alive the issue

of African liberation, and people who were there remembered Tambo’s focus on using local

government to achieve change in the United States.

For the ANC, a focus on the local was imperative in the United States because they had

no other plausible recourse regarding the U.S. government. Different presidential administrations

were uncomfortable with the apartheid government because of the bad press apartheid attracted,

19 Minter, Hovey, and Cobb, No Easy Victories, 153.

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but South Africa’s reliability as an ally in the Cold War ultimately meant that no president would

willingly abandon their commitment. The ANC was in the position of either ignoring the United

States and risking a closer alignment with the South African government, or limiting the support

that the United States could provide to South Africa. By the 1960s, ANC members were carrying

out cross-country tours to educate Americans about their government’s cooperation with

Pretoria.20

Tarrow’s contention that activists had the ability to move between different sites and

levels of activism is useful to keep in mind here. Transnational actors were extremely mobile,

moving between areas but carrying their activism with them. Their movement back and forth

also involved movement between groups, and many of them cycled through anti-apartheid

groups. The movement back and forth between local and national groups meant that they could

steer both levels, which became particularly significant as the goals of the national committees

shifted toward supporting a bottom-up movement.

Studies of transnational human rights activism also shed light on the importance of

information gathering and dissemination. One model, the spiral model of human rights change,

found that the success of human rights campaigns rested in part on transnational groups

spreading knowledge widely about human rights abuses. Educational work was some of the

longest-running work that activists had to do, and it occurred during and outside of periods of

high activity. The need was great, both because of the paucity of media coverage and the

extensive South African propaganda campaign in the United States.21

20 SADET, The Road to Democracy in South Africa, Volume 1 1960-1970, (: Zebra Press, 2005), 558. 21 Thomas Risse and Stephen Ropp, “Introduction and Overview,” in The Persistent Power of Human Rights: From Commitment to Compliance, ed. Thomas Risse, Stephen C. Ropp, and Katherine Sikkink, (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University press, 2013), 6.

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Transnational activists were often the ones who remained in the struggle on a long-term basis as well. Cosmopolitanism was not simply an enabling factor, but a motivating one. Heated moments such as 1976 or 1984-1986 produced an outpouring of participation, but those moments ended. The transnational activists were the ones who tended to stick with liberation activism for years or decades at a time. Divestment activities at the state level could take years to complete; in the case of Illinois, it took close to seven years just to achieve a partial divestment of state funds.

Time spent abroad and connections forged with the liberation movements proved to be powerful long-term motivators, one that sustained the movement through relatively fallow periods.

Other historians have noticed the role of transnational actors in human rights campaigns.

Hakan Thorn framed his history of the anti-apartheid movement around transnational actors.

More recently, Sarah Snyder’s book From Selma to Moscow examined the role of transnational actors in several early human rights campaigns in the late 1960s and early 1970s. One such case study was the fight for a free : many of those actors appear in this dissertation as well.

Her other case studies, which are , Greece, and Chile all examine the interplay of transnational actors and their role in sustaining campaigns in the long-term. Brad Simpson’s article dealing with transnational solidarity networks for East Timor notes the importance of refugee networks in creating the Australian solidarity movement, the educational work carried out in the United States to build a sympathetic constituency, and the way that work was directed at the grassroots.22

There are several ways by which Americans and South Africans became cosmopolitans.

The transnational connections that I describe did not all spring from the same source. Americans

22 Sarah Snyder, From Selma to Moscow: How Human Rights Activists Transformed U.S. Foreign Policy, (New York: Columbia University Press, 2018); Brad Simpson, “Solidarity in an Age of : The Transnational Movement for East Timor and U.S. Foreign Policy,” Peace & Change 29: (2004), 453-482.

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were drawn to the struggle for different reasons. Some were interested because of the similarities between the American civil rights movement and the fight against apartheid. Others were peace activists who objected to both the violence of the apartheid government at home and its increasingly brutal foreign policy in the rest of southern Africa. Still others were interested in the struggle as part of a global left-wing campaign against political repression. South Africans in turn came to the United States for a multitude of reasons. For some, flight was simply a necessity, either to have a reasonable chance of continuing to work without experiencing repression, or to escape an increasingly heavy-handed . For others, traveling abroad was an opportunity. Some sought educational opportunities in North America, while others came to work freely and in a multi-racial environment (even with its own attendant issues). Regardless of the reason, there are several areas which frequently attracted transnational actors, which I will outline below.

Churches

Because religion is a force that easily transcends national boundaries, missionaries, priests, and others in the United States were often some of the first people to become involved in the anti-apartheid movement. Experience as a missionary gave people an outward-looking focus in the world that was often dedicated to social work and charity. The first head of ACOA,

George Houser, credited his interest in social work to growing up in the with two missionary parents. U.S. churches were among the earliest places to have any kind of presence in southern Africa. The Congregational Church, which became the United Church of Christ, sent its first missionaries to KwaZulu- as early as 1830 and had a large presence in modern-day

Angola by the 1880s. For the founders of two of the earliest divestment committees in the United

States, their exposure to the liberation movements came from a project known as the Frontier

17

Internship in Mission that sent Protestant seminary graduates abroad. Members of that particular

group were sent to South Africa, Tanzania, and other parts of southern Africa, and many became

leaders in the American anti-apartheid movement.23

For Americans in the United States, churches were an important point of education as to

what was going on in South Africa. Churches formed outreach committees and educational

groups to familiarize congregants with the realities of apartheid and why they should be

concerned with it. National church offices did not provide material aid to the liberation

movements on a scale to match their Scandinavian counterparts, but they did sustain specific

American groups such as ACOA. Church groups formed networks that could be organized and

mobilized in city or state divestments, and eventually for federal sanctions.

Religion also helped to bring South Africans to the United States, mostly as visiting

ministers, seminary students, and priests. Z.K Matthews, a prominent member of the ANC, was

visiting New York as a professor at Union Theological Seminary in 1953 and 1954, the same

time that a few Americans were rallying to support the Defiance Campaign protesters. He

formed ties to George Houser and members of ACOA, passing word about conditions in the

country and helping to coordinate donations of money and goods. Gladstone Ntlabati, a South

African Methodist minister, was an active preacher in the United States, particularly in .

Ntlabati worked as an informal ANC rep by dedicating himself to cross-country speaking tours.

Even expatriate South Africans in American churches who did not devote themselves fully to

anti-apartheid activism still played a role in familiarizing parishioners with South Africa.24

23 Interview with George Houser, No Easy Victories, http://www.noeasyvictories.org/interviews/int02_houser.php. For a full history, see Ada Focer’s dissertation, “Frontier Internship in Mission, 1961-1974: Young Christians Abroad in a Post-Colonial and Cold War World,” (PhD Diss., , 2016). 24 Letter to Houser, November 30, 1959, UNISA, ZK Matthews Papers, B3.40; Letter from Kathleen Kafka to , August 10, 1982, UNISA, AB 00-09, Received Correspondence 20/02/1982-12/11/1982; Letter to Allan Boesak from Willa Roghair, August 10, 1982, UNISA, AB 00-09, Received Correspondence 20/02/1982- 12/11/1982

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Theology also proved to be its own kind of powerful transnational connection between

North Americans and South Africans. , made famous by the American

theologian James Cone, focused on the ways that Christianity in the United States had heretofore

failed African Americans by not meaningfully addressing and white supremacy.

Cone wanted to create a theology that specifically address “blackness,” not strictly in terms of

race, but more broadly in terms of marginalization in society. Allan Boesak, a famous minister in

the Dutch Reformed Church and later head of the South African Council of Churches (SACC),

was engaging with Cone’s ideas in the early 1970s. So too was Bonganjalo Goba, a South

African congregationalist who studied in Chicago in the 1970s. Prior to coming to the United

States, Goba felt that Cone’s ideas were enormously influential, not only for him personally but

for many of his colleagues in South Africa; they saw Cone’s ideas as equally applicable in both

the South African and North American contexts.25

Liberation theology, which was the combination of Christian theology with Marxist

socioeconomic analyses that encouraged adherents to work for political and economic liberation,

also fed North America interest in the South African liberation struggle. While liberation

theology is arguably best known in the Latin American context, it was often applied in the

context of South African apartheid. In 1970, the U.S. theologian Frederick Herzog wrote

Liberation Theology, calling on Christians to specifically align themselves with the “marginales” of society and fight for social justice. Herzog had imagined his book as a kind of response to the

American civil rights movement, but others began applying his ideas to the South African

25 Emmanuel Martey, African Theology: Inculturation and Liberation, (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock Publishers, 2009), 108.

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context. Writing retrospectively, Boesak felt that Herzog’s writing raised the question of what

liberation and equality actually meant at a time when the terms were heavily circumscribed.26

Churches in the United States were also motivated in no small part by images of suffering

Christians being denied the freedom to practice their faith. The power of this symbol was

identified by Melani McAlister in her book on U.S. evangelicalism in the world, The Kingdom of

God Has No Borders. McAlister notes that even the conservative Southern Baptist Convention

was motivated into spirited debates over condemning and divesting from South Africa because

of the news of the of South African Christians. This dynamic was not confined to

politically conservative churches. Members of the United Church of Christ (UCC) drew on the

imagery of suffering parishioners being assaulted by members of the South African security

forces when lobbying Congress. When the SACC issued the in 1985, it

effectively endorsed armed struggle by asserting that the South African government was

illegitimate, allowing the churches to work more closely together with their American

counterparts.27

To be sure, support from American churches was contingent on certain factors and

difficult to maintain. A growing conservative backlash by the 1970s meant that many churches

found themselves on the defensive as they tried to explain how they could justify supporting

communist-aligned groups in South Africa. U.S. churches did not support the WCC’s funding of

the liberation movements; even the fact that UCC gave money to WCC for its general programs

generated controversy among member churches. Finally, there was the serious issue of how

26 Allan Boesak, Farewell to Innocence: A Socio-Political Study on Black Theology and Black Power, (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock Publishers, 2015), 150. 27 Melani McAlister, The Kingdom of God Has No Borders: A Global History of American Evangelicals, (New York: , 2018); Gretchen Eick Report November 20-22 1986, UCC 2002.20.29, Unlabeled folder, United Church of Christ archive; Vuyana S. Vellem, “Prophetic Theology in Black Theology, with Special Reference to the Kairos document,” Theological Studies 66 (2010).

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Christian churches could justify backing groups which embraced armed struggle. The reality of

violence in the liberation struggle was something that individual parishioners took issue with on

a regular basis. In the Quaker AFSC, even endorsement of divestment proved controversial for

members who felt that hurting the South African economy would be a form of economic

violence. A number of prominent churches sought to divest their own holdings but were blocked

by specific members or committees, often for years on end. The Lutheran church voted to divest

in 1981, but individual members of the church held up the actual stock divestment for several

years.28

Yet the churches also overcame these issues, or at least individual members advanced

arguments that allowed them to justify their support of armed groups. George Houser of ACOA

justified his support for violent revolutionaries, writing in one letter that “The movements which

we have helped to support in our limited fashion have countered the violence against them with

their own violent tactics. It has not been our position to preach to them about the tactics they

should use.” In effect, violent struggle had been forced on the liberation groups, who were only

responding in kind. Sutherland similarly worked inside the AFSC to reorient the group.29

Universities

For most Americans, universities were the places where the anti-apartheid movement was

most visible. Student groups could be extremely vocal in their condemnations of apartheid, and

in the wake of the Vietnam War support for the liberation struggles in southern Africa became

one of the most powerful mobilizing forces on campuses. University divestments were large,

28 Letter to Gary Kriss and Harold Peters, December 31, 1987, UCC 93-7, RG 4, Box 9, Folder 20, South Africa Shell Boycott; Southern Africa Committee Minutes June 15, 1978, AFSC, 1978 PED Program Resources Southern Africa, Comms and Orgs A-Z. 29 Letter to Alfred C. Ames, June 9, 1978, Amistad, ACOA Addendum, Series 1, Box 10, Folder BOD: Correspondence, Houser 1978.

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public, and presented an opportunity to force debate on South Africa. Universities had a much

larger part to play in the anti-apartheid movement however, and themselves were roots of

transnational connections between the United States and South Africa. Obviously, as places of

education they became spaces where people first became aware of the realities of apartheid and

could meet like-minded people. Places with thriving African Studies departments such as

University of Wisconsin or Michigan State University attracted some of the earliest vibrant on-

campus movements. They worked at a much more direct level, acting as conduits and hubs for

people going abroad.

South African students came to the United States for a variety of reasons. Some came not

out of any political pressure but simply because the universities were so well-regarded, and there were institutions such as the Phelps-Stokes Fund that provided scholarships for students. Others came because the educational opportunities at home were too limited. A great many of the actors in this particular history began as students in the United States, often moving back and forth between southern Africa and North America. One of the ANC’s chief representatives in North

America, Lindiwe Mabuza, had attended a community college in Ohio and then returned for graduate degrees, eventually teaching at the University of Minnesota. Barbara went to

Fordham University in New York and afterward spent time teaching in Staten Island; she became the head of the ANC’s culture desk in the U.S. South African students at Harvard and elsewhere were instrumental in setting up groups to pressure the university into withdrawing its investments, and later in the community they established groups to work for the divestment of the state’s pension funds. Even participation in university life served to enmesh South Africans more deeply into American life.30

30 Barbara Masekela interview, Wits, A3299, B4.1.2.2, M.

22

American colleges and universities also attracted a number of South African expatriates

and exiles as faculty members. Many left for the same reasons as students, a combination of absence of opportunity at home and intolerable political repression. They contributed to burgeoning African studies departments, and because of expertise, particularly in languages where virtually no North American expertise existed, they could attach themselves to university programs for years or decades at a time. The University of Wisconsin attracted a number of prominent South African academics, including Archibald Campbell Jordan, and many of them became founding members of Madison’s liberation support group.

Equally important was the process of going abroad for North Americans. In southern

Africa, one of the most famous of these institutions was the University of in

Tanzania. As detailed in Seth Markle’s A Motorcycle on Hell Run, Tanzania was an attractive destination to many Americans. U.S. moderates preferred Nyerere’s style as leader because of his nonracialism, meaning that early American supporters of African liberation embraced

Nyerere before the country’s independence. After 1964, it also became a destination for Black

Power advocates who were attracted to Nyerere’s brand of African , .31

Even outside of southern Africa, travel abroad could be a way of raising consciousness of

apartheid if it brought the traveler into contact with other liberation activists. The journalist and

activist first became involved while he was studying in London at the London

School of Economics, where he met the exiled South African journalist and other

members of the ANC. Schechter went on to found the Africa Research Group, work with the

group Artists United Against Apartheid, and create a nationally syndicated TV show called South

Africa Now. Gretchen Eick studied at Fourah Bay College in Sierra Leone in 1962 as part of the

31 Seth Markle, A Motorcycle on Hell Run, 7, 13.

23

first group of white students to attend that university. It left her with a lasting interest in

decolonization and working alongside people of color, an interest she maintained when she went

to work as the United Church of Christ’s foreign affairs lobbyist.32

Exile

For many South Africans, some kind of exile from their was a reality of the

apartheid years. People fled at varying times, sometimes because they felt that the atmosphere at

home was simply too repressive. For others, it was out of a fear of government violence; the

famous South African Joel Carlson finally decided that it was time to leave after his

house was firebombed. The Scandinavian countries proved to be the strongest allies of the ANC

among the western countries, directly funding them up to tens of millions of Kroner a year.

While other Western states failed to offer the same kind of support to the ANC, the organization

nevertheless opened offices for publicity, consciousness raising, fundraising, and in the case of

New York, to have a voice at the . Consequently, the ANC sent some of its

members abroad as part of its broader struggle. The ANC established an office in New York in

the mid-1960s (with financial assistance from American churches), and Washington’s office was

established as the legislative battle for sanctions reached its peak. ANC chapters sprang up

across North America; Boston, San Francisco, and Los Angeles were just a few of the cities that

had active ANC chapters.33

Many others sought exile in North America outside the auspices of the ANC. In the wake

of particularly violent crackdowns such as the Massacre or Uprising, people

32 , “Danny Schechter, ‘News Dissector’ and Human Rights Activist, Dies at 72,” March 23, 2015; Interview with Gretchen Eick, February 17, 2017. 33 Interview with Joel Carlson, Hilda and Rusty Bernstein Papers, Wits, A3299, Tape 13; “Sellstrom on Thorn, ‘Anti-Apartheid and the Emergence of a Global Civil Society,’” H-Net Reviews, October 2007, accessed October 3, 2017: https://networks.h-net.org/node/10670/reviews/11155/sellstrom-th%C3%B6rn-anti-apartheid-and-emergence- global-civil-society.

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fled South Africa en masse, often relying on whatever connections they could to get them out of

the country. For people like Jennifer Davis, the reality of South African politics in 1966 was that

there did not seem to be much prospect for work inside the country: most activists had either

been imprisoned, scared off, or driven so deeply underground that they were no longer working.

Going abroad was the only way to stay involved. For others like Collins Ramussi, the violence of

the apartheid state meant that even working outside of the ANC was simply too risky, and so he

went to Chicago. For particularly visible individuals such as , the apartheid state

would also consider a kind of quasi-exile to get rid of them. Rather than approving a South

African passport, they were given exit documentation to allow them to leave the country but

leave them with no legal means of return. In doing so, the apartheid state actually facilitated the

creation of transnational networks by dispersing people abroad.

Exiles contributed to the cosmopolitanism described earlier in obvious ways. While some

studies or descriptions of the experience of exile understandably focus on its traumatic

characteristics (loneliness, isolation, and depression, in addition to the undermining effect on

institutions in exile), studies about the South African experience suggest a somewhat different

experience. Exile proved far less damaging for the ANC and the people who experienced it:

people were energized by the political structures that existed elsewhere and kept people focused

on the long-term goal of defeating apartheid. While these structured communities were most

prominent outside of the United States, they nevertheless existed within the United States, and

their creation attracted new activists.34 South African exiles showed up in surprisingly diverse

parts of the United States, exposing other people to the realities of apartheid. Apart from

34 Colin Bundy, “National Liberation and International Solidarity: Anatomy of a Special Relationship,” in Southern African Liberation Struggles: New Local, Regional, and Global Perspectives, ed. Hilary Sapire and Chris Saunders Cape Town, SA: Press, 2012, 218.

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schooling and religion, relatively few forces brought South Africans to the United States. For

reasons of ideological support, they were more likely to go to either the socialist bloc or to

Scandinavia; for reasons of ease, they were more likely to stay in southern Africa. Given the

importance of South Africans in both regional and national committees, exile was a critical way

of transplanting South Africans to the United States.

Pan-Africanism

One cannot discuss the anti-apartheid movement without acknowledging the strong ties

between African Americans and South Africans. Indeed, the racial dimension is the aspect that

has been most closely discussed in histories and historiographies such as Francis Nesbitt’s Race

for Sanctions or Nicholas Grant’s Winning Our Freedoms Together: African Americans and

Apartheid, 1945-1960. Grant in particular focuses on both the economic and social factors that

linked South Africans and African Americans. Similarities between the two liberation struggles

led individuals on both sides to seek common cause in the fight against white supremacy in both

countries. Black power and self-determination also became an important transnational link

between the two countries. Americans such as had a keen interest in African

liberation and decolonization, while the had a vibrant international mindset

that led its members to look to , , and Tanzania for models. Tanzania’s significance

was on display at the 1974 Sixth Pan-African Congress, which a number of African Americans

were present for. This congress specifically focused on liberation in southern Africa and

mobilized a number of individuals to work on issues of African liberation.35

In some senses, the American civil rights movement and the anti-apartheid movement

diverged ideologically. After 1960, the ANC announced that it was endorsing violent resistance,

35 Nicholas Grant, Winning Our Freedoms Together: African Americans and Apartheid, 1945-1960, (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2017); Nesbitt, Race for Sanctions, 65.

26

while figures such as Martin Luther King, Jr. remained committed to . King called for sanctions against South Africa for the remainder of his life, but other civil rights groups in the

United States lost focus after 1968. CORE, which had been one of ACOA’s most reliable allied groups, turned inwards and became a politically conservative. Other groups such as the SCLC or chapters of the NAACP maintained an interest in apartheid, though as Penny von Eschen notes, existing U.S. civil rights organizations became more centrist and interested in working with rather than against the U.S. government. They could play contributing roles at certain moments, but their participation was neither guaranteed nor consistent. Von Eschen also argues that a subsequent of activists, lacking a left-wing civil rights orientation because of its destruction by McCarthyism, had to reinvent themselves ideologically in the 1960s as they searched for anticapitalist critiques, which had an impact both in domestic politics and overseas.36

James Meriwether describes a phenomenon that is similarly related to African American

support for anti-apartheid causes, which was the preference for clear good-and-evil actors,

particularly in the form of white supremacy. Apartheid South Africa found few friends among

African Americans (some exceptions such as or even Bayard Rustin existed).

Supporting the freedom struggle of South Africans was easier from a moral perspective as well

as from sheer simplicity: solving the problems of uneven colonial development was something

most Americans were not considering.37

Transnational actors represented on the one hand a rediscovery of some of those

anticapitalist critiques that von Eschen discusses. Exiled South Africans were willing to critique

capitalism in ways that their American counterparts were slower to adopt, while also enjoying

36 Eschen, Race Against Empire, 120, 187. 37 Meriwether, Proudly, 239.

27

the comparative freedom of U.S. society to study . Americans who went abroad often

found themselves exposed to these same kinds of thinkers. Yet transnational actors experienced

the greatest successes when they depicted apartheid in terms that were familiar to audiences in

the United States. Focusing on the similarities between apartheid and in the United

States such as housing justice, poverty, labor , and built solidarity with

Americans. Activists might have been motivated by deeper questions of capitalist exploitation,

but they stayed away from those ideological issues when working with an audience.

Leftism

Over time, a commitment to leftism and left-wing causes became an important part of the

anti-apartheid movement, though this political development took considerable time to come to

fruition. Nesbitt’s Race Against Empire and Grant’s Winning Our Freedoms Together note the

importance of support from leftists for fighting apartheid. American pacifists became some of the

earliest supporters of liberation activism. George Houser’s interest in the Defiance Campaign

was influenced by Gandhian nonviolence in the ANC. Houser had attempted to bring those same

principles to his work in CORE and saw a connection between the two struggles ideologically.

Houser was not alone as a committed pacifist who wanted to be part of the struggle in South

Africa: other Americans included Bill Sutherland, the Presbyterian minister Norman Thomas,

and A.J. Muste. American pacifists also lacked some of the reservations about working with

other leftist groups, particularly because American supporters inclined toward socialism.

However, pacifists also had to reconcile their involvement with groups such as the ANC that

endorsed violence. Some members, such as Houser, endorsed violence because they ultimately

saw no other recourse.38

38 Interview with George Houser, No Easy Victories, http://www.noeasyvictories.org/interviews/int02_houser.php.

28

How was a left-wing coalition developed from this initially small group of pacifists?

Dissatisfaction with the Cold War consensus went a long way, particularly in the wake of the

Vietnam War, and those concerned about U.S. support for anticommunist regimes could say they

wanted to curtail further violence. James Meriwether noted that African Americans adopted

Nelson Mandela as a symbol in part because of what he could say about African Americans and their shared issues. This notion of apartheid as a way to force discussion on sensitive issues in the United States was not unique to issues of race. Activists found ways to draw linkages, both in the realm of foreign policy and in domestic politics.39

As detailed in Apartheid, Guns, and Money, the South African state forged close ties with

other repressive governments such as Chile to circumvent the or other sanctions.

In the United States, anti-apartheid groups often created links to other sympathetic groups, and

anti-Pinochet groups joined with liberation activists on certain issues. Bank loans became one such issue. Activists targeted certain banks for their policy of lending, noting that banks holding

South African debt often had a policy of lending to Chile and of in their own .

Anti-nuclear groups also became involved, particularly after news emerged that the South

African government had tested a nuclear weapon in the late 1970s. This system of linkages was

just one way for activists on the left to construct the fight against apartheid as part of a global

fight against right-wing oppression.40

Anti-apartheid activists also worked alongside other African liberation activists. Indeed,

many anti-apartheid activists got started working on behalf of the other liberation groups, such as

FRELIMO in Mozambique and the MPLA in Angola. While lines between the different activists

often blurred, they nevertheless were distinct in other ways. Even after the independence of the

39 Meriwether, Proudly, 244. 40 Vuuren, Apartheid, 462.

29

Portuguese colonies, groups such as the Mozambique Support Network continued to focus on

providing support to the post-independence government. The fact that South Africa funded a

proxy war in Mozambique and directly intervened in Angola meant that they were rarely if ever

discrete issues. In turn, activists used the alliance with South Africa to make a broader critique of

U.S. foreign policy in the Cold War, as the United States’ support for South Africa translated

into a support for proxy wars in southern Africa.

Another group on the left in U.S. life was the Council on African Affairs (CAA).

Founded in 1936 by , a director of the international section of the Young Men’s

Christian Association. Yergan spent time in Dar es Salaam in the 1910s and in South Africa from

1921 to 1936. Yergan used his time there to cultivate close connections with members of the

ANC. The group included a number of prominent African American leftists including Alphaeus

Hunton, who rose to prominence through the CAA to become its executive director. Its members

also included W.E.B. DuBois, the African American intellectual and founding member of the

National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), and , the

African American singer and actor. While the organization remained small, it still enjoyed

support from a cross-section of other African American organizations. Hunton’s writings focused

on the exploitative practices of U.S. businesses, which operated by mistreating nonwhite workers

at home and abroad. Moreover, Hunton made the argument early on that economic engagement

with South Africa directly reinforced apartheid by shoring it up financially.41

The CAA was ultimately persecuted into effective nonexistence in the second .

The group targeted under the McCarran Security Act and by 1955, it had effectively ceased to

41 William Minter and Sylvia Hill, “Anti-Apartheid Solidarity in United States-South Africa Relations: From the Margins to the Mainstream,” in The Road to Democracy in South Africa, International Solidarity, Volume 3 (Pretoria: UNISA Press, 2008), 754; von Eschen, Race, 18; Grant, Winning, 29.

30

exist. It nevertheless managed to raise some money to support South Africans engaged in civil

disobedience against the apartheid regime in 1952. Mainstream African American organizations

shunned the organization, fearing that they would be targeted as well for supporting it. Yergan

went from being a prominent leftist to an ardent anticommunist, going so far as to praise aspects

of apartheid by the 1960s. Yergan’s about-face was owed in no small part to the fact that the FBI

learned of his attempt to extort money from a former lover, using that to blackmail him into

speaking out against other subversives.42

Evaluations of the CAA as an organization have run a considerable gamut. Penny von

Eschen argues that the destruction of the CAA effectively cut off a generation of African

American activists from a left-wing perspective on foreign affairs and weakened their

commitment to anticolonialism during the 1960s. Arguing against the CAA’s significance, Alvin

Tillery suggests that the CAA was a marginal organization and that organizations such as the

NAACP effectively took up the mantle of African American anticolonialism. While the

organization’s footprint was ultimately a small one, many of its critiques about the dual nature of

racism and capitalism were revisited by a subsequent generation of activists.43

From the 1960s through the 1980s, the United States witnessed an increasingly powerful

conservative political ascendancy. Unlike McCarthyism, it did not silence leftists outright, but

the diminished possibilities available because of conservative politicians left activists looking for

ways to discuss domestic politics. Apartheid serviced this ambition, in part because of the

conservatism of apartheid South Africa. Anti-union policies at home could be connected to the struggles of South African labor activists, or unequal housing access could be connected to

42 Minter and Hill, “Anti-Apartheid Solidarity,” 754; Grant, Winning, 47. 43 von Eschen, Race, 186; Alvin B. Tillery, Jr., Between Homeland and Motherland: Africa, U.S. Foreign Policy, and Black Americans (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2011), 74-75.

31

redlining by specific banks. When discussing sanctions in Illinois for example, activists took

note of specific government buildings built with South African at a time when the Illinois steel

industry was violently contracting.

Structure

This dissertation will consist of four chapters, each looking at a transnational aspect of the North American anti-apartheid movement. In the first chapter, I explore the early roots of the

U.S.-based anti-apartheid movement until the mid-1960s. I focus in particular on a few key individual actors, in no small part because the movement was limited in those years. Through the

1950s and 1960s liberation activism was dependent on interpersonal relationships and the cultivation of networks, and a handful of transnational actors built relationships that proved to be significant as time went on. For liberation groups such as the ANC that had members working inside the United States, working at a decentralized level was the only feasible option, and the movement remained decentralized as a result.

In chapter two, I look at ACOA, the longest-running group with a national presence that was exclusively dedicated to African liberation issues. ACOA was led and staffed by a number of transnational actors, including several South African exiles. For much of the 1960s and into the 1970s, it grappled with ways to build an effective national movement, but attempts to move outside of New York repeatedly failed because of limited resources. Similarly, attempts to change American foreign policy stalled because ACOA lacked influence to do so. By the early

1970s however, certain members of ACOA reoriented the movement by funneling support and resources to grassroots groups. Rather than directing a nationwide movement, ACOA cultivated and sustained local movements, shifting away from a top-down approach.

32

In chapter three, I examine local anti-apartheid movements in the United States: Madison,

Wisconsin, Michigan, Chicago, and Boston. The local dimensions of the anti-apartheid movement have been understudied, in no small part because the source base is scattered. These

four local movements were significant in the development of the national anti-apartheid

movement as it became focused on divestment. Activists faced profoundly different audiences in

each state. Transnational actors proved to be extremely adept at tailoring their messages to

specific places, finding diverse ways to connect with Americans who were otherwise unfamiliar

with South Africa. These four regional campaigns each had vibrant movements that proved to be

exemplary in certain ways. Each of these case studies also speaks to an aspect of the broader

anti-apartheid movement in the United States, ranging from how divestment was embraced as a

strategy to the difficulties of coalition building.

In my fourth chapter, I show how these grassroots movements gained momentum in the early 1980s. The mobilization of activists that I describe in chapter three did not create a uniform national coalition, but rather a patchwork of state and city groups that raised awareness of South

African apartheid. Groups such as TransAfrica and the WOA demanded stronger sanctions

against the South African state at the federal level. Other organizations such as the AFSC created

awareness by working with teams of South African exiles and others who toured parts of the country where a grassroots movement did not yet exist. This focus on decentralized, grassroots lobbying was instrumental in passing sanctions in 1986.

The dissertation will then conclude with a brief discussion of the legacy of the anti- apartheid movement in the United States. While the vast majority of the organizing committees and support networks are gone, a few remain at the city level, maintaining the ties that had been built during the movement. This dissertation makes clear some of the characteristics of effective

33

organizing on remote issues, and the legacy of the anti-apartheid movement can be seen in contemporary activism.

34

The Historical Context of Apartheid

Commonly said to have been established in 1948, apartheid (literally, “separateness” in

Afrikaans) was in fact a series of policies that were passed in 1948 and after, through the 1950s.

Several of its chief features such as the pass system had been created before 1948, with the

General Pass Act of 1905 requiring black South Africans to carry a pass, and the Native Land

Act in 1913 restricting black South Africans from purchasing or owning land in most places

outside of so-called reserves. Other gave residential segregation the force of law, denied the franchise for non-whites, and created labor restrictions that preserved skilled trade as the exclusive domain of white workers.

While the remained a country with legalized segregation for much of the first half of the twentieth, two important factors pushed the country toward apartheid. One was the position of within white South Africa and the . Afrikaners had resisted British in the First and , and even after the establishment of the Union of South Africa in 1910 and the home-rule given to South Africa as a dominion in the

British Empire. Ill-treatment by the British stoked a sense of cultural nationalism that was aimed simultaneously at the British as well as black South Africans, and was fostered by the Dutch

Reformed Church and schools. Afrikaners were economically marginalized as well in.

In 1945, Afrikaners earned on average 47% of what their British peers were paid, and they were

more heavily concentrated in agriculture and manufacturing, which put them into direct

economic competition with black South Africans.44

44 Jamie Miller, An African Volk: The Apartheid Regime and Its Search for Survival, (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016), 31, 47.

35

World War II also undermined much of the preexisting consensus that existed within

South Africa and the ruling United Party. The demands of the war had increased the appetite for

black South African labor in major cities, where the need for labor was greatest. Thus, certain

earlier kinds of control eroded, especially in the labor sector. Black South Africans were

suddenly able to compete for certain kinds of skilled jobs, and labor militancy increased as well:

the war years witnessed a large number of strikes. Labor militancy was combined with

increasing black visibility in South Africa’s largest cities. Attempts by the United Party to

recognize labor unions fed Afrikaner resentment. Concern over these issues led the National

Party under Daniel Malan to victory in 1948. South Africa was led by the National Party until the

end of apartheid.45

Apartheid was never an entirely fixed policy, and at times it meant different things to . Intra-white resentment, having partly created it, eroded over time because

Afrikaners caught up to their British counterparts in income and moved into white-collar

positions. As a policy, apartheid increasingly focused on so-called “,” which were

South Africans of mixed racial heritage, Indians, and black South Africans. For Dr. Hendrik

Verwoerd, one of its “architects,” apartheid was rooted in immutable cultural differences

between white Christians and “barbarian” black South Africans. While crude racism could be

found at multiple levels in South Africa, the outward trappings of apartheid were presented as a

way to respect the integrity of different cultures. One strand of apartheid thinking wanted to

preserve total white domination, while a separate strand imagined near-total separation between

the races.46

45 Miller, African Volk, 32. 46 Miller, African Volk, 47; Saul Dubow, Apartheid, 1948-1994, (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014), 13, 27.

36

While the implementation of apartheid was not a wholly smooth process and in fact

proceeded in an ad hoc and haphazard way, the National Party nevertheless acted enthusiastically

to further divide the country along racial lines. The of 1950 empowered

authorities to designate certain areas for specific race groups, allowing city governments to

eliminate racially-integrated neighborhoods. The apartheid government also enthusiastically embraced anticommunism and used it to silence political dissent within South Africa.47

The establishment of apartheid did not come without opposition, especially from those racial groups that found themselves far more marginalized than before. The ANC had been founded in 1912, and had spent the first decades of its existence as a largely accommodationist body, gathering to protest the government but otherwise taking little .

Milder forms of activism shifted because of the war and the large-scale migration into major cities, which afforded the group new opportunities for mobilization. The ANC’s Youth League drove much of this process both in terms of organization and goals, and its members included

future leaders such as Oliver Tambo, Walter Sisulu, , and most famously, Nelson

Mandela. The ANC’s leadership was inclined to cooperate with other groups on racial lines, such

as the Indian National Congress, and with the South Party as well. In 1952,

the ANC launched one of its first major attempts at , the so-called Defiance

Campaign. Modeled on Gandhian nonviolence (though protests in some places turned into riots), thousands of black South Africans were arrested for violating so-called “petty apartheid” segregation ordinances.48

47 Nicholas Grant argues that the apartheid state drew directly on anticommunism in the United States for its application in South Africa. Grant, Winning, 122. 48 Dubow, Apartheid, 40, 43.

37

Vigorous protests notwithstanding, the National Party continued to assume more power

for itself and to limit the independence and sovereignty of the black community. The Bantu

Education Act of 1953 ended the authority of independent mission schools and left the state in

charge of black education, which it used to circumscribe the employment opportunities for black

pupils. The Industrial Conciliation Act of 1956 held that black South Africans were legally not

employees, striking a major blow to labor rights. The Department of Native Affairs steadily

expanded its authority so that any black South African seeking employment in a city had to be

officially registered through a labor bureau, all in the interest of so-called “influx control.” Most

tellingly for the future was the Bantu Authorities Act in 1951, which created “tribal authorities”

in the land reserved for Africans. Divisions of power along tribal or ethnic lines had earlier

precedents in the British system of indirect colonial rule. These became the basis of the so-called

“,” which were supposed to be for the various tribes of South Africa.49

Police crackdowns on the ANC accelerated after the declaration of the

in 1955, which asserted that a free South Africa would be multiracial and that certain industries

would be nationalized. In 1956, over one hundred leading activists were arrested in what became

known as the Treason , which lasted over five years and saw the acquittal of all of the

defendants. While the trials themselves went nowhere, they did nevertheless detain the leaders of

the ANC and hamstring their role in leading public opposition to apartheid. A breakaway group

led by and Potlako Leballo formed the PAC in 1959, rejecting the ANC’s

multi-racialism. Simultaneously, the government began creating new security legislation in light of the Treason Trial’s failure to silence dissent in the country.50

49 Dubow, Apartheid, 62. 50 Dubow, Apartheid, 71-72.

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The PAC inaugurated the upheaval that rocked South Africa in 1960 in what became

known as the pass campaign, protesting the country’s . The country was already in the

midst of workplace turmoil; a well-publicized mine disaster claimed the lives of four hundred

and thirty-seven work at Coalbrook Colliery. On , a crowd of approximately 5,000

protested at a police station in the of Sharpeville. As the crowd became unruly, police

panicked and opened fire, causing the deaths of sixty-nine people and wounding hundreds more.

The shooting set off a wave of protests within South Africa as well as a fresh wave of international condemnation, briefly threatening the South African economy.51

The government reacted by banning the ANC and the PAC as revolutionary

organizations, while both organizations formally disavowed nonviolence as a guiding

philosophy. Mandela in particular took the lead in establishing an armed wing of the ANC,

Umkhonto we Sizwe (UMK, and a Xhosa phrase meaning “Spear of ). For the

liberation movements, neither was well-positioned to either capitalize on the chaos gripping the government, or to move toward armed struggle. A furtive campaign of by the ANC and attempts to foment a popular uprising by the PAC were matched by a campaign of arrests and

“bannings” (a term for that severely limited the activities a person could do), and by

1963 Mandela had been arrested at a farm house outside Rivonia along with other ANC leaders before being sentenced to life in 1964. By the end of 1963, liberation activists were either in jail, neutralized, or in exile abroad. Meanwhile, the South African state adopted a number of repressive laws to arrest potential dissidents, setting it on the road to becoming a full- fledged police state.52

51 Dubow, Apartheid, 74, 81. 52 Dubow, Apartheid, 86, 96.

39

The remainder of the 1960s were a period of prosperity and political stability for the

apartheid states. The South African state reached its most ambitious point in this period,

unveiling under prime ministers and a policy of so-called

“separate development.” Separate development was supposed to take place through the

“homelands,” which became known as bantustans and which were intended to be homes for different tribes. Bantustans were supposed to become fully independent, their residents no longer

South African citizens but instead citizens of their respective homeland. Bantustans were often

criticized as simply being cheap reservoirs of indigenous labor, though Saul Dubow has observed

that the South African government had to subsidize their existence to such an extent that they

were an economic loss. Tiny, situated on poor farm land, and economically underdeveloped, they

rapidly became overcrowded and impoverished, while forced population removals led to the

forcible movement of three and a half million people between 1960 and 1982.53

The liberation movements had to adapt to exile, which left them out of touch with their

would-be supporters in South Africa. The PAC ultimately became less effective because of

factional struggles. The ANC forged relationships with independent African states, the Soviet

Bloc, and civil society groups in Western Europe and North America that held the group together. Internally, while apartheid remained politically unchallenged, the Black Consciousness

Movement (BCM) spread through churches and universities and encouraged black South

Africans to reject racist attitudes that made them feel inferior; it joined class critiques of South

Africa with racial critiques. Perhaps its most famous proponent was Steve , though as a movement it was decentralized.54

53 Dubow, Apartheid, 109, 112. 54 Dubow, Apartheid, 136, 159.

40

Within South Africa, the 1970s saw several important changes. The country’s shifting

socioeconomic dynamics for whites meant earlier Afrikaner-British tensions had been smoothed over. The National party made overtures to British whites in the country to create a united white political front. South Africa under John Vorster made overtures to other independent African

states even as it maintained ties to other white-minority regimes, namely the Portuguese colonies and . Vorster relaxed certain features of petty apartheid, allowing a few interracial sporting competitions in response to international opprobrium. Simultaneously, Vorster encouraged uranium enrichment, setting the country on the path to developing a nuclear arsenal.

These changes also saw South Africa beset by a number of internal contradictions that

made it more difficult to maintain apartheid. The victory of the Marxist-led MPLA in

neighboring led the South African government to intervene directly in the subsequent Angolan

Civil War in 1975. Blocked from seizing the capital by Cuban intervention, the defeat

encouraged the increasing militarization of South African society in anticipation of future

conflicts with neighboring states. Thereafter, South Africa was on the side of UNITA in the

Angolan Civil War and sponsored anti-government forces in Mozambique, provoking a civil war

in that country. International economic shocks, particularly the oil shock in 1973, put an end to

South Africa’s impressive growth. Stagflation from the rising price of oil occurred

simultaneously with a growing shortage of skilled labor, growing black labor militancy despite

the illegality of labor unions, and the anger over the poor wages earned by black workers.55

Then in 1976, political disturbances recurred. In Soweto, one of the of

Johannesburg, a ruling that instruction take place in Afrikaans provoked

demonstrations. On June 16, a mass demonstration was met by police firing tear gas and then

55 Miller, African Volk, 281; Dubow, Apartheid, 177-178.

41

live ammunition, killing at least one hundred and seventy-six children (the death toll is disputed but estimated by some to be higher). Far from returning calm, the violence fueled more protests which continued for over a year, and hundreds more died before they ended. In 1977, was arrested by police, tortured, and beaten to death in custody. These events severely strained

South Africa’s relations with its western allies, and led to an arms embargo by the UN that same year. Meanwhile, though it had little direct connection to events in Soweto, the ANC used the events to begin rebuilding itself internally as well as through a wave of exiles fleeing post-

Soweto turmoil.56

South Africa stabilized somewhat from 1978 to 1982, buoyed by high prices for and

the rise of conservative governments in Britain, the United States, and West . Some conciliatory measures to mollify black South Africans were passed by P.W. Botha, the prime minister who succeeded John Vorster. One of the most significant reforms was the legalization of black trade unions in 1979. Yet the ruling whites themselves split between pro-business interests who recognized that some kind of reform was necessary to preserve their own economic standing and conservative hardliners who rejected any of apartheid laws. The country’s white minority became unified largely through anti-communism and fear of a Marxist successor government, which left them unified and supportive of a militaristic domestic and foreign policy but with no other areas of agreement. The proposal and establishment of a that gave limited rights to Indians and coloureds provoked the departure of right-wing Afrikaners into the Conservative Party.57

The constitutional changes also failed to mollify political dissidents precisely because it

omitted the majority black population of South Africa. It led in part to the establishment of a new

56 Dubow, Apartheid, 181, 192. 57 Miller, African Volk, 327; Dubow, Apartheid, 195, 198, 205.

42

anti-apartheid organization, the United Democratic Front (UDF), in June 1983. A multiracial

coalition of churches, civic groups, and trade unions, UDF went from opposing the constitutional

changes to an endorsement of the ANC’s Freedom Charter. In September 1984, new protests

erupted in the townships and spread throughout the country in the forms of strikes, stayaways,

and civil disobedience. The government declared a in June 1985 and

deployed troops throughout the townships, launching thousands of arrests to quell the unrest. The

ANC responded with a fresh campaign of sabotage and guerrilla attacks to increase the pressure

on the South African government. While these attacks did not materially threaten the apartheid

regime, the apartheid regime responded with a wave of counter-attacks and assassinations of

ANC leaders outside the country. This turmoil undid the progress South Africa’s economy made after Soweto, leading to increasing capital flight by 1985, the devaluation of the country’s currency, and weak growth for high-tech industries. A second state of emergency was declared in

1986-1990, and while arrests and detentions undermined the UDF substantially the government never regained its earlier control over the country.58

Negotiations by private individuals with the ANC led to governmental acceptance for the

idea of some kind of negotiated settlement. These talks included calls for the release of Nelson

Mandela, who had gone from being largely forgotten in the 1970s to international celebrity by

the 1980s. A South African military defeat in Angola at the battle of Cuito Cuanavale in 1988

undermined hope in a protracted military struggle, while the fall of communist governments in

1989 removed a source of aid for the ANC and a source of fear for the South African

government. The ascension of F.W. de Klerk as prime minister also broke the deadlock, as de

Klerk seemed to have made up his mind to negotiate in order to preserve as much of the white

58 Dubow, Apartheid, 210, 215, 224, 240.

43

position in South Africa as possible. De Klerk unbanned many of the country’s political

organizations and organized the release of a number of political , including Mandela.59

The period between 1990 and 1994 became the most violent years of apartheid, in part because of killings between rival groups and fringe groups on the far left and the far right.

Nevertheless, while the negotiations were frequently fraught and violence threatened to derail the process, the ANC and the National Party stuck to the process, while those in opposition remained divided. Most of the apartheid laws were done away with in 1991. In elections of April 26 to

April 29, 1994, the ANC won with a little over sixty percent of the vote, and Mandela was inaugurated as president on May 10, 1994.60

59 Dubow, Apartheid, 253, 264-265. 60 Dubow, Apartheid, 272.

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Chapter 1 Person-to-Person Links in the Anti- Apartheid Movement

The American Judy Seidman first went to Africa in 1962, when her parents became

lecturers at the in . Far from falling in love with the country, she hated

it and later recalled spending her time there in screaming matches with her parents. However,

Ghana under Nkrumah was a hotbed of liberation activism, with Nkrumah openly declaring that

his goal was the eradication of white settler in Africa. She read a great deal about

South Africa while she lived there. At the age of 15, she enrolled at the University of Wisconsin

in Madison and became engrossed in protests against the Vietnam War.1

In 1972, her parents moved to the University of in . Having finished her

BA and an MFA degree, Seidman visited them before continuing her schooling in the United

States. She found that she enjoyed Zambia, and decided to stay. Trained as a graphic artist, she

produced occasional works of art for the ANC office in Lusaka. She married an English-

Botswanan expatriate who in 1975 got a job at the University of , , and

Swaziland. In 1980, Seidman and her husband moved to Gaborone in Botswana where she took a job teaching at the Medu Art School. Medu was home to a great many members of the ANC. On

June 14, 1985, the South African Defense Forces attacked Medu in order to reach a number of

ANC members, killing twelve people. Seidman then joined the armed wing of the ANC,

Umkhonto we Sizwe (UMK). She claims that she never knowingly transported arms for the group, but she did act as a courier by transporting other members to safehouses. In 1987, her ex-

1 Interview with Neva and Zeph Makgetla, June 4, 2017.

45

husband’s house was petrol-bombed, an attack that which narrowly missed her children because they were somewhere else at the time. Undeterred, Seidman sent them out of the country and continued producing art and working for UMK.2

Seidman’s experience was unusual, but not unique. This chapter will focus on a number of prominent individuals in the North American anti-apartheid movement from its beginning in the early 1950s until the mid-1960s. Focusing at the individual level has a few important benefits for the broader analysis of this dissertation. While anti-apartheid causes eventually adopted a mass character, building a movement was a slow process at best and took considerable time to develop any kind of organizational strength. More realistically, interest waxed and waned, meaning that groups would often form only to fall apart a few years later. Individuals were more significant in the early years when in many cases a couple of key people effectively sustained whole organizations. Outside of brief cycles of media interest, the anti-apartheid movement in

the United States was a small collection of scattered individuals. To understand how the

movement was built, one needs to begin by studying them and seeing the interlocking

connections they built. It shows how these individuals became involved in liberation causes and

what motivated them to stay involved when they returned to North America.

More critically, these are individuals that I contend either shaped the U.S. anti-apartheid movement or were representative of certain trends which became normal among activists over time. Some of their influence was intellectual, shaping the orientation of different groups or aligning American sympathizers with their South African counterparts. Many of them had considerable personal charisma, which is significant in building grassroots network from scratch.

Others simply had a knack for being in the right place at the right time, managing to be present

2 Interview with Neva and Zeph Makgetla, June 4, 2017.

46

when major campaigns were unfolding and contribute from there. For those individuals who

were representative in some way, understanding how they worked and what they accomplished

sheds light on the movement in certain respects, whether it was how activists won over U.S.

audiences, or the arenas they chose to work in to lessen U.S. support for apartheid.

For the sake of organization, this chapter will proceed in a roughly chronological fashion

by beginning in the early 1950s and will offer a profile of some of the most significant

transnational activists in North America along with the networks that they created. While some

Americans had ties to southern Africa that predated this period (primarily missionaries), only after the establishment of apartheid laws in the late 1940s and early 1950s did Americans begin

involving themselves in the politics of the country. As South Africans came to the United States

for work, study, or to get away from the politics and repression of their home country, they also

became involved in activism in their new home.

Bill Sutherland

In some respects, Bill Sutherland was present at the very beginning of the American fight

against apartheid. An African American born in Glen Ridge, New Jersey to a well-off family and

raised as a Congregationalist, Sutherland became politically active during WWII. He sought

conscientious objector status and was sentenced to because he refused to serve in a segregated army. While leading protests against segregation, Sutherland also used the time to

meet several other civil rights and peace activists who he remained in contact with for the

remainder of his life: Bayard Rustin, Dave Dellinger, and George Houser. These connections

firmly embedded Sutherland inside the American civil rights movement, and his association with

Houser proved to be significant.3

3 Interview with Bill Sutherland, No Easy Victories, http://www.noeasyvictories.org/interviews/int01_sutherland.php.

47

Sutherland represented several of the transnational roots that defined the anti-apartheid

movement. Because of his faith, he was a committed pacifist who protested against both the

Second World War and nuclear proliferation during the Cold War. Because of his race and the

relationships he made while in prison, he had connections both among civil rights activists and

Pan-African thinkers. After his release from prison at the end of the war, he attended the Pan-

African Conference in Manchester, in 1945 that brought together a number of African

Americans and African nationalists. Sutherland spent several years primarily working in the field of anti-nuclear activism and believed the opportunities for anti-racist organizing in the United

States were shrinking rather than expanding. Sutherland believed McCarthyism was making the

United States too hostile for any kind of meaningful civil rights activism.

Sutherland’s broader interests in , anti-nuclear activity, and anti-racism brought him into what became the anti-apartheid movement. Through his anti-nuclear connections, he had met the Pan-Africanist thinker . While in London either in late 1951 or early

1952, Sutherland met the editor of the South African Bantu World newspaper who told him about a pending Gandhian resistance campaign in South Africa, the Defiance Campaign.

Sutherland told some of his colleagues in CORE about the pending campaign, including George

Houser. He came back to the United States to work with AFSAR, speaking on behalf of the

ANC.4

In 1953, Sutherland decided to move to Africa. Initially he had hoped to go to ,

but it was under direct British control and his prior political activities made him suspect to the

British. The Gold Coast (Ghana), however, was internally autonomous, and so Sutherland

4 Interview with Bill Sutherland, No Easy Victories, http://www.noeasyvictories.org/interviews/int01_sutherland.php; Ernest Dunbar, The Black Expatriates: A Study of American Negroes in Exile, (New York: E.P. Dutton & Co., Inc., 1968), 93.

48

decided to move there. When Ghana became independent on March 6, 1957, it was Sutherland

who helped to secure an invitation for Martin Luther King, Jr. to attend the ceremony.5

Sutherland used his position in Africa to carry on a wide variety of activism. In 1958 at the All-

African People’s Conference in Accra, Sutherland was a delegate and an organizer, and he meet the future , . Reportedly, Sutherland gave Kaunda a number of his books on nonviolence and direct action. Sullivan was one of two critical organizers of antinuclear activity in Ghana, which took a leadership role in denouncing French nuclear testing in the Sahara.6

In 1961, Sutherland assisted in founding the World Peace Brigade in Beirut, and a year later brought the group to (Zambia). By 1963, Sutherland had relocated from

Ghana to Dar es Salaam, in part out of his preference for Nyerere’s political style and leanings.

Dar-es-Salaam was the headquarters of many of the liberation movements, and Sutherland was already familiar to many of the liberation leaders because of his earlier activism; Sutherland considered Nyerere as a personal friend. Sutherland’s home became a kind of waystation for

Americans headed to Tanzania. Sutherland hosted on his final trip inside Africa.

Sutherland also became a civil servant in Tanzania and founded solidarity groups such as the

Pan-African Freedom Movement of East and Central Africa. He also represented an unofficial line of communication between sympathizers in North America and the southern African liberation groups. While living in the Gold Coast, Sutherland had received funds from ACOA for

5 Interview with Bill Sutherland, No Easy Victories, http://www.noeasyvictories.org/interviews/int01_sutherland.php. 6 For more on this story, see Jean Allman’s “Nuclear Imperialism.”

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work he did with a school there. By the time he had relocated to Zambia, Sutherland used his

connections with ACOA to procure aid and support for refugees from South Africa.7

The connections between Sutherland’s pacifism and the anti-apartheid movement might

seem tenuous, in part because South Africa was missing the kind of high-profile conflict that

beset places such as Congo or Algeria. However, Sutherland’s pacifism had been shaped by his

time in prison, when he claimed he recognized “institutional violence” that repressed and

traumatized individuals, projecting psychological violence onto them. In his worldview, the

absence of outright conflict was not peace. While he was imprisoned in the early 1940s,

Sutherland noted that his views were not necessarily popular with other pacifists, but his views

became increasingly influential over time. Sutherland also represented a kind of mounting

interest in supporting decolonization and liberation activism. Experiences similar to Sutherland’s were a starting point for many anti-apartheid activists. Groups such as ACOA focused initially on decolonization within all of Africa, gradually narrowing their scope of activities to those places still under foreign domination, or like South Africa, under minority control.8

Sutherland’s interest in Africa was unusual, but not dramatically so in the context of the

times, and his movement back and forth between the United States and southern Africa is typical

of many Americans who were drawn to Africa in this period. Sutherland was part of a relatively

large group of individuals who saw Africa as the place with the greatest possibilities for change

on a revolutionary scale. The fact that he championed Tanzania as a site where the hopes around

7 Sutherland Personal History, AFSC, 1979, Southern Africa Program, Projects: Sutherland Speaking Tours; Dunbar, Black Expatriates, 95; Interview with Bill Sutherland, No Easy Victories, http://www.noeasyvictories.org/interviews/int01_sutherland.php; “Bill Sutherland Pan African Pacifist, 1918-2010.” Accessed October 1, 2017: http://kora.matrix.msu.edu/files/50/304/32-130-786-84-african_activist_archive-a0b6l4- a_12419.pdf; “Financial Report of the Project Fund of the American Committee on Africa Period to October 18, 1955,” American Committee on Africa records, Box 3, Folder 6; Letter from George Houser to Bill Sutherland, February 8, 1966, American Committee on Africa records, Box 100, Folder 26. 8 Leilah Danielson, “Not By Might: Christianity, Nonviolence, and American Radicalism, 1919-1963,” (PhD Diss., University of Texas-Austin, 2003), 214.

50

freedom and pacifism might be realized were not the sole factor in explaining Dar’s draw to

North Americans. This appeal shifted over time as well, moving away from pacifist activists

such as Sutherland toward black power activists from the United States. Sutherland remained as

a bridge for many Americans looking to experience southern Africa, and he spent significant

amounts of time in the United States publicizing the horrors of apartheid, but he was also part of

a broader trend toward interest in the possibilities of revolutionary Africa.9

George Houser

Sutherland might have been a vital link between AFSAR and the South Africans, but it

was an American named George Houser who sustained that interest. Houser was born in 1916 to

missionary parents and grew up in the Philippines. Houser attributed his pacifistic and anti-

racism views to his parents as well as his upbringing in the National Council of Methodist Youth

which stressed social activism, opposition to racism, and socialism. Houser’s initial interests

were in working with criminal gangs on the lower East Side of New York and joined the

Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR) in 1938, where he met A. Philip Randolph on a picket line.

Houser refused to register for the draft in 1940 and spent a year in prison, where he worked with

other inmates to protest the treatment of African Americans by prison authorities. After he was

released, Houser and several of the men with whom he had been imprisoned went to Chicago,

where they helped to found CORE. Houser’s activist influences were coming from Gandhian nonviolence, which shaped CORE.10

Houser was attracted to Sisulu’s cause again in part because of its similarity to civil rights

issues in the United States and Sisulu’s embrace of certain aspects of Gandhian nonviolence.

Because the Defiance Campaign was cut off from international media, Sisulu asked Houser to

9 Markle, Motorcycle, 2, 33. 10 Interview with George Houser, No Easy Victories, http://www.noeasyvictories.org/interviews/int02_houser.php.

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publicize events in South Africa. Houser’s connections among civil rights activists proved to be

useful, as he reached out to civil rights , members from the NAACP, Adam Clayton

Powell, and the reverends Donald Harrington and Charles Trigg. Houser was also able to meet

with Z.K. Matthews, a member of the ANC who was teaching at Union Theological Seminary in

New York. Houser began collecting funds as well as donations from FOR and CORE to send to

the ANC. Houser also built connections with prominent members of the anti-apartheid

movement in Britain, partnering with journalist Ruth First to circulate her publications in the

U.S. They picketed the South African consulate in New York. Lastly, they put out a bulletin that

gave the number of people who had been arrested, the reactions of whites to the Defiance

Campaign in South Africa, and over time, political developments in South Africa.11

AFSAR ultimately collected around $3,000 for the ANC, most of which went to paying

fines and for . But more significant than the donations that were offered by AFSAR was

the determination to form a group that continued supporting African Liberation, the American

Committee on Africa. AFSAR showed signs of expanding its view beyond South Africa in 1953;

one bulletin described the spread of civil disobedience campaigns throughout Africa, particularly

in Rhodesia. AFSAR’s mailing list grew from a few hundred people at its inception to several thousand, suggesting growing interest in news about African social justice issues.12

At this time, advocacy related to African issues was weak; the only other group in the

United States that addressed U.S. foreign policy was the CAA. The International League for the

11 Interview with George Houser, No Easy Victories, http://www.noeasyvictories.org/interviews/int02_houser.php; Letter from Walter Sisulu to George Houser, June 18, 1952, ACOA, Box 100, Folder 2, South Africa Correspondence June-Dec, 1952; Letter from George Houser to Arthur Blaxall, January 23, 1953, ACOA, Box 100, Folder 3, South Africa Correspondence 1953; Letter from Ruth First, February 24, 1954, ACOA, Box 100, Folder 3, South Africa Correspondence 1953. 12 Letter to Arthur Blaxall, May 1, 1953, ACOA, Box 100, Folder 3, South Africa Correspondence 1953; AFSAR Bulletin No. 15, Box 100, Folder 40, South Africa ACOA Programs and Activities Americans for South African Resistance 1953.

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Rights of Man and the NAACP both offered legal assistance and financial support at the UNC to

South African petitioners and those working to end South Africa’s occupation of .

Houser rapidly positioned AFSAR and ACOA as an alternative to the CAA in no small part by

staying away from communism which the CAA was inextricably linked to by the early 1950s.

Houser by contrast was not a Marxist, though he endorsed certain socialist tenets, had strong

civil rights credentials, and his position in the Methodist Church likely gave him a certain veneer

of credibility in the atmosphere of the Red Scare. Houser’s political framing of ACOA

represented an early fissure with other leftist groups. Penny von Eschen’s brief discussion of

ACOA argued that the group was intractably hostile to communism, and Houser did display a

preference for non-communist groups. W.E.B. DuBois referred to them as a “right-wing” group and stated that they were unable to tell African stories fully.13

Out of AFSAR, ACOA was founded by George Houser and several others who had been involved with the Defiance Campaign. The decision to make ACOA into a permanent organization was not made lightly because the founding members had no financial base to support the organization. In the beginning, they depended on space donated by the Community

Church of New York, and Houser worked with one other woman, Lydia . Its executive board was the same as AFSAR’s, but ACOA’s task was concerned much more with opposing colonialism throughout Africa. ACOA’s task was political action, particularly through the United

Nations, and to sway opinion in the State Department. A key piece was educational, as Houser and the other interested members recognized that public awareness about African issues outside

13 South Africa had been awarded control of Namibia as a Class-C Mandate following World War One. In 1946, it attempted to directly annex Namibia into South Africa, setting off a protracted fight in the newly-created United Nations. Charles Denton Johnson, “African Americans and South Africans: the Anti-Apartheid Movement in the United States, 1921-1955,” (PhD diss., Howard University, 2004), 221; Interview with George Houser, No Easy Victories, http://www.noeasyvictories.org/interviews/int02_houser.php; Penny von Eschen, Race, 143-144.

53

of African American groups was practically nonexistent. Members of the group also hoped to support African students who matriculated at universities in the United States.14

As early as 1953, Walter White, the executive director of the NAACP expressed doubts that ACOA was a viable organization, a sentiment echoed by its former chairman of the board,

Arthur Spingarn. White likely felt this way because ACOA’s proposed budget of $16,000 was too small and because Spingarn and White felt that ACOA’s membership lacked expertise on

Africa. White and others felt that the NAACP was best positioned to be the leading group dealing with African issues. Moreover, they likely disliked the idea of having to compete with

ACOA for fundraising. ACOA’s continuing connections to CORE meant it existed somewhat uneasily among civil rights organizations in the United States, but this did not ultimately stop

ACOA from taking leadership on African issues. Whatever White’s feelings on the proper role of the NAACP and anti-colonialism, the NAACP by the mid-1950s was unable to assume a leadership role addressing U.S. foreign relations in Africa. Between dealing with the conservatism of the Eisenhower administration and the increasing demands of the U.S. civil rights movement, the NAACP ceased paying full attention to African issues.15

Taking on this work also led Houser to strengthen his ties within Africa, in part because he was still relatively unfamiliar with the various liberation movements. He made his first trip in

1954, spending six months visiting a host of countries, including Tanzania, , and South

Africa. In doing so, Houser reinforced his connections with members of various liberation movements: Kenneth Kaunda in Zambia, in Ghana, in

Tanzania, and Oliver Tambo in the ANC. Houser built up a great deal of trust and political

14 Interview with George Houser, No Easy Victories, http://www.noeasyvictories.org/interviews/int02_houser.php; “Memorandum, American Committee on Africa Aims and Structures,” American Committee on Africa, Box 1, Folder 1, Interoffice Memoranda 1952; Charles Denton Johnson, “African Americans,” 223. 15 Charles Denton Johnson, “African Americans,” 230; Carol Anderson, Bourgeois Radicals, 304.

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capital with these movements as a result, and he continued making trips over and over again for

the remainder of his life: he made thirty-such trips over the next forty years.

Houser became the group’s executive director in 1955, and for the next decade and a half, the group’s connections were built more or less off of Houser’s. ACOA drew its support from a wide variety of traditionally liberal groups. Houser maintained strong ties to participants in the civil rights struggle, including Martin Luther King, Jr., A. Philip Randolph, and .

ACOA received donations from the American Federation of Labor-Congress of Industrial

Organizations (AFL-CIO), and Walter and Victor Reuther of the United Auto Workers (UAW) served as board members for the group. Eleanor Roosevelt also joined in protests and events sponsored by the group, such as the Declaration of Campaign. Philosophically, nonviolence remained the bedrock of the movement. Its demographics skewed toward

Caucasians and African Americans remained a relatively small portion of the leadership, a point which W.E.B. DuBois angrily fixed upon as proof of white appropriation of African concerns.16

The connection with key labor leaders also proved to be invaluable for the future. The

UAW was one of the most politically liberal unions, and ACOA had a solid working relationship

with both Walter and Victor Reuther, both of whom served on ACOA’s board of directors. In a

letter to House from Victor in 1965, Reuther said that the UAW wanted to support ACOA both

because of concerns about apartheid’s injustices and because labor conditions in South Africa

could have a direct impact on American businesses as well as American workers through the

cheap labor created by apartheid. The Reuthers and the UAW supported ACOA with large cash

donations in the group’s early years. This close union connection also carried certain

16 David Hostetter, “’An International Alliance of People of All Nations Against Racism’: Nonviolence and Solidarity in the Antiapartheid Activism of the American Committee on Africa, 1952-1965,” Peace & Change 32 (April 2007): 141-142.

55

complications: American labor leaders were not necessarily strongly interested in South Africa,

or if they were, of one opinion about what their policies should be. In 1957, George Meany

declined Eleanor Roosevelt’s invitation to participate in the Declaration of Conscience

Campaign.17

ACOA relied on its relationship with several churches, not only to mobilize activists but

to pool resources and finances for specific campaigns. The connections there were present from

the very beginning of ACOA. George Houser was a life-long Methodist and many of the early

founders of ACOA had been affiliated with churches. Unlike some of the other links to the early

civil rights movement, however, the ties between various churches and ACOA did not fall away

as the 1960s wore on. ACOA supplied expertise and information regarding African issues;

Houser had been one of the consultants hired by the Episcopalians to help make decisions, and in

return, the churches provided much of the money ACOA used by for its operations.

ACOA’s activities in these years were based around education about Africa in the United

States, organizing trips to Africa to visit newly independent states, and arranging nonviolent

boycotts and sanctions aimed at changing South Africa’s racial policies. ACOA sponsored sit-ins

at colleges in an attempt to mobilize students to support African liberation along with

conferences to coordinate activist activity. At the UN, ACOA provided financial and logistical

support to petitioners seeking independence for their homelands. ACOA started a magazine,

Africa Today, and by 1963 it had achieved a circulation of approximately 5,000 people. Perhaps

most significantly, ACOA established a legal aid and defense fund to provide funds to liberation

movements.

17 Letter from Victor Reuther to George Houser, , 1965, MSU, MSS 294, Box 1, Folder 2; Letter to Eleanor Roosevelt from George Meany, George Meany Memorial Archives, IX International Files, B International Affairs Geographical Files South Africa 1957-1960.

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ACOA became a significant actor in the U.S. anti-apartheid movement, though it also

evolved considerably over time. Importantly, Houser’s influence shaped the group’s initial

orientation. ACOA’s strength as a group was based in no small part on its ties to labor and the

civil rights movement, and as the only group dealing exclusively with African affairs after 1955,

it set the tone for the early anti-apartheid movement.

Yet Houser’s direction also meant the group existed uneasily with the civil rights

movement. Houser and ACOA by extension were frequently criticized for being a “white”

organization as well as middle-class. Speaking retrospectively, some actors in the anti-apartheid

movement felt that this reputation was undeserved. E.S. Reddy, a longtime head of the UN’s

Special Committee on Apartheid, asserted that Houser did his utmost to integrate African

Americans into ACOA and that African American organizations too lagged on the issue. When

social mores and times changed in the 1960s and 1970s, ACOA reinvented itself.18

Houser’s background as a pacifist and activist also shaped the early direction of the anti-

apartheid movement in the United States. Philosophically, one of Houser’s greatest interests was

reconciliation. In an interview conducted years later, Houser articulated his beliefs about reconciliation, noting that there were certain forms of confrontation he could not endorse, but he respected the right of others to take the actions that they felt necessary. This managerial approach occasionally caused conflict within ACOA, particularly over issues where Houser took a more conservative stance than his colleagues. On the other hand, this flexible reconciliation mentality allowed him to continue working alongside the liberation movements, which he acknowledged

18 Interview with E.S. Reddy, No Easy Victories, http://www.noeasyvictories.org/interviews/int03_reddy.php.

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did not (and could not) adopt nonviolence as a way to free themselves. It was his attitude that

held together much of the pacifist left, including ACOA, during the anti-apartheid movement.19

Z.K. Matthews

Around the same time that Bill Sutherland was settling on Ghana as his new home, the

South African professor Zachariah Keodirelang (Z.K.) Matthews, came to New York. Born in

Kimberley in 1901, Matthews studied at the University of , an institution that he visited periodically for the remainder of his life. He completed a masters degree at Yale in 1934 and settled in South Africa for eighteen years. In 1924, Matthews had met and the two men had become friends. Luthuli went on to become the head of the ANC, and Matthews joined the party.

In 1952, just before the Defiance Campaign was scheduled to begin, Matthews went to

New York to take a position at Union Theological Seminary. The timing of his trip coincided with the onset social unrest in South Africa meant that there was sudden interest among

Americans about apartheid. African Americans sought more information about conditions in

South Africa and the sudden explosion in civil disobedience. Even compared to his 1930s experiences in the United States, Matthews found Americans were interested in the plight of nonwhite South Africans. Matthews refused to mute any of his criticisms of the South African government. In New York, Matthews cultivated connections with a number of prominent civil rights activists, including the executive director of the NAACP, Walter White, W.E.B. DuBois,

19 One such issue was over Houser’s support for of the National Liberation Front of Angola (FNLA). Houser supported Roberto even as most of his peers aligned themselves to the Marxist Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA); Interview with George Houser, 1988, 41, 101. Accessed March 5, 2019: http://www.idaillinois.org/cdm/ref/collection/uis/id/2492.

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and George Houser. He also spoke to groups, often several times a day, about oppression by the

South African government and the political demands of black South Africans.20

Ultimately, his political activities angered the government in Pretoria, which refused to

authorize any extension of Matthews’ passport and forced him to return to the country in 1953.

The connections that Matthews had made in the United States remained of use, however,

particularly for George Houser. In the atmosphere of 1950s Cold War America, Matthews’ brand

of activism religious and liberal anti-communism had appeal in the United States. Matthews’

political orientation attracted George Houser, who went to visit him in 1954 and conducted an

interview about conditions in South Africa. Over time, Matthews became one of Houser’s most

important contacts in South Africa, one who he relied on for information about conditions inside

the country. For example, when the Pan-Africanist Congress split from the ANC in 1959, Houser

inquired whether the group was “responsible.” When ACOA established a South Africa Defense

Fund in 1959, Matthews was asked to serve as an advisor, and when he accepted he offered

suggestions about other potential collaborators in South Africa.21

Matthews found himself increasingly under attack in his own country, because of his

activities in the United States and in his home country. In 1956, Matthews was arrested and incarcerated as part of a mass arrest, and he spent the next two years fighting to stay out of court.

He was finally discharged without a conviction in late 1958, but found that his position in the university system was threatened. Fort Hare, which had previously accepted students from all over South Africa was designated to be turned into a college for members of the Xhosa ethnic

20 Charles Denton Johnson, “African Americans,” 188; Nicholas Grant, “Crossing the Black Atlantic: The Global Anti-Apartheid Movement and the Racial Politics of the Cold War,” Radical History Review 119 (Spring 2014), 83; Z.K. Matthews, Freedom for My People: The Autobiography of Z.K. Matthews: Southern Africa 1901 to 1968, (London: Rex Collings, 1981). 21 Interview with Z.K. Matthews, Accessed March 5, 2019: http://africanactivist.msu.edu/audio.php?objectid=32- 12E-2; Letter from George Houser, , 1959, UNISA, ZK Matthews Papers, B3.36; Letter from George Houser, November 12, 1959, UNISA, ZK Matthews Papers, B3.39.

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group exclusively. Matthews resigned in protest. However, while he wanted to return to the

United States, and Houser and several others worked succeeded in setting him up with several

job offers, he was unable to acquire a passport from the South African government.22

Instead of returning to the United States as he hoped, he took a position with the World

Council of Churches (WCC) as the African Secretary in Geneva in 1961. Matthews increasingly

embraced the necessity of as the only tool left open to those operating

outside of South Africa; South Africans inside the country had no option except force. Five years

later, Matthews accepted the position of Ambassador of Botswana to the United States. He

served for less than two years in that capacity before he died in 1968.23

Matthews was an important early connection between concerned Americans such as

George Houser and Bill Sutherland, the former of whom lacked any concrete connections to the liberation movements in southern Africa. During the short period that Matthews lived in New

York, they had been the conduit to Houser for information about what was going on with the

Defiance Campaign, information that was in turn passed on to civil rights groups such as the

NAACP, and in general motivated AFSAR to pick up the issue of apartheid with the UN. A

number of individuals got their exposure to apartheid and South Africa through Matthews, and

this exposure stuck with them in varying forms through the coming decades.24

Exiles, expatriates, and others like Matthews became increasingly common in the United

States as time went on. Many of them did not arrive in the United States for explicitly political reasons; Matthews’ decision to go to the United States had as much to do with career as anything else. Once there, however, they found demand for their knowledge and experience, which

22 Letter to Mary-Louise Hooper, October 26, 1959, UNISA, ZK Matthews Papers, C2.146; Letter to Mary-Louise Hooper, November 30, 1959, UNISA, ZK Matthews Papers, C2.212. 23 Memo to WCC Colleagues re: Policy on South Africa, July 1964, UNISA, ZK Matthews Papers, B5.5. 24 Charles Denton Johnson, “African Americans,” 203.

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pushed people into activism. Matthews was doubly significant because he was part of an older,

more moderate generation within the ANC that focused on moderate reform. Their successors, who included Oliver Tambo and Nelson Mandela, were more radical and aggressive, but

Matthews and other members of his generation adopted the new outlook of their younger peers.

For Americans, Matthews was popular because of his religiously inspired activism, their

moderation, and their commitment to integration.

Mary-Louise Hooper

Mary-Louise Hooper was an American who worked closely with Houser and ACOA.

Hooper was a wealthy heiress who became closely involved in civil rights causes in the 1940s,

joined the NAACP in California, and converted to Quakerism in 1950. She visited Kenya,

Nigeria, and South Africa as part of a Quaker tour group, and decided to buy a house in .

While living there, Hooper became connected to the head of the ANC, Chief Albert Luthuli, and

she began volunteering for the group. She worked her way inside the group until she became

Luthuli’s personal secretary, which at the time made her the first white person to work inside the

ANC. She formed friendships with others in the ANC, including Z.K. Matthews.25

Hooper’s activities eventually aroused the ire of the South African state, and she was

arrested in late 1956 in the same police sweep that Matthews was involved in. Hooper denied

any association with the ANC, while acquaintances in the country such as Bishop Ambrose

Reeves asserted that she was a “foolish woman” who was simply very sympathetic toward the

natives. Hooper was released in 1957 and fled to Rhodesia and then back to the United States.

Her arrest failed to deter her from further activism. Her interest in Africa had now expanded to

25 “About Mary-Louise Hooper 1961,” Accessed July 14, 2017: http://kora.matrix.msu.edu/files/50/304/32-130- B6F-84-AA%20ACOA%20Hooper%2061%20resized.pdf.

61

the entire continent and the end of European imperialism, and a year later, in 1958, she joined the

American Committee on Africa to serve as its West Coast representative.26

Hooper was an extremely effective public speaker, and she succeeded at publicizing the

evils of apartheid on the West Coast. Part of her responsibilities included raising funds for the

Defense and Aid Fund, which provided money to South Africans who were under trial. In 1960,

Hooper raised approximately $12,000 for the fund. A event she hosted that

drew Martin Luther King, Jr. raised over $10,000, in addition to donations of clothing and

medical supplies sent to refugees around the continent, most of whom were Angolans. Hooper

published a newsletter for the west coast, which was a part of the country generally ignored by

liberation groups in the early 1960s and became one of the few sources of information for

people. Because of her prior work in South Africa, she had grown friendly with Z.K. Matthews,

the leader of the Cape Town ANC, who wrote to ask her for financial assistance. Hooper raised

over $500 solely for Matthews in 1960.27

In addition to her work as a fundraiser, Hooper was coordinated public action against the

South African government. She traveled to both the first and second All African People’s

Conferences, in both cases as a delegate of the ANC. The International Longshore and

Warehouse Union (ILWU) 10 in Oakland became famous during the 1980s for the refusal of its

members to unload cargo from South African ships, but Hooper actually coordinated the local’s

very first such picket in 1962, attracting substantial press attention. When Martin Luther King,

26 Memo of Conversation re: Mary-Louise Hooper, March 12, 1957, Fort Hare, U.S. Repatriation, Box 3, Folder 2; Memo of Conversation re: ML Hooper, March 12, 1957, Fort Hare, U.S. Repatriation, Box 2, Folder 4; “About Mary-Louise Hooper 1961,” Accessed July 14, 2017: http://kora.matrix.msu.edu/files/50/304/32-130-B6F-84- AA%20ACOA%20Hooper%2061%20resized.pdf. 27 Letter to Amos Ginindza, July 25, 1966, MSU, MSS 293, Box 1, Correspondence; “About Mary-Louise Hooper 1961,” Accessed July 14, 2017: http://kora.matrix.msu.edu/files/50/304/32-130-B6F-84- AA%20ACOA%20Hooper%2061%20resized.pdf; Annual Report West Coast Representative, Africa Defense and Aid Fund January-December 1960, Accessed July 14, 2017: http://kora.matrix.msu.edu/files/50/304/32-130-23EE- 84-PW%20ACOA%20AR%20WC%201960%20opt.pdf.

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Jr. was due to give a speech on the South African government, Hooper interceded with him to

plead that he not focus on nonviolence as a solution and instead to focus on economic sanctions.

King followed her suggestions.28

In 1964, Hooper relocated to New York to work as a full-time staff person for ACOA.

She became director of ACOA’s South Africa Program during this period. Because of her ties with the ANC, Hooper pushed ACOA to work more closely with the ANC. In 1968, Hooper took the lead in pushing ACOA to fund a permanent ANC representative in the United States, in no small part out of hope that larger cash donations would flow to the ANC. The ANC had solicited her assistance to do so as a kind of conduit, and when Hooper approached the board with this

idea, they agreed to provide some funding for an ANC member in the United States as well as

assisting in setting up an ANC office.29

Hooper continued with these activities into the 1970s, though her health occasionally

interfered with the work. Eventually, the sabbaticals grew longer and longer, and Hooper’s

activities declined. Hooper was representative of the dedicated activists who made up the anti-

apartheid movement. Brought into liberation activism by her interest in civil rights, she

eventually dedicated herself not only to the South African cause, but to opposing European

imperialism throughout the continent.30

Hooper became one of the most visible early faces of the American anti-apartheid movement, and in certain respects she was a role model for future activists. As a fund-raiser and

28 Report on All-African People's Conference in Accra, December 8-13, 1958, MSU, MSS 293, Box 1, AAPC Accra; 1962 Annual Report, Accessed July 14, 2017: http://kora.matrix.msu.edu/files/50/304/32-130-AC1-84- AA%20ACOA%20AR%2062%20opt.pdf; “Memo from Mary-Louise Hooper to George Houser, November 5th, 1965,” Part 1: ACOA Executive Committee Minutes and National Office Memoranda, 1952-1975,” Folder “Interoffice Memoranda, November-.” 29 “For the Steering Committee of ACOA, February 5, 1968,” ACOA Records, Box 106, Folder 5; “Minutes of the Steering Committee, February 5, 1968,” ACOA Records, Box 3, Folder 2. 30 Letter to Bonnie, August 8, 1967, MSU, MSS 293, Box 1, Correspondence.

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organizer, she was extraordinarily successful compared to other American activists. ACOA

raised approximately $10,000 in 1959 for the Treason Trial support funds in South Africa;

Hooper raised that sum in 1965 for Human Rights Day, working practically by herself.

Moreover, she represented an early, fleeting attempt by ACOA to rely on local groups to

carry out grassroots work rather than attempting to build a centralized network. ACOA was

unable to sustain that kind of commitment because it lacked the institutional strength to do so,

but the pattern would be a familiar one in coming decades: a few committed activists attached themselves to fighting apartheid and started a group, or in some cases, multiple groups. This approach could have its own limitations, which Hooper exemplifies as well. She was in effect all of ACOA’s presence on the West Coast, and when she was unable to continue working for health reasons, ACOA’s presence there effectively vanished. Groups that relied on one or two particularly driven individuals could abruptly stop working if the person departed.

Hooper also represented the extremely strong attachments that could be formed between

Americans and South Africans. Speaking at an ad hoc UN committee meeting in 1967, Hooper said “my devotion and my loyalty are South African. I became so fond of these people and so closely associated with them. You see, something like the Freedom Movement – the African

National Congress - is the closest sort of association you can imagine.” Hooper’s attachment to the ANC seems to have had less to do with its specific politics. Indeed, it appears that by the early 1980s she had to be dissuaded from resigning from the ANC, suggesting some disagreement with the group’s politics. Rather, certain Americans simply became very attached to the cause of ending apartheid.31

Ben Magubane

31 Quoted from Frankie Nicole Weavers “Art Against Apartheid: American and South African Cultural Activism and Networks of Solidarity,” PhD Dissertation for SUNY-Buffalo, 2013, 193.

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Ben Magubane was part of a movement of South African academics to the United States.

An anthropology professor who spent most of his career at the University of Connecticut,

Magubane’s most famous book, The Political Economy of Race and Class in South Africa,

looked at the parallel processes of underdevelopment and racism and how they reinforced one

another in South Africa. Even more than his academic and intellectual significance, however,

Magubane sheds light on the importance of the movement of students and academics during this

period. As a student, he organized protests, and he continued doing so as a faculty member.

Magubane’s activities also shed light on the fact that certain parts of the United States saw

greater anti-apartheid activity sooner than other areas.32

Magubane was born in the province of Natal in 1930. Magubane’s family relocated from

a rural farm to the city of Durban after his father struck a white farmer who had been beating

him. As Magubane noted, the move probably spared him and the rest of his family from a life of

agricultural labor. Magubane recalled WWII as a time that radicalized most of his peer group and

exposed him to politics through urban labor struggles. Magubane obtained a teaching certificate and went to the for his BA and MA in 1954; he had already met members of the ANC and South African Communist Party, but his time at Natal introduced him to people he worked alongside for the remainder of his life. Magubane’s thesis advisor, Leo Kuper received a yearlong fellowship at UCLA, and because Magubane had already wanted to go to the United

States, he decided to apply and follow him there for his dissertation, arriving in January 1962.33

His time at UCLA was a liberating experience for Magubane in no small part because he

could finally approach Marx academically, free of the South African political culture that

32 Akwasi Aidoo, “Review of The Political Economy of Race and Class in South Africa,” Review of African Political Economy, no. 21 (1981): 114-118. 33 Bernard Magubane, My Life and Times, (Scottsville: University of KwaZulu-Natal Press, 2010), 14, 24, 75, 96, 104.

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outstripped McCarthyist America in its vehement anticommunism. Magubane instead found

himself drawn to Marxism because it could explain racism and in a way

that Weberian political pluralism could not. UCLA was home to a small community of South

African academics, including Tiyo Soga, Tony Ngubo, Daniel Kunene, and A.C. Jordan.

Together with Ngubo and the white South African , they worked together with

ACOA to liaise between the ANC offices abroad and to facilitate visits from ANC officers

coming to the United States. In Los Angeles, they picketed places affiliated with the South

African government in some way. One such place was the South African Tourist Corporation.

They demonstrated against it by building a mock-up of a cell with a person inside of it outside the building during work hours. SNCC, CORE and a number of other groups participated in the demonstrations. However, sustaining media coverage of these events was difficult, and

SAFAC was slow to make inroads in the broader community in Los Angeles. While they bolstered the cultural boycott of South Africa by reaching out to celebrities, their low profile made it difficult to meet people.34

SAFAC fell apart in due course because some of the enthusiasm for South African causes evaporated as the short-term memory of Sharpeville faded, and its leading members moved around the country. In , Magubane accepted a job at the . While living there, Magubane befriended the treasurer of the ANC, T.T. Nkobi, who had been impressed by Magubane’s activities in Los Angeles. Magubane’s position afforded him access to

Oliver Tambo, acting president of the ANC, which allowed him to take a greater part in party actions such as leading ANC delegations abroad or participating in party conferences. Magubane

34 Magubane, 108-109; SADET, 1960-1970, 557-558; “What We Have Done-A Program of Action,” SAFAC Report, March 22, 1965, Accessed April 15, 2017: http://kora.matrix.msu.edu/files/50/304/32-130-21DB-84- ML%20SAFAC%20opt.pdf.

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eventually settled in Connecticut, where he became a popular speaker on the east coast because

of his expertise with apartheid. He also was one of the founding members of the Connecticut

Anti-Apartheid Committee, lobbying for city and state divestment.35

Some of SAFAC’s tactics, such as the construction of a mock detention cell in front of

the South African Tourist Corporation are striking because they became commonplace in the

next twenty years; it is difficult to avoid comparisons with the shantytowns that students built in

the following decades. More striking than the similarity of tactics is the importance of the

movement of students in the anti-apartheid movement. For a few years in the early 1960s, Los

Angeles was home to a group that was interested in coordinating opposition to apartheid. UCLA

was the catalyst because it attracted both South African students and South African faculty

coming to the United States for research.

While much attention has been justifiably paid to in the anti-apartheid

movement, much of that focuses on the role of American students in opposition to apartheid. The

number of South African students in the 1960s was relatively small: the Kennedy Administration

estimated that the number in 1963 was a mere 334, and only a small number of them were black

or coloured. That number grew, however, after the U.S. government pursued a quiet path to reform in South Africa, offering support for black South African students to study in the United

States. This motive had a second component to it inspired by the Cold War, which was a fear of losing students to the communist bloc. One report in 1963 said that as the number of refugees streaming into places such as Dar es Salaam increased, so did the amount of communist aid and scholarships to study in the Soviet bloc. With the majority of students headed to Lincoln

University, the author suggested that the United States government increase its support, a

35 Magubane, My Life, 141, 156.

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suggestion which was echoed by Averell Harriman, a prominent Democratic party statesman and

John Kennedy’s under-secretary of state for political affairs.36

The U.S. government was not the only source of this support. The Rockefeller and

Carnegie foundations offered scholarships to students to study in the United States as well, apart from whatever sources of financial aid the students themselves could find. The result was probably not what Harriman or other Kennedy administration bureaucrats had hoped for, as the

South African students became an important group in catalyzing activism in the United States. In this respect, Magubane was typical of a class of student activists with ties to the liberation movements and to the United States.

Dennis Brutus

Of all of the South African exiles living in the United States, Brutus was arguably the best-known. He achieved fame as a writer and a poet, beginning with a book he published from prison in 1963, Sirens, Knuckles and Boots. Born in 1924 in Rhodesia, Brutus’s parents moved him to South Africa when was young. Under South African law, Brutus was classified as

“coloured,” and after doing well in school examinations he received a scholarship to study at the

University of Fort Hare in 1943. Fort Hare was a mixed-race university which attracted several

future liberation leaders, including Nelson Mandela and . Brutus became a high

school teacher in , and was known in the community as intelligent, articulate, and deeply opposed to the system of apartheid.37

36 South Africa National Strategy Series, Kennedy Library, National Security Files-Countries, Box 159, South Africa 10/28/63 (2 of 3); Student Refugee Problem in Southern Africa, Kennedy Library, William Brubeck Papers, Box 387 A, South Africa 9/63-11/63; Memo from Averell Harriman to Dean Rusk, November 4, 1963, Kennedy Library, William Brubeck Papers, Box 387 A, South Africa 9/63-11/63. 37 Dennis Brutus, The Dennis Brutus Tapes: Essays at Autobiography, (Woodbridge: , 2011), 16.

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U.S. consular officers in Port Elizabeth got to know Brutus well because they were

expanding their contacts with nonwhites to better understand the country’s racial atmosphere. In

January of 1956, John Harter of the State Department reported having met with Brutus just after

New Years’ Day. Brutus had apparently made a resolution that sports would be his new area of

interest in fighting apartheid. Like many South Africans, Brutus recreationally played a variety

of sports. For non-white athletes, traveling abroad was a way to break their preconceptions of what a society must look like as well as expanding their contacts. Harter summed up his conversation by saying, “I believe that Brutus, like most South Africans, has an exaggerated notion of the importance of sports in the world today. Yet I suspect that he is probably right in his belief that this is one area of activity in which he might work with some effect.” His words proved to be extremely prescient.38

In an interview in 1984, Brutus claimed that his interest in sports came from his

acquaintanceship with Christopher Gell, who encouraged Brutus to campaign against South

Africa on the sports issue because the Olympic Charter included a provision banning racially

segregated teams. Brutus claimed that was a hot-button issue in no small part because, in

his words, South Africa was “desperately poor culturally.” Sports occupied the place of music or

plays, and cutting off South Africa from the international sporting community threatened the

well-being of the white community.39

In 1958, Brutus organized the South African Sporting Association, and in 1963 it became

the South African Non-Racial Olympic Committee (SANROC) so that the International Olympic

Committee would address their concerns. Brutus consolidated the country’s various racial

38 Letter from John Harter to Bill, January 6, 1956, National Archives, RG 84, UD 3302, US Embassy and Legation Classified General Records, Box 22, Contact with Non-White. 39 Interview with Dennis Brutus, 1984, Amistad, ACOA Addendum, Series 1, Box 68, Folder Africa Network 1986- 1984.

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sporting organizations under one umbrella organization to oppose and criticize segregated sporting teams and events. Bringing attention to in South African sports also attracted the hostile attention of the services, who targeted and harassed Brutus. Although the South African government banned Brutus in 1961, he managed to continue his activities while on the run from the police twice before finally being captured and sent to in 1963. Brutus remained there until 1965, when new banning orders made it impossible for him to make a living, and he was given an exit permit that forbade him from ever coming back to South Africa. A few years later, Brutus moved to the United States.40

Brutus was an unusual South African expatriate, but like the other individuals discussed in this chapter, also emblematic of certain trends in the anti-apartheid movement in the United

States. While South African artists and writers emigrated to the United States, few enjoyed the kind of critical reputation that Brutus did, which gave him an uncommon degree of celebrity in the United States. Because of his role in creating SANROC, he came to be closely identified with the sports boycott, and was for a time arguably the closest thing it had to a single leader. Though his role in SANROC was eventually eclipsed by other leaders, he had an impact on the direction of the sports boycott in the United States as well, through association with its leaders and support for its organizing efforts.

Especially in the early years of the global anti-apartheid movement, the campaign against

South Africa’s participation in sports was one of the most visible and arguably successful protest movements. As calls for economic boycotts of South Africa failed to take root in the early and mid-1960s, the campaign against South African participation in sport became one of the more fruitful avenues to publicize the activities of the apartheid government. Brutus was not solely

40 Interview with Dennis Brutus, 1984, Amistad, ACOA Addendum, Series 1, Box 68, Folder Africa Network 1986- 1984; Interview with Dennis Brutus, May 29, 1987, SAHA Collection AL2460.

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responsible for the takeoff of the sports boycott; Brutus himself attributed the successful on

South African participation in the 1964 Olympics to three individuals specifically: the late

Eleanor Roosevelt, , and Kwame Nkrumah. He did a great deal to catalyze much

of the early activity and act as a spokesman.41

Once in the United States, however, Brutus also took on a number of activities that other

South Africans would practice. Brutus’ speaking tours and other publicity-generating activities

were an important way to create some kind of spotlight on apartheid when nothing in the media

provided an opportunity. Brutus became sought after for expert testimony across the United

States, usually from politicians looking for support in the passage of divestment legislation.

Brutus’ status as expert witness was one a number of expatriate South Africans laid claim to in

the coming decades, and that became particularly significant once cities and states considered

legislation to divest their finances from companies doing business in South Africa.42

Gladstone Mxolisi Ntlabati

Gladstone Mxolisi Ntlabati is one of the forgotten activists of the anti-apartheid

movement in North America. His absence in the historiography is in no small part because he left the United States while the movement was still underway, and after returning to South Africa he died in 1979 (allegedly at the hands of agents of the state). Nelson Mandela’s second cousin,

Ntlabati was recruited by Mandela to join the ANC Youth League while in a boarding school in

41 The works that detail the campaign against South Africa’s participation in sports are numerous. Marc Keech and Barrie Houlihan’s “Sport and the End of Apartheid,” The Round Table 349: (1999), 109-121 offers an excellent overview of the ways in which the sports boycott contributed to the end of apartheid. Other works examining facets of the sport boycott include Aviston Downes’ “Forging Africa- Solidarity within the Commonwealth? Sport and Diplomacy during the Anti-Apartheid Campaign” in Diplomatic Games: Sport, Statecraft, and International Relations since 1945, ed. Heather Dichter and Andrew Johns Lexington, KY: University of Kentucky Press, 2014, and Eric Morgan’s “Black and White at Center Court: and the Confrontation of Apartheid in South Africa,” Diplomatic History 36: (2012), 815-841; Interview with Dennis Brutus, 1984, ACOA Addendum, Box 68, Africa Network 1968-1984. 42 Letter from David Strong, January 21, 1975, Northwestern, Dennis Brutus Papers, Box 25, Folder 5.

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South Africa. Ntlabati became a Methodist minister and frequently encouraged young black

South Africans to oppose the apartheid government. He distinguished himself by a willingness to

be politically active when there was considerable pressure to create distance between the

churches and the liberation movements. Ntlabati was harassed by the South African security

forces, but he had the fortune of having financial scholarships to study in the United States. In

1962, he was arrested along with Mandela and several others for allegedly carrying out

bombings in the country, but he was released on to tend to his congregation. Once the trial

ended, Mxolisi fled the country, with his wife Nonzi arriving a year later.43

The Ntlabatis felt that the United States was equally as racist as South Africa and quickly

became activists in their new country. Mxolisi made a name for himself as the official

representative of the ANC in the United States. The ANC paid relatively little attention to the

United States compared to the . Ntlabati worked with the UN Special Committee on

Apartheid to identify South African students who needed financial support. By fundraising for

the International Defense and Aid Fund (IDAF), he became such a regular speaker at churches

and college campuses that by 1968, George Houser claimed that he had spoken more than any

other African he knew in the United States. Houser hoped Ntlabati might lead an office in

Atlanta that would be a branch of ACOA. Instead, Ntlabati became the executive director of the

Chief Albert Luthuli Memorial Fund in Atlanta in 1969, which was devoted to fundraising and

holding public educational forums. It brought together activists and South African exiles for

conferences as well to organize with the American civil rights community, including one such

43 , Life Under Nyerere, (Washington, D.C.: New Africa Press, 2006), 61; Radio interview with Nonzwakazi Ntlabati, http://archives.wdet.org/shows/craig-fahle-show/episode/relatives-of-nelson-mandela- /; Jabulani Buthelezi, Rolihlahla Dalibhunga Nelson Mandela: An Ecological Study, (Bloomington, IN: Trafford Publishing, 2006), 264; Nonzi remembers Mxolisi leaving in 1962, but other sources give his date of departure from South Africa as 1964.

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weeklong conference at Shaw University in North Carolina in 1969. Ntlabati taught at Atlanta

University in 1969 and 1970, and then he went to Andover Newton Theological Seminary in

1971 and 1972. By 1972, Ntlabati was an instructor in Detroit.44

Intellectually, Ntlabati represented a new kind of activist. Whereas earlier figures such as

Z.K. Matthews had embraced pacifism and encouraged an end to apartheid to prevent a violent

conflict, Ntlabati instead stressed the fact that violent struggle was the only way to affect

meaningful change in southern Africa. Within a few years, the WCC endorsed the liberation

movements in southern Africa and begin directly funding them as well. Ntlabati also pulled no

rhetorical punches in describing the United States. When he gave a speech in North Carolina, he

said “In the past decade the blacks of this country have not been liberated, the conditions for

their have been improved. The war in Vietnam was merely part of centuries of territorial

expansion by the United States and a latest act in its aggression against colored peoples.” This particular rhetoric became increasingly appealing in the United States in the wake of Vietnam, and as Americans considered the effects of American foreign policy in other parts of the world.

Moreover, it suggested links between the conduct of U.S. foreign policy and racism.45

Ntlabati is also emblematic of the general style of diplomacy carried out by the African

National Congress in the west. In the 1960s, South Africa’s close alignment with the United

States and Britain meant there as little chance of gaining support from either of those countries.

Substantial aid in the form of money flowed from the Eastern Bloc under the or the

Scandinavian countries, recently decolonized states tended to be the most sympathetic

44 Radio interview with Nonzwakazi Ntlabati, http://archives.wdet.org/shows/craig-fahle-show/episode/relatives-of- nelson-mandela-detroit/; Letter to Oliver Tambo, April 1, 1965, Wits, SACC Papers, A 2094, Ed8, Tambo Letters; Memo from George Houser to the ACOA Executive Board, October 23, 1968, ACOA, Series I, Box 1, Folder 36, Inter-Office Memoranda Oct-Dec. 1968; Minter, Cobb, and Hill, No Easy Victories, 90; “‘South Africa’ Lecture Set at Vassar College,” Poughkeepsie Journal, April 18, 1971. 45 “Ntlabati Cites U.S. ‘White Problem,’” The Daily Tar Heel, October 17, 1968; “Professor Warns Against ‘Racism in Reverse,’” Arizona Republic, July 3, 1969.

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diplomatically, and the United Nations was the chief venue for early harassment of the South

African government. Nevertheless, by 1962 the ANC leadership recognized that they needed some kind of presence outside of friendly countries, and they began establishing mission offices and representatives in North America. These missions were intended to help counteract the diplomacy of the South African government, educate people about the realities of apartheid, and build global solidarity by targeting specific groups such as labor unions with propaganda that would be relevant to them specifically.46

These missions tended to be small in scope, however, again in part because the prospects for fundraising or direct support in North America were relatively slight. The ANC lacked the resources to many diplomatic missions, at least in the early years of the struggle. As American activists frequently discovered, the presence of groups in New York or Washington, D.C. did little for people living in the South, the Midwest, or the west coast. Individual members of the

ANC were encouraged to form their own chapters and to build awareness of the cause, and the spread of exiled and expatriate South Africans across the United States meant that those with

ANC ties became quasi-representatives.

Once Gladstone Ntlabati went back to South Africa, he found himself initially sent to the

Transkei , where he was eventually banished because of his political agitation. He was then sent to the Bantustan, where he worked as a high school vice-principal and his activities led to him being rearrested several times. After leading students in a prayer vigil for a hunger strike on Robben Island, he was imprisoned for several months and tortured. Upon his

46 SADET, 1960-1970, 545, 553.

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release, the strain of the hunger strike in prison as well as repeated beatings led to a fatal heart

attack in 1979.47

Bill Minter

Bill Minter was an important activist dealing with a wide variety of African issues.

Minter was not interested solely in apartheid, and in many respects he was led to anti-apartheid activism because of his interest in the neighboring Portuguese colonies. The closeness of those governments with the South African government, their similar racial attitudes and policies, and their active cooperation in propping each other up often led activists from one issue to the other: they were inextricably interconnected.

Minter’s early background mirrors some of the other activists in this chapter. His family was interested in racial egalitarianism and civil rights activism and had a pacifist background: his father served as a doctor during World War II, met his mother in an AFSC work camp, and raised Bill on an interracial farm in Mississippi. By the early 1960s, Minter was already disillusioned with U.S. foreign policy. Minter spent a year with the Frontier Internship in

Mission (FIM) in 1961-1962 in Nigeria when he befriended a South African man who had been arrested by Portuguese colonial authorities and imprisoned for a number of months. The man’s story stimulated his interest in Portuguese colonialism, and in turn in the repressive activities of the South African government.48

When Minter returned to the United States, he became active in the National Student

Christian Federation (NSCF). In conjunction with an exiled South African Methodist minister

named Kenneth Carstens, participants in the FIM program such as Minter, Gail Hovey, and

47 Radio interview with Nonzwakazi Ntlabati, http://archives.wdet.org/shows/craig-fahle-show/episode/relatives-of- nelson-mandela-detroit/. 48 Focer, “Frontier Internship,” 37-38, 144-145.

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David Wiley worked with the NSCF to create the Southern Africa Committee (SAC) which

existed in a few schools on the East Coast in order to study southern African issues, and in

particular apartheid, though its members over time also focused on Zimbabwe. SAC existed in

various forms until 1983, becoming an independent body in 1970, publishing research through

Southern Africa magazine.49

Minter married Ruth Brandon and reapplied to work with FIM. Ruth had grown up

around a family friend who served as a missionary in Angola, so she was familiar with the

realities of Portuguese colonialism. Together, the Minters were assigned to work in Tanzania, at

the Mozambique Institute. Based in Dar-es-Salaam, the Mozambique Institute was a teaching center for Mozambican refugees that taught a wide variety of subjects, ranging from primary education to nursing. The leader of the Mozambique Liberation Front (FRELIMO), Eduardo

Mondlane offered them teaching positions if they could secure their own funding; the head of

FIM, Margaret Flory, knew Mondlane personally and agreed to fund them. They arrived in Dar- es-Salaam in 1967 and remained at the institute until 1969. They maintained their earlier connections with SAC in New York and became close friends with Mondlane, who was assassinated shortly after they left Tanzania. Minter reflected on Mondlane’s death by saying that as one of the few Americans with any real familiarity with Mozambique, he had an obligation to continue working on behalf of the region.50

The Minters returned to the United States and lived in Madison, Wisconsin from 1969

until 1973; his activities there will be discussed in a later chapter. He returned to Tanzania in

1973, relocated to Mozambique in 1975, and came back to the United States in 1976

permanently. Minter became a writer, editor, and researcher for Africa News and wrote a book,

49 Minter, Hovey, and Cobb, No Easy Victories, 110, 112. 50 Focer, “Frontier Internship,” 426, 427; Interview with Bill Minter, 2009.

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King Solomon’s Mines Revisited, detailing the rise of apartheid and the connections that bound

western nations to South Africa. He also contributed written materials to groups such as ACOA.

Minter’s transformation into an activist on Africa was actually fairly typical of many of the FIM members, several of whom became directly involved in the anti-apartheid movement in the United States. Initially motivated by the possibilities of revolutionary change that could make newly-independent states into more just societies, participants became committed to working with the liberation movements. Other members such as David Wiley and Marylee Crofts, who interned in (Zimbabwe) served in the anti-colonial same committees; Wiley happened to serve as his dissertation advisor at the University of Wisconsin. These connections proved to be powerful over the coming decades.51

The Minters also represented some of the changing nature of religious and pacifist activism, which steadily grew more comfortable with the violence employed by the liberation movements. Minter represented this trend. As early as 1965, a document Bill Minter authored for

SAC argued the chief goal of activists was to make sure that when a crisis arrived in South

Africa the U.S. government would lack the popular support to intervene on behalf of the apartheid government. Written at a time when the U.S. government was escalating its presence and the fighting in Vietnam, the document clearly reflects concern that South Africa could become the site of another war. Implicit was an assumption that a crisis was inevitable for South

Africa, and when it came, it would be violent.52

Minter also articulated some of the changing tactics of the anti-apartheid movement

which became commonplace in the 1970s and 1980s. Minter was one of the first volunteers to

51 Focer, “Frontier Internship,” 404. 52 “Where Do We Go From Here?”, September 20, 1965. Accessed January 17, 2019: http://africanactivist.msu.edu/document_metadata.php?objectid=32-130-403; Stevens, “Boycotts and Sanctions,” 294.

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serve on SAC’s economics committee and demonstrated an early interest in American business

practices in South Africa. Minter’s interest stemmed from the belief that economic participation

in South Africa perpetuated apartheid, and that by attacking such participation, apartheid could

be weakened. It was also predicated on the notion that direct action could make Americans aware

of apartheid, which in and of itself was valuable because public awareness was so low. Minter’s

emphasis on research as a tool of education could be seen in 1965 as part of an implicit

recognition that the general public in the United States knew very little of apartheid, and

consequently activists needed to present information on the realities of apartheid.53

Conclusion

The activists discussed here were significant for a few reasons. Bill Sutherland and

George Houser generated American interest in decolonization, southern Africa, and apartheid.

Sutherland’s fortuitous connections enabled the otherwise disconnected South African liberation

activists to gain support from the United States. Houser represented a great deal of the energy

that held together ACOA, even if other individuals worked inside the group. ACOA was for a

long time the only group open to people who were interested in southern Africa, so it attracted

individuals on that basis.

These activists were also emblematic of individuals who became involved in the U.S. anti-apartheid movement and the kinds of roles they adopted. Sutherland’s interest in Tanzania was unusual in that he was drawn to the country both because of Pan-Africanism and anti-

nuclear agitation, but he nevertheless illustrated the ways that southern Africa stirred interest in

many Americans. Houser represented an American political culture that was sympathetic to

liberation activism: left-wing but not communist, religiously oriented, and rooted in the civil

53 “Where Do We Go From Here?”, September 20, 1965. Accessed January 17, 2019: http://africanactivist.msu.edu/document_metadata.php?objectid=32-130-403.

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rights movement. Hooper was similar to Houser but worked at a different level, and her role as

fundraiser, speaker, and publicist of apartheid to Americans who were otherwise ignorant.

The South Africans described here also occupied certain roles that became common as

time went on. Some of this was tactical: Dennis Brutus’ close focus on the sports boycott against

South Africa became one of the most recognizable facets of the anti-apartheid movement.

Americans could easily identify with Z.K. Matthews because his religious background and

nonviolent orientation were broadly acceptable to Americans. Figures with symbolic value

became an important aspect of the anti-apartheid movement. In many ways, Matthews prefigures

some of the attention later paid to Nelson Mandela. Ntlabati and Magubane were in some ways

the first of a generation of student activists who in turn moved past some of the political

orientations of their elders: embracing violent struggle as necessary, and more willing to draw

connections between conditions in the United States and conditions in South Africa as

interlinked.

American actors were often attracted to this movement by the political possibilities

inherent in African revolution and liberation. George Houser and Mary-Louise Hooper treated fighting apartheid as an extension of their own interest in civil rights and Gandhian nonviolence.

Bill Sutherland was the most explicit about his own philosophical interest, viewing Ghana and later Tanzania as rife with possibilities McCarthyite America simply lacked. Unsurprisingly,

South Africans felt the same way about the United States. Even as foreigners, they did not face

the same level of scrutiny or persecution abroad as they did at home. Magubane noted as such,

but he was hardly unique. One South African, Lindzi Manicom, felt inspired by the openness

about black power in New York in 1970, an attitude she took back with her to South Africa.54

54 Interview with Lindzi Manicom, Wits, A3299, B4.1.2.2, M.

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Familiarity was, more often than not, an important beginning point for many activists.

African studies was a new discipline in most universities, meaning that relatively few people could be exposed to the continent through teaching. The news media was slow to discuss issues around South Africa, and in the 1960s and 1970s apartheid was competing with a number of other issues that all too often could drown it out in the media. Travel and living abroad were the best ways to expose people to issues around African liberation. liked to refer

derisively to the Africa experts in the State Department as a collection of ex-missionaries, but it spoke to the fact that they were frequently the only people who had any real familiarity with

Africa. Not coincidentally, several of the individuals, American and South African alike, had come out of a church background.

Most of these activists educated the North American public about conditions in South

Africa. Education happened through frequent speaking tours, and Bill Sutherland occupied the extreme end of this activity, doing two tours of the United States a year with 50 events in one tour alone. Given the paucity of information available about Africa as a whole and South Africa specifically, people who had been there tended to carry an automatic degree of expertise.

Consequently, South Africans living in the United States or Americans who had spent enough time living abroad spoke at public venues, both to educate the public and to raise funds for activist causes. For at least one person and in all likelihood for several others, this kind of public speaking could be a source of livelihood when they had first arrived in a new country and needed to make money. Education could also be more academic, such as Bernard Magubane’s work.

Indeed, for many people there was considerable crossover into education, both as livelihood but

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also as a way to connect with students about southern Africa and sheds light on the centrality of

universities to subsequent anti-apartheid organizing.55

Transnational activists were also very good at motivating others. Brutus, Matthews, and

others were charismatic, which in turn drew others to their cause: Matthews’ relationship with

Hooper in turn inspired her own activism in the United States. The AFSC Peace Education

Division often noted that visits from Bill Sutherland catalyzed activity in certain areas afterward,

and Sutherland’s laid the groundwork for regional offices to begin building their own

programs.56

Transnational activists often had sufficient motivation to sustain their work even when

there was little chance of any real progress in the short-term. For people like Gladstone Ntlabati, the choice may have been clearer-cut: he was persecuted at home and fighting back against a system that racially marginalized him. But for Americans, apartheid ultimately had no direct bearing on their lives. It bore similarities to the American civil rights movement, but that was no guarantee of securing participation from African Americans either. Reminiscing about the 1970s,

Jeremiah Wright complained that organizing against apartheid in Chicago was difficult because

too many black churches were uninterested and focused instead on events in the United States

rather than South Africa. Abstract sympathy based on similar circumstances alone was

insufficient to build a mass movement.57

It is also worth emphasizing that there was a stochastic element in how many people

became involved in activism. Elizabeth Schmidt articulated reflected on the role that chance

55 Interview with Peggy Helen Johnson, July 22, 2017. 56 Letter to Bill Hayden, April 7, 1978, AFSC, 1978 PED Southern Africa Continued, Regional Offices Dayton; Africa Panel Program Planning Sub-Committee Summary Notes, July 19, 1979, AFSC, 1979 Administration Africa Programs, S. Africa Rep: Administration Extension. 57 Jeremiah Wright, Spring 2009, https://digitalcommons.colum.edu/cadc_caam_oralhistories/17/.

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played in her own career as an activist and scholar, saying that at the moment in her life when

she became active, there were several professional directions she could have gone. To be sure,

people such as Ben Magubane or Gladstone Ntlabati were motivated by personal circumstances

and would likely have been involved in activism regardless. However, the time and place of that

activism was not guaranteed. Mary-Louise Hooper went on a religious study trip and happened

to be motivated by South Africa. Even Ben Magubane might have stayed in Zambia rather than

return to the United States.58

Looking at these individuals, it is also possible to draw some broader conclusions about what the U.S. anti-apartheid movement looked like in this early period. Houser and Sutherland represented connections to both liberal Christians and to the civil rights movement. ACOA

depended on financial support from mainstream Protestant churches, and much of its actual

ability to organize was dependent on its ties to CORE and A. Philip Randolph. To a lesser extent,

the organization gathered support from labor unions, though this was likely due as well to the

influence of Randolph and the strength of American unions in the 1950s, many of which had

well-developed foreign affairs programs.

In summary, what movement existed in the United States approached the issue of ending

apartheid with something like a civil rights mentality. The first generation of activists had been

drawn to the issue because of its similarities with the civil rights movement in the United States

or with Gandhian nonviolence. Individuals such as George Houser explicitly made these

connections, and their support for anti-apartheid causes tended to mirror support in the United

States: raising funds for people undergoing trial, raising publicity around denials of rights, and

58 Interview with Elizabeth Schmidt.

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working through petitions and other means of redress to change the South African government’s

behavior.

Yet neither the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa nor the U.S. civil rights

movement in the United States were static. Once the ANC and PAC essentially embraced armed

struggle as a tactic in the wake of the , its use of force alienated some

supporters in the United States, particularly those who came out of a pacifist tradition. The anti-

communist orientation of the early U.S. movement meant that it had a somewhat ambivalent relationship with the more politically radical elements of the South African movement, an attitude which bled over into other aspects of U.S. liberation activism in Southern Africa. In the early 1970s, George Houser be criticized within and outside of ACOA for his support of Holden

Roberto and the FNLA in lieu of the MPLA.

The civil rights movement changed as well, particularly as African Americans felt that civil rights organizations were either too dominated by whites and consequently too focused on political moderation. This same criticism was applied to ACOA, whose executive board mostly consisted of whites, and which was often accused of trying to find a middle path. The criticism of ACOA was coupled with decreasing support from established civil rights groups, particularly

CORE, which had provided much of the manpower for ACOA in its early years. As these connections fell away, new actors reoriented the group and its politics.

Above all, individuals formed networks with each other, and the anti-apartheid movement is best understood as a collection of activist networks. Organized institutions such as

ACOA were important because they became organizing sites where activists could collaborate, but groups were frequently impermanent. While institutional instability could be a weakness, it

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could also be a strength, as the end of one group usually saw individuals coalesce around a new group or institution.

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Chapter 2 ACOA and the Creation of an Anti- Apartheid Movement in the United States

ACOA was, for a long time, the chief organizing force in U.S. society campaigning

against apartheid (as well as the broader issues of African decolonization and liberation

activism). However, the group lacked a particularly strong presence throughout America for much of the 1960s or 1970s; in reality, it was confined to New York and to Washington, D.C.

Because Africa was a niche area of interest for the vast majority of Americans, ACOA became almost by default a clearinghouse for those individuals, but there were competing intellectual and philosophical influences competing to drive the organization.

When ACOA was organized in the early 1950s, it formed at a moment when there was considerable optimism about the prospects for peaceful decolonization throughout Africa and not solely in South Africa. For the remainder of the 1950s and into the early 1960s, the group was in the position of supporting a wide variety of African nationalists: Kwame Nkrumah in Ghana,

Julius Nyerere in (Tanzania), and the National Liberation Front in Algeria, in addition to the contacts they developed within southern Africa. Its constituency was essentially a civil rights constituency, dominated by white but with ties to mainstream civil rights groups such as CORE, and able to draw on support from churches and labor unions. It supported petitioners at the United Nations, sponsor speaking tours, and educate Americans about decolonization in Africa, with a small amount of aid and support to African groups.

By the middle of the 1960s, however, the initial orientation ACOA had adopted no longer worked for the issues the group wanted to tackle. Indeed, even the specific issues that the group

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wanted to work on were contested, as were the means and the ideological orientation. ACOA’s

leadership at various times contemplated business boycotts, support for a business code of ethics

in South Africa, creating ACOA chapters around the United States, and direct lobbying in

Washington to steer U.S. foreign policy. These approaches all had limitations and ACOA found

itself walking back at times, such as the repeated attempts to create chapters of ACOA. While

ACOA’s membership was liberal, board members nevertheless differed on issues ranging from

their support for capitalism to ; while seemingly secondary to the group’s mission, those

issues also highlight the political, generational, and racial differences in the group.

Furthermore, ACOA did not work exclusively on apartheid or South African issues, but

was instead dedicated to a whole host of southern African issues that included white-minority governments in Rhodesia (Zimbabwe), Angola, Mozambique, and Namibia. These white- minority governments did not exist in isolation from apartheid, because the South African government made common cause with both and Rhodesia after the Unilateral

Declaration of Independence in 1965. Nevertheless, they were distinct issues, and disputes over how best to support the liberation movements in Mozambique, Angola, Guinea-Bissau, Cape

Verde, and Zimbabwe also had effects on ACOA’s leadership. Tracing all of these issues is beyond the scope of this dissertation, though it is useful to note where and when ACOA’s support for one liberation movement affected its support for another.

The group also faced a shifting political landscape in the 1960s and 1970s. ACOA’s white liberal leadership came under fire from some African Americans who in the wake of the civil rights movement did not want to work with white dominated organizations. The civil rights organizations that had been part of ACOA’s strength in the 1950s and early 1960s such as CORE

splintered, or focused more closely on domestic politics in the United States. The Vietnam War

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pushed protest movements further to the left while also absorbing public attention. Above all,

apartheid was still a small issue. A. Philip Randolph explicitly stated in 1966 “there is, at best,

only the germ of an anti-apartheid movement in this country.” Perhaps as a result, ACOA faced

declining budgets from 1965 onward that provoked a conversation about the kind of work the

group should be doing.1

Those same forces also brought new people into the group, which was responsible for the

shift in the way that ACOA worked and operated. Most of them had similar transnational

connections, though there were more South Africans joining the group in this period. Some of

them, Jennifer Davis in particular, tightened and honed ACOA’s working focus on research.

Americans such as Prexy Nesbitt nevertheless brought a harder left-wing approach, as well as some of the lessons of the civil rights movement about organizing and reaching communities outside of ACOA’s earlier constituencies.

The period from 1963 until 1976 is relatively understudied in American anti-apartheid activism, in part because it was largely quiet: overshadowed by Vietnam and starved for attention because South Africa enjoyed a period of relative calm and quiet. South Africa enjoyed enough tranquility to launch a diplomatic offensive in Africa to end its hostile relationship with the newly-independent states while still preserving apartheid, and most activists recognized that it was the strongest of the white-minority regimes in southern Africa. It is worth paying attention, however, to the groups and people who were in the background building a constituency that opposed apartheid. When moments of intense media attention came, as they did after the

Soweto Uprising in 1976 and a year later with the death of Steve Biko while in police detention,

1 Letter to Bishop Wetmore, , A. Philip Randolph Papers, Box 16, Committee of Conscience Against Apartheid.

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groups such as ACOA channeled interest toward protest. Studying these seemingly quiet periods

is key to understanding the activism which came later.2

Above all, ACOA’s transformation reflects a broader transformation among Americans

interested in anti-apartheid activism. The first years of liberation activism were rooted in

rhetorical support for African nationalists, but in those years, public support for decolonization

was generally quite strong: ACOA or its members never had to reckon with directly opposing the

U.S. government, or with the exception of Portugal, a European colonial power. The end of the

era of largely peaceful decolonization shifted attitudes by the mid-1960s, however, and ACOA’s leadership moved away from public shows of support and direct action to a third approach, which was long-term lobbying at local levels.

ACOA in the Early 1960s

Because ACOA was the only organized group in the United States dedicated to African issues, it attracted many transnational actors. In some senses, George Houser was anomalous because his familiarity with Africa came after he had already decided to work with the group.

New members tended to come out of experience in development work or church activity or were otherwise drawn through their attachment to the civil rights movement: Mary-Louise Hooper was an example of the generative role civil rights activism played. Peter and Cora Weiss worked with the group for years on end, and Peter served as its president until 1972. Peter first became interested in Africa while directing the International Development Placement Association, which stationed him in and introduced him to a number of independence activists; Cora became interested after meeting Liberian students while studying at University of Wisconsin-

Madison. Peter was responsible for talking Houser into taking the position as executive director.

2 Jamie Miller’s An African Volk analyzes the apartheid government’s diplomacy in the early 1970s.

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The Weisses remained involved with the board of trustees into the . George Shepherd was

another founding member of ACOA who had received a Ph.D. in politics from the London

School of Economics before spending two years in . He joined ACOA and assisted

launching the magazine Africa Today. Richard Stevens, another academic who worked with

ACOA, first became engaged when he went on assignment from Lincoln University to teach in

Africa and joined ACOA in 1966.3

With most of the continent undergoing decolonization, ACOA’s work was varied.

Several North African states received their independence in the early 1950s, and in 1957 Ghana became the first sub-Saharan state to achieve its independence from a colonizer. ACOA held a reception for Kwame Nkrumah when he visited New York, and began forming relationships with many of the independence leaders in other countries, such as Julius Nyerere in Tanganyika and

Kenneth Kaunda in Northern Rhodesia (Zambia). Decolonization sped up after 1957, with

seventeen states receiving their independence in 1960 alone.

Because of Houser and the other members’ connections with leaders of liberation movements, one of ACOA’s important activities became the sponsorship of speakers’ tours in the United States. As decolonization swept Africa, ACOA helped people to speak to the

American public; in 1959 for example, funds raised by ACOA helped pay for Kenyan Tom

Mboya’s six-week tour of the United States. South African leaders such as Oliver Tambo of the

ANC were also approached by ACOA to begin making appearances in the United States.

Activists acknowledged that speakers from South Africa or other regions immediately affected by apartheid had a strong emotional impact on listeners. Even considering that typical audiences were likely to be people sympathetic to ending apartheid, most people were still likely to be

3 Interview with George Houser, No Easy Victories, http://www.noeasyvictories.org/interviews/int02_houser.php.

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unfamiliar with the specifics of apartheid in South Africa, and personal contact was effective in

building emotional connections that motivated listeners to action.4

As decolonization sped up, Houser and other members of ACOA argued that they could

not afford to play too visible a role in the newly independent states. Apart from the fact that their

focus was on decolonization, inter-African rivalries such as the Ethiopian-Somali border dispute

meant that ACOA’s involvement on any side risked alienating one party and weaken their

overall effectiveness in Africa. ACOA lacked the resources to provide meaningful aid to newly-

independent states, which as a task was better suited to sympathetic governments such as the

Scandinavian countries.5

While ACOA did have a continental focus, it had been founded to oppose apartheid and it

paid close attention to South Africa. ACOA’s next major campaign against apartheid came in

1957, in what became known as the Declaration of Conscience Campaign. In 1956, the South

African government charged one hundred and fifty-six people with treason. Most of the accused

were members of the ANC or South African Communist Party, and included Nelson Mandela,

Walter Sisulu, , Ruth First, and members of the trade union movement. Houser was in

contact with members of the ANC who had not yet been charged and wanted to raise funds for the Treason Trial Defense Committee. The Declaration of Conscience was intended to be a worldwide campaign that called on South Africa to observe the principles of the UN Charter on

Human Rights. Eleanor Roosevelt accepted the chairmanship of the campaign, and Martin

Luther King, Jr. became a vice-chair. The Campaign joined with local committees in dozens of

4 “Who Speaks for Africa? A Report on the Activities of the American Committee on Africa,” 1959, available at: http://africanactivist.msu.edu/document_metadata.php?objectid=32-130-D86; 1986 Peace Tour Evaluation, ACOA Addendum, Box 68, Folder Africa Peace Tour/Committee 1986; 1988 Peace Tour evaluation, Ibid; Memo to Mike Simmons from Bud Day, November 1, 1977, MSS 329, Box 2, “Srn Af Task Force AFSC.” 5 “Memorandum from George Houser,” September 26, 1960, ACOA, Box 2, Folder 13, Executive Committee Minutes, 1960.

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other locations that protested conditions in South Africa on Human Rights Day while also raising

funds to be donated to the Treason Trial Defense Fund.6

Yet ACOA offered relatively limited support, because according to Houser the committee

was experiencing “growing pains.” While Houser guaranteed a minimum donation of $15,000 in

October 1957, the organizers of the defense fund noted that they needed a minimum of $100,000.

By September of 1958, ACOA had raised approximately $30,000 for the Treason Trials, with

another $10,000 gained in 1959. The trials ultimately went on through 1961, though charges

against many of the defendants were dropped. By way of comparison, a similar campaign was

launched in Britain to provide funds for the defense of those in the Treason Trials and raised

approximately £75,000. The British fund that supported the defendants in the Treason Trials

eventually became IDAF, which provided aid to anti-apartheid activists in South Africa. ACOA

followed suit by creating an Africa Defense and Aid Fund in late 1959 that filled a similar role

but would work more broadly throughout Africa.7

In the early 1960s, ACOA came closest to having a voice among American foreign

policymakers, again through some of Houser’s civil rights connections. John Kennedy had

campaigned on supporting the newly independent states in Africa against European colonialism.

Kennedy’s popularity among Africa’s new leaders was considerable, and while the Bureau of

African Affairs in the State Department had been organized in 1958, it flourished under G.

6 Letter from George Houser to O.D. Wollheim, January 17, 1957, ACOA, Box 100, Folder 8, South Africa Correspondence January-April 1957; ACOA Executive Board Meeting Minutes, , 1957, Accessed November 19, 2016: http://kora.matrix.msu.edu/files/50/304/32-130-2368-84-PW%20ACOA%20minutes%208-12- 57%20opt.pdf. 7 Letter to Ambrose Reeves from George Houser, October 7, 1957, ACOA, Box 100, Folder 10, South Africa Correspondence Oct-Dec 1957; ACOA Executive Committee Minutes, September 22, 1958, Box 2, Folder 11, Executive Committee Minutes 1958; Letter from to George Houser, February 15, 1957, ACOA, Box 100, Folder 8, South Africa Correspondence Jan-April 1957; “ACOA Executive Committee Minutes, May 5, 1959,” ACOA, Box 2, Folder 12, Executive Committee Minutes 1959; Interview with John Collins, Accessed December 13, 2016: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01b9hbg; ACOA Executive Committee Minutes, November 9, 1959, ACOA, Box 2, Folder 12, Executive Committee Minutes 1959.

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Mennen Williams. A former Michigan governor with strong civil-rights credentials who was

appointed to be the assistant secretary of state for African affairs. Williams proved to be

extremely popular among African nationalists. In this moment, the interest of the executive

branch in Africa was considerable.8

Williams actively solicited advice and counsel from George Houser, after becoming

involved with Africa Freedom Day celebrations in 1959. When Williams’s appointment was

announced, Houser briefed him on a variety of topics related to Africa. Houser advised Williams

to visit a number of countries that had been significant in the process of decolonization, such as

Ghana, and to be aware of the future importance of Nyerere within Africa. Williams established

a consultative Council on Africa to provide him with additional insights into Africa and staffed it

with a number of prominent Africanists, and Houser was one of the appointees. In an interview

years later, Williams noted that the citizens council was necessary in part because the State

Department’s resources in Africa were still so underdeveloped that he personally lacked useful

regional expertise.9

Houser and members of the board of directors expressed some optimism that they could

use Williams to pressure the State Department for sanctions. Membership within the group gave

ACOA a certain kind of lobbying access that they had previously lacked. The connection with

Williams and with Houser’s relationships with leaders of the civil rights movement also gave

Houser a certain degree of access to President Kennedy; in a proposed meeting in 1962, Houser

strategized with those leaders and others about how to secure Kennedy’s cooperation on putting

8 Philip Muehlenbeck, Betting on the Africans: John F. Kennedy’s Courting of African Nationalist Leaders, (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012). 9 “Letter to Bishop Ambrose Reeves,” April 1, 1959, ACOA, Box 100, Folder 13, South Africa Correspondence Jan- June 1959; Letter to G. Mennen Williams from George Houser, December 1960, NA, RG 59, Bureau of African Affairs-Office of the Assistant Secretary of African Affairs, A1 1485, Box 4, American Committee on Africa; Interview with G. Mennen Williams, John F. Kennedy Library.

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sanctions on South Africa. Privately, Williams supported a harder line against South Africa,

doubting that American businesses did anything useful to undermine apartheid. Williams went so

far as to suggest that a bank consortium loan offered to South Africa in the wake of the

Sharpeville Massacre should have been stopped because the apartheid government was so

desperate as to be willing to negotiate on some issues.10

Houser’s tenure was short-lived, however, because the European division of the State

Department was angered after it emerged that Houser and John Marcum visited rebel bases in the

Portuguese colonies to distribute medical supplies. Williams argued that Houser was important

as an advisor because Houser and Marcum were committed anticommunists and retaining them

ultimately would not damage relations with the Portuguese, but he failed to convince the

department and both men were dismissed from the citizen’s council. Thereafter, neither Houser

nor any other members of ACOA managed to form close relationships with those in the State

Department. Philip Muehlenbeck’s Betting on the Africans argues that the death of Kennedy

signaled a shift in U.S. foreign policy toward Africa that became increasingly accommodating

toward white minority regimes and European colonial powers. In any event, Williams’ sympathy

on African issues ultimately only extended so far, and Kennedy did not seriously revamp

American policy toward South Africa.11

In addition to Williams, both the South African and U.S. governments were aware of

ACOA’s activities. As early as 1953, a memo circulated within the South African Department of

Foreign Affairs (DFA) noting the formation of ACOA. The DFA was aware of the Declaration

of Conscience campaign in 1957, including the fact that ACOA had circulated the document

10 “Conference at the White House,” September 14, 1962, ACOA, Box 1, Folder 10, Inter-Office Memoranda December, 1962; Interview with G. Mennen Williams, John F. Kennedy Library. 11 Letter from G. Mennen Williams, NA, RG 59, A1 3111-H, Box 1, American Committee on Africa.

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among Canadian politicians (a fact that the Liberal Party viewed as scurrilous); subsequent

discussions between embassy officials and the secretary of external affairs discussed possible

ways to counter the campaign should it gain traction. At least in the 1950s, members of the DFA

were skeptical that ACOA had sufficient reach to be very damaging. This seeming optimism was belied by the fact that the consular office in New York sent regular reports on ACOA’s activities back to Pretoria, suggesting some concern over the group’s activism.12

While Williams’s rhetoric put him closer to the position of ACOA, he was in some

respects isolated in the State Department. Institutionally, the State Department preferred to

maintain closer ties with South Africa. While the South Africans were sensitive to perceived

slights, such as a United States Information Service (USIS) endorsement of the Declaration of

Conscience campaign, most U.S. personnel sided with the South Africans. The U.S. ambassador,

Joseph Satterthwaite, consistently criticized Williams’ pronouncements, which he viewed as

exciting “black extremism.” The cabinet agencies tasked with foreign affairs in both countries

were more inclined to cooperate than fight to preserve their relationship. Some evidence of this

cooperation can be gleaned from the South African archives. George Meany of the AFL-CIO had

opposed many overt attempts to break with South Africa, but in the wake of the Sharpeville

Massacre, he came around to possibly supporting a boycott of South African gold. Meany’s

interest ended when the State Department intervened and persuaded him to oppose this.13

Faced with what ultimately proved to be a dead end in the executive branch, ACOA’s

leadership debated different ways to target the colonial regimes resisting decolonization. The

12 Memo About AFSAR, December 22, 1953, SAG, BTS, 5, 14/15/3; Memo to High Commissioner, September 10, 1957, SAG, BTS, 16, 14/15/3; Telegram from SAG Embassy to Sec of External Affairs, November 8, 1957, SAG, BTS, 17, 14/15/3; ACOA Activities December 1957, SAG_ BTS_ 14A_ 14-15-3. 13 Draft Note on USIS Racial Meeting, SAB, BTS, 2, 1/33/8/3; Telegram to Sec of State, July 1, 1961, National Archives, RG 59, Bureau of African Affairs Office of the Assistant Secretary for African Affairs, A1 719, G Mennen Williams Papers, Box 22, GMW Southern Africa '61; Boycott, July 1, 1960, SAB, BTS, 6, 34/18.

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organization had supported earlier campaigns for sanctions against South Africa even prior to the

Sharpeville Massacre. In the wake of the killings, ACOA had put out a call to action that asked

Americans to donate to legal defense funds for South Africans, to boycott South African sporting

events in the upcoming Rome Olympics, and to boycott South African consumer goods. In 1960,

the consumer boycott was aimed at lobster tails in the United States, which were the best-known

South African consumer goods. ACOA also explored the possibility of collaborating with labor unions on selected boycotts, particularly with the ILWU.14

The boycott ran into difficulties because South Africa primarily produced and sold raw

materials abroad, which made it difficult for consumers to avoid South African goods.

Additionally, the called for trade embargos went unheeded by the British and American

governments, which meant that any boycott would be voluntary and of minimal impact at best.

Houser and other members of ACOA noted in later years that consumer boycotts had some

success in building awareness of issues around apartheid, but in terms of directly affecting South

Africa they had little if any effect.15

More to the point, ACOA’s approach was a strikingly top-down way to enact sanctions.

In 1961, the executive board enumerated strategies they hoped to employ: speeches in Congress

to support the issue, sending delegations to speak with Adlai Stevenson and G. Mennen

Williams, promoting speaking tours, and writing a pamphlet to nurture future activism. They

14 Letter from George Houser to , January 15, 1960, ACOA, Box 100 Folder 13, South Africa Correspondence January-June 1959; “South Africa Emergency Campaign: A Call to Action,” accessed November 15, 2016: http://kora.matrix.msu.edu/files/50/304/32-130-B65-84-32-130-B65-84-al.sff.document.acoa000251.pdf; “Minutes of the Coordinating Committee of the South Africa Emergency Campaign, September 19, 1960,” ACOA, Box 103 Folder 21, South Africa ACOA Program + Activities, South Africa Emergency Committee Minutes, 1960. 15 “Press Release, ‘Campaign to Boycott South Africa Underway, October 3, 1963,’” Part 2: Correspondence and Subject Files on South Africa, 1952-1985,” Folder “South Africa-ACOA Programs + Activities-Press Releases, 1961-1969; Letter from Houser to the New England Committee on Africa, October 18, 1978, ACOA Addendum, Box 11, Folder: Correspondence Houser, 1978. Houser notes that the closest they came to a successful boycott was over Gulf Oil in Angola, but still said that “as a boycott however it didn’t have any effect whatsoever.”

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wanted to reach out to sympathetic groups but there is no mention of which ones specifically,

and the document also does not note where specifically ACOA might focus its efforts. Its author

appeared to have been thinking nationally rather than locally.

Furthermore, ACOA’s resources were stretched especially thin in the early 1960s.

Sanctions were not seen as attainable unless the group became solely devoted to the issue.

ACOA confronted a number of issues simultaneously, including the outbreak of war in Angola, and the absence of local networks and coalitions that could support such boycotts. In late 1961,

John Marcum argued that Angolan issues were the most attractive for fund-raising, rather than

South African issues. James Robinson told Houser in early 1962 that it was impossible for

ACOA’s four staff members to devote time to a campaign against apartheid, as many of them

were already too busy with other campaigns.16

The myriad strategies ACOA was contemplating came out in a conference in May of

1960 held in conjunction with several American labor union leaders. Several strategies were

agreed upon in this meeting. U.S. businesses already in South Africa should use their influence

to oppose apartheid, and should adopt liberal employment policies such as offering better

housing, educational opportunities, and an absence of discrimination in the workplace. Athletes

competing in South Africa should either boycott the country or consistently protest apartheid,

and Americans should ban South Africa from the 1964 . Bank loans to the South

16 “Proposal on Sanctions Against South Africa,” September 11, 1961, Accessed March 22, 2018: http://kora.matrix.msu.edu/files/50/304/32-130-23DE-84-PW%20ACOA%20EB%209-11- 61%20sanctions%20opt.pdf; “Proposal on Sanctions Against South Africa,” September 11, 1961, ACOA, Box 2 Folder 16, Executive Committee Minutes June-Dec., 1961; “Executive Committee Minutes, November 13, 1961,” ACOA, Box 2 Folder 16, Executive Committee Minutes June-Dec., 1961; Memo from Jim Robinson to George Houser, February 15, 1962, ACOA Box 1, Folder 7, Inter-Office Memoranda January-February 1962.

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African government were identified as a possible target. ACOA’s leadership contemplated

supporting a permanent South African representative in New York at the UN.17

Other forms of sanctions, particularly in the arena of sports, proved more effective. ACOA supported the sports boycott as early as 1958. Houser informed Christopher Gell that in addition to publishing an editorial of Gell’s in Africa Today, ACOA member John Williams was writing

letters to sports editors around the country to enlighten them on racial discrimination in South

African sports. Concurrently, Williams wrote to of the International Olympic

Committee (IOC). By 1960, Brutus was communicating with members of ACOA in putting pressure on the International Olympic Committee, fact-checking some of their claims about the sporting situation in South Africa. ACOA and SANROC were unable to block South Africa from participation in the 1960 Olympics, but by 1960 their coordination was strong enough that they successfully lobbied against South African participation in the 1964 Olympics.18

The 1964 boycott of South Africa was temporary, however, because the South African government had been told that they could be reinstated as soon as they were complied with running a non-racial Olympic committee. ACOA put together a committee of well-known athletes who opposed the readmission of South Africa: they included Wilt Chamberlain, Jesse

Owens, and Arthur Ashe. The IOC temporarily readmitted South Africa on the basis that the new

South African tryouts had been multiracial, but Dennis Brutus refused to accept those results.

Concurrently, the OAU then threatened to boycott the Olympics. The IOC initially refused to back down, but then a number of states and the Soviet Union threatened to follow suit.

17 “24 Recommendations to Help End Apartheid in South Africa,” Accessed December 13, 2016: http://kora.matrix.msu.edu/files/50/304/32-130-234E-84-PW%20ACOA%20Conf%20res%20opt.pdf; “American Committee on Africa Steering Committee Minutes, November 1, 1961,” ACOA, Box 2, Folder 35, Steering Committee Minutes 1961; Letter from George Houser to Patrick Duncan, July 15, 1960, ACOA. 18 Letter to Christopher Gell, May 8, 1958, South Africa Correspondence Jan-May 1958; ACOA Executive Board Minutes, May 12, 1958, Executive Committee Minutes 1958; Letter to Ann Morrisett from Denis Brutus, July 24, 1960, Correspondence 1960.

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Facing the possibility of a mass walkout, Brundage ultimately conceded to keeping South Africa

out of future Olympic games. ACOA’s presence throughout the Olympic campaigns was

consistent, to the point that many delegates of the IOC felt like they were unable get away from

ACOA.19

ACOA continued this approach into the 1970s, in no small part because sports issues

remained highly visible. ACOA lobbied to cancel a fight by in South Africa in

1972 and unsuccessfully pressured Lee Elder to boycott golf tournaments in South Africa. One

of the longest-term issues took place with the African American tennis player Arthur Ashe.

ACOA and Houser initially supported Ashe in applying for a visa to play tennis in South Africa

after his request was turned down by the South African government as a way to publicize South

African racism. However, once Ashe actually received a visa, Houser and Dennis Brutus pleaded

with him to not play in the country, as they believed his presence would implicitly legitimize

apartheid. Ashe argued that going would instead undermine apartheid from within, a position he

maintained until 1977 when he finally endorsed the sport boycott of South Africa.20

ACOA wanted to develop a civil rights constituency could lobby U.S. politicians on

South African issues. A. Philip Randolph was their strongest connection because he wielded

considerable influence among labor unions and civil rights activists. When ACOA collaborated

with members of the ILWU for a boycott of South African ships, James Farmer helped set up the

meeting and CORE was to be solicited as a co-sponsor. To develop this civil rights constituency,

ACOA supported the creation of the American Negro Leadership Conference on Africa

(ANCLA), and Houser organized and supported the conference that established the group.

19 Memo from Wendell Foster to George Houser, March 31, 1967, ACOA, Box 1, Folder 29, Inter-Office Memoranda March, 1967; George Houser, No One Can Stop the Rain: Glimpses of Africa’s Liberation Struggles, (New York: Pilgrim Press, 1989), 275. 20 Houser, No One, 275; Eric Morgan, “Black and White,” 835.

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Organized in 1962, the ANLCA was intended to lead and shape African American opinion on

U.S. foreign policy in Africa.21

ACOA’s early founders had all been firmly committed to nonviolence and pacifism as a guiding ethical principle. Furthermore, many of its members on the Executive Board such as

Bayard Rustin were vociferously anticommunist, and liberation movements in southern Africa were populated with Marxists. The liberation movements accepted violence as a tactic once

nonviolent change had been stymied. Yet for a time, ACOA reconciled competing and contradictory impulses and maintain support for violent groups among its rank and file.

Reflecting on his time with ACOA, Houser justified working with proponents of armed struggle by saying that it felt inappropriate to order others how to carry out their own liberation struggle.

Undoubtedly, ACOA also benefitted from the intransigence and brutality of the Portuguese,

Rhodesian, and South African governments, at least in maintaining cohesion among its supporters.

Nevertheless, there were tensions simply at the tactical level about the best way to proceed in terms of activism. Marcum argued that ACOA needed to avoid broad calls for sanctions or the cutting of diplomatic relations, in part because of the unlikelihood that either could happen with the U.S. government. Lobster tail boycotts might actually appear so ineffectual as to seem ridiculous, which would undercut ACOA in public, and the defense and aid fund could only assist so much when the South African government was willing to pass new

21 “American Committee on Africa Steering Committee Minutes, January 4, 1961,” ACOA, Box 2, Folder 35, Steering Committee Minutes 1961; “ACOA Steering Committee Minutes March 26, 1963,” ACOA, Box 2, Folder 37, Steering Committee Minutes 1963, 1964; ACOA Executive Board Minutes, September 17, 1962, ACOA Box 2, Folder 16.

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laws that would entrench apartheid. Furthermore, ACOA needed to solicit the advice of South

Africans or other members of the liberation struggle.22

Money continued to be a problem for ACOA from its inception through the end of apartheid, for several reasons. Members were fully aware that Africa and African issues did not occupy center-stage for the public, and even among liberal issues liberation for South Africa was fighting for attention with the American civil rights movement and the Vietnam War. ACOA had run up debts through 1965, while it was stretched thin in numerous issues and campaigns as well

as financially supporting Africa Today. For 1964, even though gross income had risen from

$84,640 to $135,477, debts exceeded cash on hand by $2,250.23

The civil rights orientation of the group had liabilities that emerged during the 1960s.

White-led groups came under increasing criticism from African Americans, and the criticisms

from individuals such as W.E.B. DuBois multiplied during this period. Organizations such as the

Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee spurred a shift toward , which

was at odds with the integrationist attitudes of the NAACP, CORE and older civil-rights

organizations. Critiques from radicals were accompanied by a sense of increasing resentment toward organizations that sought a more moderate agenda. African Americans also played an increasingly important role in the leadership and staffing of civil rights groups. Racial perceptions and the rise of a younger generation of activists brought considerable change into

ACOA. In this period, ACOA never fully escaped its status as a “white liberal” organization out of touch with what African Americans wanted, even though as early as 1965 the leadership recognized that it needed stronger connections with the African American community. However,

22 Memo from John Marcum to George Houser, circa 1963, ACOA, Box 1, Folder 14, Inter-Office Memoranda Dec 1963. 23 “ACOA Operating Account, 1964 with 1963,” ACOA, Part 1: ACOA Executive Committee Minutes and National Office Memoranda, 1952-1975,” 100

this negative perception eventually created an impetus to connect ACOA with African

Americans, particularly those in cities.24

Outside of ACOA, there were other issues. The high hopes for the ANLCA never panned

out; it existed until 1967 but only through conferences that were held, and it never cultivated a

mass membership that allowed it to do more than issue pronouncements. CORE continued to

work alongside ACOA until 1968, when James Farmer left the group and it was turned over to

Roy Innis. The group briefly turned towards black nationalism before veering to the right

politically, and it effectively ceased all assistance toward ACOA.25

These facts indicate the varying directions and impulses tugging at anti-apartheid activists in the early 1960s. By the late 1970s, ACOA had embraced some of these strategies, particularly the campaign against bank loans and the sports boycott of South Africa. Others, such as the business code of ethics were issues that ACOA ended up opposing quite bitterly, while consumer-led boycotts were qualified as being effective at raising awareness but of minimal use in actually undermining the South African economy. ACOA fitfully explored some kind of relationship to the U.S. government through George Houser and G. Mennen Williams to shape policy at the national level. It also sought to use its civil rights links productively on U.S. foreign policy, but the broader turmoil within the civil rights movement made that difficult.

ACOA Finds New Ways to Build Awareness

ACOA focused on peaceful decolonization in Africa through 1965 because, with some noteworthy exceptions such as Algeria and the Congo, decolonization happened in a peaceful manner. However, southern Africa did not appear to be on a tranquil path to independence. The

24 Clayborne Carson, In Struggle: SNCC and the Black Awakening of the 1960s, (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1981), 133. 25 Culverson, Contesting Apartheid, 44.

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Portuguese state maintained that its African territories were integral parts of Portugal and could

not consider independence for any of them. In Southern Rhodesia, a relatively large white

minority of over 200,000 people refused to accede to demands for majority rule. In South Africa,

the commitment to nonviolence was finally destroyed by the events of the Sharpeville Massacre.

In the wake of Sharpeville, the ANC abandoned its commitment to nonviolence. Beginning in

1961, the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) launched its armed struggle

against the Portuguese state, followed by FRELIMO in Mozambique in 1964 and the beginning

of the Zimbabwean liberation struggle in 1964. In effect, ACOA found itself supporting various

degrees of armed liberation movements, or at least those who were not solely committed to

nonviolence.26

In 1965, ACOA adapted its mission and orientation. In 1966, George Houser noted that

only he and Mary-Louise Hooper had been on the staff for more than a year, after five years of

relatively constant staff presence. James Robinson, one of the founding members, left because he

was appointed to be the special representative to Botswana by President Lyndon Johnson. Others

remained involved in ACOA’s board of directors but ceased their contribution as staff members.

Within a couple of years, Mary-Louise Hooper was also forced to withdraw because of health

reasons. This turnover prompted certain shifts in the group as new individuals with different

perspectives were enlisted.27

Departing members included James Robinson, one of the co-founders of CORE, and a

long-standing civil rights activist and clergyman. Despite the members’ commitment to

nonviolence personally, there was increasing support for movements that resorted to violence in

26 George Houser, No One Can Stop the Rain: Glimpses of Africa’s Liberation Struggle, (New York: Pilgrim Press, 1989), 148; Dubow, Apartheid, 66. 27 “Memorandum to Executive Board, September 12th, 1966,” Part 1: ACOA Executive Committee Minutes and National Office Memoranda, 1952-1975,” Folder “Executive Committee Minutes, June-December 1966.”

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order to seek liberation. As an example, in 1965 Mary-Louise Hooper asked Houser to suggest

changes for an upcoming speech by Martin Luther King, Jr. Hooper felt that non-violence was

effectively no longer a political possibility in South Africa, and she wanted Houser to suggest as

such to King.28 King’s speech, given at a benefit for ACOA, did not discuss the orientation of the

ANC or any other liberation groups in Africa and instead called for worldwide boycotts of South

African goods.29

Internally, ACOA also reoriented its attitudes towards tactics. One policy came out of a

workshop which recommended eschewing calls for disengagement from South Africa, believing

that it was unlikely to succeed. Instead, study members suggested that ACOA lobby U.S.

companies to enact ethical business codes for operations in South Africa. That policy was

disregarded. However, one of the consequences of that same summer study was a growing

emphasis on creating direct action at a local level, which members of the study argued for.30

New individuals came into ACOA at the same time that many of the civil rights activists

were leaving. One of the most notable of the new activists was Jennifer Davis, a white South

African. Davis became involved with the South African left at the University of Witswatersrand

and later through communist contacts in the trade unions. Her academic and intellectual

background focused on the history of investment in South Africa and left her with the inclination

to be skeptical toward capitalism, and to also pay attention to the importance of foreign capital in

South Africa’s domestic economy. Davis moved to the United States in 1966 after increasing

28 “Memo from Mary-Louise Hooper to George Houser, November 5th, 1965,” Part 1: ACOA Executive Committee Minutes and National Office Memoranda, 1952-1975,” Folder “Interoffice Memoranda, November-December 1965.” 29 “Martin Luther King Speech to American Committee on Africa, December 10, 1965,” Accessed November 9, 2015: http://www.thekingcenter.org/archive/document/mlks-address-about-south-africa 30 ACOA Summer Project-Anti Apartheid Research and Action, September 8, 1965, MSU, MSS 294, Box 1, Folder 41; “Recommendation for a Continuation of the Aims of the Summer Project on South Africa,” Records of the American Committee on Africa, Part: Box 2, Folder 19.

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political repression made any kind of activism too dangerous in South Africa. Once she arrived

in New York, Davis sought out ACOA and worked for the organization, in turn bringing

knowledge of a network of activists operating in Africa, particularly South African lawyers who

were providing legal assistance to members of banned groups.31

Other people moved in and out of ACOA at various moments but remained as resources

for the group. Davis was joined by another South African émigré, Stephanie Urdang. Urdang

joined Davis in volunteering for ACOA as well as SAC. For Urdang, exposure to the United

States taught her the extent to which apartheid was sustained by capital investment, and it

reinforced her desire to target U.S. businesses. Urdang primarily worked for SAC through the

1970s, but worked exclusively for ACOA beginning in 1982. Gail Hovey, a graduate of the FIM

program who had done her internship in South Africa and had done research on American

business practices there, also volunteered with ACOA. She worked primarily with SAC during

this period, but went on to become ACOA’s research director after Jennifer Davis. Urdang,

Hovey, and Davis both worked within ACOA for the next twenty years, leading the research

department.32

Another equally important new member of ACOA was Prexy Nesbitt, who brought an

important transnational element to ACOA. Born and raised in Chicago, Nesbitt’s family was

interested in African issues, and he remembered being taken to rallies led by W.E.B. DuBois and

later Kwame Nkrumah on one of his visits to the United States. Nesbitt attended college at

Antioch College and studied abroad at the University of Dar-es-Salaam in 1965, where he was the first American student to enroll there. Nesbitt befriended a group of ANC refugees, who

31 Interview with Jennifer Davis, No Easy Victories, http://www.noeasyvictories.org/interviews/int09_davis.php. 32 Stephanie Urdang, Mapping My Way Home: Activism, Nostalgia, and the Downfall of Apartheid South Africa, (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2017), 43, 169.

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introduced him to most of the activist community in Dar. Nesbitt studied history with Terence

Ranger, John Iliffe, and John Lonsdale in Tanzania, some of the most prominent historians of

Africa, and he returned from Tanzania only to go back again in 1968. Nesbitt became acquainted with ACOA through George Houser’s daughter Marty, who matriculated with him at Antioch and helped found the Antioch Committee for a Free South Africa.33

Nesbitt came back from Tanzania with a thorough knowledge of the various activist circles, and he relocated to Chicago in 1970, where he worked for the committee from 1970 to

1972, and then again from 1976 to 1979. He had already met important ACOA members such as

Robert Van Lierop, but his work with ACOA in networking anti-apartheid groups in the

Midwest put him at the center of activism. Nesbitt was hired in no small part because ACOA looked to expand and build a friendly network of African American activists but without the stigma of taking directions from a largely white group. Nesbitt’s own political orientation was, like Jennifer Davis’, critical of American capitalism and supportive of leftism.34

The changing political orientation of ACOA and its shift toward support for radicals did

not happen harmoniously, and there were a number of disputes between staff members and board

members, the latter of whom tended to be more conservative. One incident separate from

apartheid nevertheless highlights some of the internal disputes within the group. In 1970, the

director of ACOA’s Washington, D.C. branch, Charles Hightower, signed a public letter

condemning Israel for its ties to South Africa and its occupation of the West Bank. The letter set

off a furor within ACOA, as some board members such as Peter Weiss felt that Hightower’s

statements were anti-Semitic, and wrote to ask him to clarify that his views were his alone. A

special board meeting was convened to discuss the issue, and led to criticism from Nesbitt for

33 Interview with Prexy Nesbitt, October 31, 1998. 34 Interview with Prexy Nesbitt, October 31, 1998.

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example that ACOA was failing to meet its obligations to work on behalf of all of the liberation

movements. This dispute reflected broader divisions between more radical African American

groups and older, more conservative supporters of the civil rights movement in the American

Jewish community.35

These disputes were not resolved quickly or amicably and persisted through the 1970s, as

several board members resigned in part because of philosophical disputes with the group: a

major sticking point among pacifist members was repression in other African states, which they

felt received inadequate attention. Those resignations did not hinder the group to the point that it

could not function, however. If anything, it likely gave ACOA more credibility in activist

communities that had previously been inclined to view the group as a baston of white, moderate

liberals.36

Research

Research became one of ACOA’s most significant activities from 1965 onward. African studies departments in universities were still relatively novel in the 1960s, especially in the

United States, and were confined to a select few institutions. Outside of African American newspapers, African news stories rarely received much prominence or attention in the media.

ACOA had always sponsored research on African topics, but it had been on a more ad hoc basis that relied on students and friendly academics, as well as contributions from board members. In

1969, Houser proposed that a special research bureau should be founded under the purview of the Africa Fund, whose sole job would be to research and offer advice regarding American

activities in Africa. While the bureau would nominally focus on all of Africa, the vast majority of

35 Marjorie Feld, Nations Divided: American Jews and the Struggle Over Apartheid, (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014). Also discussed in Michael Fishbach’s Black Power and Palestine: Transnational Countries of Color, (Palo Alto, CA: Press, 2018). 36 December 1, 1977, Amistad, Africa Fund, Series 1, Box 4, BOT-Minutes and Reports, 1978-1977.

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the information was aimed at southern Africa. These issues included American trade with all

African nations, the efficacy of the arms embargo against South Africa, the importance of the

Azores for the American air force, and South African propaganda attempts in the United States.

By creating this research, ACOA could provide rationales and bases on which to challenge U.S. policy.37

Jennifer Davis was responsible for much of ACOA’s research prior to the creation of the

research bureau, taking on the considerable task of maintaining organized newspaper clippings.

Research had a variety of uses. Smaller groups that worked exclusively in cities could draw on

the work done by Davis and the research bureau to create arguments for divestment. The

Organization of African Unity (OAU) did so, requesting assistance from ACOA in determining

which American corporations invested in southern Africa. Senator drew on

ACOA’s research in a bill aimed at ending the South African sugar quota.38

ACOA also changed how it provided financial support to liberation groups through the

creation of the Africa Fund in 1966. Writing retrospectively, in 1976 Houser claimed that the

decision to create the Africa Fund grew out of the failure to earn tax-exempt status for ACOA in the early 1960s. The Africa Fund was created to fill that need, providing funds for humanitarian causes to African groups and refugees. The group’s funding base was initially quite small, on par with the $120,000 that ACOA operated with, and it relied on donations coming from sympathetic church bodies such as the Lutheran World Ministries. It also received some support from

37 “Proposal for a Research Bureau in the Field of African American Relations,” Part 1: ACOA Executive Committee Minutes and National Office Memoranda, 1952-1975,” Folder on “Interoffice Memoranda, August- October 1968.” 38 “Summary to the Executive Board, December 3, 1970,” Part 1: ACOA Executive Committee Minutes and National Office Memoranda, 1952-1975,” Folder on “Steering Committee Minutes, 1970-1971.”; “Letter from Charles Hightower to Janet Hooper, , 1971,” Part 1: ACOA Executive Committee Minutes and National Office Memoranda, 1952-1975,” Folder on “Inter-office Memoranda, .”

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progressive institutions such as the Fund, and by the late 1970s had a contributor

base of just a few hundred individuals and institutions.39

While being nominally separate from ACOA, Houser served as the executive secretary of

the group, and the two groups remained linked through their leadership. The Africa Fund gave

money to the Mozambique Institute, a school based in Dar-es-Salaam that provided schooling to

Mozambican refugees, a medical dispensary in eastern Angola for the MPLA, and a children’s school for refugees from Portuguese-controlled Guinea Bissau. The Africa Fund’s activities served several important purposes in these years. It provided badly-needed assistance to liberation movements in both cash and kind. That same assistance was a useful form of publicity for ACOA, giving Americans an opportunity to become aware of African issues and to take part in liberation, if only at a very small level. While major newspapers generally ignored the Africa

Fund, African American newspapers publicized its research and charitable activities, as well as using the information collected by the Africa Fund for reporting.40

The Africa Fund also sponsored its own researchers, broadening the research arm of

ACOA. That same research was then published and distributed by the Africa Fund to friendly organizations, particularly student groups and other researchers.41 Jennifer Davis systematized

39 George Houser, “Meeting Africa’s Challenge: The Story of the American Committee on Africa,” Issue: A Journal of Opinion, Volume 6: 1976, 24; “Annual Report of the Executive Secretary of the Africa Fund,” April 20, 1978. Accessed January 28, 2019: http://kora.matrix.msu.edu/files/50/304/32-130-2445-84-PW%20AF%20AR%204-20- 78%20opt.pdf. 40 “Draft of Africa Fund Projects,” Part 1: ACOA Executive Committee Minutes and National Office Memoranda, 1952-1975,” Folder “Inter-Office Memoranda, October-December 1972.”; “Getty Club Collected $$$ for Biafrans,” New York Amsterdam News, September 7, 1968; “Africa Looms More As Issue,” Atlanta Daily World, , 1976; “Guinea-Bissau Recognition Pushed by American Group,” Baltimore Afro-American, August 31, 1974. 41 “Proposal for a Research Bureau in the Field of African American Relations,” Part 1: ACOA Executive Committee Minutes and National Office Memoranda, 1952-1975,” Folder on “Interoffice Memoranda, August- October 1968.”

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Africa Fund’s research, and to specifically design it for other activists to use in their own

campaigns.42

ACOA also faced the question of how to expand its reach and influence with the minimal

resources at its disposal. One idea was to establish satellite branches of ACOA to work locally

on African liberation issues. Different regional offices were suggested in various cities:

Baltimore, Atlanta, New Orleans, and Detroit were all proposed at various points, mostly

because of their large African American populations and activist communities. Most of these plans did not come to fruition, though short-term programs were occasionally run, such as short-

term speaking engagements or forums. Houser explicitly stated as such in a draft of the proposed

budget for 1967, saying that “"I don't believe, furthermore, that it's possible for ACOA to

organize a network of branches throughout the country. We can feed these local organizations

that do spring up from time to time with material and ideas. But I doubt if we ought to spend our

limited resources on attempting to organize a network of branches." Where ACOA found success

was in employing committed activists for short periods of time, letting them develop their own

networks and work, and then continuing to support those groups once they became independent.

In St. Louis for example, a group began borrowing materials from ACOA, particularly written

materials, for educating the public in the city.43

ACOA also came back to the question of what could be done in Washington, D.C. As

early as 1962, there were discussions with ACOA board member Peter Weiss about creating a

Washington chapter of ACOA, though Houser deferred the decision for the time being. By 1967,

42 George Houser, “Meeting Africa’s Challenge,” 24. 43 “Memorandum from to Executive Committee, January 15, 1968,” Part 1: ACOA Executive Committee Minutes and National Office Memoranda, 1952-1975,” Folder on “Minutes-Executive Committee-1968; Minter, Hovey, and Cobb, No Easy Victories, 90; Task of ACOA and Program Envisaged by 1967 Draft Budget, Amistad, ACOA Addendum, Series 1, Box 6, Folder BOD Board Meetings, 196; ACOA Board Meeting Minutes, June 21, 1965, Amistad, ACOA Addendum, Series 1, Box 6, Folder BOD Board Meetings, 1965-1961.

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however, Houser was revisiting the merits of such a chapter. Houser felt that ACOA needed representation in Washington, both to present their case to congressmen and to be informed about events in the capital. This same period saw the rise of a small number of African American legislators, most notably House Representative of Michigan, who were interested in African issues. Diggs was responsible for forming the Congressional Black Caucus and had taken a strong interest in African topics. He was present at Ghana’s independence ceremony in

1957, participated in the All-African People’s Conference in 1958, and undertook a number of fact-finding trips to South Africa and other nations during this time. Diggs became one of the

Washington Office’s primary collaborators in Washington.44

Lobbying efforts done by ACOA were a mixed bag in terms of their actual outcomes.

The Washington Office offered a great deal of research and assistance to Senator Ted Kennedy’s

campaign to revoke the South African sugar quota, yet Kennedy’s bill ultimately went down to

defeat in the . The director of the Washington Office, Charles

Hightower put a positive spin on the defeat by noting that it was the closest a vote had ever come

on an apartheid issue in Congress, but this did not change the fact that substantive change did not

come from Congress for many years to come. However, Hightower also cited an article from the

Rand noting South Africa was expanding its lobbying in Washington to counter

ACOA. If ACOA was not successful in changing policy in Washington, its activities were

increasingly putting South Africa on the defensive. Indeed, South Africa became even more

aggressive in its foreign propaganda campaign in the mid-1970s to combat its increasingly

44 ACOA Steering Committee Minutes, January 17, 1962, Accessed November 19, 2016: http://kora.matrix.msu.edu/files/50/304/32-130-23B1-84-PW%20ACOA%20SC%201-17-62%20opt.pdf; “Memorandum on a Washington Office of the American Committee on Africa, December 4, 1967,” Part 1: ACOA Executive Committee Minutes and National Office Memoranda, 1952-1975,” Folder “Inter-Office Memoranda, November-December 1967”; Carolyn DuBose, The Untold Story of Charles Diggs: The Public Figure, The Private Man Arlington, VA: Braton Publishing House, 1998, 123.

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blemished international image. The Washington Office on Africa also published Washington

Notes, a summary of legislation and events in Washington that related to Africa and that further

publicized southern African issues.45

The Washington Office ultimately became independent of ACOA in 1972, when it was

simply reorganized as the Washington Office on Africa (WOA). ACOA continued to give it a

small amount of money annually, but most of the group’s money came from American churches.

Its activities relating to apartheid were relatively small in the early 1970s and dealt more with

Angola and Mozambique, which gained their independence from Portugal in 1975. One such

example of WOA’s work came with the Clark Amendment, which banned aid to private groups

in the . It became an important connection between committed activists

working on Africa and the federal government in Washington, and as attention shifted back

toward South Africa, WOA became a channel to lobby Congress.

As the 1960s wore on, ACOA also backed away from one of its chief publications, Africa

Today. The magazine’s circulation was never substantial, peaking at right around 5,000

subscribers. Jim Robinson noted that the magazine was also a net income loss for ACOA,

arguing in 1966 that discontinuing it for the period from June to December would save the group

$3,504. Rather than simply abandoning the publication entirely, however, a former staff member

of ACOA, George Shepherd, decided to adopt the journal. Shepherd was a professor at the

University of Denver, and the magazine instead moved more along the lines of an academic

journal. ACOA’s influence in Africa Today did not entirely disappear, as Shepherd remained

45 “Letter from Charles Hightower to George Houser, June 16, 1971,” Part 1: ACOA Executive Committee Minutes and National Office Memoranda, 1952-1975,” Folder “Inter-Office Memoranda, June 1971.”

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sympathetic to ACOA’s mission and activities. Subsequent articles reflected the committee’s

humanitarian sympathies with liberation movements.46

During this period, ACOA never focused exclusively on South Africa. At any given

moment, its members were responding to events in Namibia, Zimbabwe, Guinea-Bissau,

Mozambique, and Angola. In the early ‘70s especially, South Africa enjoyed economic stability,

while the ANC and the PAC were both in exile and were unable to do very much work inside the

country. Consequently, ACOA’s activities more often than not addressed the guerilla wars in the

Portuguese colonies, where the liberation movements were making more tangible and visible

progress, and where Portuguese colonial rule appeared to be weaker.

By the end of the 1960s, ACOA was putting into practice some ideas about how to

cultivate a larger following in the United States. Repeated attempts to jumpstart groups in new

places failed (with the exception of Washington, D.C.), but in conjunction with systematic

research as a priority in ACOA, they also pointed the way toward an activity ACOA embraced in

the early 1970s: supporting local groups. While the development of the Washington Office

perhaps mattered less in the short run, as anti-apartheid issues lacked significance or visibility in

Congress, this too changed substantially over the next decade.

Direct Action

The leadership of ACOA had an opportunity to use direct action in the mid-1960s. The

first major campaign that ACOA participated in after 1960 was aimed at South Africa was a

boycott aimed at Chase Manhattan Bank organized by members of Students for a Democratic

46 “Memorandum from James Robinson to Steering and Finance Committee, May 9th, 1966,” Part 1: ACOA Executive Committee Minutes and National Office Memoranda, 1952-1975,” Folder “Inter-Office Memoranda, May-September, 1966”; “Memorandum from the Executive Board to George Houser, September 12th, 1966,” Part 1: ACOA Executive Committee Minutes and National Office Memoranda, 1952-1975,” Folder “Inter-Office Memoranda, May-September, 1966.”

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Society (SDS) as well as SAC, whose members were largely concentrated in New York. Chase

and a consortium of other banks, including Chemical Bank and Citibank, offered regular loans to

South Africa, and activists at SDS targeted Chase because of its longstanding ties to the South

African government and the visibility of the bank in New York.47

One such loan had been offered in the wake of the Sharpeville Massacre to help stabilize

South Africa’s internal economy. SDS led initial protests and conducted a sit-in at the South

African consulate, but did not succeed in making the bank abandon the proposed loan, and SDS

activists were soon absorbed with the ongoing war in Vietnam. ACOA adopted the campaign

against Chase in conjunction with the National Student Christian Federation, specifically SAC,

and founded the Committee of Conscience Against Apartheid as a new group to spearhead the

project. A. Philip Randolph was appointed the leader of the committee, though other supporters

included Stokely Carmichael, Victor Reuther, and Congressman Charles Diggs. ACOA’s

involvement highlights that the group’s understanding on the most appropriate ways to engage

with American businesses had evolved. The protests were to be understood “as symbolic of

protest against American involvement in the South African economy.”48

Bank boycotts were one way to target South Africa in the United States. Its own wealth

and industrialization notwithstanding, South Africa was largely dependent on outside sources of

capital. South Africa was an attractive place for foreign investors in the 1960s, where the growth

rate was among the highest in the world. However, the country had also seen a flight of

47 Southern Africa Committee Meeting Minutes, February 19, 1965, Accessed January 28, 2019: http://kora.matrix.msu.edu/files/50/304/32-130-3FA-84-african_activist_archive-a0b1j7-a_12419.pdf. 48 Minter, Hovey, and Cobb, No Easy Victories, 24; Press Release, “Students Meet on Chase Manhattan-First National City Boycott, August 10th, 1966,” Part 1: ACOA Executive Committee Minutes and National Office Memoranda, 1952-1975,” Folder “South Africa-ACOA Programs + Activities-Bank Campaign-Press Releases, 1966”; Proposal for a Campaign on First National City and Chase Manhattan Banks in New York, Undated (earlier than April 1966), Accessed February 17, 2018: http://kora.matrix.msu.edu/files/50/304/32-130-1327-84- GMH%20ACOAproposal.pdf.

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international capital following the Sharpeville Massacre that had badly hurt the country’s

economy, and activists became increasingly aware that targeting foreign investors in South

Africa could ultimately lead them to pull out if public scrutiny became too intense.49

The campaign against Chase was a different kind of boycott which embraced the view

that it was functionally impossible to create a total, voluntary commercial boycott of the South

African economy. Instead, successful boycotts could be based on the behavior of U.S. businesses

in South Africa. This model of a consumer boycott did not require extensive levels of

organization to succeed; it was more akin to a visible surgical strike targeting a specific entity.

Using its coalition of supporter groups, ACOA and the Committee of Conscience sent out

mass mailings that urged people to withdraw any money they had invested in the bank

consortium. Picket links and demonstrations were also staged at the respective banks to raise the

profile of the campaign. Stretching over a number of years, a number of high-profile clients

withdrew their investments, including the United Methodist Board of Missions, the Episcopal

Church, the United Presbyterian Church, and Cornell University. ACOA claimed that the

campaign was responsible for the withdrawal of over $22 million from Chase. Eventually, the

South African government withdrew the request for the loan, though it denied that the failure to

renew was in any way connected to the protests. Activists did not agree with Chase’s public

proclamation. Bill Minter wrote in a subsequent book that the campaign suggested that

corporations would respond to public pressure, if only to avoid bad publicity.50

49 Massie, Loosing, 88. 50 Massie, Loosing, 88; “Report on the Campaign for the Withdrawal of Accounts From Chase Manhattan and First National City Banks,” January 1967, Accessed November 20, 2016: http://kora.matrix.msu.edu/files/50/304/32-130- 658-84-african_activist_archive-a0b4l2-a_12419.pdf; William Minter, King Solomon’s Mines Revisited, (New York, New York: Basic Books, 1986), 254.

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The bank campaign is useful to illustrate how the anti-apartheid movement evolved.

Houser had written a rationale for the bank campaign that outlined the reasons for supporting what later became known as divestment. According to Houser, apartheid was so firmly legally entrenched that reform was not an option, and American business engagement in South Africa strengthened rather than weakened the apartheid state. While pressuring banks and corporations to pull out would not immediately bring an end to apartheid, it could gradually weaken the South

African state.51

ACOA was not able to follow up on the momentum generated by the Chase Boycott, for

several reasons. The higher-profile members of ACOA were either leaving or consumed with

work outside of African liberation, such as the war in Vietnam. SDS abandoned the campaign

fairly early into 1966, and increasingly the civil rights organizations that ACOA previously

worked with were falling away or focusing on their own internal issues. The aging Randolph was

unable to commit himself to limitless action. CORE ceased to be a major supporter of ACOA

campaigns after 1966, and they had been integral in bolstering picket lines and protests. The

Vietnam War increasingly captured the public’s attention, putting apartheid squarely on the back

burner, and the liberation struggle in the Portuguese colonies and Rhodesia was becoming

increasingly violent as well. Furthermore, South Africa largely stabilized after the early 1960s.

The ANC’s leadership was either in exile, imprisoned, or laying low in South Africa, and their influence and reach in the country was somewhat minimal by the end of the decade. After 1963, internal violence died down considerably, meaning that there were far fewer attention-grabbing headlines that could engross the public’s attention.52

51 Massie, Loosing, 218. 52 ACOA Board Meeting June 15, 1964, ACOA Addendum, Series 1, Box 6, Folder BOD Board Meetings, 1965- 1961.

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ACOA also focused its attention on other issues, including the aforementioned liberation struggles in the Portuguese colonies. These took some of the attention off of South Africa, but they nevertheless had an effect in the future on opposition to apartheid. One such form of protest was the shareholder protest: In the private sector, American churches began filing shareholder resolutions at company meetings, with the United Church of Christ (UCC) filing one at Gulf

Oil’s annual meeting in December of 1970 to protest its presence in Angola, and the

Episcopalian Church following suit at a meeting a year later to demand withdrawal from South Africa. American businesses found themselves encountering criticism for having any relationship to the apartheid government. ACOA did not invent this particular tactic, but members embraced it as one way to force conversations about apartheid when they were not otherwise taking place.

The realities of ACOA’s limited presence outside of New York and the resources they had at their disposal meant their campaigns followed a certain pattern, at least until the mid-

1980s. ACOA found issues that could be tied to apartheid and which could be used to launch a broader conversation about American engagement with South Africa. In this capacity, they were invariably supporting local groups or other initiators. ACOA had just enough of a national voice through its ties to other organizations that they could popularize an issue. This approach also solved some of the reputation that ACOA had as a white liberal organization. It could operate in the background without appearing to steal attention from other groups or actors.

The movement spread to the Polaroid company, where two Polaroid employees, Caroline

Hunter and Ken Hunter, publicized the use of Polaroid equipment in the passbook system in

South Africa. They formed an independent group, the Polaroid Revolutionary Workers

Movement (PRWM), to compel the company to disengage in South Africa. As Robert Massie

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notes, Polaroid was an unlikely company to target in part because its leadership was so liberal

and the company’s business presence in South Africa was relatively small. Its liberal leadership

made it more responsive to outside pressure, however, and its activities in South Africa had a

crucial link to the maintenance of apartheid: manufacturing the equipment needed for the much-

hated pass book system.53

ACOA joined with the employees to put pressure on the company. The committee

distributed fact sheets and Charles Hightower of the Washington Office created connections

between the PRWM and allies in Congress, including Representative Charles Diggs. Hightower

also met with the leadership of Polaroid to echo the demands of the PRWM. Polaroid’s

leadership was in turn convinced that Hightower, ACOA and the Black Panthers had taken over

the issue. Polaroid ultimately agreed to end sales to the South African military and police and to spend more on employee . In 1977, an Indian member of the ANC named Indrus Naidoo working for Frank & Hirsch, Polaroid’s South African distributor, revealed that Polaroid’s equipment was making its way to the South African military, a disclosure which he passed on to members of ACOA. After ACOA publicized this fact, Polaroid withdrew entirely from South

Africa.54

While forcing Polaroid to abandon South Africa was a substantial victory, ACOA was

unable to replicate it elsewhere. Polaroid had originally been able to fend off public criticism by

promising to treat its workers well and provide social welfare programs, and by the mid-1970s a

number of other corporations were following suit. Indeed, members of the State Department had

53 Massie, Loosing, 271. 54 “Summary Report to the Executive Board from the Steering Committee, December 3, 1970,” Part 1: ACOA Executive Committee Minutes and National Office Memoranda, 1952-1975,” Folder “Steering Committee Minutes- 1970-1971”; Polaroid Meeting, January 14, 1971, National Archives, RG 59, Records Relating to South African Economic Affairs, 1965-1972, Box 4, Polaroid 1972; “Reports to Exec. Board December 8, 1977,” Amistad, ACOA Addendum, Series 1, Box 6, Folder BOD Exec Dir. Report Dec 8 1977.

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hoped as early as 1971 that Polaroid would network with other corporations to engage in

“enlightened self-interest” by providing better wages and education for workers’ children.

ACOA also could not count on having people like Indrus Naidoo provide insider information on

business practices in South Africa.55

However, Polaroid’s withdrawal nonetheless signaled that businesses were vulnerable to

public pressure and public opinion. Eric Morgan argues that the pressure from ACOA in

conjunction with the PRWM forced companies to adopt reformist attitudes toward South African

business practices. It also signaled that whereas previously the practices of American companies

was mostly left unquestioned, a growing segment of the American public was open to questioning the responsibility of American corporations in their overseas business practices.

ACOA’s position was that any engagement with South Africa economically was immoral.56

Another shift in the way of attacking economic participation was over the . A

one-ounce first introduced in 1967, the Krugerrand became a major export for South

Africa. Once Congress eliminated a ban on personal gold ownership in 1975, the United States

proved to be a large market for the coin, accounting for fifty percent of Krugerrand sales by

1977. For activists, the Krugerrand was a visible symbol of apartheid that was easy to campaign

against. ACOA and the Africa Fund began working on the issue in 1976, primarily within New

York, to coordinate protests against Krugerrand dealers. ACOA was not the only organization

protesting sales of the coin: it worked alongside AFSC and a number of bodies. Through its

research, however, ACOA supplied other groups with information to use in anti-Krugerrand

campaigns, and after 1976, ACOA focused less on specific corporate behavior. Unlike protests

55 Polaroid Meeting, January 14, 1971, National Archives, RG 59, Records Relating to South African Economic Affairs, 1965-1972, Box 4, Polaroid 1972. 56 Eric Morgan, “The World is Watching: Polaroid and South Africa,” Enterprise & Society, 7 (September 2006): 537.

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aimed at a specific company, Krugerrand sales existed nationally but could be tailored to specific

regional approaches.57

Protests against the Krugerrand were another kind of easy action local activists could

take, educating potentially sympathetic people about the exploitative nature of the South African

economy. Activist groups introduced resolutions to city councils to induce them to condemn

Krugerrand sales, and while these were often symbolic, they familiarized activists with the

process of lobbying (as well as providing them with an easy first victory to fight for). Protests

against the sales of the Krugerrand also led activists into conflict with banks, which in turn

became its own issue.

The last shift in how to approach U.S. businesses was actually initiated by the companies

themselves through a changing regime of corporate social responsibility. Polaroid launched this

kind of program in 1971, and by 1977 companies attempted a new public relations exercise

through the . Founded by the Reverend Leon Sullivan, a Philadelphia-based civil rights activist and board member of General Motors, the Sullivan Principles were established in cooperation with a number of prominent multinational companies including Ford and General Motors. They were based around a series of codes such as removing segregated areas in workplaces, mandating equal pay for equal work, and encouraging companies to make charitable contributions in certain areas. Proponents argued that Sullivan’s code would undermine apartheid from within, while most anti-apartheid activists argued that it gave the

South African government continued legitimacy and shielded U.S. companies from negative criticism.58

57 “South African Krugerrand,” The Pittsburgh Courier, December 17, 1977; ACOA Executive Board Meeting, December 9, 1976. Accessed February 4, 2019: http://kora.matrix.msu.edu/files/50/304/32-130-244A-84- PW%20ACOA%20EB%2012-9-76%20opt.pdf. 58 Morgan, “World is Watching,” 547.

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When the Sullivan Principles were publicly announced in 1977, ACOA responded by

saying that none of the reforms addressed the basic lived reality of apartheid for black South

Africans. There was little room for cooperation between ACOA and Sullivan, even on shared

areas of agreement such as ending bank loans to South Africa; Houser felt Sullivan’s

pronouncements were a waste of time on the issue. The Sullivan Principles became another

obstacle to overcome in legislating divestment around the United States, and there is evidence

that they forestalled divestment. ACOA in turn devoted a substantial amount of research and

lobbying to dismissing the effectiveness of the Sullivan Principles, maintaining the position that

U.S. companies could not play a constructive role in South Africa.59

ACOA Fieldwork

In conjunction with campaigns that targeted U.S. businesses, ACOA provided education

and support for local groups working on South African issues. ACOA’s leadership considered

several legislative strategies, including making fair employment practices mandatory to

American companies working in South Africa, ending the sugar quota for South Africa, and

ending tax emptions for corporations. Houser, Brutus and other members of ACOA testified

before Congressional committees on a regular basis, usually when called to testify on behalf of

legislation. However, the fact that legislation in Congress proved to be largely fruitless in this

period did not mean that the relationships ACOA and the Washington Office cultivated with

legislators were useless. Instead, those legislators used their position to force conversations about

maintain a relationship with South Africa. When wanted to offer services

59 Morgan, “World is Watching,” 538; Letter from George Houser to Jerry Herman, May 6, 1980, Amistad, COBLSA, Series 1, Box 6, Folder Correspondence, General 1983-1977; University of Minnesota and the State of Connecticut voted for divestment of non-signatory companies to the Sullivan Principles rather than wholesale divestment in 1979 and 1982. Letter from C. Peter Magrath, January 15, 1979, Emory University, Leon Sullivan Papers, Box 54, Correspondence January 1979; Letter from William Hamilton, May 6, 1982, Emory University, Leon Sullivan Papers, Box 56, Correspondence April July 1982.

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in New York, ACOA worked with Charles Diggs and a few other legislators to block their

services on the grounds that their services were discriminatory to African Americans.60

Fieldwork became the means to escape ACOA’s reputation as a group for white liberals

became the priority. By 1968, Houser, Arthur Waskow, and Charles Wilhelm agreed that ACOA

needed to change some of its operational policies in order to draw younger people who possessed

latent interest in southern Africa. They believed that fieldwork was key to this process,

particularly in cities where there was a large African American population. Organizers could create their own committees that could then draw on ACOA for support without being directly affiliated with the group. Importantly, Houser and Waskow identified former workers, civil rights organizers, and Vietnam War protesters as the right kinds of people to work for ACOA.61

Interest in branching out across the United States, combined with a desire to reach out to

broader segments of African Americans, led to the creation of a regional office in Chicago in

1970. Nesbitt felt that Chicago offered a number of advantages for activists working on southern

African issues. The city’s population was 40% African American, who accounted for one-fifth of newspaper subscribers. Furthermore, the city was home to the Chicago Defender, one of the largest and most influential African American newspapers. With all those advantages in mind,

Nesbitt also asserted that the city was a “media wasteland” and that most of the people living there were not informed about issues related to Africa. According to Nesbitt, the goal was the

“dissemination and distribution of literature and materials about the ‘Deep South’ of Africa…”

60 Staff Report Annual Meeting Executive Board, April 3, 1967, ACOA, Box 2, Folder 22, Executive Committee Minutes 1967; “Minutes of the Steering Committee April 1, 1969,” Part 1: ACOA Executive Committee Minutes and National Office Memoranda, 1952-1975,” Folder “Steering Committee Minutes-1969.” 61 “Memorandum from Arthur Waskow to Executive Committee, January 15, 1968,” Part 1: ACOA Executive Committee Minutes and National Office Memoranda, 1952-1975,” Folder on “Minutes-Executive Committee- 1968.”

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Nesbitt’s word choice is telling in that passage: he wanted to explicitly emphasize the similarities

between the American South and southern Africa.62

Nesbitt’s fieldwork in Chicago relied on consistent speaking engagements throughout the

Midwest, approximately ten a month, and the distribution of pamphlets and literature. By the end

of 1970, Nesbitt reported that two new black committees had been set up, and he was working

with a “radical white commune” aimed at targeting Chicago-based corporations that invested in

southern Africa. By May of 1972, when Nesbitt withdrew from working for ACOA to focus

more on the Africa Information Service and to finish his dissertation, his successor Eileen

Hanson reported a definite increase in participation among black Chicagoans, as well as an

increase in reporting in black newspapers. Nesbitt and Eileen Hanson oversaw an equally

important addition to ACOA’s work in Chicago, the New World Resource Center (NWRC).

Hanson first proposed the NWRC to Houser in July of 1971. She argued that Chicago needed a

center to distribute literature and information on the ongoing liberation struggles in southern

Africa. Much of this literature came from ACOA’s New York office. ACOA’s sponsorship of

the NWRC was a temporary phenomenon and only supplied a few thousand dollars annually for

the purpose, and the NWRC relied on support from several groups for its continued existence.

The sponsorship of the NWRC only lasted until 1974, when ACOA had dropped its direct

financial support to the group. ACOA’s role doing as a direct backer remained small in part

because it lacked the funds to do systematically, but other groups later adopted logistical support to smaller groups as a systematic strategy.63

62 “Report to the Executive Board of the American Committee on Africa, April 16, 1970,” Part 1: ACOA Executive Committee Minutes and National Office Memoranda, 1952-1975,” Folder “Inter-Office Memoranda, April-May 1970.” 63 “Letter from Eileen Hanson to George Houser, July 16, 1971,” Part 1: ACOA Executive Committee Minutes and National Office Memoranda, 1952-1975,” Folder “Inter-Office Memoranda, August 1971”; “Memorandum regarding ACOA support for the New World Resource Center, January 16, 1973,” Part 1: ACOA Executive Committee Minutes and National Office Memoranda, 1952-1975,” Folder “Inter-Office Memoranda, January 1972

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Yet even with the successes of the Chicago branch, which were more substantive than

what ACOA had seen in the past, the Midwest office of ACOA closed after only a year. The

money to sustain the Chicago office wasn’t offered up for the following year. There was the

fractious working relationship between Houser and Nesbitt, particularly over the issue of how to

engage with the other liberation movements. Nesbitt was opposed to ACOA’s “neutrality”

towards liberation movements and favored taking sides, which was a dispute largely over the

issue of supporting the MPLA in Angola. Nesbitt also felt that Houser liked to keep ACOA

under tight control, and that too much deviation from the regional offices threatened his

oversight of the organization.64

While the attempt to make ACOA a truly national organization failed, it was nevertheless

instructive about effective ways to manage relationships with activists going forward. Nesbitt’s

year in Chicago had helped to jump-start a number of activist groups in the city. Directly leading

groups was ineffective, but providing them with materials and information filled a gap in local

groups’ capabilities.

Research and education were the main goals for ACOA going forward, and in 1969, the research arm of the Africa Fund issued its first fact sheet. The fact sheets were simple and direct,

using a mix of statistics and short prose that demonstrated, for example, that apartheid

consolidated control of the country’s economy into the hands of whites. One of the first such fact

sheets was on the South Africa Airways issue. Throughout the 1970s, the size and scope of

literature distribution grew considerably. In addition to selling the materials, ACOA/AF also

to April 1973”; ACOA-Some options for the future?, January 25, 1974, Amistad, ACOA Addendum, Series 1, Box 5, Folder BOD Special Meetings, January 1974. 64 Executive Board Meeting, December 3, 1970, Accessed April 7, 2019: http://africanactivist.msu.edu/document_metadata.php?objectid=32-130-23BE; Interview with Prexy Nesbitt, August 13, 2017.

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supplied so-called resource centers with materials that allowed them to help inform local communities and supply anti-apartheid literature. ACOA’s sponsorship of the NWRC was a temporary phenomenon and only supplied a few thousand dollars annually for the purpose, and the NWRC relied on support from several groups for its continued existence. However, ACOA and its activists had a powerful role in the center. The NWRC could distribute ACOA literature in the Chicago area and sponsor speakers, all the while reinforcing the committee’s ties to other liberation groups. Much of this was the work of Jennifer Davis, who directed the growth of the research bureau, and likely saw it as a mean of catalyzing other groups by providing them with the means to take action.65

The Bank Campaign

Divestment is one of the best-known chapters in the international struggle against

apartheid. By contrast, the campaign to end bank loans to South Africa has received relatively

little attention, despite the fact that many anti-apartheid activists saw it as a significant strategy for undermining white minority rule. While South Africa’s economy was more industrialized than many of its neighbors, it was pursuing a general program of Import Substitution

Industrialization that was heavily dependent on outside capital. Britain was the largest lender to

South Africa, with the United States second. By cutting off the flow of capital, they hoped to weaken the apartheid state.

In the United States, ACOA cooperated with AFSC and the Clergy and Laity Concerned

(CALC) to establish COBLSA, the Committee to Oppose Bank Loans to South Africa

65 From George Houser to Janet McLaughlin, February 7, 1969, ACOA, Box 1, Folder 37, Inter-Office Memoranda, Jan-May 1969; “Memorandum regarding ACOA support for the New World Resource Center, January 16, 1973,” Part 1: ACOA Executive Committee Minutes and National Office Memoranda, 1952-1975,” Folder “Inter-Office Memoranda, January 1972 to April 1973”; “Letter from Eileen Hanson to ACOA Board, March 16, 1973,” Part 1: ACOA Executive Committee Minutes and National Office Memoranda, 1952-1975,” Folder “Inter-Office Memoranda, January 1972 to April 1973.”

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(COBLSA). Prexy Nesbitt returned to serve as the first national director of COBLSA in 1977, followed two years later by Dumisani Kumalo and then by Carole Collins in 1981. Yet COBLSA was a fundamentally decentralized group that relied on local organizers and groups to sustain campaigns against banks that were offering loans to South Africa. In the wake of the Soweto

Uprising and the killing of Steve Biko, COBLSA had the benefit of a great deal of public interest in southern African issues. It also relied on the same kinds of ties that sustained ACOA: church groups, African Americans, student activists, and labor unions, all of which could target banks.

COBLSA did not generate public interest solely by discussing apartheid. Instead, it relied on forming cooperative links with other activist groups targeting banks. Some of those activists were targeting other repressive regimes. For example, Riggs Bank in Washington, D.C. was offering loans to the Pinochet government in Chile, and activists concerned with Chile began cooperating with the D.C. COBLSA chapter. Yet even beyond tactical alliances, COBLSA’s leaders found ways to articulate the links between South African issues and the connections at home. As an example, Riggs was offering loans to the South African government while at the same time allegedly practicing redlining that denied housing opportunities to African Americans in DC. It not only joined together the African American and South African struggles, it suggested that they were ultimately in response to the same oppressive forces.

Part of COBLSA’s work involved organizing its supporter groups to divest themselves from any banks still working in South Africa. The UAW had long been one of the most important financial backers of ACOA, and local officers of the UAW such as Cleveland

Robinson were critical to ACOA’s work in New York, but it was only in 1978 that the union agreed to remove funds from any bank doing business in South Africa. A number of churches divested themselves as well, including the Episcopalian Church, the United Church of Christ

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World Ministries, as well as unaffiliated but sympathetic organizations such as the United Negro

College Fund.66

Early on, Nesbitt met with leaders of certain banks such as Chemical Bank in New York,

but found that negotiating with these institutions was ineffective. Interestingly, the leadership of

Chemical Bank at least claimed to agree with COBLSA’s intentions and even goals, but felt that

bankers could not publicly disparage one another. COBLSA’s work ultimately depended on the

hard work of locals to pressure banks into abandoning a policy of loans to South Africa. Indeed,

some of the COBLSA branches, such as Philadelphia’s, had a relatively minimal relationship

with their parent office, mostly using it for research materials and publications.67

Local chapters were generally comprised of a few dozen members and by 1978 had sprung up in New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Boston, and six other cities.

Banks that sold or offered loans to South Africa were the subject of picket lines, negative publicity, and funds withdrawals to make the banks change course. Anti-bank loan

campaigns had an important regional character: even the largest banks such as Chase or Bank of

America were still largely regional banks, working in New York and California respectively.

When Northwestern Bank in Minneapolis was faced with a $1,000,000 withdrawal from the

Minnesota CALC and its members, it ended the policy of Krugerrand sales and loans to South

Africa; it had previously loaned the South African government $2 million.68

66 “UAW Will Withdraw Funds from Banks Loaning to SA,” Amistad, COBLSA, Box 18, Folder: The People Also Say Project: Press Releases 1978-1977; COBLSA News #1, November 15, 1977, Accessed December 4, 2016: http://kora.matrix.msu.edu/files/50/304/32-130-110E-84-COBLSA%20News%20%231.pdf. 67 “Memo from Prexy,” October 5, 1978, Amistad, ACOA Addendum, Series 2, Box 98, Bank Campaign 1978; Letter from Philadelphia COBLSA, January 10, 1980, Amistad, ACOA Addendum, Series 2, Projects: Bank Campaign (Philadelphia): Correspondence 1980. 68 COBLSA Newsletter #3, March 27, 1978, Hoover, Africa Subject Collection, Box 7, International Support ACOA, COBLSA, General; COBLSA News #2, March 15, 1978, Accessed December 4, 2016: http://kora.matrix.msu.edu/files/50/304/32-130-C4E-84-al.sff.document.acoa000483.pdf.

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Elements of COBLSA were also part of the broader campaign against the Krugerrand, the

South African gold coin first issued in 1967. ACOA had long been against the sale of

Krugerrands, describing them as a product of the oppressive working conditions in South African

mines as well as a source of valuable foreign exchange; one member of the group, Paul Irish, had

been working on targeting Krugerrands in New York department stores since 1976. Leadership

of the protest was passed down to local committees, which often combined protests against a

bank’s lending policy to South Africa with protests against Krugerrand sales.

COBLSA was not confined to the United States and also had a large presence in ,

where it collaborated with the Toronto Committee for the Liberation of Southern Africa

(TCLSA) among other groups. The Canadian banking industry presented unusual challenges

compared to the American example because the Canadian banking sector was overwhelmingly

dominated by a few very large institutions. In the United States, consumers could simply

withdraw funds from one bank and place it into another, but in many parts of Canada withdrawal

could not be easily accomplished because there were no banks without ties to South Africa or

with a policy prohibiting South African loans. Activists created plans for organizing credit

unions as well as orchestrating multi million-dollar withdrawals from banks.

In 1979, COBLSA became an independent organization from ACOA and moved to

Washington, though its overall style remained the same as it had been before. Yet the fact that

COBLSA was decentralized did not mean that its national office could simply stand back from affairs, and COBLSA ran into organization difficulties as it replaced its national coordinator twice. From January 1980 to May of 1981, COBLSA’s leaders did not meet, and from May of

1980 to May of 1981 it was without a national coordinator. Research fell by the wayside as a result. There were recommendations for the group to abandon its focus on local campaigns for a

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large regional push, but a single regional campaign was difficult because COBLSA also lacked a

base that could operate at a regional level.69

COBLSA ultimately wound down for a few reasons. Certain campaigns illustrated the

limitations of the pressure that could be put on the banks. While Riggs had received a

tremendous amount of attention from the national office, even focusing on redlining ultimately

failed to pay dividends or change the bank’s behavior, and only got as far as a hearing with the

Comptroller of the Currency which resulted in small penalties. Furthermore, fundraising for

explicitly anti-corporate activity was becoming more difficult, partly as a result of the

increasingly conservative political atmosphere of the 1980s. The organization was effectively

dead by 1983.70

How effective was COBLSA? In terms of direct pressure applied to South Africa, it was

at best a limited success. Estimates of depositor withdrawals hovered around $325 million

dollars, but that figure did not necessarily lead institutions to break off their arrangements in

South Africa. Smaller banks such as Northwestern in Minnesota, First National in Chicago, or

First National in Oregon could be pressured by their communities, but their loans in South Africa

tended to be relatively small. Larger banks were another story, however. While Citicorp stopped

making loans to the South African government in 1978, Citicorp’s South African subsidiary still

remained, and South African law required it to buy a set number of bonds. Furthermore, loans to

private entities such as companies in South Africa continued to help the overall economy.

COBLSA in New York persuade the Furriers Council to withdraw ten million dollars from

69 Memorandum on Research and Organizing Tasks, May 8, 1981, Amistad, COBLSA, Box 2, Folder Correspondence (General) 1990-1980; “Report over the 1977 Activities,” August 6, 1978, Madison State Historical Society, Beate Klein Becker Papers, Box 1, National Meeting, August 6, 1978. 70 Comptroller of the Currency to Daniel Callahan of Riggs, Amistad, COBLSA, Series 2, Box 9, DC Bank Correspondence 1983-1975; Letter to Ben Hull, May 15, 1985, Amistad, ACOA Addendum, Series 2, Box 102, Boycott, 1986-1984.

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Manufacturers Hanover in one swoop, but Hanover continued offering loans to South Africa

until 1985. Likewise, the campaign to limit the sale of Krugerrands was a useful tool for

generating publicity, and 1978 was the year of peak sales for the Krugerrand in the United States

at six million ounces. Thereafter, sales of the coin declined steadily, but it was not 1986 when

their importation into the United States ended.71

The evidence for COBLSA’s efficacy in worsening South Africa’s status as credit-

worthy is stronger. Observers noted that even as the international campaign against bank loans

gathered steam and won certain victories, the amount of foreign capital entering South Africa

actually increased by 330% from 1980 to 1984. However, the terms of those loans were much

more unfavorable than they had been before, the majority of them short-term loans at higher interest rates than South Africa had received in the 1960s. Banks treated South Africa as a risky lending prospect, and COBLSA played a large role in contributing to a worsening financial atmosphere for South Africa, even if only by worsening the terms available to the government.

By the early 1980s, South Africa was lurching toward an economic crisis as the government relied on foreign financing to subsidize deficit spending, fueling a looming disaster with foreign debt that had to be paid back in the short-term.72

COBLSA instead can be understood as a means of mobilizing people and organizing

local committees in between periods of high attention. South Africa had been the subject of

considerable attention because of the violence of the in 1976, but that energy

faded over time. The government enjoyed a period of relative quiet after 1978, and public

71 COBLSA News #3, March 27, 1978, Accessed December 4, 2016: http://kora.matrix.msu.edu/files/50/304/32- 130-C4F-84-al.sff.document.acoa000484.pdf; Bank Campaign Update, July 22, 1977, Amistad, COBLSA, Box 2, Folder Correspondence (General) 1979-1977; Memo on Municipal Divestment Campaign, June 19, 1985, Amistad, ACOA Addendum, Series 2, Box 86, UN Center Against Apartheid, 1985-1982. 72 Draft Copy Philadelphia Bank Ties to SA, Madison State Historical Society, Beate Klein Becker Papers, Box 2, S.A. Loan; Massie, Loosing, 591.

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interest in South African issues ebbed especially once the pace of change proved to be slow. Yet despite growing fatigue, COBLSA committees continued to work for years at a time, even after the national office had officially come to an end. Though Seattle’s SeaFirst bank did not abandon making loans to South Africa until December 1984, the COBLSA coalition of labor unions and church groups that had been built there continued to press on that issue until it finally came through; it was followed by North Carolina National Bank Corp, the largest regional lender to

South Africa in July 1985.73

Conclusion

At the same time that COBLSA campaigned against bank loans to South Africa, states

and cities began passing divestment laws which prohibited cities from placing funds in a

financial institution doing business in South Africa. These divestments were generally thought of

as relatively easy to pass, but were a kind of foot in the door for anti-apartheid activists seeking to legislate at the local level. ACOA could not claim authorship for these actions directly, though

Jennifer Davis participated in one of the first municipal debates in Gary, Indiana in 1976 to successfully argue for the passage of a selective-purchasing law. Over the long-term, the strategy adopted by ACOA, along with dozens of local and smaller committees, was to push public entities to divest from any company or bank doing business in South Africa.74

ACOA’s experience when opposition to apartheid was not at the forefront of activist movements speaks to some of the difficulties that activists faced. Contrary to the Anti-Apartheid

Movement in Britain, South African activism in the United States was highly decentralized.

73 Seattle COBLSA, Amistad, ACOA Addendum, Series 2, Box 98, Bank Campaign 1980-1979; Richard Knight, “Documenting the U.S. Solidarity Movement: With Reflections on Sanctions and Divestment Campaigns,” Accessed December 5, 2016: http://africanactivist.msu.edu/document_metadata.php?objectid=32-130-372. 74 Interview with Chris Root and David Wiley, August 28, 2016; Gary, Indiana City Council Votes for Anti- Apartheid Boycott, December 10th, 1976, MSU, MSS 258, Box 7, Gary Campaign 1976.

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Attempts to create a national presence for ACOA continually foundered because the group

lacked substantive links outside of New York. Even when they temporarily managed to establish

small affiliate groups, such as Mary-Louise Hooper’s West Coast Branch or Prexy Nesbitt’s

Chicago Office, those satellite groups became defunct once their members were forced to move

on.

While ACOA did not directly control every facet of the anti-apartheid movement in the

United States (as its members noted, its presence outside of New York was virtually nil), it shaped aspects of the movement. Even where ACOA could not control events, a close examination of the group still reflects certain factors that affected the development of the anti-

apartheid movement in the United States. ACOA did not exclusively focus on class or economic

injustice and had originally been founded because of a concern with racial injustices. The CAA

had originally fielded those concerns, and the silencing of its members left the focus on race for a

time. However, by the early 1970s those concerns over the economic injustices of apartheid were

coming back into the U.S. movement, and moreover, they were being connected to specific

American business practices. Jennifer Davis, Stephanie Urdang, Prexy Nesbitt, and others were

not the only ones offering those critiques, but compared to a great many other African activist

groups, they had a visible platform to present those critiques. Even relatively conservative

members such as George Houser had by the early 1970s had accepted that U.S. businesses could

and would not solve apartheid.

ACOA’s experience illustrates some of the tactical decisions that U.S. anti-apartheid

groups made. Contrary to some popular understanding of opposition to apartheid as simply being

a racial issue, the anti-apartheid movement was framed around multiple issues. In the wake of the Vietnam War, activists often compared support for South Africa to support for South

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Vietnam and suggested that it could eventually lead into another proxy war for the United States.

Once South Africa successfully tested a nuclear weapon in the late 1970s, ACOA and other

groups focused on its nuclear power status to woo anti-nuclear activists. Adopting different

critiques was simply a strategy of simply seeing what might work best, and activist groups

frequently through periods of long trial-and-error to find an effective message.

Supporting groups in direct action also made it easier to build a constituency interested in southern African issues. Reflecting on the efficacy of boycotts, Houser believed they did not harm or challenge the South African state. However, they created awareness as Bill Minter had

noted in 1965, and this same philosophy was applied to shareholder meetings, sports matches,

and U.S. economic engagement with South Africa. Members of ACOA firmly believed that the

U.S. business presence in South Africa helped sustain apartheid, and so as the 1970s wore on the

emphasis shifted from individual corporate actors to larger investment funds held by cities and

states. Such an action could accomplish two purposes: educating and mobilizing people to

oppose apartheid while also eroding the strength of the South African state.75

ACOA’s work laid much of the foundation for the heated anti-apartheid work that

unfolded in the 1980s. While there had been groups and active individuals in the preceding

decades, as has been mentioned, after considerable experimentation ACOA found a way to

support and cultivate activism across the country. Directly running ACOA satellite offices had

not worked, nor had top-down activism directed from New York and Washington. Going

forward, ACOA provided resources and support to groups working locally. It is to these groups

that we will turn in the next chapter.

75 Letter from New England Committee on Africa, October 18, 1978, Amistad, ACOA Addendum, Series 1, Box 11, Folder: Correspondence, Houser, 1978.

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Chapter 3 Making the Transnational Local: Grassroots Anti-Apartheid Committees

In the early 1980s, members of the Madison Area Committee on Southern Africa

(MACSA) heard that a speaker from the South African consulate in Chicago was going to be

speaking at a local high school about life in South Africa. The consulate’s activities were part of

a broader diplomatic offensive in the United States, as South Africa was desperately fighting for

support for its so-called homelands, more commonly referred to as the Bantustans, and they put

together attractive presentations with glossy publications across the country. Meg Skinner and

Daniel Kunene, two members of MACSA, persuaded the principal to allow them to give a

counter-presentation. They spoke in detail on the poverty and misery of life in the Bantustans.1

This debate, which was not of any great stakes taken on its own terms, was part of

MACSA’s work, which at its most basic was built around educating the public about South

Africa. Similarr encounters and battles between activists and apologists played themselves out over and over again in the United States. The anti-apartheid movement in the United States is noteworthy in part because of its heavily decentralized, local character. While a few prominent national groups lobby in Washington or create awareness of South Africa in the media, their influence was limited by their small numbers and limited resources. Local committees, which were concentrated at the state and city level, were responsible for helping to build a groundswell of public opinion against apartheid. These committees frequently did not focus exclusively on

1 Interview with Meg Skinner, August 12, 2016.

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apartheid. Many activists began by supporting liberation groups in other parts of southern Africa,

such as the Portuguese colonies or Rhodesia after 1965.

By the 1980s, however, divestment committees existed across the United States, and they

chiefly targeted South Africa. While they were often strongest in traditionally liberal and urban

areas where one might expect support for anti-apartheid causes, they also flourished in more

rural and conservative parts of the United States. These groups were often dependent on a small

core of committed activists who organized coalitions with sympathetic churches and unions, and

who sustained interest in South Africa year after year. Many activists were transnational actors, either Americans who had spent time in Africa and become interested in apartheid while there, or exiled South Africans who came to the United States and became involved in liberation activism.

There were often webs of connection between local groups. As will be revealed in this chapter, members of the Madison Committee on Southern Africa often branched out elsewhere into the

Midwest and then started new groups.

Local committees are where one can most easily see Sidney Tarrow’s framework around

“cosmopolitans,” who because of their familiarity with apartheid could approach it relatively easily. It is at the local level that the importance of these activists becomes so clear, because they were adept at tailoring messages about apartheid to local audiences. Understanding the anti-

apartheid movement as one unified movement with a single message misses the fact that there

was a federalism of activism at work: different places responded to varying themes and

interpretations of apartheid. In predominantly white and liberal Madison, criticism of South

Africa often had as much to do with criticism of American business practices. Industrial cities in

the Northeast often drew on criticisms of labor practices, particularly around unions. In the

American South, apartheid was compared and contrasted with Jim Crow, while in Los Angeles

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and San Francisco, liberation was often framed in terms of black power. Examining the local

dimensions of the anti-apartheid movement help to understand what Margaret Keck and Kathryn

Sikkink called “transnational advocacy networks.” Prior histories of the global anti-apartheid

movement have paid scant attention to the different factors that drew in activists and concerned

audiences.2

These cosmopolitans transformed the people they worked around into cosmopolitans as

well. Media coverage of South Africa was extraordinarily limited into the mid-1980s, and

relatively few Americans traveled there. Outside of four-year cycles of activity (1960-1963,

1976-1979, and 1983-1986), South Africa received little attention. Transnational activists presented the issue to their fellow Americans. For many people, friendship with a South African was their point of entry into the anti-apartheid movement. Through writings, lectures, debates, and other events, transnational activists built bases of support that took action against apartheid.

In the early years of the movement support meant financial support for the ANC or donations to

South African refugees living in the , but evolved over time into divestment from

companies working in South Africa.

It would be impossible to cover all fifty states and all of the activist groups, and

transnational actors did not play an equal role in every state and city divestment movement.

However, several regional movements share some common factors There are some common

factors that unite these various groups in their early years. Large universities with African

Studies departments became home to organized anti-apartheid groups because they attracted expatriates while supporting students who traveled abroad; the best examples of these schools

2 Keck and Sikkink, Activists, 1-2; A noteworthy exception is 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, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press), 2014, 204-225.

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were University of Wisconsin, Northwestern University, and Michigan State University. Major cities such as Chicago and Boston became home to South African exiles and expatriates simply because there were opportunities for work as well as for activism. Over time, however, activists diffused across many parts of the country.

These case studies also show the ways that regional activism flourished and are exemplary in certain respects. Madison was the first U.S. city to completely divest from

American businesses working in South Africa, and MACSA was a kind of model that many other groups followed as they demanded divestment. The University of Wisconsin’s divestment was well-publicized, and activists around the country studied it to replicate it at their own universities and colleges. It was driven by a number of transnational actors who were especially focused on corporate research and finding ways to strike at white supremacy in Africa by targeting business links in North America. Additionally, it drew on some of the climate of the

Vietnam War. Madison was a hotbed for anti-Vietnam War protests, and liberation activists in the city often framed support for white minority regimes as possibly leading to another Vietnam in southern Africa.

The Michigan, Chicago, and Boston case studies show how relatively small constituencies of activists, particularly transnational actors, managed to nevertheless drive statewide coalitions. These three places were home to particularly vocal and motivated actors. In the case of Michigan and Chicago, the success and even partial-victories of activists were striking because of the obstacles they faced. Both Michigan and Chicago were in the midst of industrial downturns, which on the one hand shaped criticism of apartheid, but also made audiences more fiscally conservative. What’s more, the remainder of the state was often much more conservative. While Boston’s activists faced a politically liberal state that was receptive to

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divestment, statewide political movements could not be effectively built by one or two major

liberal cities such as Chicago and Detroit. In short, divestment was not necessarily inevitable in

these places simply because they tended to produce Democrats. Divestment at the state and city

level happened because of persistence.

Boston’s anti-apartheid scene is significant at several levels. A number of prominent national actors such as of TransAfrica were shaped by the anti-apartheid

movement in the city, much of which was driven by transnational actors. Their experiences in

the city eventually played out on the national stage. In Boston, the path to guiding statewide

divestments was more or less established, and the framework for white and black political

partnerships soon became a formula of sorts that played out in other cities. ACOA used the

coalition that existed there as a model for other state legislators to follow and increased

awareness of it through conferences and publications.

Madison, Wisconsin

In many senses, Madison, was an ideal place for African liberation activists. Madison

was a politically liberal town and became the site of increasingly influential student activism in

the 1960s, beginning with protests against the Vietnam War. The University of Wisconsin was

home to one of the largest African Studies departments in the country that attracted a number of

scholars and students who were already motivated to pursue African liberation. As a small town,

Madison was also easier to organize in for a small group of activists. A major city such as New

York or Chicago required a greater audience, and there were obstacles to achieving any kind of

disengagement from South Africa. Activists in Madison enjoyed a degree of visibility that their

peers elsewhere lacked in the early 1970s.

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Madison had become home to two South Africans, Archibald Campbell Jordan and his

wife, Phyllis Ntantala-Jordan, in 1962. Jordan was an academic and writer who left South Africa

because of the political climate. In her autobiography A Life’s Mosaic, Ntantala-Jordan spoke

warmly about Madison, where they were well-received by the university’s African Studies

Department and by the Madison chapter of the NAACP. However, Madison was also a place

where two Molotov cocktails were thrown at their house, and Ntantala-Jordan recalled that the

city, and by extension the United States had serious problems with racism too. Nevertheless, they

formed a small community of like-minded individuals: Joel Samoff recalled their house as a kind

of meeting place for people who were interested in South African issues.3

In the fall of 1968, MACSA was organized with the assistance of the Jordans and a

number of other people. Its founding members included a number of transnational activists:

David Wiley, Meg Skinner, and Daniel Kunene, among others. They were joined in 1969 by Bill

and Ruth Minter. Wiley had first become interested in African liberation because of his time as a

Presbyterian FIM in Southern Rhodesia from 1961 to 1963. Wiley participated in work camps in

which missionaries did manual labor alongside the people they worked with while devoting a

portion of each day to Bible study. While there, Wiley became increasingly alienated by the

racism practiced by white Rhodesians and became an increasingly vocal critic of segregation.

The Rhodesian government declared him a “prohibited immigrant” and kicked him out of the

country. When he returned to the United States, Wiley finished his education and became a

faculty member at the University of Wisconsin in the department of sociology.4

3 Phyllis Ntantala-Jordan, A Life’s Mosaic: The Autobiography of Phyllis Ntantala, (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1993), 197, 201; Interview with Joel Samoff, Accessed March 18, 2017: http://michiganintheworld.history.lsa.umich.edu/antiapartheid/exhibits/show/interviews/joel-samoff--former-uofm- facul. 4 Focer, “Frontier Internship in Mission,” 162; Interview with Chris Root and David Wiley, August 28, 2016.

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Daniel Kunene was exiled from South Africa. An acquaintance of A.C. Jordan, Kunene

left South Africa in 1961 to study in London and requested political asylum while living there in

1963. The Minters brought their own transnational experience once they arrived in Madison in

1969, galvanized by the assassination of their friend . Meg Skinner had first

become interested in South Africa as a child in the 1950s when Chief Albert Luthuli came to her

church in Connecticut and her father, a newspaper editor, interviewed him.5

Wiley proved to be especially effective in motivating other people to devote themselves to African liberation. Wendy Simmons first became meaningfully engaged in southern Africa when she attended the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She worked as a cooperante in

Mozambique’s newly-independent university system, did some advocacy work with American organizations on southern Africa, and wrote a dissertation on rural legal aid in Zimbabwe, where she lived for a number of years. Reflecting on her time in Madison, she mentioned falling under the orbit of David Wiley. She considered Wiley a “juggernaut” who motivated and recruited a number of students to both study and work on southern Africa, bridging the gap between scholar and activist.6

A.C. Jordan died in 1968, but Phyllis remained active, organizing speaking engagements

about apartheid, spurred on in part by Mxolisi Ntlabathi. Daniel Kunene was a professor of

African Languages and Literature who had left in South Africa in 1963; he lived in Madison for

the remainder of the anti-apartheid movement. Other South Africans included Wandile Kuse and

Gideon Mangoaela. A memorandum was first circulated in fall of 1968 calling for the

establishment of a support group for liberation activists. Tellingly, they recognized that their first

5 Letter from G. Edward Clark to Jesse MacKnight, September 27, 1963, National Archives, RG 59, Bureau of African Affairs, Box 3, Informal Letters; Interview with Meg Skinner, August 12 2016. 6 Interview with Wendy Simmons, July 12, 2017.

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priorities would be information and education while working in the long-term to end involvement in oppressive regimes in southern Africa. Early meetings began in March of 1969.

By October, MACSA was organizing separate committees: a research committee to investigate

South Africa as well as U.S.-South Africa ties, a committee to do educational work in area schools, a public information committee to work with the media, a committee to work with local churches, and a committee to liaise with students.7

In 1969 and 1970, MACSA faced a great deal of competition from other issues. For

student groups, the Vietnam War was still paramount in importance, while labor unions were

mostly concentrating on domestic issues. In addition, MACSA was splitting its efforts between

anti-apartheid work, Rhodesia, and the Portuguese colonies. Progress was slow, especially as

committees merged with other committees internally to function more effectively. The group

was volunteer-driven, meaning that members could not give their work their full attention for

long periods of time.8

Like ACOA, MACSA’s tactics varied widely. Members raised funds for supplies for different liberation movements. They identified local targets to direct action towards. In the group’s third newsletter, released in April 1970, it had identified several Wisconsin-based companies that were in South Africa. Those companies were likely targeted because the

American business presence in South Africa was greater than it was elsewhere in southern

Africa. On the other hand, in terms of political orientation, the group also remained focused more on the national stage rather than the local. Members identified their two political priorities as the

7 Jordan, Life’s Mosaic, 230; “Some Hypotheses Concerning the Southern Africa Issue and Wisconsin,” Fall 1968, Accessed March 15, 2017: http://africanactivist.msu.edu/document_metadata.php?objectid=32-130-4E6; “March 10, 1969,” Madison Area Committee on Southern Africa, Box 1, Folder 1, Madison Historical Society; MACSA Newsletter No. 1, November 1969. Accessed March 15, 2017: http://kora.matrix.msu.edu/files/50/304/32-130-350- 84-32-130-350-84-african_activist_archive-a0b0p0-a_12419opt.pdf. 8 MACSA Meeting Executive Committee January 4, 1970, Madison Area Committee for Southern Africa, Box 1, Folder 2, Madison Historical Society.

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need to put pressure on Wisconsin national legislators and the federal government. As yet, the

group was not thinking in purely local terms. Building community engagement and interest was

slow. A speakers’ series commemorating Sharpeville in 1970 that featured Dennis Brutus and a

number of other prominent liberation activists was poorly attended.9

Relationship building was a relatively slow process but yielded results over time.

Churches such as First Congregational, which had several MACSA members, formed Southern

Africa committees by 1972. Members of the church networked with other Madison-area churches. By 1973 an ad hoc southern Africa committee consisted of the local United Methodist conference, three Presbyterian churches, and First Congregational. Those churches committed to spending a year educating other churches in Wisconsin about South Africa. Within a few years, other churches around the state hosted their own educational programs.10

Ties were established with local labor unions including the International Brotherhood of

Electrical Workers, the UAW, and the meat cutter and packing unions at the Oscar Mayer plant.

These ties became more effective over time, but only brought small amounts of financial support initially. Inroads were made with Wisconsin politicians such as a Democratic candidate for state attorney general, in the hopes that southern African issues could become a more visible issue.

However, acknowledgement from a political candidate did not necessarily spell success,

9 Letter from Janet Mondlane, 1-11-72, Madison Historical Society, MACSA Records, Box 1, Folder 12; “Wisconsin Corporate Involvement in Southern Africa,” April 1970, Accessed March 15, 2017: http://kora.matrix.msu.edu/files/50/304/32-130-524-84-african_activist_archive-a0b2u2-a_12419.pdf; “Hypotheses Around African Engagement,” Undated, Madison Historical Society, MACSA Records, Box 1, Folder 2; Letter to Prexy Nesbitt, April 13, 1970, Madison Area Committee for Southern Africa, Box 1, Folder 6, Madison Historical Society. 10 “Resolution on Use of Stock,” , Accessed March 15, 2017: http://africanactivist.msu.edu/document_metadata.php?objectid=32-130-34D; Ad Hoc Church Committees on Southern Africa, February 10, 1973, Accessed October 22, 2017: http://kora.matrix.msu.edu/files/50/304/32-130- 37B-84-african_activist_archive-a0b0v5-a_12419.pdf; “Missionary from Philippines Slated for Mission Festival at Trinity,” Chippewa Herald-Telegram, September 16, 1976; “Apartheid is Subject of Film,” Manitowoc Herald- Times, September 20, 1976.

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especially when South Africa and apartheid remained unimportant as campaign issues and were

out of the news cycle.11

One useful metric for MACSA’s growing success was its fundraising, yet fundraising

was slow to grow when dealing with South Africa. At the first Sharpeville commemoration in

1970, MACSA generated just $163, far below what the group hoped to raise, and in April 1971

only managed to generate less than $100. Two years later, a campaign in the fall had raised

$1200 for Angolan and Mozambican groups. By contrast, a year later MACSA was only able to

raise approximately $500 for the Aid and Defense Fund in South Africa. South Africa was

mostly out of the news; by contrast, the war against the Portuguese was turning against them and

the various guerrilla movements could capitalize on this increased attention.12

What helped keep MACSA functioning in this period was action, even if action was

purely symbolic. Boycotts were a mixed bag in terms of outcomes; few activists concluded that

they meaningfully affected white-minority regimes economically. However, they organized

people in Madison around certain issues and increased awareness of apartheid. In Madison,

MACSA coordinated boycotts of a product called Kafir Tea, focusing heavily on the fact that

Kafir is a racial slur in South Africa. The national boycott against Polaroid (discussed in chapter

two) was seized upon by MACSA members, and city aldermen sympathetic to the group vetoed

a resolution to spend city funds on equipment from Polaroid. The local campaign against

Polaroid was the beginning of a relationship with Eugene Parks, a sympathetic city alderman

11 Union Follow Up May 19, 1972, Madison Area Committee for Southern Africa, Box 1, Folder 2, Madison Historical Society; MACSA Newsletter No. 5, April 1970, Accessed March 15, 2017: http://kora.matrix.msu.edu/files/50/304/32-130-354-84-african_activist_archive-a0b0q0-a_12419.pdf. 12 MACSA Newsletter No. 6, Accessed March 16, 2017: http://africanactivist.msu.edu/document_metadata.php?objectid=32-130-35C; Minutes of MACSA Evaluation and Planning Committee, June 3, 1972, Madison Area Committee on Southern Africa, Box 1, Folder 2; MACSA Newsletter No. 18, August 1972, Accessed March 16, 2017: http://kora.matrix.msu.edu/files/50/304/32-130-1759- 84-MACSA_News18_opt.pdf; MACSA News, No. 30, September 1973, Accessed March 16, 2017: http://kora.matrix.msu.edu/files/50/304/32-130-173F-84-MACSA%2030%20opt.pdf.

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who continually supported MACSA’s resolutions. MACSA’s educational work also expanded beyond the university in the early 1970s and into the broader community. Documentary

showings became possible as the group rented films on the various liberation movements and

show them to churches, schools, and at community meetings.13

MACSA’s activities slowed dramatically in 1973 and 1974 because of the departure of

several members. Because of the cycle of people in and out of the community, university-driven

activist organizations lost people when students left for whatever reason. William and Ruth

Minter returned to Tanzania for two and a half years. These two did not abandon their activism: the Minters established Africa News Service in Durham, North Carolina when they returned to

the United States. Phyllis Ntantala-Jordan moved away in 1975 to Michigan. For MACSA,

however, it slowed down their activities in Madison and activity in the city came to a halt. The

moves away from Madison also coincided with a slowdown in activism dealing with South

Africa, as attention turned back to the Portuguese colonies.

In 1975, Activity picked up. MACSA participated in a national coordinating conference

in Madison organized by ACOA and WOA which included committees from across the Midwest

and Toronto; MACSA provided arrangements for the people who met there. The conference was

centered around Angola, but for many activists, it was the first time they had met with one

another, and it provided for coordination between African liberation groups. The conference also

reflects how important MACSA had become as an activist group, as it was a regional committee

operating at a similar level to ACOA. Union organizing, especially in the public sector, paid off:

13 Interview with Meg Skinner, August 12, 2016; MACSA Newsletter No. 23, February 1973, Accessed March 16, 2017: http://kora.matrix.msu.edu/files/50/304/32-130-178E-84-MACSA_News23_opt.pdf; MACSA Newsletter No. 20, November 1972, Accessed March 16, 2017: http://kora.matrix.msu.edu/files/50/304/32-130-35F-84- african_activist_archive-a0b0s8-a_12419.pdf.

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the local postal union was persuaded by MACSA to oppose wearing ID badges from Polaroid

and in turn began lobbying the national office to have them removed.14

By 1976, MACSA had reorganized and reenergized, in no small part because of the increased attention paid to South Africa in the wake of the Soweto Uprising. Its new convener was another transnational activist, Henry Bucher, Jr., who had lived and studied abroad even prior to coming to Madison; he had gone to Gabon and on a Fulbright Grant in the mid-

1970s. He had also been a student activist as part of the University Christian Movement,

beginning with his opposition to the Vietnam War.

A symbolic resolution condemning the killing of several hundred black children by South

African police in Soweto was written by a MACSA member, Allan Cooper, a member of the

African Studies Department at the university, and was passed by sympathetic city aldermen. A

month later, it was followed by a resolution for the city to do business only with firms with no

presence in South Africa, which passed with a nearly unanimous vote. Wiley had personally

lobbied the city council for weeks on end, and members of MACSA had carried out lobbying

through church networks they had cultivated to reach other city aldermen. The Madison

resolution was not without precedent; the previous year, Gary, Indiana had enacted a selective

purchasing ordinance. However, the Gary resolution targeted specific companies operating in

South Africa, including IBM and Motorola, because of their business practices in the country.

Madison’s resolution went farther in targeting any U.S. company in South Africa regardless of

its behavior. Other activists consciously copied Madison’s actions in this regard.15

14 Letter from Washington Office on Africa on Madison Conference, July 25, 1975, Madison Area Committee on Southern Africa, Box 3, Folder 26; MACSA Newsletter No. 52, September 1975, Accessed March 17, 2017: http://kora.matrix.msu.edu/files/50/304/32-130-36A-84-african_activist_archive-a0b0t2-a_12419.pdf. 15 MACSA Newsletter No. 59, October 1976; MACSA Newsletter No. 60, November 1976.

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The last major campaign concerned the university itself, and the UW’s endowment.

MACSA and the African Students Union had been lobbying since 1969 for the university’s

Board of Regents to divest its assets from any company working in South Africa, but in April

1977 the finance committee of the Regents remained steadfastly against divestment. A month

later, however, the Attorney General, Bronson LaFollette invoked a state law banning the

university from doing business with any companies practicing racial discrimination. LaFollette

appears to have invoked this law more or less on his own initiative; David Wiley recalls that

there was some contact between members of LaFollette’s staff and MACSA, but LaFollette was

not lobbied to by MACSA. Now the pressure to divest redoubled. A bill urging sale of the stock

was introduced in the state legislature and was passed, the City of Madison passed a resolution

urging the same, and members of MACSA, most prominently Daniel Kunene began lobbying

members of the regents privately. The fear of a prolonged battle that might worsen the publicity

led the university to divest, which it voted for on February 10, 1978. MACSA was not the first

group to successfully pass a university divestment action; Hampshire College, a very small

college in , had done so in 1977. However, it was the largest such action up until

that time, and it was highly visible. The eventual divestment totaled close to $12 million.16

Following this divestment, a number of prominent members left. Wandile Kuse left in

1976, followed by the Wileys a year later. MACSA’s activities slowed down after the divestment

of UW, in part because most of the convenient targets that MACSA could go after had been

exhausted by 1978. While Milwaukee and other parts of the state had anti-apartheid committees,

16 MACSA Timeline, Madison Area Committee on Southern Africa, Box 3, Folder 2, Madison Historical Society; Letter from Bronson LaFollette, May 19, 1977, MSU, MSS 430, Box 2, U.W. Divest Campaign; Interview with David Wiley and Chris Root, August 28, 2016; Letter from Joyce Erdman, February 13, 1978, Emory University, Leon Sullivan Papers, Box 54, Correspondence January March 1978; MACSA Timeline, Madison Area Committee on Southern Africa, Box 3, Folder 2, Madison Historical Society.

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they were unable to pass statewide divestment legislation. Madison was too small to provide

leadership on this issue for the rest of the state. The departure of several key organizing figures

only slowed the group’s activities further. Yet it never fully stopped functioning either. Instead,

Meg Skinner recalls that they continued setting up tables at events to give out literature on

apartheid or speaking and countering South African propaganda in the area.17 MACSA

reorganized itself as a formal committee in the 1980s when new attention was cast on South

Africa and apartheid and was effective at mobilizing community members for events. Members

of the group continued to publicize apartheid, as well as supporting the perennial divestment

efforts in the state, until the end of apartheid.

MACSA’s tactics were shaped in some senses by the city itself. The legacy of the

Vietnam War shaped activism in the city, which left many people in the city concerned with the

direction of U.S. foreign policy. As many activists noted (and complained), the fixation

overshadowed South Africa much of the time. However, over time MACSA used the attention on Vietnam to highlight similarities between Vietnam and U.S. support for South Africa,

articulating a broader critique of U.S. foreign policy.18

The experience in Madison highlighted some of the future routes of anti-apartheid activism in the United States. Universities had a dual significance, most visibly because student populations tended to embrace activism and liberal causes; they made for a very effective base of support. Equally important but less visible were the faculty because they were able to sustain efforts longer than undergraduates. MACSA reflected the fact that carefully cultivating an

17 Interview with Meg Skinner, August 12, 2016. 18 Matthew Levin’s Cold War University: Madison and the New Left in the Sixties, (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 2013), examines the development of student activism in the city; examples include “Southern Africa-The Next Vietnam?????.” Accessed January 30, 2019: http://kora.matrix.msu.edu/files/50/304/32-130-4E5- 84-african_activist_archive-a0b2m2-a_12419.pdf.

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audience receptive to learning about apartheid could pay off politically. The passage of

divestment in 1976 was aided by the negative attention generated by the Soweto Uprising, but

the speed with which it passed could not be solely attributed to news coverage.

Simultaneously, MACSA reflected certain limitations on activist groups. MACSA was

influential within Madison, but the group, while occasionally staging demonstrations in

Milwaukee and elsewhere could not effectively drive activism for the whole state. The cycles of

university life took people away, and while this also dispersed them to new areas, it took strength

away from the group. Moreover, Wisconsin was a state which underwent a conservative

transformation in this period. Marcia Coggs, a state legislator who consistently supported

divestment legislation, declared in 1981: “we are in an era of fiscal conservatism, which I am

sure is true in your home states, also. The State of Wisconsin is faced with loss of federal funds,

a large budget deficit, and declining revenue projections. Any proposal which involves millions

of dollars, like divestment, is going to face an uphill battle.” Other states that passed divestment

either had multiple networks cooperating simultaneously, or a larger city wielding greater

political power in the state.19

Michigan

Michigan’s statewide anti-apartheid movement relied on similar foundations as the one in

Wisconsin, but those factors played out across the state. East Lansing, Michigan and Madison

share some commonalities in terms of how they managed to become centers of anti-apartheid

activism. Michigan State University (MSU) had African Studies program that drew both students

and faculty, many of whom came with considerable interest in southern Africa. East Lansing was

a small, liberal town that was especially dependent on its vibrant student population. Over time it

19 Speech at 1981 Divestment Conference, June 13, 1981, Madison State Historical Society, Marcia Coggs, Box 6, Divestment Conference UN New York, NY.

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drew anti-apartheid activists from elsewhere, including a number of MACSA alums (the Wileys,

Joel Samoff, and others), which strengthened the reach and ability of activists already there.

They applied lessons learned from Madison to Michigan.

In 1972, the Southern African Liberation Committee (SALC-Lansing) was founded at

MSU. Its founding members included Warren “Bud” Day, a engineering professional and the campus minister, Carol Thompson, a graduate student in the political science department,

Bill Derman, a faculty member and professor of development studies, Patricia and Frank

Beeman, the latter of whom was a tennis coach at MSU, David Dwyer, a grad student and later faculty member at MSU, and Lovemore Nyoni, a young Zimbabwean exile student. Day had lived doing development work in newly independent countries and had become interested in southern African liberation as a result. Derman had become an activist in the early 1960s at

University of Michigan, including with one anti-apartheid protest in 1962, but then went to do field work in Guinea and developed his interest in Africa there later in the 1960s. The Dwyers had first become interested in African activism while serving in the Peace Corps in Cameroon in the 1960s and became involved with South Africa following a stockholders resolution at General

Motors to divest in 1971. Lovemore Nyoni had a strong concern for refugees and was referred to members of SALC-Lansging by the United Ministries, where Bud Day was a pastor.20

SALC-Lansing’s early activities were more focused on the broader African liberation

struggles, particularly regarding the Portuguese colonies, as well as Rhodesia and Namibia.

Through 1975 and 1976, SALC-Lansing’s chief public activities on campus were devoted to

Angola and fears of a possible U.S. intervention in that country on behalf of the National Union

20 Interview with Bill Derman, Accessed March 18, 2017: http://archive.lib.msu.edu/VVL/dbnumbers/DB14589.mp3; Interview with David and Anabel Dwyer, Accessed March 18, 2017: http://africanactivist.msu.edu/audio.php?objectid=32-12E-22; Letter from Lovemore Nyoni, February 12, 1973, MSU, MSS 329, Box 2, Lovemore Nyoni.

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for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA). When the group worked on South Africa and

apartheid, it was mostly in terms of educational work aimed at the students on campus. Movies

such as Last Grave at Dimbaza were shown to illustrate the differences in standards of living and

life expectancy for black South Africans. Attendance for these kinds of events could vary wildly

(the Dwyers recalled nights when the only people watching were those who put the film on), but they showed up week after week at the same times to expose as many students as possible.

SALC-Lansing was also successful in attracting speakers to come to campus, and members noted the effectiveness of South African speakers for students.21

By 1976, the additional impetus from Soweto ramped up interest on campus about South

Africa, and members of SALC were looking to pressure the City of East Lansing into a

resolution similar to what had been passed in Madison the year before. David Wiley noted

retrospectively that divestment in the city was a battle to win over the students. Unlike those in

Madison, the students in East Lansing could wield considerable power in elections. Enough

support from MSU’s student body made divestment politically feasible in East Lansing.

Furthermore, SALC’s leadership hoped pursuing divestment with the city first made it easier

with the university and thereby target U.S. businesses working in South Africa. SALC sponsored

hearings with city councilmembers and supplied testimony and evidence on conditions in South

Africa. Most councilmembers were politically liberal and were easily convinced to support the

divestment, while the few conservative members were apparently convinced with literature from

the ICCR and UN Center on Apartheid.22

21 Interview with David and Anabel Dwyer, Accessed March 18, 2017: http://africanactivist.msu.edu/audio.php?objectid=32-12E-22; Memo to Mike Simmons, November 1, 1977, MSU, MSS 329, Box 2, Srn Af Task Force AFSC. 22 Interview with Chris Root and David Wiley, August 28, 2016; Description of the East Lansing City Council Campaign, April 1978, MSU, MSS 258, Box 1, Boycott and Divestiture Histories.

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Concurrent with city divestment was the divestment of MSU, which followed a similar

pattern to the city. College and university divestment became a popular tactical option among

activists because universities had large endowments that could be targeted for divestment, and

students tended to support those actions. Some of the materials that SALC used in both

campaigns focused explicitly on the behavior of U.S. corporations in South Africa: a 1976 leaflet

singled out IBM, ITT, Control Data, and Motorola because many of their contracts within South

Africa came directly from the government.23

For the first few months of 1977, SALC-Lansing focused on fostering student

demonstrations and amassing petitions that made evident student support for the issue.

Simultaneously, members of the group quietly lobbied the trustees to support the divestment of

the university. There was greater opposition to divestment at the university level, for various

reasons. A member of General Motors sat on the board of trustees, and General Motors was

already under pressure from activists because of its close ties to the South African military. In

anticipation of corporate lobbying against divestment, SALC members held twelve public

meetings and provided literature arguing that U.S. corporations played no role in reforming

apartheid and were strengthening the South African state by remaining in the country.24

Another hurdle to overcome was demonstrating that divestment could be accomplished

without undue financial loss for the university. However, the financial climate of the late 1970s

was such that smaller firms, which tended to not have South African holdings, were performing

better than their larger counterparts, and so members of SALC-Lansing made the case that

divestment would actually be a financial boon for the university. Combined with assurances that

23 “Selective Purchasing Policy-U.S. Corporations Operating in South Africa,” 1976. Accessed January 31, 2019: http://kora.matrix.msu.edu/files/50/304/32-130-A4-84-african_activist_archive-a0a6s7-b_12419.pdf. 24 “Divestiture Background Information,” March, 1978. Accessed January 31, 2018: http://kora.matrix.msu.edu/files/50/304/32-130-18AD-84-SALC%20Divest%20Info%203-78.pdf.

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they would not be held financially responsible for any liabilities from the campaign, the

university’s trustees agreed to divest in 1977. MSU’s divestment removed approximately $8

million in funds from companies working in South Africa, and actually generated a profit of

close to $1 million.25

MSU attracted other exiles who became active in the state’s politics. Kgati Sathekge was

a South African exile who had been targeted by the police following the Soweto Uprising. He

had joined the ANC in spite of police pressure, but by 1980 he had decided to go into exile

abroad. After spending time in Mozambique and Swaziland, he came to the United States and

attended Michigan State and was a student from 1982 to 1984. After moving to Detroit, he

became a vocal spokesman for anti-apartheid causes in the state, serving as a quasi-official

representative of the ANC and organizing the Midwest Coalition Against Apartheid at Wayne

State University.26

SALC-Lansing also campaigned against propaganda coming from the South African

government and sympathizers within Michigan. The most well-known example of the latter was a Michigan newspaper publisher named John McGoff who became embroiled in a scandal within

South Africa that became known as “.” Within South Africa, the Minister of

Information, , concocted a plan to divert money from the country’s defense budget for propaganda purposes abroad, particularly in the United States. McGoff, widely known as a far-right conservative, first visited South Africa in 1968 and became sympathetic to the apartheid government. In 1974, McGoff began receiving funds from Mulder to purchase

American newspapers in the hope of pushing a more sympathetic view to South Africa. For his

25 Development of MSU Divestiture Campaign, MSU, MSS 258, Box 1, Boycott and Divestiture Histories; Interview with Chris Root and David Wiley, August 28, 2016. 26 Interview with Kgati Sathekge, Accessed March 18, 2017: http://overcomingapartheid.msu.edu/video.php?id=65- 24F-23.

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part, McGoff’s motives were in no small part about turning a quick profit, but he faced no

serious repercussions when the scandal became news in 1978. McGoff and SALC’s paths

crossed over his attempt to donate a million dollars to the MSU Wharton Center in 1979.

Members of SALC launched the “McGoff Off” campaign, demanding that his name be removed

from the building because of his effective endorsement of apartheid and the university’s position

on South Africa, and by 1984 SALC members convinced the university to return the money.27

Similar patterns played out elsewhere in Michigan. had its own

anti-apartheid movement on campus that was sustained by a group of activists, many of them

African students. The African Studies Association (ASA) at Michigan was similarly well-

developed and attracted a relatively large number of South African students as well as graduate

students and faculty who were interested in African liberation. The Ann Arbor group was also

known as SALC-Ann Arbor and was founded by a white South African named Ansell Horn in

1975. It had grown out of Vietnam War groups and became an autonomous committee by 1976.

It carried out the same kind of educational work on campus and collaborated with the ASA there

while holding protests on campus. By 1978, it staged a three hundred-person rally, one of the largest on campus since the protests of the Vietnam War. SALC also proved to be useful in joining otherwise disparate community groups, ranging from churches and unions to socialist groups. Lastly, faculty members participated as well; one of them, Joel Samoff, had originally been a member of MACSA. Others were South African expatriates such as Leonard Suransky, a professor of psychology.28

27 The history of Muldergate is discussed at some length in Ron Nixon’s Selling Apartheid; Y.G-M. Lulat, United States Relations with South Africa: A Critical Overview from the Colonial Period to Present, (New York: Peter Lang, 2008), 236; Interview with Chris Root and David Wiley, August 28, 2016. 28 “The Southern African Liberation Committee (Ann Arbor),” Accessed March 18, 2017: http://michiganintheworld.history.lsa.umich.edu/antiapartheid/exhibits/show/exhibit/apartheid-comes-to-campus-- 197/_wccaa; Interview with Josué Njock Libii, Accessed March 18, 2017: http://michiganintheworld.history.lsa.umich.edu/antiapartheid/exhibits/show/exhibit/apartheid-comes-to-campus--

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Horn pushed the university to divest, a difficult task given the close ties of Michigan

corporations such as GM and Ford to South Africa and those same companies’ ties to the

university. Business ties to the university was not a new issue by 1977-1978: SDS had first

raised the issue of the university’s investments in South Africa as early as 1965. Horn pressured

the reluctant university president, Robben Fleming, into a public debate. Fleming took the stance

of personally viewing apartheid as abhorrent, but maintained that divestment was purely

symbolic and that the university did not have an obligation as a corporation to behave morally.29

By 1977, the ASA and SALC (Ann Arbor) joined with other groups to form the

Washtenaw County Coalition Against Apartheid (WCCAA) to lobby Ann Arbor and UM for

divestment. WCCAA faced an uphill struggle in convincing the university to divest its holdings.

The board of trustees for the university refused to consider any divestment policy even after

months of hearings on the subject. University regents began meeting behind closed doors to

avoid the negative publicity and demonstrations that came with any discussion of South Africa

and divestment. The South African government lobbied through its Chicago consulate to oppose

any university divestment, and it was joined by the International Affairs division of General

Motors. Lobbying succeeded in conjunction with the regents’ intransigence, and the resolution

they ultimately passed affirmed the Sullivan Principles. Activists felt this stance largely

protected the university’s investments.30

197; “Fleming: The End of an Era,” The Michigan Daily, September 17, 1978; Interview with Ansell Horn, Accessed March 18, 2017: http://michiganintheworld.history.lsa.umich.edu/antiapartheid/exhibits/show/interviews/item/102; “We Can Shake the Apartheid State only by Divesting our Interests There,” Detroit Free Press, March 17, 1983. 29 “Fleming Looks Back on Career,” The Michigan Daily, May 13, 1978; “Fleming: The End of an Era,” The Michigan Daily, September 17, 1978. 30 Janice Love, “People’s Participation in Foreign Policy Making: Evaluating the US Anti-Apartheid Movement,” (PhD Diss., The Ohio State University, 1983), 103; “U-M Closed Meeting Challenged,” Battle Creek Enquirer, March 20, 1979; “Regents' March 1978 Meeting: First Resolution and Discussion,” Divestment for Humanity: The Anti-Apartheid Movement at the University of Michigan, accessed February 1, 2019, http://michiganintheworld.history.lsa.umich.edu/antiapartheid/items/show/263.

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Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo was also home to a vibrant anti-apartheid movement through the South African Solidarity Organization (SASO). Founded by students, faculty members, and a campus minister in 1978, the group followed the same pattern of work set out by SALC-Lansing. Its protests before the university’s board of trustees proved to be so vigorous that ten members of the group were arrested, prompting further outcry about their arrest. SASO hosted its own anti-apartheid conferences with other midwestern activists, expanding their network of connections. The group was also able to push for the city of

Kalamazoo by sponsoring debates and conferences among the city’s religious bodies, most of whom backed divestiture and then lobbied for it.31

These local anti-apartheid committees across the state now coalesced, cooperated, and

pushed for state-level divestment. In 1978, members of SALC-Lansing were met with several

state representatives to begin pushing for divestment: Perry Bullard from Ann Arbor, Virgil

Smith from Detroit, and Lynn Jondal from East Lansing, who agreed to put together plans for

divestment. Bullard was a particularly important ally for SALC-Lansing (despite the fact that his seat was in Ann Arbor) because his seat was judged to be very safe and because he was in the left-wing of the Democratic Party. He took charge on shepherding divestment bills through the legislature and closely cooperated with SALC-Lansing and the WCCAA. Virgil Smith was an

African American legislator who became head of the Legislative Black Caucus for the state. The cooperation between legislators and the activist networks in Ann Arbor and Lansing to begin doing outreach throughout the state. Bullard’s office convened meetings of the state’s civil rights committee to discuss bills dealing with divestment, including in Detroit, and then include

31 “Support the SASO-10.” Accessed February 5, 2019: http://kora.matrix.msu.edu/files/50/304/32-130-1F2A-84- saso%20I0.pdf; “SASO II Organizing Anti-Apartheid Meet,” Western Herald, April 7, 1980; “Local Clergy Urge City to Divest,” Western Herald, April 13, 1987.

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testimony from church leaders, student groups, and Africanists. They also won endorsements

from churches for divestment legislation.32

Members of Michigan’s anti-apartheid groups also found a congressional ally in Howard

Wolpe, the congressional representative for Kalamazoo. Wolpe was something of a political

oddity, as his professional background was as an Africanist and an academic. He’d been drawn

to Africa while at Reed College in 1960, where he became interested in the continent because of

the independence movements and the similarities to the civil rights movement in the United

States; his graduate work at MIT focused on Nigeria. While working as a professor at Western

Michigan University, he became involved in politics and ran for a seat in the state legislature in

1972. Wolpe became a critical ally for anti-apartheid activities when he was elected to the House

of Representatives in 1979, and later became chair of the House Subcommittee on Africa.33

The first divestment bill was a relatively easy sell for the state legislature. It banned the

state from placing money in banks that offered loans to South Africa, which was passed in 1980.

Bank divestment followed the COBLSA campaign aimed at cutting off bank loans to South

Africa. However, the bill was acknowledged as not being in and of itself a particularly hard blow

to capital markets in South Africa. Bullard passed the law easily because few banks in the state

had any such financial connections. Even the state’s banking community did little to firmly block

the bill. It was viewed as an easy foot-in-the-door to make subsequent bills easier to pass by

virtue of momentum.34

The next major legislative battle in the state revolved around the divestiture of the state’s

universities and was modeled on the divestment experience at MSU. This bill passed in 1982

32 Love, “People’s Participation,” 1983, 254, 259. 33 Interview with Howard Wolpe, http://africanactivist.msu.edu/audio.php?objectid=32-12E-1E. 34 Love, “People’s Participation,” 263; Interview with Chris Root and David Wiley, August 28, 2016.

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despite heavy lobbying from Ford and GM, as well as the South African consulate, and was

signed into law by the state’s Republic governor. However, University of Michigan now brought

suit against the law by claiming it interfered in the affairs of the university. The bill went to the

state Supreme Court before it was struck down (David Wiley noted wryly that the Michigan

Supreme Court happened to be packed with UM Law graduates). However, this process took a

considerable amount of time to resolve and only came to an end in 1988. By that time, UM had

divested all but $500,000 of the $50,000,000 it had in South African companies.35

After the university divestment bill was passed, the big target became divestiture of the

state’s pension fund. State-level divestiture was an extremely difficult goal in the context of the

1980s, as Michigan was grappling with extremely high industrial unemployment, and some of

the state’s most important corporations had large South African operations. The state’s Treasury

Department argued that being unable to hold stock in significant companies would actively harm

the state’s economic recovery. For the next six years, Bullard, Jondahl, and Smith repeatedly

submitted bills to the Michigan legislature only to see them be stalled in committee or fail to pass

a Republican-controlled legislature. However, when the bill was finally passed in the summer of

1988 it targeted companies with licensing agreements and franchises, which many American

corporations used to continue carrying out business in South Africa. Ultimately, it was

responsible for the divestment of close to a third of the state’s pension fund: approximately $5

billion was involved.36

35 Interview with Chris Root and David Wiley, August 28, 2016; “Appeals Court Overturns Law on Divestiture,” Detroit Free Press, February 4, 1988. 36 “Retirees, Blue-Chip Companies Lobby Against S. Africa Divestment Bill,” Detroit Free Press, October 9, 1985; Love, “People’s Participation,” 284; “State Drops Holdings Tied to S. Africa,” Detroit Free Press, December 31, 1988.

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Michigan is where a kind of shift can be easily seen in how different messages about

opposition to apartheid could be seen. When dealing with students or “student cities” like East

Lansing or Ann Arbor, groups like SALC generally felt free to criticize the United States first

and foremost for its activities in southern Africa. SALC likened Angola to Vietnam and claimed

that U.S. support for South Africa was about protecting corporate profits. Thus, in student

leaflets and materials, American companies were as much a target as the apartheid government.

One such leaflet justified sanctions “against corporations who invest heavily in apartheid,”

stressing American culpability for supporting and maintaining apartheid. SALC (Ann Arbor)

described itself as an anti-imperialist organization at its founding, and in its dealings with

students its politics were leftist.37

Students might have been more receptive to economic or Marxist-leaning critiques of

U.S. foreign policy, but these were toned down elsewhere or refocused. The Washtenaw County

Coalition Against Apartheid was based in Ann Arbor as well, but stayed away from economics

to focus more on the politics of the Reagan Administration: one such article in a newsletter

looked at links between U.S. foreign policy in Guatemala, and South African assistance in

counter-insurgency to the Guatemalan government. The group also acknowledged the history of racism in the United States and committed itself to opposing racism locally.38

When groups focused on American business practices, those critiques were framed less

as a critique of capitalism as a whole and instead reframed to specific business practices,

37 ““Angola, Another Vietnam?” Accessed February 14, 2018: http://kora.matrix.msu.edu/files/50/304/32-130-9A- 84-african_activist_archive-a0a6r7-b_12419.pdf; Boycott Corporations Supporting Apartheid,” Accessed February 14, 2018: http://kora.matrix.msu.edu/files/50/304/32-130-1D32-84-SALC%20Boycott%20Hearing%203- 30%20opt.pdf; Southern Africa Liberation Committee (Ann Arbor), Accessed February 15, 2018: http://kora.matrix.msu.edu/files/50/304/32-130-109A-84-SALC%20AA.pdf. 38 “Washtenaw County Coalition Against Apartheid,” Accessed February 15, 2018: http://kora.matrix.msu.edu/files/50/304/32-130-15A0-84-washtenaw%207-83.pdf; “Organizational Notes,” Accessed February 15, 2018: http://kora.matrix.msu.edu/files/50/304/32-130-2320-84-wccaa%20org%20notes.pdf.

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particularly as they affected Americans. Leonard Suransky at Ann Arbor wrote in an editorial for

the Detroit Free Press that workers, seeing their companies shed thousands of jobs in the United

States ought to urge their employers to leave the country and only to return when apartheid

ended. In an interview with the same publication in 1984, Kgati Sathekge focused on the ways

American businesses contributed to apartheid, namely through taxes and by selling to the

military and police. Strikingly absent is the critique that SALC had been employing just a decade

before, that apartheid served American corporate interests.39

The anti-apartheid movement in Michigan also built on something that MACSA was

unable to accomplish to nearly the same extent, which was the creation of a statewide network

that worked on apartheid. A few organizations such as the Michigan Anti-Apartheid

Coordinating Council came into being during the 1980s, all of which generally only survived for

a couple of years at a time. The connections between groups were quite loose and at many times

strung together by a few state legislators, but the effect of was more effective lobbying in

Michigan.

Absent from these networks were African American groups, and Detroit more broadly.

This was not because of a lack of interest; a Detroit Committee for the Liberation of Africa

existed from at least 1976 until at least 1979. Yet their presence in the statewide lobbying

network is unclear, and the group left an extremely minimal archival footprint to trace. The most

visible organizations were based in the state’s smaller university towns: Lansing, Ann Arbor, and

Kalamazoo all worked more visibly on anti-apartheid causes. Charles Diggs, mentioned in

chapter two, was from Detroit and used his seat in Congress to work on behalf of liberation

39 “We Can Shake the Apartheid State Only by Divesting Our Interests There,” Detroit Free Press, March 17, 1983; “U.S. Firms Get Pressure on South African Ties,” Detroit Free Press, November 18, 1984.

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issues, but once he resigned in 1980 the congressional representative from Michigan working on

African issues was Howard Wolpe, whose was largely based in Kalamazoo.40

The difficulties in passing a pension bill may also have been governed by a complicated

relationship between organized labor and activists. SALC-Lansing made relatively few inroads with important unions such as the UAW, leaving that work for Bullard’s office to carry out. The

UAW did endorse divestment legislation, but did not push workers or retired workers to support the legislation. Their links to African American groups in the state were relatively weak, though that was offset by their relationship with Virgil Smith, who used his position to ensure his caucus consistently voted in favor of divestment.

Chicago

American anti-apartheid activists hoped that Chicago was be an ideal place to create a grassroots movement. It was a large city and business capital, home to a large African American population with a history of Pan-African political movements. Among white liberals in the city, interest in the civil rights movement could easily translate into support and sympathy for African liberation; indeed, some white activists began with interest in South Africa.41 But the same

factors that made Chicago ideal in some respects also made it extraordinarily difficult in others.

Through the 1960s, African American groups were focused on the civil rights movement and

anti-poverty campaigns in the city itself. The city’s business community was likely to push back

against any attempted tie-breaking with South Africa. When Prexy Nesbitt was hired by ACOA

to start a branch in the Midwest, he asserted that the city was a “media wasteland” and that most

40 The earliest mention that I have found of the group was in an article “The Internal Struggle: A Background,” Black World/Negro Digest, March 1976, while a letter to ACOA was sent by Herb Boyd of the same group in 1979. Letter from Herb Boyd, March 28, 1979, Amistad, ACOA Addendum, Series 2, Box 98, Bank Campaign Applications 1979. 41 Interview with Lydia Talbot, March 3, 2017.

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of the people living there were not informed at all about issues related to Africa. Furthermore, if

Chicago was a generally liberal city, the remainder of Illinois was not, and there was

considerable difficulty passing legislation when the base of support came from Chicago.

Chicago also became home to a relatively large number of South African exiles and

expatriates who became involved in liberation activism in the city. Funeka Sihlali, another South

African exile, recalled Chicago had a large number of activists already there when she arrived in

1979. The most famous of them was the South African coloured poet and exile Dennis Brutus,

who arrived to teach at Northwestern in 1971. Brutus wasn’t the only South African exile living

in Chicago, and the city was home to a number of activists. Bonganjalo Goba was a South

African and member of the United Congregational Church of South Africa who came to study at

the Chicago Theological Seminary. One of his professors was Jeremiah Wright, head of Trinity

Avenue UCC and a committed civil rights activist. Conversations between the two men fed

Wright’s interest in the country, and Trinity Avenue became an important site of activism.

Wright sponsored annual Soweto Day walkathons that raised thousands of dollars for liberation

groups in South Africa, but he also used connections within the national church to lobby on

behalf of South Africa, coordinating letter-writing campaigns to legislators. Trinity was not the

only UCC church in Chicago with a strong anti-apartheid contingent. Wellington Avenue was a

majority white church that had strong civil rights credentials because of its pastor in the 1960s,

Richard Kidd.42

42 Interview with Funeka Sihlali, Accessed March 23, 2017: http://digitalcommons.colum.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1003&context=cadc_caam_oralhistories; Interview with Jeremiah Wright, Accessed March 22, 2017: http://digitalcommons.colum.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1016&context=cadc_caam_oralhistories; Interview with Lydia Talbot, March 3, 2017.

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In Chicago in the early 1970s, the chief activities around African liberation were devoted

to the Portuguese colonies. Angola, Mozambique, and Guinea-Bissau all appeared to be closer to

liberation than South Africa. The major group in Chicago apart from ACOA’s Chicago office

was the Chicago Committee for the Liberation of Angola, Mozambique and Guinea-Bissau

(CCLAMG), which was organized by Prexy Nesbitt and sustained by the leadership of the

NWRC. Effective organizing against apartheid in truth began through activism aimed at the

Portuguese colonies, in part because it cultivated a constituency of people interested in African liberation. For Nesbitt, education meant scheduling regular speaking engagements for representatives from the liberation movements. However, there were smaller groups such as the

Citizen’s Coalition for Southern Africa, which targeted Continental Illinois Bank because of a rumor that it loaned $48 million to the South African government to purchase locomotives, with a guarantee from the Export-Import Bank. They staged picket lines outside of the bank.43

By 1977, these disparate Chicago entities eventually began cooperating in broader anti-

apartheid struggles around banking through the Chicago Coalition on Southern Africa (CCSA).

CCSA brought together many of the activists in Chicago: Eileen Hanson from CCLAMG, the

Wellington Avenue UCC, Dennis Brutus, the U.S. out of Angola Committee, and other groups

such as the Amilcar Cabral Collective and NWRC. At the time of their establishment in February

1977, their chief issues in opposition to apartheid specifically were supporting an end to bank

loans to the South African government and ending the sale of Krugerrands. They also began

establishing connections with other liberation and liberal groups in the city: disarmament

coalitions, white churches, CALC, and Puerto Rican liberation groups. Most significantly, CCSA

could also reach out to the well-developed civil rights network in Chicago, and groups such as

43 Interview with Prexy Nesbitt, July 1, 2009; “Pickets Assail Bank Here on South Africa,” The Chicago Defender, March 28, 1972.

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Operation PUSH gave the campaign a great deal more power. By June 1977, CCSA was carrying

out protests and pickets in front of First National in Chicago while affiliated groups such as

CALC carried out shareholder resolutions intended to create public debate about bank policies.

But CCSA was also in a difficult position in terms of coordinating between its various member

groups, partly because groups dropped out because of the overwhelming focus on the bank

campaign, and in part because African American representation within CCSA was relatively

weak.44

Meanwhile, the bank campaign in Chicago proceeded slowly because pinning down both

banks on their policies proved to be difficult. In 1978, both banks committed to ending loans to

the South African government and government-controlled entities but not loans to private entities in South Africa, which CCSA and other groups refused to accept. In April 1978, one Chicago alderman introduced legislation to prohibit the city from placing funds in institutions doing business with South Africa. Continental abandoned the sale of Krugerrands in 1978, but it was not until 1980 that First National stopped selling them to individual consumers, and it was another three years before the bank finally ceased all sales of the coin. Ultimately, the CCSA was unable to prevent its various appendages from splintering off and pursuing their own agendas.

For the next several years in Chicago, activity on South Africa quieted down.45

In 1983, a new divestment coalition was formed to bring about divestment in the state,

the Coalition for Illinois’ Divestment from South Africa (CIDSA). Prexy Nesbitt had gone

44 Minutes of Chicago Coalition on Southern Africa, February 8, 1977, Accessed March 24, 2017: http://kora.matrix.msu.edu/files/50/304/32-130-608-84-african_activist_archive-a0b3z6-a_12419.pdf; Minutes of Chicago Coalition on Southern Africa, February 24, 1977, Accessed March 24, 2017: http://kora.matrix.msu.edu/files/50/304/32-130-603-84-african_activist_archive-a0b3z0-a_12419.pdf 45 “2 Big Banks End Lending to S. Africa,” Chicago Tribune, March 15, 1978; “Continental’s Loan Policy Hit,” Chicago Tribune, April 25, 1978; “First National to Halt All Sales of Krugerrands,” Chicago Tribune, April 6, 1983; Proposal re CCSA, Fall 1980. Accessed February 5, 2019: http://kora.matrix.msu.edu/files/50/304/32-130-60A-84- CC%20CCSAreport2%20resize.pdf.

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abroad for several years to work for the WCC’s Programme to Combat Racism, but he returned

to Chicago that year and with several others established a new group that pushed for divestment

of the state’s pension funds. The other members included Cheryl Johnson-Odim, a professor at

Northwestern University in the African Studies department, a photographer named Basil Clunie,

and a doctor named Rachel Rubin, the latter two of whom became co-chairs of the group.

Johnson-Odim recalled that CIDSA was the first group to successfully bridge the divide

between white and African American groups in the city. Clunie, who was African American, and

Rubin, who was white, were made co-chairs in part because it was an attempt to make clear the group’s multiracial status. CIDSA created a coalition of sympathetic groups in the city:

Wellington Avenue and Trinity Avenue UCC, labor unions, and the activists there who were already involved in the cause. It made inroads with white-collar public sector unions such as the

American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME). AFSCME’s support was important because their workers were the ones whose pensions were affected by

divestment, making their support critical. Ultimately, more than sixty organizations partnered

with CIDSA to endorse its goals. Nationally, CIDSA drew support from ACOA members who

prepared materials and expert testimony for divestment as well as activists who had worked on

divestment in other states; Art Serota, who had worked on the Mass Divest campaign, provided

advice in crafting divestment legislation.46

Divestment in Illinois faced an uphill battle, however, for many of the same reasons as

Michigan. Illinois had a large pension fund with a strong business community whose industrial

46 Interview with Cheryl Johnson-Odim, Fall 2009, https://digitalcommons.colum.edu/cadc_caam_oralhistories/9/; Interview with Rachel Rubin, Spring 2009, https://digitalcommons.colum.edu/cadc_caam_oralhistories/26/; CIDSA Meeting Minutes August 14, 1983, Madison State Historical Society, Prexy Nesbitt Papers, Box 5, CIDSA 2 of 2; CIDSA Minutes, July 24, 1983, Madison State Historical Society, Prexy Nesbitt Papers, Box 6, CIDSA Meeting Minutes '83-'84.

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workforce was contracting. The business community lobbied against divestment on the basis that it would harm workers. Opponents of divestment included companies such as General Electric,

Caterpillar, and Texaco. Opposition particularly came from legislators in southern Illinois, many of whom submitted amendments that weakened the bill or delay its implementation. Legislation stalled for several years because of legislative deadlock.47

Recognizing that it also could not hope to win a statewide divestment solely through a

Chicago constituency, CIDSA began making inroads in other parts of the states, setting up

affiliated chapters in Champaign-Urbana, Peoria, Rockford, and Carbondale. Members began

organizing statewide conferences to draw activists together: the first such meeting drew

approximately 75 people in early 1984, and a conference was held for downstate organizers in

1985 that drew another 75 people. These statewide lobbying networks were judged to be

effective in terms of forcing bills out of committee in 1985.48

When the Free South Africa Movement (FSAM) protests began in late 1984, Chicago

activists took part, targeting in particular the South African consulate in the city. Weekly

demonstrations took place outside of the South African consulate, where by early 1985 protests

and occasional arrests had become common. Through Jeremiah Wright, Trinity Avenue UCC’s

Church & Society outreach committee was instrumental in setting up demonstrations. Even the

47 CIDSA Minutes June 11, 1983, Madison State Historical Society, Prexy Nesbitt Papers, Box 6, CIDSA Meeting Minutes '83-'84; CIDSA Update No. 3, Accessed April 3, 2017: http://kora.matrix.msu.edu/files/50/304/32-130- 4C2-84-african_activist_archive-a0b2g4-a_12419.pdf. 48 Final Report from CIDSA, December 1987, Madison Historical Society, Prexy Nesbitt Papers, Box 5, CIDSA 1 of 2; CIDSA Update No. 2, Accessed April 3, 2017: http://kora.matrix.msu.edu/files/50/304/32-130-4B4-84- african_activist_archive-a0b2e7-a_12419.pdf; CIDSA Update No. 11, Accessed February 4, 2019: http://kora.matrix.msu.edu/files/50/304/32-130-4CA-84-african_activist_archive-a0b2h3-a_12419.pdf; CIDSA Update No. 14, Accessed February 4, 2019: http://kora.matrix.msu.edu/files/50/304/32-130-4CE-84- african_activist_archive-a0b2h8-a_12419.pdf.

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arrests themselves became a kind of publicity exercise as defendants arrested for misdemeanor

trespass called other activists as witnesses.49

Nesbitt and others drew on his connections to drum up support within and outside of the

state for publicity and education efforts. In 1985, CIDSA brought together several teams of

South African exiles and anti-apartheid activists to tour the state in a push for divestment: they

included Tandi Gcabashe, Jeanette Ndhlovu, and Jerry Herman of the AFSC. As a local issue,

CIDSA also focused over time on the importation of South African steel into the state. Illinois’

steel industry was in decline throughout the 1980s, and given the unfair competitive labor

advantages enjoyed by South Africa CIDSA and others hoped to win over more union members

to oppose steel imports. Pointedly, South African steel was brought up when it was disclosed that

new public buildings were being built with South African steel.50

In 1985, a similar bill failed to advance because of the lack of a few supporting votes in

the House. Basil Clunie, CIDSA’s co-chair, recalled that constant pressure on downstate

legislators, often through their churches, pushed them to reconsider their positions. Through

lobbying, some of them considered allowing a weaker bill to go through. Finally, in 1986 CIDSA

and their sympathetic legislators decided to weaken some of the bill’s provisions to prohibit

future investments by the pension fund in South Africa-affiliated companies, and which passed

in 1987.51

49 FSAM January 4, 1985 Update, Howard University, Southern Africa Support Project, Box 10/2002 3, FSAM; Interview with Cheryl Johnson-Odim, Fall 2009, https://digitalcommons.colum.edu/cadc_caam_oralhistories/9/; “Protesters to Use Trials as Forum: Consulate Sit-Ins ‘Necessary’ to Fight Apartheid,” Chicago Tribune, May 15, 1985. 50 , 1985 Press Release, Madison State Historical Society, Prexy Nesbitt Papers, Box 6, State-wide Tour April '85; May 1, 1985 CIDSA Press Release, Madison State Historical Society, Prexy Nesbitt Papers, Box 6, CIDSA Press Releases '85. 51 Interview with Basil Clunie, Spring 2009, https://digitalcommons.colum.edu/cadc_caam_oralhistories/7/.

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Following the passage of this divestment bill, CIDSA restructured itself into a new

organization: the Chicago Committee in Solidarity with Southern Africa (CCISSA). Federal

sanctions had been passed, and CIDSA members had participated in letter-writing campaigns to

their representatives to urge passage of the Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act (CAAA). Their

next issue was financial and moral support for the liberation movements in South Africa and in

divesting the city of Chicago’s pension funds. CIDSA had already lobbied to prohibit the city

from dealing with banks working in South Africa, and they hoped to build on the legislation that

had already been passed. Nesbitt had moved on by this time, now employed as a consultant for

the government of Mozambique, and leadership of CCISSA fell to Basil Clunie. In terms of

direct fundraising, CCISSA’s collaboration with other groups on events such as the Soweto Day

Walkathon generated thousands of dollars at a time for the South African Council of Churches;

the 1989 walkathon brought in $12,000.52

Divesting the city’s pension funds proved to be nearly as difficult as divesting the state

had been. Contrary to the expectation in ACOA that citywide divestments could be accomplished

in approximately a year, it dragged on in Chicago for a number of years: state law made the

city’s pensions subject to control by the state. When Mandela began his tour of the United States

in 1990, members of Chicago’s TransAfrica chapter advised the ANC to skip Chicago because

of Richard Daley’s hostility to divestment. Nesbitt still corresponded with activists in the city as

well as Helen Shiller, a sympathetic city alderman working for divestment of the city’s pension

funds. She reported that Daley continually made suggestions which weakened the impact of sanctions or delayed implementation by up to ten years and acted this way to preserve the city’s

52 Letter to Jean Sindab, November 10, 1987, Madison State Historical Society, Prexy Nesbitt, Box 5 CCISSA; Final Report from CIDSA, December 1987, Madison Historical Society, Prexy Nesbitt Papers, Box 5, CIDSA 1 of 2; CCISSA Briefing, Fall 1989, Accessed April 4, 2017: http://kora.matrix.msu.edu/files/50/304/32-130-38D-84- african_activist_archive-a0b2j5-a_12419.pdf.

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good working relationship with big business while still presenting himself as an opponent of

apartheid. Ultimately, in lieu of divestment, activists passed a selective purchasing agreement that restricted the city to contracts with businesses not working in South Africa.53

In Illinois, the significance of the religious dimensions of the anti-apartheid movement

were clear. African American churches were some of the most significant supporters of anti- apartheid groups, even in the early 1970s. Jeremiah Wright’s church was effective at both popularizing the issue and at turning out people time and time again through events such as the

Soweto Walkathon. Perhaps more significant, however, was the role of churches in expanding the movement to the rest of the state. From a logistical perspective, churches were the easiest audience to arrange in other parts of the state, especially if smaller communities lacked universities that might otherwise draw speakers.

It might seem paradoxical that some of the closest and most successful relationships then were between churches on the one hand and secular, leftist radicals on the other hand. Nesbitt, who was a central figure in Chicago’s anti-apartheid movement helps to illustrate how that relationship worked. He was raised in an activist congregation of UCC, and while he himself was not a Christian he evidently remained comfortable around faith-based activists. Pragmatically,

Nesbitt argued that the churches’ goals aligned with those of activists, so an alliance of some kind was natural and desirable. There was some of the legacy of the civil rights movement as well, which saw close cooperation between activists and sympathetic churches. Furthermore, there were either denominations or church bodies whose values overlapped even with radical

53 “Group Says it Urged Mandela to Skip City,” Chicago Tribune, June 14, 1990; Letter from Helen Shiller, July 18, 1990, Madison State Historical Society, Prexy Nesbitt, Box 5, S.A. Chicago City Council [1]; “2 Cook County Officials Seek Visit by Mandela,” Chicago Tribune, June 15, 1990. City councilmen friendly to Daley argued that Daley had been supportive of Mandela and the fight against apartheid and pushed for a visit to the city.

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leftists; while working at the WCC in the early 1980s, Nesbitt recalled there was a unit entirely

dedicated to Karl Marx.54

Churches too might have seemed like strange bedfellows, but in turn a number of them

happily worked alongside secular radicals. Not all of the churches or denominations were equally

active, but the presence of a few activist churches could agitate within their networks and slowly

win them over. Moreover, religiously-inspired activism within radical circles was not new by the

1970s. Phyllis Slade Martin’s “A Moral Imperative: The Role of American Black Churches in

International Anti-Apartheid Activism” notes that a number of African American congregations

stood by Paul Robeson in the 1950s as the CAA was being politically persecuted. Some of the

pastors of the churches themselves had radical views, but even for more conservative

denominations, they were skeptical of the U.S. government and agreed with the broad of

what activists such as Robeson were striving toward. Speaking from the perspective of a church

leader, Jeremiah Wright felt that the descriptions of the ANC as communists for example did not

match the news that he heard from his South African friends, suggesting that education and

familiarity eroded leftism as a potential threat.55

Massachusetts

Massachusetts was where many of the formulas which succeeded in other states and cities

came together. For ACOA, Massachusetts became a kind of guide for how other states could

successfully pass legislation. The state could lay claim to having a dedicated activist community

that worked in solidarity with the South African liberation movement. Indeed, Boston had one of

the earliest local committees dedicated to working against apartheid, Bostonians Allied for South

54 Interview with Prexy Nesbitt, July 1, 2009. 55 Phyllis Slade Martin, “A Moral Imperative: The Role of American Black Churches in International Anti- Apartheid Activism,” (PhD Diss., George Mason University, 2015), 84-93; Interview with Jeremiah Wright, Spring 2009, https://digitalcommons.colum.edu/cadc_caam_oralhistories/17/.

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African Resistance (BAFSAR), which was closely tied to AFSAR and which formed in 1952.

BAFSAR collected around $700 to be sent to the leaders of the defiance campaign and distributed

literature and other materials in Boston. Most of its support came from Harvard University, and it

had perhaps 200 members.56

Boston and Massachusetts had several advantages to offer anti-apartheid activists from the

1960s onward. It was a politically liberal state with a strong Democratic party that tended to be more sympathetic to anti-apartheid causes. The numerous universities and colleges in the state provided a welcoming atmosphere for activists, particularly student activists, which in turn became home to expatriates. A growing African American population in Boston and elsewhere was interested in anti-apartheid activism, both as an outgrowth of civil rights work in the United States and then a growing interest in human rights internationally. Massachusetts’ role in the anti- apartheid movement was significant enough that when Mandela visited Boston in 1990, he referred to the state as a “pioneer.”57

In 1967, concerned group of African Americans in the city established he Southern Africa

Relief Fund (SARF). It was intended to provide material relief to all southern African groups struggling against settler imperialism. Members raised money for liberation groups and it carried out some educational work in the Boston area as well. The group was only active for a few years, but its members included a number of significant future activists. The most notable of them was

Randall Robinson, a student at Harvard.

After working as SARF’s chairman, Robinson founded a new group in 1971 called the

Pan-African Liberation Committee (PALC) along with South African exile Chris Nteta. Nteta was

56 George Houser, “American Supporters of the Defiance Campaign,” Accessed April 4, 2017: http://kora.matrix.msu.edu/files/50/304/32-130-38C-84-african_activist_archive-a0b0x9-a_12419.pdf. 57 “In Boston, Mandela Hails State’s Leadership in Anti-Apartheid Drive,” Washington Post, , 1990.

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a Methodist who had come to Harvard Divinity School and became the chairman of PALC; he was

also a member of the ANC. Their goal was the divestment of Harvard University from Gulf Oil

because of Gulf’s support for the Portuguese government in Angola. They staged sit-ins in the

Harvard President’s office and agitated with the student body for the divestment of the university

endowment from Gulf. This activity was a bridge for many would-be activists who later shifted from working on Angola and Mozambique to South Africa. Additionally, Robinson and others demonstrated the utility tactics such as sit-ins to raise awareness of apartheid.58

Nteta proved to be an important bridge between the ANC and North American activists,

such as Willard Johnson. Johnson was an MIT professor whose interest in Africa dated back to his time as a student at UCLA, and he was interested in ways of supporting the liberation movements.

Johnson was also connected to African American politicians in the city and served as an important bridge between activists and legislators. Oliver Tambo came to the United States to meet with

Johnson and suggested that they begin mobilizing at a local level to reorient the foreign policy of the United States. Johnson invited other prominent Bostonian politicians such as . At the time, their hope was to mobilize the longshoremen’s unions to refuse to unload Rhodesian cargo, but Johnson later saw this meeting as one of the first steps toward divestment. Not coincidentally,

King became one of their most reliable allies in state politics.59

Boston and the surrounding area became an important base for anti-apartheid activists. In addition to Chris Nteta, Aggrey Mbere left South Africa in approximately 1955 and settled in

Boston, eventually teaching history at Roxbury Community College. He spoke in the community about apartheid and often appeared on programs on WGBH Boston about life in South Africa.

Themba Vilakazi became the ANC’s representative in Boston and became one of the state’s most

58 “A Conflicted Relationship,” Harvard Crimson, September 18, 1998. 59 Interview with Willard Johnson, July 27, 2017.

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successful activists. Vilakazi also went on to become active in several of Boston’s liberation

groups. Nteta articulated why the presence of exiled South Africans in Boston and elsewhere was

so useful in terms of anti-apartheid organizing: a shared font of historical experience, namely

“oppression under racial capitalism.” Within Boston, Nteta saw valuable partnerships between

African Americans and South African immigrants played out in a few early campaigns.60

Linkages between the African American community in Boston and the South African

expatriate community first became visible during the campaign against Polaroid, as discussed in

chapter two. Through a South African distributor, Polaroid was responsible for providing

equipment necessary to the much-despised passbook system in South Africa. Two African

American employees of Polaroid, Ken Hunter and Caroline Hunter, discovered the sale of

equipment in October 1970. When they asked their superiors about the sale and publicized the

information, they were told that the equipment was not used in apartheid laws and emphasized the

benefits of Polaroid’s presence in South Africa.61 Williams and Hunter knew Nteta, however, who constructed counter-arguments against Polaroid’s involvement in South Africa and emphasized

that the country was profiting from enforcing apartheid laws. Together, Hunter, Williams, and

Nteta began a boycott of Polaroid that lasted for seven years. 62

Anti-apartheid organizing in Boston was limited from 1974 to 1976, and many committed

activists turned their attention on Angola. After 1976, however, Boston again became an important

hub of anti-apartheid activism, led in no small part by students. In Cambridge, Harvard University

60 “Local Group Hits S. ,” Boston Globe, February 24, 1985; South African in Exile, WGBH, Accessed April 6, 2017: http://bostonlocaltv.org/catalog/V_4VU36AX5EIJOXH6; “South Africa: Perception and Reality,” Say Brother, WGBH, Accessed April 6, 2017: https://www.digitalcommonwealth.org/search/commonwealth- oai:dv141b753; “South Africa: Perception and Reality,” Say Brother, WGBH, Accessed April 6, 2017: https://www.digitalcommonwealth.org/search/commonwealth-oai:dv141b753; Chris Nteta, “The Linkage Between African Americans and the South African Black Immigrant Community,” Trotter Review 10 (1996): 24-26. 61 Morgan, “World is Watching,” 525. 62 Morgan, “World is Watching,” 526-527.

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was at the center of this process, though by now many of the earlier activists such as Randall

Robinson had graduated. A new committee formed in 1977, the Southern Africa Solidarity

Committee, that pushed for divestment of Harvard’s endowment. The university was forced to

commit to the Sullivan Principles as a way of defusing some of the students’ arguments for

divestment, but acceding to even partial demands put the administration on the defensive. Other

aspects of Harvard’s ties to South Africa were criticized: for example, there was an attempt to

name the Kennedy School library after Charles Engelhard, a South African mining magnate. Under

pressure from student groups, the name was withdrawn from consideration.63

Outside of universities, the next major group to come into existence was the BCLSA in

1976. Vilakazi had been calling for such a group for a few years, and it built in part off of earlier

organizations, including African Students and Workers for African Liberation. Some of its

members had participated in the PALC protests at Harvard and had formed a white group in order

to preserve the African American leadership of PALC. More immediately, it was formed out of

the protests against intervention in Angola in 1975, with many of its members coming from the

Angola Solidarity Coalition. BCLSA worked on two immediate issues: banning sales of the

Krugerrand, and ending bank loans by First National Bank of Boston to the South African

government, which had made close to $100 million in loans from 1975 to 1976. Their work on this

issue predated COBLSA by a couple of years and focused on pickets, particularly working with

other local groups such as a divestment committee in Plain. BCLSA was effective at

turning people out, leading a protest march against racism that came to nearly a thousand people.64

63 “Divestiture: A History,” Harvard Crimson, March 5, 1984. 64 R. Joseph Parrott, “Boycott Gulf! Angolan Oil and the Black Power Roots of American Anti-Apartheid Organizing,” Modern American History 1 (2018): 209; “CALC Report,” Accessed April 8, 2017: http://kora.matrix.msu.edu/files/50/304/32-130-1CE4-84-CALC%20Report%20Bank%2077%20opt.pdf; “Some 1000 Demonstrators Protest Racism Here and in South Africa,” Bay State Banner, May 5, 1977.

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The intersection of African American and black South African solidarity can be clearly

seen in the campaign against First National Bank of Boston (FNBB). BCLSA criticized the bank

for its links to South Africa while also focuing on the negative effects the bank had in the African

American community. The bank refused to endorse an affirmative-action hiring policy and was

accused of practicing redlining, particularly in African American neighborhoods such as Jamaica

Plain. Vilakazi particularly focused on these issues, drawing links between local and foreign

oppression. Adopting different critiques also helped the group forge ties with different entities in

Boston, ranging from anti-nuclear advocates to groups working for affordable housing.65

FNBB pushed back against criticism by announcing that it would reduce its loan exposure

in South Africa and adopt more short-term three-year loans. However, it maintained a South

African subsidiary for the purposes of facilitating trade, and the bank maintained that it would continue lending to private entities working in South Africa. These private transactions became of concern because they could nevertheless be used to benefit the apartheid government. In 1980, it emerged that Foxboro, a Massachusetts company, had sold computers to a South African parastatal for use in uranium enrichment. BCLSA pressured FNBB for the next two years, when the bank announced that it was no longer lending to South Africa.66

The existence of all of these groups working in conjunction with one another led to the

eventual formation of a broad, statewide coalition aimed at divesting the state’s pension funds

from companies working in South Africa. That coalition became known as MASS-DIVEST.

Public interest in divestment grew because of the visibility of other campaigns in the state. In 1979,

65 “Letter from BCLSA,” December 28, 1979, Amistad, ACOA Addendum, Series 2, Box 98, Bank Campaign 1980- 1979; Open Letter from Dick Clapp, May 4, 1980, Amistad, ACOA Addendum, Series 2, Projects: Bank Campaign (Boston), 1980. 66 “2 Boston Firms and South Africa,” Boston Globe, November 23, 1977; “Ban Request Withdrawn on S. African Loans,” Boston Globe, January 25, 1979.

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the city of Cambridge voted on a nonbinding resolution to divest from any company working in

South Africa, and its treasurer began exploring ways to divest the city’s portfolio. State

Representative Mel King and State Senator Jack Backman were the two legislators most

responsible for guiding divestment legislation through; King became involved in African issues

with a bill in 1973 aimed at preventing state facilities from being used to offload Rhodesian goods.

In 1979, in conjunction with members of BCLSA, a pension fund task force found that the state’s

pension funds were only marginally invested back into the state; more was involved in

multinationals based in South Africa. That next year, the two men introduced a divestment bill,

which failed to pass.67

MASS-DIVEST was formally organized in February 1981 and began hearings on Backman

and King’s bill, inviting testimony from experts in the state, including Edison Zvobgo, a

Zimbabwean liberation activist and professor at Tufts. It drew support from within the African

American community, namely through the BCLSA, elected representatives such as Charles

Yauncey, and the Boston chapter of TransAfrica, as well as service labor unions. Crucially, they also made overtures to teachers’ unions and AFSCME, heavily lobbying them to win their support.

Johnson was also interested in making inroads with white liberals in the city and making sure that the coalitions were as inclusive as possible of different groups within the left. To be sure, he was concerned about African Americans being displaced from leadership positions in anti-apartheid groups, and there were racial tensions that existed throughout groups. Nevertheless, MASS-

DIVEST made crucial allies in the city’s Catholic hierarchy, a necessary step toward victory in a heavily Irish-American city.68

67 “A Brief History of MASS-Divest,” April 1983. Accessed February 5, 2019: http://kora.matrix.msu.edu/files/50/304/32-130-116F-84-mass%20divest%204-83%20small.pdf. 68 Willard Johnson, “Getting Over by Reaching Out: Lessons from the Divestment and Krugerrand Campaigns,” The Black Scholar, 9 (1999): 9; “A Brief History of MASS-Divest,” April 1983. Accessed February 5, 2019:

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One of the themes Johnson returned to in pushing for divestment was reinvestment in

Massachusetts. The state was caught in general economic downturn of the early 1980s, and according to Johnson it made more sense to reinvest the money going abroad back into the state.

Money spent on companies that perpetuated apartheid could instead be spent, for example, on

companies working in Massachusetts or mortgage pools in the state, which would allow people to

gain access to housing. MASS-DIVEST also reached out to labor unions in the state, particularly

public-sector unions. The BCLSA carried out educational work to win people over while Boston’s

TransAfrica chapter went to work securing the support of African American clergy and academics who would lobby for the bill.69

The bill failed in 1981 because of delays in the Senate but was immediately followed by

an identical bill in 1982, and MASS-DIVEST’s allies lobbied key legislators to support the bill.

They were matched by a heavy South African and corporate lobbying campaign, one which drew

both direct lobbyists from the South African government and companies such as Ford. A

retrospective report in 1983 found that South Africa had been the single largest spender on

lobbying in the state in 1982, all of it aimed at defeating the divestment bill. Governor Ed King, a

conservative Democrat, returned the divestment bill to the legislature with a clause that would

have weakened it dramatically by exempting banks and companies such as Ford. MASS-DIVEST opted instead to stick with their own bill, which led Ed King to veto. Coalition building paid off now as the legislature overrode the governor’s veto, enacting the first successful comprehensive

http://kora.matrix.msu.edu/files/50/304/32-130-116F-84-mass%20divest%204-83%20small.pdf; Minter, Hovey, and Cobb, No Easy Victories, 155; Interview with Willard Johnson, July 27, 2017. 69 Willard Johnson, “Make It Here-Not in South Africa,” Boston Globe, August 28, 1981.

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pension divestment bill in the country. Approximately $90 million was affected by this

divestiture.70

Anti-apartheid activism in Massachusetts did not lose steam following the divestment of

the state’s pension funds. Campaigns to end the sale of Krugerrands continued, urged on by the

Boston chapter of TransAfrica (one of the best-functioning local chapters of that organization). By

the time the FSAM protests began in November 1984, activists in Boston had been targeting

department stores carrying Krugerrands for some time. Johnson was now responsible for founding

an FSAM chapter in Boston, and their first target was the South African consulate in Boston. City

officials cooperated with Johnson by giving him a platform to announce demonstrations, even

using police to allow Johnson to send messages directly to the South African consul (a voluntary

position held by Richard Blankstein, a lawyer in the city whose firm worked for the South African

government). Under pressure, Blankstein resigned in early December of 1984. Following that,

activists began targeting a national gold coin retailer in the city, Deak-Perera, ultimately forcing it

to abandon sales in 1985. Willard Johnson contended that Deak-Perera’s termination was actually

a substantial blow to the sales of Krugerrand nationwide.71

Boston was in many ways one of the most successful scenes for anti-apartheid activism in

the United States. South African expats and transnationally-minded Americans worked in extremely effective partnerships for several decades on end, forming different groups and developing new strategies to weaken U.S. ties to South Africa. Much of this solidarity was rooted in a shared solidarity of experience between African Americans and black South Africans. Unlike

70 “S. African Lobby Spent $300,000 in Bay State,” Boston Globe, January 28, 1983; “Make It In Massachusetts, Not In South Africa,” March 1983, Accessed April 8, 2017: http://africanactivist.msu.edu/document_metadata.php?objectid=32-130-CB4. 71 Memo from David Scott to Randall Robinson, March 30, 1984, Howard University, TransAfrica, Box 60, S.C. Meeting, June '84; Willard Johnson, “Getting Over by Reaching Out: Lessons from the Divestment and Krugerrand Campaigns,” The Black Scholar, 9 (1999): 12; Minter, Hovey, and Cobb, No Easy Victories, 156.

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many other places which saw an interest in South Africa diminish once the immediate problem of apartheid appeared to have been solved, Boston continued to retain an activist base that was still interested in African issues.

Conclusion

These four case studies do not capture the full breadth of the local anti-apartheid movement in the United States, which varied considerably from state to state. In choosing to focus on the locales where there were victories in the east coast and the upper Midwest, the west coast and the South is absent. Each region faced different dynamics in terms of organizing. The

South was a much more conservative region and lacked the same kinds of liberal and leftist trends to support liberation activism that activists in Boston enjoyed. California appeared to be driven in no small part by black power and black power advocates: places like Oakland, home to the Black Panther Party, led the state’s anti-apartheid movement. Those same factors were less present in these case studies.

Nevertheless, if this chapter only studies the Northeast and upper Midwest, it does shed light on important facets of the anti-apartheid movement. Perhaps most obvious is simply that early divestments were instructive for other activists: they offered a path and a set of steps that could be followed. In the mid-1970s, there was not necessarily a great deal of agreement among activists about the best path forward to take, and it is worth pointing out that Madison was not the first city to pass legislation opposing apartheid. Gary, Indiana had passed a law banning city purchases from IBM and Motorola in 1975, but the legislation was passed specifically those companies were perceived as supporting the South African military. After 1977, activists were more likely to endorse laws endorsing a total break with South Africa, and to regard legislation punishing specific companies as a way of distracting from that first goal. When Massachusetts’

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state government divested in 1983, it became the subject of an entire pamphlet by ACOA, all to

illustrate how divestment could be achieved elsewhere.

One common facet in three of the case studies was a manufacturing sector in decline by the late 1970s and early 1980s. The relationship of the American labor sector with the global anti-apartheid movement was a complicated one. The leadership in the AFL-CIO was more interested in pursuing a more moderate approach on South Africa that ranged from supporting the Sullivan Principles to directly funding South African labor unions (with some assistance from the State Department). Individual union members sometimes tended to drift away from their more centrist leadership, ranging from Cleveland Robinson’s UAW 65 to the members of

ILWU 10 in the Bay Area. However, most individual unions did not become directly involved unless their national office intervened first.

Transnational actors were an important part of that transformation, and in these places they frequently worked closely with the unions to win them over to supporting divestment. Prexy

Nesbitt was perhaps the most involved in building connections with the unions, both because of his union background, and because his work with ACOA brought him into regular contact with union members. Critically, there were also links with unions such as the AFSCME, a public sector union. Their alignment with anti-apartheid groups was crucial in working towards divestment, because it was their pension funds that would be affected. MACSA began by reaching out to unions in the city, both for financial support, but also as a constituency for future legislation.72

The case study of Illinois illustrates some of the significance that churches played in the

anti-apartheid movement. In all of the four case studies, activists enlisted sympathetic churches,

72 Interview with Prexy Nesbitt, June 1, 2009.

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and in certain instances church leaders were themselves committed activists: Jeremiah Wright

used Trinity Avenue Church in Chicago to raise money for liberation movements and to create

publicity. However, in Illinois their role in reaching out to more conservative audiences created something like a statewide movement.

The movements also relied to a large extent on symbolic legislation. Indeed, many of the legislative victories they scored were voluntary resolutions that were non-binding. Even in the case of successfully passed laws, on an individual basis they were unlikely to cause any material damage to the corporations they targeted. None of the members of MACSA acted as though

Madison’s divestment would change corporate behavior. However, they all mobilized activists and kept them engaged in a longer-term struggle, and aware of South African issues going forward.

Taken by themselves, these four local divestments were not likely to have caused substantial economic damage to any companies, and they did not cause any damage to the South

African economy. Over time, however, these divestments added up as companies weighed whether South Africa was a safe business opportunity. By the mid-1980s, American companies were withdrawing in large numbers from the country. Apart from simply setting precedent for other activists, these ties built durable coalitions interested in South Africa and apartheid. If interest in apartheid tended to cycle every few years, creating these state and city-level groups interested in this issue meant that they could be quickly mobilized when interest in the issue peaked in the mid-1980s.

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Chapter 4 Building a National Network for Sanctions

In 1981, members of WOA sat down with Phil Christenson, one of the aides of

Republican Senator of Kansas. The meeting was not an especially productive

one. Christenson began by telling WOA staff that “we [the Republicans] won the Nov. 4 election

and you are out!” Christenson told the WOA members that there would be no major changes in policy toward South Africa. If anything, Christenson argued that they would need to cooperate with the established power brokers in South Africa. Christenson believed that WOA could

accomplish nothing under the Reagan administration. Yet within just six years, Kassebaum came

around to become one of the critical swing votes in the passage of sanctions against South

Africa.1

The local movements that were described in the last chapter coalesced around divestment

as a way to change U.S. corporate behavior in South Africa. The take-off of these regional groups in a few places presented national groups with new opportunities for activism. ACOA was in the vanguard of providing research materials and expert testimony for student groups and divestment committees, but in the 1970s they worked alongside groups, most prominently AFSC and TransAfrica. These groups each brought their own tactical approaches to weakening

apartheid, and each became interested in cultivating grassroots support.

These national groups, in conjunction with their local counterparts, were responsible for

lobbying for the passage of sanctions against South Africa. From the outset, the passage of

1 “Notes of Meeting with Phil Christenson,” February 19, 1981, Yale Divinity Library, Washington Office on Africa, Box 16, Folder 114.

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sanctions was not an inevitable conclusion, and the groups did not share uniform plans about

achieving sanctions. The desire to enact sanctions against the South African government was not

a new one by the 1980s. , the representative from Oakland, had introduced

sanctions bills beginning in 1972 and did so annually for the next fourteen years. Members of the

Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) such as Charles Diggs had held hearings on the relationship

between the United States and South Africa, while white politicians such as Steven Solarz and

Howard Wolpe were free to work on southern African issues because their districts were

sufficiently liberal that a representative could take the initiative on his own and face no backlash.

Activists in the 1960s had hoped that the Sharpeville Massacre would lead western

governments to pass sanctions, but the failure to pass those sanctions against South Africa then

and the difficulty of effectively enforcing them against Rhodesia pushed activists away from the

idea of sanctions. Even under the relatively liberal Carter administration, administration officials

were hesitant about an outright break with South Africa and wanted to chart a course of moderate

reform. Cyrus Vance enthusiastically backed the Sullivan Principles as a way of supporting

moderate reform in South Africa outside of genuine political reform. Even ,

Carter’s envoy to the United Nations and an American civil rights leader, was ambivalent about

divestment, stating in a letter to the chancellor of UC Irvine that “I have long encouraged

American business interests in South Africa to adopt a policy supportive of change in that

country.”2

The prospect for sanctions under the Reagan administration were even more remote.

Reagan and his foreign policy team saw South Africa as an important partner in the fight to

2 Stevens, “Boycotts,” 298-299; Letter to Henry Ford II, December 22, 1977, Temple University Archives, ICEOP Papers, Box 5, Folder: Ford Motor Co; Letter from Daniel Aldrich to Andrew Young, May 11, 1978, Auburn Avenue Research Library, Andrew Young Papers, Box 159, Folder 4.

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contain as well as to roll back communist governments. Reagan’s general ignorance of the

conditions of apartheid were well-known; in one radio interview in 1985, he claimed that the

country had eliminated segregation in public life.3 Furthermore, the Reagan Administration backed Pretoria’s support for UNITA in the Angolan Civil War (an issue which divided the

American civil rights community as well).

Any action from the executive branch to move away from support for apartheid was unlikely, and any sanctions needed to be passed over a presumed veto from the president. The

Democrats controlled the House of Representatives through Reagan’s presidency, but often through conservative southern Democrats who were willing to caucus with Republicans and sympathetic to the Cold War framework. This political reality meant that to beat the veto,

activists would have to build a political coalition that could sway Republicans and conservative

Democrats.

The coalition that successfully lobbied for sanctions was cultivated by national groups at

the top channeling grassroots energy. To be sure, this grassroots activism was not always

consciously directed toward the idea of passing sanctions, except perhaps as a far-off goal: much of it was simply dedicated to educating unfamiliar people with the realities of apartheid, or organizing them to work on behalf of state and city divestments. Elsewhere, even in places where the prospects for success of such activism might seem remote, organizing enabled the passage of the 1986 CAAA. It will examine the work of the AFSC in working in areas outside of traditional liberal strongholds, TransAfrica in generating publicity and interest in attacking

apartheid, and ACOA as well as the WOA lobbied for sanctions and a veto override in 1986.

3 Accessed November 30, 2017: https://reaganlibrary.archives.gov/archives/speeches/1985/82485c.htm.

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To build this coalition, groups first carried out educational work, borne out of a shared awareness of how little was known about South Africa and apartheid. Educational work had the effect of creating a groundswell of people interested in apartheid, and these national groups worked together to facilitate the creation of local committees. The interconnections between groups, even though they were largely informal, helped to unify their agreement on certain tactics: divestment, ending bank loans, and isolation of the South African regime. Some groups, such as AFSC and TransAfrica, directly sponsored groups; others, such as ACOA and the Africa

Fund helped those groups pass divestment legislation. With the creation of the Free South Africa

Movement in 1984, the level of national attention that apartheid received from concerned

Americans made it possible to fight for the passage of sanctions at the national level.

National Committees

After ACOA, AFSC became the second major group to work for liberation activism and specifically against apartheid. AFSC was a Quaker charitable organization founded in 1917.

While it initially rose to fame internationally because of its collaboration with Herbert Hoover to provide famine relief in Eastern Europe in the wake of World War One, AFSC worked in a variety of areas: American race relations, campaigns for peace and disarmament, and support for refugees. AFSC interest in South Africa actually predated the formal creation of apartheid, as members first pushed for an AFSC delegation to visit the country in 1937.4 Apartheid fed this

interest, as it represented an intersection of concerns that dominated the group: racism, violence,

and economic injustice. Furthermore, AFSC was connected to Quaker societies in in southern

Africa, giving it a kind of foothold and direct expertise that American groups lacked.

4 Letter from Thomas Jones to Clarence Pickett, December 8, 1937, AFSC, General Files Foreign Service South Africa 1937.

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AFSC also had the not-inconsiderable advantage of being a group with a national

headquarters as well as strong regional offices across the country. Unlike ACOA’s failed efforts

to create regional offices, AFSC had a presence in Portland, Seattle, Chicago, Grand Rapids,

Michigan, Denver, Colorado, Dayton, Ohio, Baltimore, Atlanta, and several other cities. While

these offices were usually engaged in several kinds of work simultaneously and were not devoted

solely to anti-apartheid work, they represented pre-existing activist structures in communities.

They could also support other activist groups by providing resources and logistical support to

allow them to function.

The group’s interest in apartheid notwithstanding, tactical plans varied substantially. The

embrace of violence by the liberation movements in the early 1960s presented a problem for the

pacifist AFSC, and many of its members refused to embrace movements that countenanced the

use of force. Controversy over the use of violence set up a certain amount of tension between professional members who joined AFSC to work as activists, many of whom personally believed in nonviolence but were willing to accommodate the liberation movements, and committed

Quakers, who were opposed to any kind of violent struggle. By the late 1970s, certain members were turning against others such as Bill Sutherland for being too willing to stand behind violent revolutionaries.5

Simultaneously, there was a collective recognition from program staff that they needed to

cultivate connections outside of the traditional Quaker groups they had worked with in the

United States and other countries. AFSC’s earlier involvement in the civil rights movement and

in opposition to the Vietnam War brought members into contact with activists whose goals were

similar but who endorsed strikingly different methods. It also came from a desire to build new

5 Letter from Alfred C. Ames, July 18, 1979, Amistad, ACOA Addendum, Series 1, Box 10, Folder BOD: Correspondence, Houser 1978.

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constituencies that were outside of AFSC’s traditional bases of support. The

Coalition argued for more diversity within AFSC. This group was informally organized in 1971 by a number of staffers, many of them people of color, who felt that AFSC did too little to promote the views of its non-white staff and members. Many of the coalition members were themselves coming out of a civil rights background and pushed a more radical line. AFSC responded by recognizing them as an internal caucus and by including more non-Quaker staff members. Regarding South Africa, the position of many of the members was that South Africa was bound to be another Vietnam, and the best course of action was total disengagement. To cultivate support that would back disengagement, AFSC needed a broader base. In particular, by the 1970s, members of the group were interested in so-called “third world peoples” whose experiences the staff believed were similar those of people living under apartheid, including but not limited to African Americans.6

AFSC developed relationships with people who had some direct experience with apartheid. Much of the AFSC program staff had at least some familiarity with Africa to begin with, as they had provided some development and technical assistance work throughout the continent. At the grassroots level, however, they also became increasingly willing to turn the leadership of their regional programs over to persons with the kind of transnational background that has been described in this dissertation. By 1978, one of AFSC’s staff members was planning to work through the Phelps-Stoke Fund to recruit South African students living in the United

States to work through the regional offices.7

6 David Hostetter, “Liberation in one Organization: Apartheid, Nonviolence, and the Politics of the AFSC,” Peace & Change, 27: October, 2002, 573, 582. 7 Letter from David Sogge, August 24, 1978, AFSC, 1978 Africa Programs, Southern Africa Rep Correspondence: Letters &D From.

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The connection to South Africa could also be a limitation. Certain members of AFSC

looked to their South African counterparts for guidance or advice on how best to approach the

issue of apartheid, but many of the more prominent South African Quakers such as Hendrik van

der Merwe took a more moderate, reformist position that was at odds with the increasingly

militant American anti-apartheid scene; van der Merwe on occasion suggested that the AFSC

was excessively interested in bringing down the South African government. Within AFSC,

certain board and staff members were divided between supporting the position of their South

African board members.8

Nevertheless, AFSC paid increasing attention to apartheid through the 1970s, in no small

part because some staff members focused on southern Africa. One of those staff members was

Bill Sutherland, who was hired in 1974 by the organization as its representative in southern

Africa. Sutherland was hired because of his expertise and familiarity with the liberation groups, many of which were somewhat leery of outsiders. Sutherland had a number of responsibilities during this period, not all of which were related to South Africa. For example, the government of

Mozambique had only just become independent and was facing critical shortages of certain goods, and Sutherland coordinated the shipment of medical supplies. In another instance,

Sutherland passed word that the South African government was illegally shipping arms to the Ian

Smith regime in Rhodesia (Zimbabwe), hoping that political allies in D.C. could somehow quash the shipment.9

8 Joint Report by SA Visiting Friends to Friends World Committee, November 1978, AFSC, 1978 PED Southern Africa Continued, Projects: Visits of South African Friends to U.S. 9 Transcription of trip to Africa by Jeanne Newman, November 5, 1976, AFSC, 1976 Africa Programs, Administration: Trips to Africa Hunt/Newman; Bill Sutherland Telephone Call, September 2, 1977, AFSC, 1977 PED Southern Africa Program, Correspondence: Sutherland.

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However, many board members disliked Sutherland’s presence because of his

willingness to work with liberation movements that endorsed violence. To be sure, Sutherland

was absolutely committed to nonviolence at a personal level. However, he felt it was arrogant to

dictate to oppressed people how to conduct their resistance, which brought him into conflict with

other Quakers. Discussions over violence became the topic of an entire board meeting, as

accusations were repeatedly leveled that Sutherland was in effect embracing violence as a

legitimate tool. Beyond support for the liberation movements, even economic pressure from a

boycott was debated among AFSC internal staff as being too coercive and violent.10

Additionally, AFSC brought another South African into the group in the 1970s, a man

named Peter Molotsi, one of the founding members of the PAC. Molotsi had left South Africa

shortly before the Sharpeville Massacre in 1960 and came to the United States to serve as the

PAC’s permanent representative at the UN. He stayed in the United States to pursue graduate

education and continued to work on behalf of the PAC, speaking in the United States. In 1976,

AFSC hired Molotsi in the newly created South Africa Program of the Peace Education division

along with a former SNCC activist and two AFSC staff members, working in conjunction with

Sutherland.11 Lastly, AFSC staff member Jim had spent over a decade in Zambia, during

which time he cultivated contacts within the liberation movements. Bristol was the author of an

influential pamphlet, “Nonviolence Not for Export,” that argued that pacifists in the west had no

moral authority to demand the means by which oppressed people elsewhere liberate themselves.

Instead, it was incumbent on pacifists in the west to reorient the behavior of their own countries

10 Interview with Bill Sutherland, No Easy Victories, http://www.noeasyvictories.org/interviews/int01_sutherland.php; Memo from Ron Young to Dan Seeger, 1979, AFSC, 1979, Southern Africa Program, Correspondence: Criticism; Southern Africa Committee Minutes June 15, 1978, AFSC, 1978 PED Program Resources Southern Africa, Comms and Orgs A-Z. 11 David Hostetter, “Movement Matters: American Antiapartheid Activism and the Rise of Multicultural Politics,” PhD Dissertation at University of Maryland-College Park, 2004, 88.

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toward repressive regimes. Bristol’s argument set off fierce debate within AFSC, and by the end

of the 1970s, Bristol’s argument had been accepted by a large number of staff and board

members.12

Alongside ACOA and AFSC was TransAfrica, which grew out of African American

activism dealing with southern Africa in Boston. Randall Robinson had participated in the Gulf

Oil Boycott at Harvard, as discussed earlier, while Willard Johnson had worked since the early

1970s to build a platform for African Americans to be able to speak about foreign policy issues;

one conference in Puerto Rico in the early 1970s had brought together African American

politicians and legislators to discuss, in part, South Africa and the remnants of European

imperialism in Africa. A desire for a stronger lobbying arm grew in part because of the

successful passage of the Byrd Amendment, which permitted the United States to import chrome

from Rhodesia in direct contravention of the United Nations embargo. Finally, in 1976, the

Black Leadership Conference was convened by the CBC that led to, among other things, a

resolution for a specific lobbying group that would address liberation causes. TransAfrica was

created in July of 1977, and began operating in 1978. TransAfrica was also closely tied to the

CBC, especially because of the caucus’ involvement in its creation.13

Like AFSC, TransAfrica was not specifically an anti-apartheid organization, though its

anti-apartheid work in the 1980s brought it some of its greatest attention. Instead, it was a body

that dedicated itself to Afro-Caribbean affairs, and Robinson framed the group’s work around

Pan-Africanism. For Robinson, race was central to his own identity as well as the official U.S.

12 SADET, South Africans Telling Their Stories, (Cape Town: Zebra Press, 2013), 45; David Hostetter, “Movement Matters: American Antiapartheid Activism and the Rise of Multicultural Politics,” (PhD Diss., University of Maryland-College Park, 2004), 88; Jim Bristol, “Nonviolence Not for Export.” Accessed February 8, 2019: http://kora.matrix.msu.edu/files/50/304/32-130-1792-84-AFSC%20Nonviolence%20opt.pdf. 13 Interview with Willard Johnson, July 27, 2017; Nesbitt, Race, 102-103.

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support given to South Africa, and the fight against racism at home was a fight against racism

abroad. In his autobiography, he wrote “I could see no real distinction between my American

experience and the painful lot of Haitians, South Africans, Mozambicans, Angolans, Zairians and

Afro-Brazilians.”14

As an organization that addressed a number of Pan-Africanist concerns, TransAfrica

attracted individuals with a similar orientation. Washington, D.C. was also home to a number of

activist TransAfrica members. One such American was Sylvia Hill, who had gone to Tanzania in

1974 for the Sixth Pan-African Congress (for which Bill Sutherland served as one of the key organizers) in Dar-es-Salaam. For Hill, the conference was a transformational moment: “It was really Six PAC that led me to return and work on Southern Africa. There were a group of us who committed ourselves that we were going to work against colonialism, and it was based on the investment in this congress and the agenda of the national liberation struggle." With so many of

the liberation movements working out of Tanzania, Hill used her time there to acquaint herself

with the various groups and came back to the United States interested in supporting African liberation. Hill became one of the founding members of TransAfrica in 1977.15

A number of other Americans attended the congress, some of whom had already resided

in Tanzania for some time, and others who came to the conference: approximately two hundred

people came as guests, delegates, and tourists. The Sixth Pan-African Congress influenced a

number of other Americans as well who were involved with TransAfrica. Kathy Flewellen was

one of the American organizers of the Sixth PAC and went on to become a founding member of

the Southern Africa Support Project (SASP) with Sylvia Hill. Sandra Hill (no relation to Sylvia

Hill) was also present in Dar for the conference and was a founding member of SASP. Other

14 Randall Robinson, Defending the Spirit: A Black Life in America, (New York: Dutton, 1998), 69. 15 Interview with Sylvia Hill, No Easy Victories, http://www.noeasyvictories.org/select/08_hill.php.

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DC.-based American activists included Adwoa Dunn-Mouton, who had first gone to Africa as an exchange student from Berkeley and had been interested in the similarities between the civil rights movement and African liberation groups. In addition to her experience as an activist,

Mouton also had a career in Congress as a legislative aide to Howard Wolpe, the Michigan congressman who had been affiliated with SALC.16

Randall Robinson rapidly became the head of TransAfrica and became its public face as well because Robinson had a gift for organization, and particularly for publicity. Robinson was aware that Africa and the Caribbean were rarely afforded coverage in the media, but thought that because of the concentration of whites in southern Africa, there was a chance of stirring up awareness in the media. Johnson described Robinson as a brilliant strategist and organizer with an unparalleled ability to get attention using and publicized events, in a way that few others appreciated. TransAfrica’s work began over Rhodesia, when it campaigned against the lifting of sanctions against that country in 1979. Protesting the possibility that the beleaguered white minority government there might receive a reprieve, TransAfrica suffused the Carter

Administration with petitions and goaded sympathetic African American organizations into making clear their displeasure with the possibility of easing pressure on the Rhodesian government. Robinson used connections with state politicians to build a network of sympathetic politicians, and used national conferences to run TransAfrica-sponsored divestment workshops at the conference of the National Black Caucus of State Legislators in 1981 and 1983. He also proved to be a savvy fundraiser, winning a large WCC grant in 1980 (through Prexy Nesbitt’s

16 Said, Abdulkadir. “The Sixth Pan-African Congress: Black Unity: Coming of Age in Dar-es-Salaam,” New Directions 1 (1984): 4; Minter, Hovey, and Cobb, No Easy Victories, 105; http://www.clarityfilms.org/haveyouheardfromjohannesburg/biographies.php?id=90; Interview with Geri Augusto, No Easy Victories, http://www.noeasyvictories.org/interviews/int10_augusto.php#_ednref25

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recommendation and assistance) following a speech in Geneva that people were “raving” about

afterward; similar grants were awarded annually thereafter.17

While TransAfrica and Robinson in particular had a gift for pulling together events that

could attract media attention, the group suffered from a few weaknesses at the time of its

founding. Robinson wanted the group to have a strong degree of support at local levels, but as an

organization, it lacked any such base. Robinson put it bluntly in one meeting while working on

the Rhodesian sanctions: “we are a leadership without any followship.” Without a strong

foundation of support around the country, they behaved as an African American lobbying arm on

foreign policy. However, their ties to the CBC did not necessarily make them into a strong

lobbying arm, either. At least in regard to the Rhodesian issue, the CBC did not act as a major

source of pressure on the Carter Administration (Nancy Mitchell argues that members of the

administration were if anything lobbying Charles Diggs and others to work harder to protect the

sanctions). Members of the CBC were juggling multiple, competing concerns, and in the early

1980s, South Africa still remained an issue of limited interest.18

Based in Washington, D.C., WOA complemented some of TransAfrica’s function as a

lobbying arm as well as a certain amount of research and educational work, like ACOA. WOA

existed in an uneasy space by the late 1970s and early 1980s because it depended so strongly on mainstream Protestant churches for financial support, but those churches were themselves turning away from the kind of liberal or leftist political activities WOA practiced. Throughout

17 Robinson, Defending, 111; Interview with Willard Johnson, July 27, 2017; Nesbitt, Race, 110, 119; Memo from Gay McDougall to Randall Robinson, July 22, 1980, Howard University, TransAfrica, Box 20, Gay McDougall; Letter to Anwar Barkat, October 18, 1982, Howard University, TransAfrica, Box 5, World Council of Churches Programme to Combat Racism. 18 Quoted in Nancy Mitchell’s in Africa: Race and the Cold War, (Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 2016), 570, 579.

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most of the 1970s, its attention had been focused on Angola or Rhodesia, where the need was

judged to be more pressing, and the chance of success more promising.

Early congressional action taken against South Africa had either been largely symbolic,

or had been part of a broader global response such as the arms embargo following the Soweto

Uprising in 1977. One of the earlier battles drew Congressional attention, but also illustrated

some of the limitations that activists faced. In 1978, members of Congress discussed the Export-

Import Bank’s (Ex-Im) extension of benefits to American investors in South Africa, and passed an amendment requiring American businesses to support the Sullivan Principles if they wanted

Ex-Im support. However, because many American activists openly opposed the Sullivan

Principles, requiring companies to adhere to them was not a dramatic political victory for them.

Chris Root of WOA recalled that it was important for them mostly to be able to force a conversation about apartheid rather than inflicting damage on the apartheid state. As for the arms embargo, it was sufficiently porous that the South African government found ways to smuggle arms, while the U.S. government laxly enforced the embargo. Congressional pressure from

Howard Wolpe limited the sale of certain nuclear technology in 1982 and 1983, but this prohibition depended on close oversight from the legislative branch.19

Nevertheless, if the campaign to end Ex-Im Bank support was a largely symbolic issue, it showed some of the ways WOA operated in later legislative campaigns. WOA enlisted support from sympathetic church bodies that financially supported the group and who committed to lobbying congressmen whose votes were needed. Through connections to Prexy Nesbitt, the

19 Interview with Dave Wiley and Chris Root August 28, 2016. This strategy was echoed in a planning document from the period. Strategy Discussion with Ed Snyder, August 5, 1977, Yale Divinity Library, WOA Papers, Box 14, Folder 91; “U.S. Charged With Violating South Africa Arms Embargo,” Sun Reporter, December 22, 1977; Report on Campaign to end US-SA Nuclear Collaboration, October 29, 1983, Amistad, ACOA Addendum, Series 2, Box 91, Washington Office on Africa, 1984.

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group was also able to enlist the aid of a number of unions that had also signed on to COBLSA’s

objectives, which was happening concurrently. Because the group had existed in Washington for

a number of years, it had forged close connections with a number of sympathetic congressmen,

such as Senator Ted Kennedy. These ties also allowed WOA to directly comment on the

legislation to shape it to be as effective as it could be. While WOA was no longer directly

affiliated with ACOA, the two maintained an extremely close working relationship that also

allowed them to coordinate their activities.20

Lastly, there was ACOA and its focus on local divestment campaigns. Those divestment

campaigns built grassroots networks that were first intended to support divestment but which

could also be organized to lobby for other causes. The group functioned as a clearinghouse in the

1970s and 1980s, providing research and expert testimony for groups but not generally

supervising events from the grassroots level. Members of ACOA liaised with other organizations

and worked alongside them whenever possible.

Earlier attempts toward the creation of a unified national body had failed. In 1975

ACOA, WOA, and several smaller regional committees such as MACSA created a Committee for the Liberation of Southern Africa, but by 1978 the organization appears to have been defunct.

Instead, coordination between them relied on informal contacts between the groups, working group meetings and conferences that brought activists together, and the largely-agreed upon fact that divestment was the preferred strategy for anti-apartheid organizations.

Education

Alongside ACOA, AFSC took the lead in coordinating grassroots networks, and after

1976 its work in other arenas wound down. Through 1976, AFSC prioritized material assistance

20 Strategy Conversation on Ex-Im, December 3, 1977, Yale Divinity Library, WOA Papers, Box 14, Folder 91; Memo to Ian Kalicki from Ted Lockwood, June 15, 1978, Yale Divinity Library, WOA, Box 15, Folder 98.

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to South African refugees fleeing the turmoil of the Soweto Uprising. Thereafter, members of the

Southern Africa Program developed programming that called public attention to apartheid. As

the number of South African military deserters increased, Sutherland was the one who suggested

that the AFSC begin to support them and raise them as a critical issue. AFSC’s board initially

ignored the proposal when he first offered it, but five years later, the AFSC was working with

white South African resisters to lead teach-ins.21

The AFSC increasingly pivoted to educational work and awareness-building. In January of 1977, Bristol worked with an AFSC staff member to develop a proposal for a “Southern

Africa Summer,” modeled in part on the so-called “Vietnam Summers” the group had run a decade before. Volunteers were recruited from around every AFSC office in the country, relying in no small part on the “Third World” peoples that the group was interested in, and educated using the expertise of the southern Africa personnel in the group. They carried out educational work throughout the summer in the hopes of building an activist constituency.22

Sutherland and Molotsi reoriented AFSC away from moderate positions and toward divestment as the most viable strategy for supporting the end of apartheid. South African

Quakers such as Merwe favored an American business ethics code for the country to improve the livelihood of black South Africans, and the idea had some appeal within AFSC as well. When

the Sullivan Principles were announced in 1977, Sutherland and Molotsi went to meet with

Sullivan. Their report back to AFSC’s central committee was largely dismissive, asserting that

21 Memo by David Sogge, July 9, 1976, Accessed December 2, 2017: http://kora.matrix.msu.edu/files/50/304/32- 130-1D0D-84-AFSC%207-9-76.pdf; Taped Message from Jim Upchurch, April 13, 1978, AFSC, 1978 PED Program Resources Southern Africa, Correspondence: James Upchurch; Telephone Conversation with Bill Sutherland, December 28, 1977, AFSC, 1977 PED Southern Africa Program, Correspondence: Sutherland; South Afircan Program Accomplishments 1983, December 31, 1982, AFSC, 1983 Narmic Southern Africa, Southern Africa Administration: Mission and Strategy 1983. 22 Letter to Jim Bristol, January 25, 1977, Amistad, ACOA Addendum, Series 2, Box 70, American Friends Service Committee 1977.

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Sullivan was a well-intentioned man, but his program lacked any meaningful monitoring

mechanisms and gained no traction with European companies, which minimized its overall

impact. Molotsi and Sutherland also lobbied against continually sending delegations to visit

South Africa, believing that such trips offered a kind of legitimacy to the apartheid government

that it was actively seeking.23

Grassroots networking became an important part of the realignment of AFSC. From 1975 until 1985, he spent approximately half the year in southern Africa and then several months touring the United States. As early as 1976, the regional offices were encouraged to make use of

Sutherland’s experience and speaking ability to energize their constituencies. In 1976, during just one tour, Sutherland had 50 public speaking appearances as well as fifty media interviews,

usually with African American newspapers.24

Sutherland’s speaking tours were extensive, and community organizers consistently noted

after the fact that he generated so much interest that it often catalyzed into groups or other forms of activity after the fact. Visits to St. Louis inspired both the Amalgamated Clothing and Textile

Workers as well as the Teamsters to send delegations to southern Africa to see it for themselves.

A visit with the Trade Union Leadership Caucus, a black caucus within the United Auto

Workers, inspired the caucus to push the union’s leadership to embrace a tougher stand on South

Africa, including divestment.25 Sutherland also came into contact with at this

same time; he met him at a meeting of South African and American church leaders in New York

23 Excerpt from Rosemary Elliott report on US Trip, 1978, AFSC, 1978 PED Southern Africa Continued, Projects: Visits of South African Friends to U.S.; Southern Africa Committee Minutes June 15, 1978, AFSC, 1978 PED Program Resources Southern Africa, Comms and Orgs A-Z; Phone Conversation with Bill Sutherland, October 13, 1977, AFSC, 1977 PED Southern Africa Program, Correspondence: Sutherland. 24 Memo on expanded Southern Africa Work in the Peace Education Division, May 19, 1976, AFSC, PED Program Resources, Administration: Program Development; Letter to Rockefeller Brothers Fund, September 8, 1976, AFSC, 1976 Africa Programs, Administration: Finance: Fundraising-Rockefeller Bros. Fund. 25 Letter to Bill Hayden, April 7, 1978, AFSC, 1978 PED Southern Africa Continued, Regional Offices Dayton.

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in 1978. Sutherland introduced Tutu to other members of AFSC, whose leadership nominated the

archbishop for the year after year until he received it in 1984. Lastly,

Sutherland testified as an expert witness on South Africa. In 1980, he spoke to legislators in

Michigan considering divestment legislation. A year prior, he staged meetings with a number of

bankers from First National Bank in Portland who owned stock in the Private Export Funding

Corporation (PEFCO); they were ultimately persuaded to sell off the stock.26

This grassroots activism shifted AFSC’s policies to work in tandem with groups like

ACOA. As the group contemplated divestment of AFSC’s own stock portfolio in the 1970s, the

debate focused on whether or not it would be harmful to black South Africans. While higher-up

staff members split on this issue, the regional offices and programs that AFSC ran were far more

interested in supporting divestment as a program. The Peace Education Division advocated for

divestment from American businesses operating in South Africa and participation in the

COBLSA protests organized by ACOA. Notably, agitation for divestment happened at the local

level simultaneously: Chicago AFSC personnel collaborated with other groups in the city,

personnel in San Francisco targeted Bank of America, and Molotsi and other Philadelphia

workers collaborated with Philadelphia groups. In 1978, students within the Southern Africa

Summer Program promised to quit if AFSC itself did not divest its own South African stocks.27

Educational programming launched local activism, particularly in areas where AFSC had

an affiliate office. The AFSC regional offices mobilized newly educated constituencies,

26 Bill Sutherland and Matt Meyer, Guns and Gandhi in Africa: Pan-African Insights on Nonviolence, Armed Struggle, and Liberation in Africa, (Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, 2000), 154; Janice Love, “People’s Participation,” 1983, 261; Sutherland Speaking Tour January July 1979, AFSC, 1979 Africa Programs, Programs: Sutherland Spring Tour; Meeting Minutes March 3, 1979, Amistad, COBLSA, Series 1, Box 7, Folder: Meeting Minutes 1979-1978;Letter to Elizabeth Groff, , 1979, AFSC, 1979, Southern Africa Program, Regional offices: Pacific Northwest-Portland 27 Memo from Michael Simmons, November 8, 1977, Accessed December 2, 2017: http://kora.matrix.msu.edu/files/50/304/32-130-1D15-84-AFSC%2011-8-77%20opt.pdf; Southern Africa Committee Minutes June 15, 1978, AFSC, 1978 PED Program Resources Southern Africa, Comms and Orgs A-Z.

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frequently because Sutherland could connect regional offices with sympathetic activist groups

(in AFSC’s parlance, the Third World peoples in their midst). AFSC’s Southern Africa Summer

program proved to be important as well, which was launched in the summer of 1978 with the

planned forty volunteers around the country. Some of the activity occurred in places such as

Chicago and San Francisco, which already had well-developed solidarity groups in the 1970s,

but also included places where movements were less organized: Baltimore, Mobile, Alabama,

Portland, Kalamazoo, Michigan, and so on. In Portland, AFSC collaborated with Zimbabwean

exile Fungai Kumbula to travel around the state working for divestment in Eugene and Salem.28

Not all of the AFSC regional programs were equally on board with the new foci for

activism. Members of the Dayton, Ohio program complained about the attention paid to African

Americans, claiming that it was “fighting racism with racism.” Nor were the coalitions the

Southern Africa Summer programs forged necessarily long-lasting. While Portland and San

Francisco’s groups continued to work for years on end, other areas found it difficult to sustain the groups in the long-run, in no small part because the business of familiarizing people with apartheid was slow and difficult. In 1979, Christian ministers in Kalamazoo refused to meet with

Bill Sutherland because of his boycott of South Africa, and an attempt to create a statewide coalition with activists in Ann Arbor failed in less than a year. Other offices struggled to generate momentum. In 1980, Denver reported that it was not experiencing much in the way of

southern Africa activity. AFSC’s Philadelphia office also came in for criticism because it tended

to pay more attention to less conservative parts of the country; members of the Texas--

28 Memo on Southern Africa Program 1976, June 7, 1976, AFSC, PED Program Resources, Administration: Program Development; Report from Portland Office, December 7, 1978, AFSC, 1978 PED Southern Africa Continued, Regional Offices Pacific Northwest Portland.

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Oklahoma office resigned en masse in 1980, alleging that the Sun Belt had been ignored even as

it became increasingly militarized.29

However, that concern over the neglect paid to the South soon changed. In 1981, members of AFSC organized a tour of the South in conjunction with other activist groups that specifically targeted areas that had been marginalized previously: Greensboro, North Carolina,

Atlanta, , Jackson, Mississippi, New Orleans, and northern Florida. This interest

became the Africa Peace Tour, and was not focused exclusively on South Africa or even

southern Africa; in 1987, for example, one of the major topics was American military aid to

Liberia. South Africa and apartheid were consistent, major talking points in each tour. They went

after the same institutions that activists pursued in major cities, churches and university students,

except that these areas had been scarcely reached by activists in the preceding several decades.

The other major consistency that existed at the regional level were civil rights groups such as the

NAACP and SCLC, though these groups were not single-issue groups and very much depended upon individual staff to function. The tour was staffed by a variety of friendly groups and activists that were well-known to AFSC: IDAF, ACOA, WOA, and representatives from

SWAPO and the ANC.30

Annual tours involved participation from a variety of the solidarity groups as well as

representatives from the liberation movements. In areas such as Dallas or Denver, where the

1982 tour focused, groups only became active for a short period of time. On the one hand, the

29 Narrative on Southern Africa Organizing in Western Michigan 1976-1979, August 29, 1979, AFSC, 1979, Southern Africa Program, Regional offices: Dayton, Western Michigan; AFSC Southern Africa Summer Feedback Form, June 24, 1978, AFSC, 1978 PED Program Resources Southern Africa, Projects: Southern Africa Summer Reports/Regional Activity; Memo from Denver Office, April 1, 1980, AFSC, Southern Africa Program 1980 Cont'd, Regional Office: North Central Denver. 30 “U.S. Aid, Corporations Feed Famine, Africans Say,” Tallahassee Democrat, May 13, 1986; AFSC Tour of South 1981 Summary, 1981, AFSC, Southern Africa Program 1981 PED NARMIC Southern Africa, Projects Southern US Tour Jerry Herman.

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tour was a way for the organizers to familiarize themselves with on-the-ground conditions and network with sympathetic politicians. In the visit to Denver, for example, organizers met with

Arie Taylor, an African American who introduced some of the first legislation in the state opposing the sale of Krugerrands; Taylor subsequently submitted legislation for divestment in

1983, setting off a long struggle to divest state and city funds. In turn, organizers discussed techniques of what had worked in other states, discussing successful divestment movements in

Michigan and Connecticut.31

The peace tours developed a broader message throughout the decade in the hopes of

meeting some of the concerns of Americans. Organizers discussed the interconnections in

American foreign policy. By the mid-1980s, speakers focused on the similarities between

support for the Contras in Nicaragua and support for UNITA in Angola, or U.S. aid given to

repressive regimes. One critique that resonated in the Midwest was deindustrialization and the

attacks on unions emanating from the Reagan Administration, and organizers focused on the

departure of jobs to South Africa. In the South, two critiques resonated with audiences,

particularly African Americans. One was the similarities in racism between the American South

and South Africa, which might have been expected. Increasingly through the 1980s, however,

speakers also focused on the military support that flowed to South Africa and its various

sponsored insurgencies, particularly because certain places of the South were either

manufacturing hubs for arms or were ports through which they were shipped.32

31 “Divesting from Apartheid: A Summary of State and Municipal Legislative Action on South Africa.” Accessed February 11, 2019: http://psimg.jstor.org/fsi/img/pdf/t0/10.5555/al.sff.document.acoa000587_final.pdfhttp://psimg.jstor.org/fsi/img/pdf/ t0/10.5555/al.sff.document.acoa000587_final.pdf; AFSC Tour SW 1982, MSU, Carole Collins Papers, Box 5, Folder 11. 32 1986 Tour Evaluation, Amistad, ACOA Addendum, Series 1, Box 68, Folder Africa Peace Tour/Committee, 1986; Africa Peace Tour "Why the People of Pennsylvania and Ohio Should Support Liberation, Peace and Development in Africa", Amistad, Africa Fund, Series 2, Box 81, Projects: Africa Peace Tour, Broches

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Invariably, Peace Tour organizers reported that one of the best characteristics was the

opportunity to actually meet with South Africans. Feedback from the South was especially

consistent on this point; audience reports from Lafayette, Louisiana, Montgomery, Alabama, and

smaller towns in Mississippi were unanimous in their reports that first-hand information was the

most resonant part of the tours for audience members. In some parts of the South where arms

were shipped, for example, activists argued that arms production and transshipment hurt both the

local community and Africa more broadly. Those transnational actors who participated in the

tours were particularly adept at presenting the issues in such a way that audience members could

relate to them, namely by finding different ways to take concrete action against apartheid. In the

words of somebody from Holmes County, Mississippi, "A new consciousness/awareness,

especially those with direct hands-on experience, which helps us in MS to understand that

system of apartheid is not confined to [the] Continent of Africa."33

Creating Groups

Bill Sutherland eventually resigned as Southern Africa representative for AFSC in 1983.

Sutherland’s tenure had never been an entirely comfortable one, as he had a poor relationship

with the South African Quakers; his efforts to prevent an official trip failed in 1980, when an

AFSC delegation finally visited the country. While Sutherland continued to make annual

speaking tours in the United States, he was replaced by Ted Lockwood, whose scope of action

was far more limited. Perhaps in frustration over his limited ability to support the liberation

movements, Lockwood stated that his chief role had mostly been writing letters for the AFSC

Correspondence, Guides, 1992-1990; October 27, 1986, Amistad, ACOA Addendum, Series 1, Box 68, Folder Africa Peace Tour/Committee, 1986. 33 Campaign for a New South Eval, Amistad, ACOA Addendum, Series 1, Box 68, Folder Africa Peace Tour/Committee, 1987; Holmes County, MS, Amistad, ACOA Addendum, Series 1, Box 68, Folder Africa Peace Tour/Committee, 1987; October 27, 1986, Amistad, ACOA Addendum, Series 1, Box 68, Folder Africa Peace Tour/Committee, 1986; Holmes County, MS, Amistad, ACOA Addendum, Series 1, Box 68, Folder Africa Peace Tour/Committee, 1987.

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newsletter in the United States. For the Southern Africa Program, the work largely shifted to

Zimbabwe and providing material assistance to the newly-independent government there.34

The loss of Sutherland as a formal educational resource for AFSC did not meaningfully

shift the group’s activism, because by the early 1980s AFSC as a whole had shifted to an entirely

different model; meaningful support for the liberation movements now came from the regional

offices within the United States. The Seattle office argued that after years of educational

programming their emphasis would be on “direct action.” Because other activist groups

embraced divestment as the best possible course of action, Seattle agreed, and would focus on

finding public sources of funds to remove from South Africa.35

Regional offices elsewhere directed some of the activism aimed at apartheid. In the

South, the Atlanta office assumed primacy in directing regional anti-apartheid activism, and

indeed set much of the national policy within the group. Atlanta’s leadership stemmed from the

hire of a particularly active South African exile, Tandi Gcabashe. Gcabashe was the daughter of

Chief Albert Luthuli and had been educated by American congregationalist (UCC) missionaries

at the Inanda Seminary. She had been politically active in the same way as her father and had

been arrested several times in the 1950s and 1960s. She had chosen to leave South Africa in

1970 and settled on Atlanta because she liked the climate and because of Martin Luther King,

Jr.’s interest in her father. In 1981, she was appointed the head of the Southern Peace Education

Program, giving her responsibility for education in the southeast, a position that she held for the

next fifteen years. When she was hired, she also began recruiting people from Atlanta University

to establish the Southern Africa Support Committee, which later became the Georgia Coalition

34 Hostetter, “Liberation,” 589; Telephone Call from Ted Lockwood, December 1, 1984, AFSC,1984 Africa S TAMAPSA, S Africa IAP Rep: Correspondence #d from. 35 Seattle Southern Africa Program FY 83, 1983, AFSC, 1982 PED Southern Africa, Regional Offices: Pacific Northwest.

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for Divestment in Southern Africa. AFSC financially supported the group at least through 1986,

making their activities in Atlanta possible.36

TransAfrica also became involved in creating local chapters. However, TransAfrica’s

local footprint was weak throughout much of the 1980s. While Robinson was an extremely

capable organizer and could command attention from audiences, attempts to create support

committees at a regional level foundered repeatedly. In describing the Atlanta office, a member

of the group described its inactivity as “embarrassing” and noted that they more or less depended on the office of , an African American state legislator. Things were no better in the

Winston-Salem office in North Carolina, where there was reportedly a lack of membership and motivation as well as a general sense that it was difficult to relate Afro-Caribbean issues to what was going on domestically. By March 1984, a memo in the national office noted that most of the regional offices had stopped submitting reports and had effectively dissolved, and only the D.C. and Boston chapters were still effectively functioning.37

In D.C., Sylvia Hill, Kathy Flewellen, and other members of TransAfrica were

responsible for founding SASP in 1978 to provide material aid to African liberation movements,

including but not limited to South African groups. Clothing and medicines were initially their

chief area of focus, and for the first several years SASP split its efforts between attention to

Angola, Zimbabwe, and South Africa. After 1980, however, SASP’s attention increasingly

turned to apartheid and South Africa. Using D.C. area musicians, particularly go-go groups,

SASP raised thousands of dollars annually for the liberation movements and gradually embedded

36 Interview with Tandi Gcabashe, Wits, A3299, Tape 23; Lauren Moran, “South to Freedom? Anti-Apartheid Activism and Politics in Atlanta, 1976-1990,” (PhD Diss., Georgia State University, 2014), 81, 86. 37 Letter from James Sulton to Jeannen Pridgeon, October 18, 1983, Howard University, TransAfrica, Box 60, Atlanta Support Committee; Report on Winston-Salem Chapter 1983-1984 activities, Howard University, TransAfrica, Box 52, Winston Salem Support Committee; Memo from David Scott to Randall Robinson, March 30, 1984, Howard University, TransAfrica, Box 60, S.C. Meeting, June '84.

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themselves within the district’s African American community. They staged presentations and

discussions in the community to raise awareness of apartheid. In effect, they functioned as a

local arm of TransAfrica, driving a large part of the city’s anti-apartheid movement.38

Direct Action

AFSC’s various chapters carried out a great deal of substantive grassroots activism.

Within Atlanta, Gcabashe and her group focused on the city’s business community. Gcabashe simultaneously ran the AFSC office as well as founding the ANC chapter in Atlanta (there were estimated to be between 200 to 300 South African families living in Atlanta). In 1981, she liaised with faculty members at Atlanta University to form the Georgia Coalition for Divestment. They targeted Mars, Inc., which by 1985 agreed to stop distributing its candies through an independent distributor in South Africa. One considerable advantage open to Gcabashe was the fact that she could leverage support from the state’s civil rights community: participated in the discussions and protests against Mars. Similarly, the Atlanta-based SCLC participated in negotiations with different companies as well as protests against the Krugerrand.39

Perhaps the largest, and also the most difficult, target was the Coca-Cola Corporation. As

one of the city’s biggest and most prominent companies, it was highly visible. It also enjoyed ties

to some of those same civil rights activists, and prominent African American company leaders

such as Carl Ware were active in city life as well as tied to individuals such as Leon Sullivan.

Negotiations with the company proved to be difficult because it outwardly embraced rhetoric

about divestment, though in practice, it had relatively few assets to divest and instead focused on

dominating the South African soft drink market through independent distributors. Gcabashe

maintained a boycott against the company from 1985 to 1993, though the coalition fell apart in

38 Interview with Sylvia Hill, No Easy Victories, http://www.noeasyvictories.org/interviews/int11_hill.php. 39 “Exiles,” The Atlanta Constitution, November 4, 1984; Moran, “South,” 81.

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1987. As has been discussed in prior chapters, boycotts tended to be of very limited success in

affecting businesses. Boycotts against Coke or any of the other Atlanta businesses did not

necessarily have a great impact in changing their business activities in South Africa. However,

they were mobilizing and had a sense of participation that could be useful in keeping people

engaged in thinking about apartheid and remaining aware of the issue, particularly at a critical

time in the mid-1980s.40

Gcabashe used the boycott to generate local interest in apartheid while cultivating

relationships with politicians. Julian Bond, a civil rights leader and state senator, was an early

supporter of divestment, but Gcabashe also befriended Tyrone Brooks, a member of the state

house of representatives. Brooks and Gcabashe communicated with Mel King and Jack Backman

of Massachusetts, who helped them write divestment legislation that they could submit and

offered advice on the best way to lobby for the bill. Unlike Massachusetts, activists in Georgia

never managed to successfully pass a divestment bill, but they developed a statewide lobbying

network that kept trying to pass it year after year.41

In San Francisco, the AFSC launched what became one of the longest-running bank loan campaigns, which became known as “$top Banking on Apartheid.” AFSC worked with a black

South African group called Kopano that was based in California and a coalition of other groups to target the Bank of America, which was one of the largest lenders to the apartheid government.

The group was led by a woman named Miloanne Hecathorn and the group worked through the regional AFSC office. In its first year, the group staged sixty simultaneous pickets of Bank of

America locations; in 1979, one year later, the group was mobilized 2,000 people to leaflet

40 Mark Pendergast, For God, Country, and Coca-Cola, (NY: Basic Books, 2013), 350. 41 Moran, “South,” 121.

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against Bank of America.42 That same year, the group co-sponsored legislation in Berkeley

withdrawing city funds from banks operating in South Africa, fueling long-running divestment

activity in the city. AFSC’s California office eventually withdrew from running the group and

$top Banking on Apartheid continued to protest Bank of America’s until it announced it would

no longer lend to South Africa in 1986. The group merged with other California anti-apartheid groups to provide information on lending.43

In Portland, Oregon, the head of the program Elizabeth Groff, had spent time in West

Africa in the early 1960s (to which she attributed her own interest in opposition to apartheid).

She spent the 1970s working on the bank campaign, with some success in getting National Bank

of Oregon to back away from corporations working in South Africa. However, she also noted the

difficulty of collaborating with the city’s churches, such as the African American Albina

Ministerial Alliance. To improve their working relationship with the city’s African Americaan

community, Groff felt that it was essential to work with the city’s African American community

to provide energy for the movement. Groff recruited a black Portlander and former Peace Corps

member named Avel Gordly to serve as the head of the city’s South Africa program. Gordly

worked with the Black United Front in Portland, which had previously been established to fight

against police harassment and inadequate funding in Portland schools; as a member, she could

encourage group members to support AFSC’s activities, while AFSC provided the administrative

and logistical support to make activism work. One long-term volunteer included the

Zimbabwean student Fungai Kumbula, who coordinated with sympathetic unions on the west coast to send material aid to the liberation movement. Gordly remained as the head of the

42 Timeline of Bay Area Anti-Apartheid Activism, Accessed December 3, 2017: http://kora.matrix.msu.edu/files/50/304/32-130-1ED3-84-SF%20Divestment%20Chronology%20opt.pdf. 43 Stop Banking on Apartheid Newsletter, November 15, 1979, Accessed December 3, 2017: http://kora.matrix.msu.edu/files/50/304/32-130-65E-84-african_activist_archive-a0b4l8-a_12419.pdf

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AFSC’s Southern Africa Program for the 1980s, allowing her to provide leadership once the

FSAM protests began in the city.44

By the early 1980s, legislative action within D.C. was also becoming a possibility. As

early as 1975, the city council had contemplated punitive action against IBM, Motorola and two

other companies because of their poor working conditions for South African laborers. By 1982,

activists in D.C. were emboldened by the passage of pension fund divestment in Philadelphia,

the first major city in the United States to adopt such legislation. Activists in D.C. modeled their

bill on what had been passed in Philadelphia and a new coalition, D.C. Divest formed to push for

divestment of the city’s pension funds, relying on a sympathetic city councilmember, John

Ray.45

Passage of the bill within D.C. was not particularly difficult because of the city’s

sympathetic African American politicians. Sylvia Hill recalls SASP not being particularly

involved in the process of lobbying, though the group’s educational work meant that the crucial

African American constituency already had some awareness of the issue and topic. Furthermore,

SASP produced thousands of signatures and were responsible for organizing public

interest in the issue. However, politicians in the district are restricted from passing legislation

before it can be reviewed by Congress, meaning that the divestment was to come up for review,

and activists feared that it could lead to a veto. The local and national groups joined forces on

this particular issue, both to ensure the passage of divestment in the district and to force a

national conversation about U.S. support for apartheid. Philip Crane of Illinois challenged the

44 Letter to Elizabeth Groff, June 12, 1979, AFSC, 1979, Southern Africa Program, Regional offices: Pacific Northwest-Portland; Report from Buff Groff, May 2, 1979, AFSC, 1979, Southern Africa Program, Regional offices: Pacific Northwest-Portland; Ethan Johnson, “Black Americans and the South African Anti-Apartheid Campaign in Portland, Oregon,” Africology: The Journal of Pan-African Studies, 9 (December 2016): 165. 45 “District of Columbia City Council Considers Action Against Corporations Involved in South Africa,” Accessed April 10, 2017: http://kora.matrix.msu.edu/files/50/304/32-130-195A-84-UN_Unit_on_Apartheid_opt.pdf; John Ray Press Release, January 11, 1983, Howard University, Southern Africa Support Project, Box 3, DC Divestment.

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legality of the divestment but following testimony from D.C.’s leaders declined to pursue a veto.

The D.C. divestment had received support from TransAfrica at the top, including expert

testimony from Randall Robinson. However, SASP had provided much of the infrastructural

support.46

ACOA tapped into this burgeoning interest in and awareness of South Africa, but not

with sanctions in mind. For Jennifer Davis, who assumed an increasingly important role in

ACOA, the function of divestment was to force American companies out of South Africa and

weaken the economy for the apartheid government. In January 1984, Davis wrote to Swedish

anti-apartheid activists and asserted that her hope was not the passage of sanctions so much as

terminating American business support. Creating capital flight was her preferred strategy simply

because it seemed like the easiest path to put pressure on the South African government. Even as

late as 1986, Davis felt that the possibility of sanctions was years or even longer away.47

The group had not invented this particular approach; as discussed in preceding chapters,

Madison and East Lansing had passed divestment ordinances without substantial support from

ACOA. However, while those two cities pointed the way in many regards for those seeking to

break ties with apartheid, there were also limitations that prevented the Madison experience from

simply being transplanted in another city. Both were university cities with large student

populations, which made them uncommonly liberal as well as politically dependent on student

votes. Because the University of Wisconsin and Michigan State University attracted Africanists

46 Interview with Sylvia Hill, No Easy Victories, http://www.noeasyvictories.org/interviews/int11_hill.php; “ACOA Board Meeting Minutes,” December 13, 1983, Accessed April 11, 2017: http://kora.matrix.msu.edu/files/50/304/32- 130-248B-84-PW%20ACOA%20EB%2012-13-83%20opt.pdf; “District Officials Defend S. Africa Ban,” Washington Informer, February 8, 1984. 47 Letter to Peter Weiss, January 21, 1981, Yale Divinity Library, WOA Papers, Box 2, Folder 1; Letter to Lars Hult, January 31, 1984, Amistad, ACOA Addendum, Box 138, Projects/Countries Scandinavian Anti-Apartheid Groups 1969-1984; Letter to Magnus Walan and Mai Palmberg, January 10, 1986, Amistad, ACOA Addendum, Box 138, Projects/Countries Scandinavian Anti-Apartheid Groups 1969-1984.

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and specialists who were interested in apartheid, they also came with supportive constituencies.

Lastly, because they were smaller towns they tended to support divestment more quickly. They

upset business interests less because the amounts of money being divested were small, and were

less likely to have deeply embedded relationships with those businesses. Winning such support

in a large town or at the state level was more difficult. It is noteworthy that while Madison was the first city in the United States to fully divest, activists never managed to make divestment

work at the state level.

In short, to expand divestment work, ACOA and other groups needed to broaden their

base beyond student groups or the few areas such as Madison and East Lansing that had

uncommonly well-developed links to southern Africa. Municipal and state legislators had

already begun working on divestment legislation. Politicians (like Mel King, many of them

African American) and groups existed in different states and cities: Ernest Chambers in

Nebraska and William Dyson in Connecticut were just two of the allies ACOA cultivated to help

expand its divestment work.

Internally, ACOA and the Africa Fund experienced internal changes. George Houser

retired as the executive director of both organizations in 1981. Jennifer Davis succeeded Houser

as the executive director, a decision that was received enthusiastically among staff. By 1980,

Davis noted that there was considerable momentum from student support for divestment, which

gave a mass character to American anti-apartheid activism. State and city divestments targets of

opportunity at that particular moment because sanctions still seemed to be such a remote

possibility.48

48 Letter to Davis from George Houser, May 5, 1981, Amistad, ACOA Addendum, Series 1, Box 54, Folder: Staff Memos/Corr. 1992-1981, 1979; Interview with Jennifer Davis, No Easy Victories, http://www.noeasyvictories.org/interviews/int09_davis.php.

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Dumisani Kumalo, a South African expatriate joined ACOA in this period. Kumalo had

gone to school in Indiana to become a journalist, returned to South Africa but had been forced

into exile in 1977 as the government tightened press restrictions and persecuted unfriendly

journalists. Kumalo chose the United States because he felt that the technology South Africa was

dependent on came from American companies, and because Great Britain reminded him too

much of South Africa. Kumalo had gone to work in New York for the Phelps Stoke Educational

Fund in 1978 and became acquainted with ACOA and the Africa Fund there, where Houser

recruited him to serve as project director for the organization. He also worked as the director of

COBLSA following the departure of Prexy Nesbitt from the organization.49

Kumalo’s work represented ACOA’s new focus and orientation as he traveled to speak

before various groups almost constantly. Rather than focusing in more liberal cities and states,

Kumalo also worked in more conservative parts of the Midwest and South to galvanize

audiences who had previously been uninvolved in South African issues.50 What ACOA did was

to funnel resources, support, testimonials, and materials to these groups to allow them to make a

better case for divestment; Dumisani Kumalo proved to be vitally important in helping pass

divestment laws by spending time with local committees to prepare evidence and testimony.51

Kumalo proved to be extremely talented at forging local coalitions, especially those outside of traditional supporters of anti-apartheid work. He based his work in part on the union organizing done to allow the J.P. Stevens Company in the U.S. to allow its workers in the South to unionize. One lesson in particular that Kumalo highlighted was separating board members or

49 Interview with Dumisani Kumalo, Wits, A3299, Tape 37. 50 Interview with Dumisani Kumalo, No Easy Victories, http://www.noeasyvictories.org/interviews/int14_kumalo.php. 51 “Legislative Action Against Apartheid: A Case of the Connecticut Campaign,” Amistad, COBLSA, Series 2, Box 8, Folder: ACOA, Correspondence, Press Releases, Newsletters.

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power brokers from the rest of the group and lobbying them directly. Jennifer Davis felt that he

was particularly talented at reaching out to Republicans in part because he isolated the more left-

wing aspects of the anti-apartheid movement, particularly by working through multiracial

coalitions or restricting the criticism of South Africa on racial lines. According to Davis, Kumalo

recognized that divestment could not be won solely by African American politicians and

constituencies and had to develop partnerships with white communities.52

Supporters of divestment, however, faced a hurdle. Investors always seek to minimize

financial loss, but for public entities and particularly governments laws usually exist that

mandate state investment boards to seek the best profits whenever possible. Arguments about

divestment became difficult in the economy of the late 1970s and 1980s. Under some

circumstances, divestiture actually turned a profit for institutions, but this depended on

conditions in the stock market. ACOA’s research department created guides on divesting with

minimal loss and avoiding transaction costs associated with selling stock.53

ACOA also continued to argue against the Sullivan Principles, which were often introduced as a potential alternative to complete divestment. Davis and others contended that the

Sullivan Principles offered no substantive benefit to black South Africans because the companies infrequently abided by the codes they signed. Rather than reforming South African laws, the

Sullivan Principles accommodated them and created no impetus for the apartheid government to end apartheid. By the mid-1980s, Sullivan publicly acknowledged that his principles were poorly enforced and that the South African government was not reforming.54

52 Interview with Dumisani Kumalo, No Easy Victories, http://www.noeasyvictories.org/interviews/int14_kumalo.php; Interview with Jennifer Davis, No Easy Victories, http://www.noeasyvictories.org/interviews/int09_davis.php. 53 “Oregon's South Africa-Divestment Law Contested,” The Oregonian, August 14, 1988. 54 Memo to GM Board of Directors, May 20, 1985, Emory University, Leon Sullivan Papers, Box 57, May-June 1985.

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ACOA and the Africa Fund became involved in a few ways in supporting these local

movements’ fight for divestment. One way was to simply provide written materials that argued

for divestment, which ACOA/AF could do through their various researchers. The anti-apartheid committee at University of California-Santa Cruz had gotten its start using ACOA’s materials.55

ACOA also worked as a kind of clearinghouse for connections between anti-apartheid activists, a

valuable service given that these groups frequently had no kind of connection to one another. As

an example, members of a Dartmouth University divestment group were connected with the

organizers of a successful divestment at Hampshire College.56

Dumisani also worked closely with students and participated in university tours. These tours were financially supported by the various churches ACOA was affiliated with, such as

UCC. Notwithstanding the energy students brought to anti-apartheid causes, he noted that most of the groups had been recently organized and benefitted from relatively expertise in the issues.

ACOA literature was an important tool in organizing these groups, but what they needed were periodic visits to help orient them. For example, the Sullivan Principles were a stumbling block for students because they could weaken arguments for divestment. Accordingly, Dumisani impressed on student groups the significance of ignoring resolutions dealing with a company’s treatment of black workers because discussions would invariably obscure the issue of total divestment. On that same tour in 1979, Kumalo visited close to thirty universities or colleges.57

To better coordinate and support the burgeoning student movement, ACOA hired Joshua

Nessen to coordinate among college and university groups. Nessen had worked on the first

55 Interview with Jennifer Davis, No Easy Victories, http://www.noeasyvictories.org/interviews/int09_davis.php. 56 Letter to and from William Toman, January 30, 1978, Amistad, ACOA Addendum, Series 2, Box 105, Projects: Divestiture, 1978. 57 Report on 10-week tour of United States, Amistad, ACOA Addendum, Series 2, Box 98, Bank Campaign 1980- 1979.

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successful divestment of a school at Hampshire College in 1977, and he monitored the incredibly

porous student movement. Nessen’s own hope in the movement was to link the struggle against

apartheid to struggles against exploitative capitalism and domestic racism, creating student

consciousness around a variety of issues. ACOA used Nessen to oversee the implementation of

university divestments because student groups were poorly suited to oversight simply because of

student turnover. ACOA organized conferences in conjunction with the UN Center Against

Apartheid to familiarize student activists with how best to accomplish their own divestments.58

In addition to logistical support for committees, members of ACOA also directly lobbied politicians to vote for divestment bills, or to avoid divestment bills that only targeted non- signatories of the Sullivan Principles. Both Jennifer Davis and Dumisani Kumalo repeatedly testified in hearings before legislators. Reports from legislative sponsors frequently noted that their paired testimony was instrumental in persuading wavering legislators to support divestment; in Pittsburgh, for example, city councilmen backed divestment because of Kumalo.

Davis recalled that their division of labor focused on him cultivating the connections and maintaining the coalitions on a state-by-state basis, while because of her background in economics she was often called in to testify and convince legislators who wanted more technical

information about South Africa. Yet they also framed it in emotive terms. In testimony before

the Pennsylvania House of Representatives Finance Committee, Davis deemphasized the ANC’s

links to communism and emphasizing the of Lutheran pastors.59

58 “Interview with Joshua Nessen,” Tony Vellela, New Voices: Student Activism in the ‘80s and ‘90s, (Boston: South End Press, 1988), 33-36; 1981 Annual ACOA Report, Accessed December 11, 2017: http://kora.matrix.msu.edu/files/50/304/32-130-ACA-84-AA%20ACOA%20AR81%20opt.pdf. 59 “Letter to Assemblyman Alister McAlister,” April 20, 1980, Amistad, ACOA Addendum, Series 2, Box 106, Projects: Divestment Actions, 1983-1980; Letter from Tom Fitzgerald, January 18, 1985, Amistad, ACOA Addendum, Box 110, Projects Divestment, Pennsylvania 1987-1984; Letter from Richard Roper and Ciro Scalera, March 24, 1986, Amistad, ACOA Addendum, Series 2, Box 105, Projects: Divestiture, 1990-1986; Report to COBLSA Affiliates on Bank Loan Campaign Activities since July 1979, Amistad, COBLSA, Box 8, Folder: Chicago Coalition on Southern Africa Report; Interview with Jennifer Davis, No Easy Victories,

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One of ACOA’s most significant actions was putting together conferences for state and municipal legislators to build connections between participants and reflect on tactics that been effective in prior divestment campaigns. The first such conference was held in June of 1981, with funding from the UN Special Committee on Apartheid. Forty legislators attended, representing fourteen states as well as representatives from trade unions, investors working in social responsibility, and members of the various activist coalitions. Sessions focused on ways to best prepare legislators for pushing divestment bills to passage as quickly as possible, which meant familiarizing them with arguments for and against divestment. Some of the presentations educated attendees about life under apartheid, but there were sessions on the Sullivan Principles, the role of U.S. banks in lending to the apartheid government, and the imperatives for U.S. economic withdrawal.60

The New York conference proved to be very successful and was the first of a series that

brought legislators from around the country and gave them step-by-step instructions on submitting divestment legislation and what had been successful for other states. A subsequent conference was organized in 1983 in Boston, against with the support of the UN Center Against

Apartheid, and drew in an even greater number of legislators, close to two hundred. Jennifer

Davis recalled that each of the invited legislators submitted or sponsored legislation after attending. Within two years, the number of states that had divested went from just one to eleven, including Colorado, Minnesota, , and North Dakota, in addition to a number of city and

county divestments. ACOA even supplied model draft bills for legislators to use or provide

http://www.noeasyvictories.org/interviews/int09_davis.php; Statement Before the House Finance Committee Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, , 1984, accessed April 8, 2019: http://kora.matrix.msu.edu/files/50/304/32- 130-CCF-84-al.sff.document.acoa000613.pdf. 60 “Minutes from Final Plenary of Conference Against Investment in South Africa,” June 13, 1981, Amistad, ACOA Addendum, Series 2, Box 107, Project: Campaign to Oppose Investment National Conference 1981; “Report on Conference on Public Investment and South Africa,” Accessed November 29, 2016: http://kora.matrix.msu.edu/files/50/304/32-130-1018-84-GMH%20ACOA%20PubInvConRpt.pdf

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editorial feedback for legislators to ensure that their divestment bills would be both of sufficient

strength as well as financially sound.61

ACOA’s efforts to support divestment also relied on extensive lobbying, which was

accomplished through the network of religious activists ACOA could draw upon. In New York,

New Jersey, and Wisconsin, the Catholic hierarchy of the states endorsed divestment. The

Lutherans proved to be particularly important in the Midwest. According to Kumalo, they

focused on the suffering of Lutheran Christians in Namibia and South Africa, and without them

it would not have been possible to divest in Nebraska or Minnesota.62

Over time, ACOA increasingly focused not only on states, but individual cities as well.

Attention to city politics was as much a practical consideration as any other: Jennifer Davis

noted that while state divestment tended to be a two to three-year campaign, city divestment of

pension funds could be accomplished in as little as a year. Philadelphia was the first major

American city to pass city divestment bill, in 1982, a major victory for divestment proponents

because it was also the home of Leon Sullivan. ACOA also pushed for selective purchasing

contracts, successfully lobbying for a selective purchasing law in . In New York,

ACOA functioned more like a local committee, directly leading citywide divestment in

conjunction with local labor and church leaders. Selective purchasing proved to be very effective

in New York in leading companies to break ties with South Africa. After selective purchasing

was enacted, three of the last banks making loans to South Africa, Morgan Guaranty Trust,

61 ACOA Annual Report 1983, Accessed December 10, 2017: http://kora.matrix.msu.edu/files/50/304/32-130-ACB- 84-32-130-ACB-84-al.sff.document.acoa000078.pdf; Letter to Abdennour Abrous, September 26, 1984, Amistad, ACOA Addendum, Series 2, Box 85, United Nations: NGOs, 1984, 1978; “Make It in Massachusetts, Not in SA: How We Won Legislation by Mass Divest,” Amistad, COBLSA, Box 8, Folder: ACOA, Correspondence, Press Releases, Newsletters. 62 “Letter to Abdennour Abrous,” Amistad, ACOA Addendum, Series 2, Box 85, United Nations: NGOs, 1984, 1978; Interview with Dumisani Kumalo, No Easy Victories, http://www.noeasyvictories.org/interviews/int14_kumalo.php.

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Citibank, and Manufacturers Hanover liquidated their loans in South Africa and decided to ban

any future loans as well.63

Free South Africa Movement

TransAfrica’s work changed dramatically in 1984 because of the advent of the Free

South Africa Movement (FSAM). On November 21, Randall Robinson, Congressman Walter

Fauntroy, and visited the South African embassy conducted a sit-in which

led to their arrest. Robinson chose to do a sit-in without consulting other groups (reportedly

angering members of his own board, who were notified by telephone call as the sit-in was taking place), and his timing proved to be shrewd: as the arrests occurred the day before Thanksgiving, a slow day in the news cycle and they reported on the front page of .

Robinson and the others announced the formation of FSAM after their arrest and listed three demands: the release of all black political prisoners in South Africa, a power-sharing agreement between the liberation movements and the South African government, and the end of Ronald

Reagan’s policy of .64

Robinson’s goal was to use civil disobedience to drive sanctions legislation through

Congress. Unlike in 1979 when Robinson had difficulty mobilizing the CBC into action on

Rhodesian sanctions, Robinson found it comparably easy to motivate members into action.

Members of the CBC made themselves highly visible in protests while simultaneously

sponsoring sanctions legislation. In the new political climate of FSAM, these hearings attracted

more attention that the work done by Charles Diggs a decade earlier.65

63 “Letter to Abdennour Abrous,” Amistad, ACOA Addendum, Series 2, Box 85, United Nations: NGOs, 1984, 1978; “Divesting from Apartheid,” Accessed December 1, 2016: http://kora.matrix.msu.edu/files/50/304/32-130- CB5-84-al.sff.document.acoa000587.pdf; “Memo on Municipal Divestment Campaign,” June 19, 1985, Amistad, ACOA Addendum, Series 2, Box 86, UN Center Against Apartheid, 1985-1982. 64 Nesbitt, Race, 125. 65 Robinson, Defending, 155.

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The publicity around FSAM reenergized the U.S. anti-apartheid movement. Public

interest owed in part to the growing intransigence of the apartheid government, which had passed largely symbolic reforms in 1983 that had only fueled protest in South Africa. In addition, the sit-ins evoked the U.S. civil rights movement. The effect was a dramatic one as FSAM groups and movements sprung up across the United States, while preexisting TransAfrica chapters leapt into recurring protests. Many demonstrations centered around the presence of South African consulates or honorary consulates, which the South African government had organized in numerous American cities as part of a broader propaganda effort. In Boston, Willard Johnson rapidly organized protests first aimed at the South African honorary consulate there, coordinating with Mayor Raymond Flynn, Mel King, and other TransAfrica members to publicize protests.

The consul resigned immediately, while protests shifted to the Krugerrand dealerships in the city, some of which, such as Deak Perrera, had a strong national footprint. Those protests lasted for close to a full year before Deak Perrera agreed to terminate its sales in August 1985. Johnson sustained this network by reaching out to groups in Boston, including such white groups as the

South Shore Irish Community or the Unitarian Universalist Association.66

FSAM’s national presence in January of 1985 indicated how quickly it spread across the

country. Members of FSAM in New York were arrested two hundred times in daily

demonstrations; Chicago, Seattle, and Houston had weekly demonstrations, and several other cities such as Portland, Minneapolis, and Los Angeles held less frequent but still regular demonstrations. Several of these places had had relatively moribund TransAfrica committees

prior to this point as well, indicating how important FSAM was to reenergizing the larger

national movement. WOA’s Educational Fund produced research for FSAM, leading to

66 Johnson, 14.

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Robinson referring to it as the organization’s research arm. AFSC’s leadership wrote to

Robinson in the wake of FSAM’s announcement to say that they were planning to expand their

own southern Africa program in response to the public outcry over FSAM. Furthermore, FSAM

drew in outside groups such as the SCLC. , the executive director of SCLC, was

arrested at the South African embassy in Washington, D.C., and afterward SCLC organized

protests and demonstrations outside of South African consulates in Birmingham, New Orleans,

Mobile, and elsewhere.67

While groups such as ACOA remained more closely focused on the state and city divestment movement, that movement also gained strength from 1984 onward. By 1986, the

number of divestments increased to seventeen states, sixty cities, and nine counties, not including

universities or other institutions. For Dumisani Kumalo or Jennifer Davis, their measure of

success was capital flight from South Africa, and they met with success in this period: seven

companies withdrew in 1984, followed by thirty-nine in 1985, and another twenty-four in 1986.

These withdrawals hurt the South African balance of payments, and more seriously, worsened

consumer and investor expectations about the strength of the South African economy. However,

this work also had the effect of building networks within states that could lobby for other

issues.68

The Peace Tours gained political significance by the middle of the 1980s, as the prospect

of enacting comprehensive sanctions against South Africa became a real possibility. However,

67 FSAM January 4, 1985 Update, January 4, 1985, Howard University, Southern Africa Support Project, Box 10/2002 3, FSAM; Form Letter from Randall Robinson, February 14, 1986, Howard University, TransAfrica, Box 62, February 1986; Letter from Joe Volk to Randall Robinson, January 23, 1985, Howard University, TransAfrica, Box 22, January 1985; SCLC Chronology of Events in SA, Emory University, SCLC, Box 221, Chronology of SCLC Involvement in South Africa 1962-1986. 68 Public Investment and South Africa Newsletter #6, March 1986, Accessed December 17, 2017: http://kora.matrix.msu.edu/files/50/304/32-130-CEE-84-AA%20ACOA%20PISA%203-86%20opt.pdf; Overseas Development Institute, “Sanctions and the South African Economy,” December 1986, Accessed April 8, 2019: https://www.odi.org/sites/odi.org.uk/files/odi-assets/publications-opinion-files/6704.pdf.

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the passage of sanctions depended on coalitions in traditionally red states, and as have been

noted, those same states generally had weak anti-apartheid groups and structures. Peace tours,

however, tended to revitalize them, at least temporarily. Each destination in a given tour relied

on some local organizers to pull together events, and these people often took over activism in the

area in the wake of a visit. The 1986 report from the peace tour noted that in Kansas and Indiana,

on-the-ground activity had been weak prior to the tour. Following the visit, organizers in

Indianapolis became two of the state’s most active supporters for sanctions. Those organizers

went to work convincing , a Republican senator in the state, to support overturning

Reagan’s veto of the sanctions bill. There is evidence that the continual pressure it generated

wore down more conservative congressmen: by 1985, Richard Lugar was publicly complaining

that he could not attend his children’s baseball games without being accosted by constituents

about his stance on apartheid.69

However, it is a mistake to attribute solely FSAM’s grassroots success to TransAfrica. To be sure, both the D.C. and Boston chapters were extremely active and successful in the sense of organizing people to participate, but they built off of preexisting groups or independent coalitions. Similarly, Chicago, Seattle, Portland, and Los Angeles had developed their own coalitions that were independent of TransAfrica, some of which have been explored elsewhere in this dissertation. Chicago’s protests relied on TransAfrica coordinating with Jeremiah Wright, who was the pastor at Trinity UCC and had already been involved in southern Africa activism for a decade. The Bay Area in California had a vigorous FSAM chapter that pushed through divestment in Oakland and at the port, but it also relied on an independently motivated labor

69 Urdang, Mapping, 173.

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movement, the ILWU 10, to generate publicity, and it built off of attention from the struggle to

divest the UC system in Berkeley. In short, FSAM built off of established activist groups.70

Activist groups debated the best way to proceed with how to break ties with South Africa.

Randall Robinson’s preference was to continue with the kinds of high-profile actions, boycotts, and sit-ins that he conducted effectively. Consequently, he planned a boycott of Shell Oil in 1985 because of its ongoing presence in South Africa. On the face of it, it was an attractive campaign: foreign oil was vital to the apartheid government’s survival, and Randall had participated in similar boycotts against Gulf Oil for its presence in Angola during the war against the

Portuguese. However, Davis was not interested in targeting an individual corporation, especially because she was doubtful whether a boycott could materially affect Shell. Prior boycotts had historically been ineffective in hurting a company’s bottom line. The planning for the Shell

Boycott had also been done without input from other anti-apartheid organizations.71

Robinson also alienated certain activists in no small part because he claimed much of the

credit for TransAfrica in the broader anti-apartheid movement. In communication with the

United Mine Workers, Jennifer Davis noted that Robinson claimed credit for the congressional

action to date while ignoring the contributions of state coalitions and other groups. Writing

retrospectively, Robinson argued that the work of WOA lobbying Congress only enhanced

public education, while the research materials produced by ACOA “sharpened public advocacy”

but accomplished little else. Davis in turn preferred to focus on continuing divestment campaigns

at the state and city level. ACOA’s own publications referred to FSAM as a kind of “moral

outrage” and that the student protests were an effective way to channel that into action. Sylvia

70 Interview with Cheryl Johnson-Odim. 71 Letter from Mark K. Stone, March 6, 1986, Amistad, ACOA Addendum, Series 2, Box 102, Shell Boycott 1989- 1986.

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Hill responded angrily in one letter, saying “This is the kind of characterization that really sows

seeds of conflict within the anti-apartheid struggle.”72

There were practical problems in sustaining this activism as well. Coordinating the

struggle from the national stage was especially difficult because many of the groups lacked

stable sources of funding. The national committees had never enjoyed stable funding to begin

with: ACOA’s budget declined from the 1960s through the 1970s, and at one point in 1980 was

operating on a $12,000 deficit. Reduced funding was owed in part to a conservative backlash in

American Christian churches, many of which became increasingly uncomfortable funding

groups which supported violent liberation movements or appeared to dabble in liberal or left-

wing politics. The Episcopal Church temporarily withdrew from funding WOA for precisely this

reason, and even as FSAM gave new life to local activism the national groups continued to want

for money. By December 1985, WOA was in financial crisis.73

One important monetary stopgap emerged in the form of the song “.” The song

was the brainchild of , who admittedly held little direct connection to apartheid;

he freely admitted that his introduction to apartheid had been ’s “Biko” and was

initially interested because of the similarities between the Bantustans and Native American

reservations. Van Zandt had earlier connected with the journalist Danny Schechter, whose

involvement in the Africa Research Group had been part of the information campaign in the anti-

apartheid movement. Schechter had become a broadcast journalist with the program 20/20, and

when van Zandt told him about the idea, Schechter pushed him to think of the song as a protest-

72 Letter to Nomonde Ngubo, September 1985, Amistad, ACOA Addendum, Series 2, Box 84, United Mine Workers; Robinson, Defending, 143; Letter from Sylvia Hill, June 20, 1985, Amistad, ACOA Addendum, Series 2, Box 82, SASP 1989-1985. 73 Letter to Howard Samuel, October 7, 1980, Amistad, ACOA Addendum, Series 1, Box 68, Folder African American Labor Center, 1988-1980; Letter from Episcopal Church, March 21, 1984, Amistad, ACOA Addendum, Series 2, Box 91, Washington Office on Africa, 1984; Form Letter from Randall Robinson, February 14, 1986, Howard University, TransAfrica, Box 62, February 1986.

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driven song that would be modeled on “We Are the World” but would criticize the United States,

and ’s policy of constructive engagement in particular. Van Zandt wrote the song

that became “Sun City,” and the two men began recruiting musicians to appear in the song and

music video. Because it was deemed essential to recruit as many African American musicians as

possible, the song was supposed to draw on hip-hop as well as rock; ultimately, the single

attracted fifty-four musicians and necessitated the creation of a full .74

ACOA and the Africa Fund became involved in the production of the record because

Schechter and van Zandt wanted to coordinate with the U.S. anti-apartheid movement. Initially,

optimism about the impact of the record was rather limited. Jennifer Davis, who was responsible

for coordinating with van Zandt and Schechter felt that the song would be unlikely to make

money, but agreed to distribute the proceeds from the record, with a third of the funds going to

support for South African political prisoners, a third going to supporting the education of

refugees, and the remaining third going to anti-apartheid groups in the United States.75

“Sun City” was not a success on the scale of “We Are the World.” Many of the musicians

involved attributed the song’s restrained success to the song’s explicitly political content, which

criticized Ronald Reagan and U.S. foreign policy. It only rose to #38 on the U.S. Billboard

charts, though it did better overseas. Van Zandt also noted that the song’s weak charting in the

United States was likely a consequence of the fact that it defied easy classification into one

genre: it was neither hip-hop, nor rock. “Sun City” was also not the first song to call attention to

apartheid; both Gil Scott-Heron and Peter Gabriel had written songs about apartheid almost a

decade earlier. However, those songs had focused on the horrors of apartheid, whereas “Sun

74 Danny Schechter, The More You Watch, The Less You Know, (New York: Seven Stories Press, 1999), 287-288. 75 Staff Meeting Notes, September 12, 1985, Amistad, ACOA Addendum, Series 1, Box 58, Staff Meetings 1985- 1980.

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City” invited the listener to consider how U.S. support for apartheid sustained repression in

South Africa.

Yet the song provided more publicity for the issues at stake, and at a time when the

added attention was necessary for many anti-apartheid groups. Even considering the difficulty it had getting airplay, it was a major song with considerable visibility. PBS’ refusal to air the making-of documentary, prompted suspicion that the Reagan administration had pressured the network. The Africa Fund used the song and the resulting album as part of a kit for teachers, materials which proved to be popular in high school classrooms.76

While the funds raised from the project were not on par with the other superstar celebrity

collaborations of the 1980s, the funds were significant. By the end of 1986, proceeds from the

project raised $110,000 for refugee work being done by the ANC. Other beneficiaries included

the South African Council of Churches, which received $50,000 in 1986. Moreover, the proceeds

were offered on an annual basis, and while the royalty payments diminished over time, the

money nevertheless represented a permanent pipeline to the liberation movements. Perhaps more

significant was the money that was made available for anti-apartheid groups. ACOA and

TransAfrica also received money for operational expenses, with $58,399 going to TransAfrica and $58,282 going to ACOA. Van Zandt requested that $50,000 be distributed through the WCC

to European anti-apartheid groups in 1987. These funds gave anti-apartheid groups a critical

margin of support as they lobbied for sanctions.77

76 Letter from Danny Goldberg, November 7, 1986, Amistad, Africa Fund, Series 2, Box 163, Sun City Correspondence and Photograph 1986; Letter to AUAA, March 11, 1987, Amistad, Africa Fund, Series 2, Box 163, Sun City Correspondence and News Clippings 1986. 77 Letter to Oliver Tambo, December 31, 1986, Amistad, Africa Fund, Series 2, Box 163, Sun City 1986; Letter to Beyers Naude, December 31, 1986, Amistad, ACOA Addendum, Series 1, Box 65, Folder South African Council of Churches, 1987-1986; Grants and Projects 1986, Amistad, Africa Fund, Series 1, Box 4, BOT Meetings and Notices 1986; Memo from Danny Schechter, Received February 25, 1987, Amistad, Africa Fund, Series 2, Box 162, Sun City Correspondence and Records.

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Passing Sanctions

Sanctions had been the ultimate goal of many American activists, even if it had long been regarded as a pipe dream. FSAM, however, had reignited legislative interest in the possibility of sanctions. Ron Dellums had spent the 1980s gradually prioritizing his desires for sanctions into a series of demands, with the highest priorities being an end to bank loans and the termination of all trade between the two countries. Dellums had in large part rallied the CBC to support the bill, though the caucus also backed more moderate legislation from William Gray of Pennsylvania.

White allies in the Democratic Party signed on to support this bill. Some of them, like Howard

Wolpe, had been state legislators who supported liberation activism and were then elected to

Congress, while others were liberals who took relatively little persuading to support the bill.

ACOA, TransAfrica, the Washington Office on Africa, and AFSC had testified often in

Congress, particularly before the House Subcommittee on African Affairs (Howard Wolpe was the chair of that subcommittee), and were aware of who they could count on as allies within

Congress. WOA had been involved in each of the sanctions fights prior to 1986, and in 1985 the head of WOA, Jean Sindab, outlined her strategy with Randall Robinson. TransAfrica would take the lead on coordinating protests, while WOA would handle legislative input and set strategy for the passage of a law.78

By 1984, however, Republicans abandoned in growing numbers the executive branch’s

position on South Africa. Waning support was the result of the obstinate nature of the apartheid

government, whose reforms were transparently superficial and which became progressively more

heavy-handed in its treatment of dissidents through the 1980s. The apartheid government’s

blatant racism became more difficult to apologize for or excuse, especially in light of its visible

78 Nesbitt, Race, 139; Letter to Randall Robinson from Jean Sindab, January 7, 1985, Yale Divinity Library, WOA, Box 18, Folder 145.

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intransigence. Support worsened in light of the apartheid government’s declaration of a state of emergency in July 1985. To a certain extent, apartheid in some ways became an easier issue for some Republicans to discuss because it lacked nuances that made other issues more complicated.

Mitch McConnell explicitly stated as such, noting that it was much easier to discuss apartheid than quotas.79

This attitude put the Reagan administration increasingly on the defensive about constructive engagement and its relationship to the apartheid government. A sanctions bill was introduced in 1985, but it faced opposition from Republicans who feared that the bill would be too drastic and hesitated to defy their own president. The bill passed the house with broad support, 295-127, though a provision from Dellums asking that all U.S. investments be terminated was withdrawn. However, successfully guiding a sanctions bill through the House presented less of an obstacle because the Democrats maintained a majority there. Republicans’ six seat majority in the Senate better positioned them to control the pace of debate.80

The Senate passed a compromised sanctions bill on July 11 in the hope that Reagan would accept moderate sanctions that included a ban on the sale of certain kinds of technology and the prohibition of future investment at the president’s discretion. In response, the White

House issued its own set of sanctions on September 9 which omitted any prohibition of future investments or the end of Krugerrand sales. Simultaneously, Reagan stated that he would veto harsher sanctions. A Republican filibuster in the Senate ultimately delayed a vote when

Democrats failed to produce enough votes to override it, though they succeeded in winning some

79 Charles Stevenson, America’s Foreign Policy Toolkit: Key Institutions and Processes, (Washington, D.C.: CQ Press, 2012), 115-116. 80 “House Votes Sanctions Against South Africa,” The Courier-News, June 6, 1985.

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Republicans to invoke cloture. Notably, Reagan’s own proposed sanctions had been suggested to

him by Richard Lugar of Indiana; Reagan had been disinclined to enact sanctions at all.81

Initially, there was some hope among Republicans that Reagan’s actions might quiet anti-

apartheid protest in the United States, and activity in Congress slowed in the early part of 1986.

However grassroots interest in South Africa did not diminish in 1986. If anything, American

interest was stoked because of the worsening security situation in South Africa following the

declaration of the State of Emergency. Despite South African attempts to create a media

blackout, word of South African police brutality continually leaked out of the country, aided in

part by South African churches passing along word of conditions in the country.82

WOA worked intensively to shape the passage of anti- in 1986. The

office held off on pushing for a sanctions bill until March because they believed it would

overshadow and subsequently stifle any legislation on Angola. Beginning in March, members of

WOA began meeting with Stephen Solarz, William Gray, Howard Wolpe, and Ron Dellums,

pushing for an end to investment and total divestment within three years. Throughout the

legislative process, they collaborated with sympathetic congressmen to include amendments to

strengthen any legislation as well as to kill harmful amendments, providing data and fact sheets

for floor speeches, and led demonstrations to demand sanctions. WOA also liaised with a number

of other groups. The Churches’ Emergency Committee on South Africa (CECSA) was organized

by a number of mainstream Protestant denominations in 1985. WOA cooperated with CECSA to

lobby for sanctions, leading briefings with approximately two hundred leaders in Washington on

81 “Senate Refuses to Vote on South Africa Sanctions,” The Palm Post, September 15, 1985; Robert Ansah- Birikorang, “A Case Study of the Role of the African Affairs Sub-Committee of the House Foreign Affairs Committee in Shaping U.S. Foreign Policy towards South Africa, 1981-1992,” (PhD Diss., Howard University, 2002); “Congress is Urged to Put Sanctions on South Africa,” The New York Times, July 28, 1985. 82 Interview with Gretchen Eick, February 17, 2017.

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the eve of the debates in the House of Representatives. WOA also collaborated with other

sympathetic lobbying bodies. UCC for example had a staff person dedicated to foreign policy

issues at its Office of Church and Society, Gretchen Eick. WOA collaborated with Eick while

using UCC’s network to push for a yes vote on sanctions from vulnerable senators.83

When a new sanctions bill was introduced in May of 1986 that strengthened the sanctions passed the previous year, Dellums once again introduced an amendment calling for a trade embargo and divestment. This motion was devised with the help of WOA staff members, who also prepared supporting arguments and wrote amendments to strengthen the legislation. The end result was a bill that would have terminated virtually all economic activity with South Africa.

Surprisingly, Dellums’ motion was allowed to stand, in part because some Republican members

of the House assumed the bill was too radical for the Senate to accept. Mark Siljander of

Michigan predicted that the bill would divide the Senate and prevent the passage of any

sanctions, and the bill passed on June 18.84

They miscalculated, however, in part because two years of visible criticism of the

administration for its policies on South Africa had moved many Republicans who might

otherwise have sided with Reagan to a pro-sanctions position, albeit reluctantly. While many

senators did not endorse the vision of total sanctions proposed by Dellums, they accepted the

need to pass more punitive sanctions than they had discussed previously. Senate Majority Leader

Bob Dole attributed his support for sanctions to the violence perpetrated by the apartheid

83 Staff Meeting 2/24/86, February 24, 1986, Yale Divinity Library, WOA Papers, Box 2, Folder 14; WOA Annual Report, 1986, Yale Divinity Library, WOA Papers, Box 1, Folder 8; Memo from Rosemari Mealy to CECSA Members, April 2, 1986, Yale Divinity Library, WOA Papers, Box 2, Folder 6; Gretchen Eick Report November 20- 22 1986, United Church of Christ Archive, UCC 2002.20.29, Unlabeled folder. 84 WOA Internal Memorandum re: legislative work, June 26, 1986, Amistad, ACOA Addendum, Box 90, WOA 1987- 1986; “House Would Require U.S. Disinvestment from South Africa,” The Washington Post, June 19, 1986.

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government even though he believed that sanctions would disproportionately hurt black South

Africans.85

Republican members of Congress hoped to defuse some of the push for sanctions with a

gesture by the executive branch, and possibly to quiet the state and city divestment movements.

Richard Lugar, Nancy Kassebaum, and others urged Reagan to condemn South Africa publicly

in the hope of forestalling comprehensive sanctions, and Lugar still publicly maintained that he

doubted sanctions would be economically damaging. Reagan responded to this new bill with a

speech on July 23, 1986 that was not his fellow Republicans were hoping for. His speech

criticized apartheid, but also focused on the acts of terror committed by the African National

Congress, and repeated the argument that sanctions would disproportionately hurt black South

Africans. Lugar and others were left disappointed by this speech, saying that it offered nothing

new in terms of solutions. It coincided with the news of a trade agreement to increase South

African textile exports to the United States, which reinforced the idea that the Reagan

Administration was indifferent to apartheid.86

In conjunction with the lobbying going on in these senators’ home states, Republican

leaders shifted and openly supported sanctions. Members of WOA met with Lugar and

Kassebaum to debate which sanctions they felt would be politically acceptable. Lugar introduced

a senate resolution to adopt sanctions against the South African government and committed to

passing the strongest resolutions he felt could overcome a veto override. In August, multiple bills were under discussion in the Senate. Debate over the particulars of the sanctions was considerable, as Democrats proposed more punitive measures while a few allies of the apartheid

85 Letter from Bob Dole, September 23, 1986, Howard University, TransAfrica, Box 54, October 1986. 86 “Transcript of Talk By Reagan on South Africa and Apartheid,” The New York Times, July 23, 1986; Birikorang, “Case Study” 100.

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government such as Jesse Helms introduced language to penalize the ANC. Edward Kennedy

and Alan Cranston of Pennsylvania submitted their own bills to include their own harsher

sanctions in whatever final bill was passed. Testimony by Secretary of State George Schulz

pleading for no new sanctions was met with derision, with Kassebaum singling out Schulz’s

rhetoric as “convoluted.” CECSA and a number of other anti-apartheid groups sent individuals to

testify before Congress again. After receiving certain amendments which strengthened the bill, it passed the Senate and needed to be reconciled with the bill that had passed the House.87

In conference, House leaders agreed to support the Lugar bill, sacrificing some of their

more punitive sanctions, in exchange for Lugar’s commitment to passing sanctions regardless of

whether the White House vetoed the bill or adopted sanctions through an executive order.

Dellums’ bill was ultimately withdrawn in order to secure Lugar’s support. However, House

leaders as well as activists lobbied to ensure Lugar did not weaken the bill substantially, or

undermine the state and city movements. Lugar argued that federal law would supersede state

and city laws government divestment; ACOA stopped by organizing some of Lugar’s

constituents and others to oppose this proposal while WOA gained supporters in the Senate to

oppose Lugar’s motion. The conference ultimately included language with the bill to protect

state and local laws.88

The bill then went to the White House on September 15, which vetoed the bill on

September 26, hours before it was supposed to be signed into law. The veto had been anticipated

by both activists and politicians, and activists began one last round of pressure to ensure that the

bill was signed into law. Lobbying to sustain the veto came to nothing. Part of this inefficacy

87 Birikorang, “Case Study,” 102. 88 Birikorang, “Case Study,” 105; ACOA Press Release 10/23/86, MSU, MSS 258, Box, State of Michigan Divestment 1985; Letter to Carl Levin, September 11, 1986, Yale Divinity Library, WOA, Box 19, Folder 153.

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was the ineffectiveness of South African diplomacy: a call from South Africa’s foreign minister

to various senators threatening to end imports of American grain if the veto were overridden was

perceived as a clumsy threat.89 The Congressional Research Service also noted that the domestic forces opposing sanctions acted weakly to sustain the veto. Business groups such as the National

Association of Manufacturers or the U.S. Chamber of Commerce had lobbied against sanctions in 1985, but they did not play a vocal role in 1986. The absence of these groups was possibly

because the business atmosphere was already so poor in South Africa that business organizations

expected more corporate withdrawal. Most of the lobbying and debating was left to activists who had already steered much of the debate. Reagan’s veto was ultimately overridden by a vote of 78 to 21, with only a few minor defections such as Bob Dole dissenting from his initial support for sanctions to sustain the veto. The bill became law on October 2.90

Conclusion

The CAAA was not in fact a bill for comprehensive sanctions, and activists at the time

recognized it as such. ACOA publicly contended that the final bill included number of loopholes,

allowed for trade and investment to continue on a limited basis. The bill even required the Justice

Department to investigate the activities of the ANC in the United States, which ACOA and other

groups had failed to strike from the final legislation. WOA felt that the CAAA was the first step

in the passage of comprehensive sanctions. ACOA hoped that the bill was the groundwork for

stronger sanctions against South Africa, which ultimately were not passed. Dellums resubmitted

89 Nesbitt, Race, 142. 90 “99th Congress and South Africa Sanctions,” in Congress and Foreign Policy, 1985-1986 Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1987, 33.

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his original sanctions bill in 1988, which passed the democratic-controlled House, but failed to

pass in the Senate.91

Because Davis had maintained that anti-apartheid activists wanted to force American

corporations to abandon their operations in South Africa, it is worth examining whether the bill

hastened capital flight from South Africa. The Congressional Research Service noted that there

was an uptick in the number of American corporations abandoning their operations in South

Africa following passage of the law, but this fact seems unconnected to the CAAA. The CAAA

did not penalize companies for their existing investments in South Africa or mandate divestment,

as Dellums preferred. The state of emergency worsened after 1985, making South Africa appear

to be a progressively less attractive target for investment, and there had been substantial pressure

in the United States for companies to minimize their business presence. City and state

divestments continued up until 1990, when the release of Nelson Mandela effectively brought an

end to the movement while negotiations played out. On top of those other factors, one of the

more substantial blows to the American business presence in South Africa came in 1987 with the

passage of the Rangel Amendment. Submitted by Senator Chuck Rangel, the amendment

prevented U.S. corporations from deducting taxes paid in South Africa and applying the

deduction to their liabilities. The bill pushed corporate holdouts such as Mobil Oil to abandon

their South African operations. These factors played a role in the decision of American

corporations to abandon their South African business operations.92

91 ACOA Action News, Fall 1986, Accessed December 26, 2017: http://kora.matrix.msu.edu/files/50/304/32-130- AB3-84-AA%20ACOA%20ActNews%2022%20opt.pdf; WOA Staff All Day Meeting, July 2, 1986, Yale Divinity Library, WOA Papers, Box 2, Folder 14. 92 Letter from , May 9, 1989, Amistad, ACOA Addendum, Series 1, Box 46, Folder: Impact, 1991- 1986.

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Whether divestment and sanctions had a significant impact on the South African

economy is in and of itself ambiguous. Divestment was judged to be effective in dovetailing with

worsening conditions to pressure companies in abandoning South Africa; American activists

increased the cost of doing business to the point where it made economic sense to leave.

However, the flight of American businesses was not necessarily matched by departures of other

multinational corporations, and the United States still possessed a smaller investment in South

Africa than Britain, for example. The departure of U.S. companies from South Africa did harm

the economy by removing foreign direct investment, weakening productivity growth as firms lost

access to cheaper capital goods and technical expertise, and creating a liquidity crisis. Where

private agitation for divestment seems to have played the greatest role in undermining the South

African economy was in worsening the lending situation for South Africa, and this predated the passage of the CAAA. The CAAA did limit new loans to the South African government, though

not loan rescheduling.93

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the fact that the CAAA depended on enforcement from the

Reagan Administration meant that sanctions were laxly enforced. The extent to which the financial impact of the sanctions drove the process of dismantling apartheid is debatable.

Through licensing and transshipment of goods, South Africa continued importing goods even after sanctions had been declared, albeit at a higher cost; one estimate posited that the bill cost

South Africa about $350 million annually from the mid-1980s onward. As this number was .5% of GNP at the time, it was painful, but bearable.94

93 Judith Posnikoff, “Disinvestment from South Africa: They Did Well by Doing Good,” Contemporary Economic Policy 15 (January 1997): 85; Yuichiro Kakutani, “MNC Decision Making under Sanctions: South Africa and Rhodesia,” Cornell International Affairs Review 11 (2017): 1; Dubow, Apartheid, 224. 94 Laurel Fletcher, Luke Cole, Alison McCorran, “South Africa: United States Economic Sanctions and the Impact on Apartheid,” Harvard Human Rights Yearbook 1 (1988): 245; Philip Levy, “Sanctions on South Africa: What Did They Do?”, Paper for the Center, February 1999, 7.

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There is a question as to the role of the CAAA on how other countries treated South

Africa as well. Randall Robinson claimed that U.S. sanctions led to sanctions being passed in

other countries, but whether the CAAA drove some of these other actions is debatable. The

Scandinavian countries, which had been both more openly hostile to the apartheid regime and

supportive of the liberation movements, passed their own sanctions against South Africa and had

openly debated total sanctions for longer than the U.S. government, with Sweden and

passing total trade bans in 1987. The Commonwealth Group passed sanctions in 1986, though

without the assistance of Great Britain, South Africa’s largest trading partner, which only

instituted a “voluntary ban” on tourism and investments. Members of the Commonwealth Group

also had their own vibrant anti-apartheid movements. Likewise, the European Community first

passed mild sanctions in 1985, and its member states had domestic anti-apartheid movements of

varying sizes and strengths that put pressure on their own governments. The best case for further

investigation on the global impact of the CAAA would likely be , which was one of South

Africa’s largest trading partners, and where the country’s own anti-apartheid movement was

underdeveloped and had no significant political footprint. Japan passed limited sanctions in 1986

and more in 1987 and 1988, and their impact has not been sufficiently studied.95

F.W. de Klerk downplayed the significance of the sanctions themselves in hastening the

end of apartheid, arguing that they actually drove together South African whites into a siege

mentality. Conversely, Les de Villiers, a propaganda official for the South African government

who worked in the United States, argued that sanctions were instrumental in pushing the

National Party to consider negotiations. A monocausal explanation for the dismantling of

95 Tor Sellstrom, Sweden and National Liberation in Southern Africa: Volume II, Solidarity and Assistance 1970- 1994, (Uppsala, SE: Nordiska Afrikainstitutet, 2002), 493; Robinson, Defending, 161; Richard J. Payne, “Japan’s South Africa Policy: Political Rhetoric and Economic Realities,” African Affairs 86 (April 1987): 176.

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apartheid fails to explain how it came to be: sanctions and capital flight were factors, but so was

the increasing ungovernability of the country in the townships, turmoil in the labor sector, its

worsening war in Angola, and the sudden loss of Soviet support for the ANC after 1989.96

The real significance of the passage of the CAAA and the override of the executive branch, however limited the economic impact might have been, was in furthering the isolation of

the apartheid government. Sports boycotts, cultural boycotts, and the increasing onus around

apartheid all served to isolate South African whites, and in the light of other pressures,

encouraged reformers who were willing to seek a negotiated end to apartheid. The economic

costs could be borne, but the continuing agitation for sanctions even after the CAAA was passed

signaled that even support from the west would not be forthcoming. In light of the cutoff of

support, the contribution of people such as Dumisani Kumalo and the other in the lobbying is critical. In an interview shortly after Mandela was released from prison, Kumalo recalled that

when he came to the United States, just 2% of respondents claimed to have any familiarity with

apartheid. By 1990, a similar poll revealed it was 38%, and Kumalo marveled over the fact that

Soweto Day had practically become a holiday in American churches.97

Ironically, the fight for divestment created a body of activists, an audience, and receptive

politics that supported sanctions, even though some of the strongest proponents of divestment did

not regard sanctions as a serious possibility. ACOA’s leadership did not think that sanctions

were a plausible end goal throughout much of the FSAM period, and were angry at times

because Randall Robinson and FSAM seemed to be taking energy away from that goal. Their

chief interest was in corporate withdrawal and the damage they hoped that it would inflict on the

South African state. WOA was more receptive, given its relationship with members of Congress,

96 F.W. de Klerk, The Last Trek: A New Beginning, (New York: St Martin’s Press, 1999), 71. 97 Interview with Dumisani Kumalo, Wits, A3299, Tape 37.

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and remained flexible as to what course of action to take. Yet once the push for sanctions was underway, ACOA found ways to support legislation because the opportunity was too good to pass up.

Still, activists did not regard the passage of sanctions in 1986 as the conclusion of the anti-apartheid. They wanted to pass comprehensive sanctions against South Africa and to terminate all U.S. economic activity with the apartheid regime. In hindsight, scholars recognize the veto override as the high point of the movement in the United States. What came after the passage of sanctions, and what the broader significance of the movement was, will be discussed in the conclusion.

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Conclusion

The anti-apartheid movement in the United States succeeded because activists found ways to make apartheid relevant to a multitude of audiences. Some audiences opposed apartheid out of a broader dislike of the foreign policy of the U.S. government. Others were drawn to activism because of parallels between the treatment of African Americans and black South

Africans, the role of U.S. businesses in the South African economy, or a commitment to pacifism. Because messages were designed with specific constituencies in mind, activists cultivated grassroots support for taking action to end apartheid. These coalitions around the

United States were responsible for the passage of sanctions in 1986.

The legacy of this movement is complicated. The anti-apartheid movement did not transform itself into an institution in the United States. The lobbying groups that fought for sanctions are defunct. U.S. media and politicians pay little attention to African issues today, much as they did in the 1970s and 1980s. The movement did not provoke a dramatic shift in U.S. foreign relations: the U.S. government continues to foster relations with regimes that have poor human rights records. Nevertheless, the anti-apartheid movement had a significant impact on subsequent activism. In the realm of human rights, anti-apartheid activists’ attention to economic issues and is a dimension that has been overlooked by other scholars. The tactics and rhetoric of the movement have been adopted in recent years by environmentalists and critics of Israel’s occupation of the West Bank.

The Anti-Apartheid Movement’s Epilogue

After the passage of sanctions in 1986, activists celebrated their legislative triumph but qualified it as a limited victory. The CAAA left a number of loopholes that American businesses

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exploited to remain in the country and that the South African government could utilize to

continue receiving needed goods. Jerry Herman of AFSC believed that the provisions of the

CAAA were going to be only a relatively minimal blow to the apartheid government because the

trade provisions could be circumvented. In a 1987 report, the WOA described its desire for a

stronger sanctions package, noting the weaknesses in the bill and strengthening it to be more in

line with what Ron Dellums had originally wanted, moving away from the flaws. The bipartisan nature of the bill produced a number of loopholes as compromises between the two parties, as well as amendments such as monitoring of the ANC that advocates failed to defeat. The bill in all likelihood represented the extreme end of what Republican politicians were willing to support.

Lugar had made it clear on multiple occasions that the CAAA was the strongest bill that he could support.1

The hope of passing truly comprehensive sanctions against the South African government

never came to pass, for a variety of reasons. The success of the CAAA limited enthusiasm for

future federal sanctions efforts because the goal had been accomplished, even if the specifics fell

short of what activist groups had wanted; activist groups certainly noted that in the media, the

passage of the CAAA was depicted as the end of the anti-apartheid movement. Efforts to pass a tougher sanctions package on South Africa failed in 1988, in no small part because those

Republican swing votes in the Senate such as Richard Lugar and Nancy Kassebaum who had been vital in 1986 refused to pass a comprehensive sanctions bill.2

1 National Peace Education Division Executive Committee, October 18, 1986, AFSC, AFSC Minutes 1986 BDE to PE, 1986 Minutes of Peace Education; Yale Divinity Library, Washington Office on Africa, Box 1, Folder 10; Yale Divinity Library, Washington Office on Africa, Box 19, Folder 153 2 WOA 1986 Annual Report, Yale Divinity Library, Washington Office on Africa, Box 1, Folder 8; “Senate Panel Backs New Steps Against Pretoria, But Bill to End Investment by U.S. in South Africa Isn’t Seen Being Passed,” The Wall Street Journal, September 15, 1988.

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The coalition that fought for sanctions at the national level also seriously weakened after

the passage of the CAAA. One of the major problems simply was money, which had long been a

limiting factor for American activists. Even in the midst of FSAM, anti-apartheid groups were

spending far more than they were able to recoup; in September of 1986, WOA was in debt

$13,000 and only had $6,000 left after board members had contributed large sums of money.

Their traditional fundraising sources such as churches were cutting back on how much they

could offer to liberation groups; UCC was forced to terminate its support for ACOA in 1988,

leaving ACOA with a struggling budget by the end of that year. Fundraising for southern African

causes always managed to be difficult; an AFSC memo from 1985 noted that even as there was

an explosion of interest in South Africa, fundraising on the issue only managed to raise a few

hundred dollars. Some of FSAM’s affiliate branches in American cities continued to work,

pushing for local divestment ordinances, particularly in California. As an arm pushing for more

activity at the national level, however, FSAM effectively stopped working.3

WOA was perhaps the hardest hit by the sudden drawdown of funding available for

liberation activism. As it had been very dependent on funds raised from churches, their inability

to fund the office hurt their lobbying. In 1988, WOA lost staff because of its inability to pay

them, which in turn weakened its activities in Congress. WOA was unable to perform head

counts for legislation, making it difficult to focus lobbying efforts, and it stopped producing

research that congressmen such as Dellums had relied on in prior years. By 1989, WOA and its

3 Letter to Jennifer Davis, September 23, 1986, Amistad, ACOA Addendum, Series 2, Box 90, Washington Office on Africa, 1987-1986; Letter from Yvonne Delk, July 5, 1988, Amistad, ACOA Addendum, Series 1, Box 66, Folder Churches, UCC-Church and Society, 1989-1985; Letter to Jean Sindab, October 19, 1988, Amistad, ACOA Addendum, Series 1, Box 67, Folder WCC 1989-1987; Minutes of Exec Committee of Board of Directors, 1/25/85, AFSC, AFSC Minutes 1985 BDE to PE, 1985 Minutes of Executive Committee of the Board of Directors

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associated educational fund had stopped producing literature on everything except Namibia,

forcing them to ignore events in Angola and South Africa.4

Even national boycotts foundered in the wake of the CAAA. TransAfrica’s Shell Boycott had always been a contentious issue among activists, with Davis questioning its worth. Shell

never withdrew from South Africa and weathered the pressure from organizers and activists.

AFSC’s Coke boycott continued into the 1990s, but coordination proved to be a problem for

activists. Writing from Massachusetts in 1988, Art Serota felt that there was little in the way of

coordination of the Coke campaign, and he had been unable to contact the organizers in Georgia.

Even the “withdrawal” of companies from South Africa, as with Coca-Cola, happened under

circumstances that permitted the companies to retain a business presence there. Corporate PR

campaigns designed to maintain that foothold were often strikingly successful, trapping activists

in internecine battles over corporate presence. These were difficult campaigns to wage because

they lacked the visibility of earlier struggles and were highly technical, limiting opportunities for

public engagement.5

Faced with these obstacles, activists instead looked for new tactics to hurt the South

African government. ACOA, WOA, and others cooperated with some executive-branch agencies

to find specific examples of sanctions American businesses violated. ACOA regularly reported

companies suspected of doing so to the Commerce Department, with a particularly close eye on

companies suspected of violating the arms embargo. As late as 1992, South Africa was

attempting to import thousands of shotguns into the country; ACOA and the Africa Fund foiled

4 1988 Report, Amistad, ACOA Addendum, Series 2, Box 89, Washington Office on Africa, 1990; 1989 Report, Amistad, ACOA Addendum, Series 2, Box 89, Washington Office on Africa, 1989. 5 Letter from Art Serota, August 22, 1988, AFSC, Atlanta Regional Office Southern Africa Peace Education Program 1982-1995, Unlabeled.

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the arms smuggling attempt, first by discovering that the shipments were taking place and then

by providing the information to journalist Jack Anderson, who publicized the findings.6

ACOA and TransAfrica coordinated campaigns to keep public awareness of the issues around South Africa alive and well, a mission that they felt was all the more important in light of the fact that interest was dimming with the lack of media attention. For example, ACOA and the

Africa Fund spent 1987 and 1988 working on the “Unlock Apartheid Jails” campaign. Bill

Cosby was asked to serve as the campaign’s honorary chairman to bring closer attention to it, and they solicited the donation of thousands of house keys to be delivered to the South African embassy to represent the political prisoners being detained in South Africa. 35,000 were ultimately delivered to the embassy, which was followed by a press conference. It received attention from newspaper around the country, and an American activist doing fact-finding in

South Africa found that many people there were aware of the campaign.7

In lieu of stronger action from the federal government, American activists fell back on

divestment. Even as they complained that there was difficulty in sustaining the divestment

campaigns because of a lack of interest, they actually continued to occur at a steady pace relative

to the mid-1980s. Arkansas, California, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Missouri, North Carolina,

Oregon, Tennessee, and Virginia all passed banking, divestment, and selective purchasing acts

after 1986, some as late as 1990. States such as Massachusetts and New York also passed

selective purchasing agreements that targeted companies working in South Africa. These

victories were in addition to the individual counties or cities that also divested, most of which

6 Memorandum on Dept.Comm. Meetings, November 25, 1987, Amistad, ACOA Addendum, Box 137, Projects: Sanctions, 1987; 1990 Report, December 18, 1990, Amistad, Africa Fund, Series 1, Box 3, BOT Meetings and Notices, 1991-1990; Letter to Lindiwe Mabuza, March 31, 1992, Fort Hare, ANC Washington Mission, Box 1, Folder 3. 7 ED Report March 18, 1988, Amistad, ACOA Addendum, Series 1, Box 3, Folder BOD Minutes and Notices, 1988-1987; Lisa Crooms Trip to SA 1988, Amistad, ACOA Addendum, Series 1, Box 54, Folder: Staff, Lisa Crooms, 1991, 1988-1986.

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were the most populous and consequently the wealthiest parts of their states. University

divestment continued as well; as late as 1991, Ohio University’s leadership was persuaded to

divest more holdings after it emerged that the university still had a number of ties to the

apartheid government.8

The assumption of the presidency by F.W. de Klerk did not necessarily comfort

American activists; even as he moved to release Nelson Mandela from prison and initiated public

discussions with the ANC, activists felt that de Klerk would still seek the best possible deal for

South Africa’s whites at the expense of everybody else in the country, and wanted to maintain

additional pressure on the South African government as negotiations went forward. Doing so

proved to be difficult, however, because the makeshift coalition that came together in the 1980s simply was not functioning well enough to coordinate more pressure. Nesbitt explicitly stated as such in a letter to Davis and Robinson as they organized a national anti-apartheid conference: “I write this letter out of increasing concern that the anti-apartheid and solidarity work in this country is steadily drifting into purposelessness and confusion at the very moment when both

South Africa and Southern Africa need broad-based US support more than ever.” By early July

1991, the rumor that George H.W. Bush was planning to lift sanctions on South Africa had circulated among activists, who hoped to block him from doing so. However, the strategies that were open to them to do were limited. With media coverage of South Africa back to its normal, low levels, they felt that there was little they could do to pressure Congress into acting.9

8 “Summary of State, County, and City Divestments, 1993,” Amistad, Africa Fund, Box 131, “South Africa Sanction Lifting”; Letter from Anderson Jones II, June 4, 1991, Amistad, ACOA Addendum, Series 1, Box 46, Folder: Impact, 1991-1986. 9 Letter from Prexy Nesbitt, March 27, 1991, Amistad, ACOA Addendum, Series 1, Box 57, Staff, Prexy Nesbitt, 1993-1985; Letter from Aleah Bacquie, July 3, 1991, Amistad, ACOA Addendum, Box 137, Projects: Sanctions, 1991 July.

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ACOA thereafter focused on maintaing the city and state sanctions, at which it largely

succeeded. Once George H.W. Bush repealed the federal sanctions, there was some movement to

undermine the city and state sanctions that were in place. ACOA participated in fact-finding missions with New York City’s government to keep existing sanctions in place. There were some attempts to enlist local and state governments into endorsing ethical reinvestment in the country, particularly in the creation of housing investments to provide affordable housing. There was even an attempt to link reinvestment in South Africa to reinvestment and democratic revitalization in the United States: planned regional workshops were supposed to train activists to discuss shared areas of concern between the two countries.10

This plan to train activists to work on a whole new set of issues ran into difficulties. The

workshop focused on Dallas, Kansas City, Seattle, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Atlanta. A staff

member from ACOA noted “I think people in the network generally are not good organizers, not

strategic thinkers and planners and above all, usually lack any resources to implement the plans

they do make...I think we are in a period where the tasks to be done on behalf of Southern Africa

are above and beyond volunteerism a la USA.”11

The end of apartheid meant that the sub-textual issues would need to be completely

rethought, and the end of the Cold War removed a familiar geopolitical dynamic that most

Americans were accustomed to. Pacifists who had been central in the U.S. anti-apartheid

movement moved on to other issues, such as the First . While some local movements

developed rhetoric around the need for domestic reinvestment as part of breaking links with

10 Executive Committee Minutes, December 5, 1991, Amistad, ACOA Addendum, Series 1, Box 2, Folder BOD Correspondence 1991; Letter to Dumisani Kumalo, September 10, 1993, Amistad, Africa Fund, Series 2, Box 131, South Africa Election Watch South Africa Sanction Lifting; Memo on Regional Workshops for organizing on Southern Africa in the 1990s, April 3, 1993, Amistad, ACOA Addendum, Box 57, Staff Memos/Corr Prexy Nesbitt 1993-1985. 11 Regional Conference Followup, April 3, 1993, Amistad, ACOA Addendum, Series 1, Box 57, Staff, Prexy Nesbitt, 1993-1985.

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South Africa, this economic perspective did not exist nationally. Perhaps the most immediate

enduring legacy for activists was attention paid to U.S. businesses and their behavior overseas.

Investor centers such as the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility had been created in

large part because of the anti-apartheid movement, and they continued to critique business

practices. These issues were highly technical, however, and generally did not become mass

movements. Some younger activists moved into anti-globalization activity, but as a nascent

movement anti-globalization took considerable time to develop.

Activism foundered at this particular movement because of disagreements over what to

do next. At one meeting of CCISSA, Jerry Herman stated that he was uncomfortable with the

idea of reinvestment in South Africa because there were no guidelines for doing and no plan for

land redistribution, arguing that it might make enable “recolonization” in the country. Basil

Clunie disagreed, however, saying that they had to trust the ANC’s leadership to know what it

was doing. By December 1993, ACOA stopped encouraging socially responsible reinvestment

because they feared investors might simply stay out of the country.12

Nelson Mandela’s visit to the United States in 1990 exposed some of the fault lines

between activists. In Los Angeles, the Friends of the ANC and the Frontline States complained

that Los Angeles FSAM (which had endured as a regional committee) excluded other groups from participating in Mandela’s welcome. In Detroit, a representative of the South African

Student Committee protested over the exclusion of the UAW from the reception and the overrepresentation of business. A similar process was happening within the ANC, too: members

12 Finance Committee Minutes November 3, 1993, Columbia College, Chicago Anti-Apartheid Movement Collection, Box 1, Folder 37; Executive Board Meeting Report December 2, 1993, Amistad, ACOA Addendum, Series 1, Box 2, Folder BOD Meetings 1993.

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in the Philadelphia unit complained that they were being sidelined by the national office, an issue

which lasted for years on end.13

This rift is an ideological split that became more obvious in post-apartheid South Africa and is still being debated today: the need to transform the social and wealth inequalities created by apartheid, and the best means of doing so. An article in the magazine Third Force noted this fissure, saying that some activists were complaining of being told to back off from criticizing

American corporations by the ANC as they sought future business relationships for the post- independence period. Staff people within ACOA made a similar observation, noting that the

ANC was adopting a pro-business position. One proposed conference led one staff member to complain, “As things stand now, there seems to be less and less in the conference for our network of activists. Should they succeed in securing corporate sponsorship for the conference as per their intention, it could become very difficult for us to be associated in any way.”14

Despite these difficulties, the structures of the U.S. anti-apartheid movement kept working to undermine apartheid. By 1993, WOA had recovered sufficiently to participate in legislation for the repeal of the remaining U.S. sanctions.15 Many of the key U.S.-based players

in the American anti-apartheid movement were present during the death of apartheid, during the

election in 1994 that brought Nelson Mandela and the ANC to power. Gail Hovey, Prexy

Nesbitt, and Jennifer Davis were all present in the country for the general election as observers,

13 Friends of the ANC and the Frontline States, June 1990, MSU, MSS 329, Box 4, Mandela-Mismanagement; Letter from Roger Jardine, June 5, 1990, Fort Hare, ANC Washington Mission, Box 107, Folder 58; Letter to Lindiwe Mabuza, July 8, 1993, Fort Hare, ANC Washington Mission, Box 107, Folder 56. 14 Alexander Nicholas, “What Ever Happened to the Free South Africa Movement?”, April 30, 1993, Third Force; Memo from Mike Fleshman to Jennifer Davis, April 27, 1992, Amistad, ACOA Addendum, Series 1, Box 69, Folder ANC Conference 1992-1978. 15 Staff Work 1993, Amistad, ACOA Addendum, Series 2, Box 89, Washington Office on Africa, 1993.

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while observers from AFSC were present in KwaZulu-Natal.16 Davis was also present for

Mandela’s inauguration, and she was repeatedly introduced as the “pillar of the anti-apartheid movement in the United States.”17 The various anti-apartheid organizations in the U.S. now had

to find new missions for themselves, whether in South Africa or elsewhere.

The Fate of Activist Groups

James Meriwether argued in the conclusion of Proudly We Can Be Africans that the end

of apartheid meant that African Americans would have to start confronting the more complicated

issues they had previously left alone. Underdevelopment, economic exploitation, and bad

governance in Africa were much more difficult topics to approach and to mobilize people to

address. This observation could be extended beyond African American activists, who in many

senses struggled to reorient their activities to a post-apartheid world in part because of the

complexities of other issues. Even as early as the 1970s, the failure of governments in places

such as Uganda alienated American peace activists from African activism. For all of the

propaganda offered up by the apartheid government, its policies were still relatively easy to

criticize. As Republican Senator Mitch McConnell put it, “When the apartheid issues came

along, it made civil rights black and white again. It was not complicated.”18

WOA, ACOA and the Africa Fund, and TransAfrica worked for a number of years after

apartheid’s end, trying to fit into a new foreign policy mold for Africa. As early as July of 1994,

Davis wanted to reorient the group towards the Nigerian military dictatorship. ACOA worked for

several years on debt supporting debt relief and increased HIV/AIDS aid packages along with the

16 1994 Report, December 13, 1994, Amistad, Africa Fund, Series 1, Box 3, BOT Meetings and Notices, 1994-1993; Report of the Peace Education Director, June 6, 1994, AFSC, Atlanta Regional Office Southern Africa Peace Education Program 1982-1995, National Office Memos 17 Letter from Davis, May 2, 1994, Amistad, Africa Fund, Series 1, Box 64, Staff: Jennifer Davis, SA trip, 1994. 18 Meriwether, Proudly, 244; “How Mitch McConnell Defied Ronald Reagan on Apartheid,” The Daily Beast, December 10, 2013. Accessed July 23, 2018: https://www.thedailybeast.com/how-mitch-mcconnell-defied-ronald- reagan-on-apartheid.

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Washington Office on Africa. In 2001, ACOA, WOA, the Africa Fund, and Africa Information

Service combined into a new organization, Africa Action.19

Randall Robinson also wanted to establish TransAfrica as a powerful lobbying group in

Washington. Robinson’s most visible action in the 1990s was on Haiti, which by 1994 was undergoing a refugee crisis. To protest the repatriation of Haitian refugees, Robinson launched a

hunger strike that lasted 24 days; in conjunction with pressure from the CBC, President Bill

Clinton reversed his position on repatriation and authorized an intervention into Haiti to restore

the deposed president.20

Thereafter, TransAfrica struggled to make substantial legislative impacts, and a number

of administrative decisions harmed the organization. The purchase of a large headquarters for

itself in the former embassy of the West German government left TransAfrica heavily in debt.

Robinson attracted criticism over Nigeria because he accepted a substantial donation from

figures in the Nigerian military dictatorship. U.S. activists attacked him for taking the money,

and when he criticized the Nigerian government he was regularly met by protesters. TransAfrica

had frequently had a poor relationship with its regional chapters, but by the early 2000s contact

with its chapters had effectively fallen off. In 2001, Randall Robinson left the organization and

Bill Fletcher, Jr. succeeded him as the executive director; Fletcher discovered that the

organization was close to bankrupt only ten days before he officially became head of the

organization.21

19 Letter to Don Stillman, July 28, 1994, Amistad, ACOA Addendum, Series 2, Box 84, United Auto Workers, 1997-1990. 20 Charles P. Henry, “The Rise and Fall of Black Influence on Foreign Policy,” in African Americans in Global Affairs, ed. by Michael L. Clemons, (Boston, MA: Northeastern University Press, 2010), 213. 21 Michael Clemons, “Conceptualizing,” 54.

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Moreover, according to former members of TransAfrica, the organization struggled with what its mission was supposed to be in the post-apartheid world. Fletcher felt that Robinson had in some ways been searching for an effective issue when he launched the Haiti hunger strike; thereafter, he never found an effective working strategy for the organization. Some of the board members wanted to go back to the way that things had worked in the 1980s because they had been so effective and visible, but new issues weren’t easy to create solely using high-visibility tactics such as sit-ins and boycotts. Fletcher’s hope was to transform TransAfrica into, his words, a “black global justice organization” by establishing new ties to . Yet the board continued to want high-visibility campaigns; Fletcher recalled one board member approaching him and asking him to bring them a “sexy issue” like apartheid. After Fletcher left in 2006, which he did in order to prevent the group’s disputes over vision from growing too poisonous, the group failed to find a new approach, and its debts eventually caused the organization to shut down entirely. TransAfrica has no staff and no assets, and it has not had any activity since

2014.22

At almost the same time that TransAfrica became defunct, Africa Action also ceased to exist. The organization, whose membership was made up in large part of veterans of the anti- apartheid movement, and had actually managed to develop a healthy endowment because of one particularly large gift. A staff member embezzled the bulk of the organization’s endowment as well as its strategic reserve fund, which was only discovered in 2010; poor oversight by the executive director at the time, Gerald LeMelle, prevented early discovery of the ongoing theft.

The loss of this money presented a serious obstacle to the organization, but other structural problems hindered the organization, namely in good governance. Poor fundraising opportunities

22 Interview with Bill Fletcher, Jr., July 25, 2018.

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led the executive director to directly use the endowment beginning in 2007, which the board

apparently acquiesced to without issue; they also ceased annual audits. Following the

embezzlement, the organization stopped working in 2014.23

The end of these national groups is one of the paradoxes of the anti-apartheid movement

in the United States: the lobbying groups and legislative apparatus that evolved to fight apartheid

ultimately did not create enduring institutions dealing with Africa. Even enduring political

groups such as the CBC saw a decline in overall activism on African legislation, as the number

of bills sponsored by members declined after 1985 even as the number of members increased.

After apartheid, issues failed to resonate in the same way, and those congressmen who were

sponsoring bills on African issues tended to be just one or two very well-informed individuals;

most members of the CBC were more concerned with domestic constituent issues.24

The way attention was paid to African or Caribbean issues was inconsistent. Here,

Meriwether’s point about the difficulty of organizing around complicated issues rings true. At

the same time that Robinson’s hunger strike on Haiti was unfolding in 1994, the Rwandan

was beginning, yet TransAfrica and the CBC took no stands on the issue; Robinson

was one of the few individuals who commented on it at all. The reason was that it was difficult to

take a stand on the issue because it was so remote, and because so few Americans felt affected

by the issue. In discussing Haitian refugees, Robinson had focused on the discriminatory effect

of those policies, which resonated with African Americans. By contrast, summed

up the situation on thusly: “I didn’t know whether the or the were correct. I

couldn’t tell anybody what I thought they should do.”25

23 “Africa Action-Task Force on Financial Loss and Leadership/Governance, 2007-2012,” sent to author by Bill Minter. Document in author’s possession. 24 Tillery, Between Homeland, 144. 25 Charles P. Henry, “The Rise and Fall,” 2010, 213.

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From an institutional perspective, the anti-apartheid movement failed to create

institutions dealing with Africa. Part of it was simply an issue of money: financial support made

or broke groups. TransAfrica never quite got away from the expensive debts it generated in the

1990s, and those same outstanding debts are one of the issues preventing the group from being

reformed today. The embezzlement of most of Africa Action’s endowment similarly put the

group in a position that caused it to disintegrate. Even the institutions that supported the anti-

apartheid movement in the U.S. have weakened dramatically: the weakening financial support

from churches and labor unions experienced by ACOA, WOA in the 1980s has not reversed

course.26

What’s more, if activists wanted to create a permanent lobby or movement in the United

States that would address U.S. foreign policy in Africa, the success of the anti-apartheid

movement encouraged unrealistic expectations. Randall Robinson’s focus on high-profile, direct- action issues such as the sit-ins at South African embassies or consulates worked in part because groups existed that could take up the work. Apartheid was not a short-lived issue; it evolved and provoked shifts in tactics from activists, which in turn institutionalized many of the groups. It also required an incredible amount of educational work, much of which was frankly slow, difficult, and at times dull (most activists can remember a bevy of poorly-attended events, fundraisers, and documentary showings they nevertheless staged time and time again). The

“sexy” issues board members demanded of Fletcher never existed; they were built on years and decades of earlier work. Jennifer Davis wryly noted in an interview after apartheid ended that what made the anti-apartheid movement work was that they stuck to it for a very long time.

Unfortunately, Americans did not like to work on long-term issues.27

26 Interview with Bill Fletcher, Jr., July 25, 2018. 27 Interview with Bill Fletcher, Jr., July 25, 2018; Interview with Jennifer Davis, Wits, A3299, Tape 37.

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While many of the larger groups have become defunct or have functionally stopped working, some of the smaller, decentralized groups have actually survived. The decentralized nature of the U.S. anti-apartheid movement has in some ways survived into the present, with certain local groups still involved in southern African issues. South Africa Freedom Fund in

Boston, which was founded by Themba Vilakazi in 1985 to provide aid to the liberation movement, has become the South African Development Fund. It funds charitable donations to

South African partner organizations to fight HIV/AIDS, provide legal support for squatters, campaign against education inequalities, and other ongoing injustices in South African society.

Vukani Mawethu, a Bay Area choir organized by an ANC member and Oakland-based anti- apartheid activists in the 1980s has continued to perform up to the present, using funds raised from performances for donations. The Friends of SOMAFCO in Philadelphia has continued to run long after SOMAFCO has disappeared as an institution, instead supporting other charitable organizations they know and have partnered with in Cape Town and elsewhere in South Africa.

Shared Interest, a lending group made of up several anti-apartheid activists (including Jennifer

Davis) offers loans to low-income communities throughout southern Africa.

Some institutions, such as Shared Interest, an NGO securing loans for farmers in South

Africa, survived in part because they had access to wellsprings of private capital and could fundraise using business connections. The survival of these groups could not be ascribed solely to money, however: community groups such as Friends of SOMAFCO or Vukani Mawethu were not richly endowed. Instead, their survival can be chalked up to two factors. Virtually all of them had well-developed contacts with southern Africa, which simply put kept them in a position of being emotionally invested in the region, and to continue working there. Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, they were well-embedded in their own communities and a constituency to

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support themselves through fundraising, and occasionally by bringing in new members who

could take on the work as older members aged out. The importance of those transnational

connections convinced Prexy Nesbitt to find ways to create new transnational connections.

Through a group called Making the Road, he takes study groups throughout southern Africa to

form connections for Americans who otherwise do not have them. 28

The decentralized nature of African activism highlights the centrality of individuals and networks in the anti-apartheid movement as well as for the future of African solidarity. A single group speaking to all of the possible issues confronting Africa may very well be impossible to construct, but while ACOA and TransAfrica are defunct, the individuals involved with them

have continued to be active. Moreover, as many of them did during the anti-apartheid movement,

they have trained new activists. Single-issue or single-country groups have proliferated since the end of apartheid, and the networks that keep activists in communication with one another have similarly survived.

The Effect on the Concept of Human Rights

The anti-apartheid movement shifted public opinion on human rights in ambiguous ways.

Opposition to apartheid did stimulate a great deal of interest in human rights issues, but it did so alongside a whole host of other issues. While opposition to apartheid helped to normalize shareholder resolutions and investor activism, the earliest such resolutions were filed against

Dow Chemical for its role supplying the U.S. government during the Vietnam War, and anti-

apartheid activists did so in conjunction with protests against companies for working in Angola,

for example.

28 Interview with Prexy Nesbitt, July 25, 2018.

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The human rights scholar Samuel Moyn argues in part that human rights fails to

meaningfully address economic inequality, for example. In Moyn’s view, human rights activism

accommodates itself to hierarchies of class and wealth, and so it could focus on establishing

minimum standards by which people could be treated without ever focusing on ameliorating

inequality. Post-apartheid South Africa is still a country of deep inequality, with an estimated

two to three million housing units needed for homeless South Africans as the opportunities for

wage labor have diminished. For leftist anti-apartheid activists, the persistence and worsening of

poverty in southern Africa has been a failure that made the end of apartheid a qualified victory.

Moyn concurs that the ANC effectively abandoned its mission of development for a neoliberal

economy, and human rights activists focused on material subsistence at the expense of

equality.29

Moyn’s criticism of the ANC is factually well-founded, and it is true that anti-apartheid

activists in the United States found it difficult to redress the economic damage inflicted by

apartheid. However, activists did not ignore the economic dimensions of apartheid or its

connections to global capitalism. The unequal distribution of wealth in South Africa was just as

great an issue, both because it could perpetuate white control of the country, and

because the standards of living endured by black South Africans were, in their view, a denial of

human rights. Unequal land ownership was one of the key issues in criticizing the bantustans,

allowing activists to call attention to the fact that they could never be economically viable in any

true sense. Those messages resonated in the United States when they were presented to

economically marginalized groups because linkages were created between the two: housing

injustice in South Africa was similar to housing injustice in the United States, a theme Dumisani

29 Anne-Maria Makhulu, Making Freedom: Apartheid, Squatter Politics, and the Struggle for Home, (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2015), 159; Moyn, Not Enough, 199, 202

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Kumalo returned to again and again. The bank divestment campaign in the 1970s did well

because it created connections to redlining in the United States, to exploitative practices by

banks, and to affirmative action policies. Union activists framed their opposition to apartheid in

terms of its hostility to labor, often drawing comparisons to the unfriendly climate for labor in

the United States. All of the concern over South African steel imports to the United States in the

1980s called attention to deindustrialization in the United States and its effect on workers.30

While shareholder resolutions and investigations of American business practices were not

invented by anti-apartheid activists, supporters of liberation activism made them a “normal” and accepted part of civic activism. Opposition to apartheid was not the only human rights cause to came out of the 1960s and 1970s, but it was the most prominent, and arguably the issue that had the longest-running salience on the left. It also argued for American culpability in overseas behavior in ways that even criticism of the Pinochet regime did not by addressing corporate as well as governmental accountability.

One consequence of activism aimed at corporate activity was that during and after the anti-apartheid movement, there were norms and expectations established as to how American businesses were supposed to behave overseas. Businesses such as Levi-Strauss drafted their own

codes of conduct, modeled in part on the Sullivan Principles, to claim to the public that their

activities were humane. Activists have in turn noted the limitations of many of these private

codes today. They argue that these codes perform many of the same functions that the Sullivan

Principles served, allowing companies to gloss over or distract from fundamentally exploitative

practices. Regardless of their efficacy or role however, there was a growing expectation among

citizens of the United States about how multinational companies were supposed to act.

30 Interview with Jennifer Davis, Wits, A3299, Tape 37.

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Whether concern over apartheid could have shifted the conservative turn in the general

public is debatable; even at the height of the anti-apartheid movement in the U.S., approximately

only 38% of Americans knew what apartheid was (a figure cited as a victory by activists). While

anti-apartheid activism and the explosion of human rights more broadly failed to ameliorate

inequality or to shift public attitudes about poverty and development, it did create an activist pool

concerned with those issues. Penny von Eschen noted that McCarthyism in the United States

effectively destroyed a radical African American intellectual class by marginalizing leftists or

driving them out of the country. Anti-apartheid activism and support for African liberation went

a long way toward reversing that trend. New activists were often intellectually inspired by the

revolutionary movements in southern Africa and the linkages that those movements created

between Africa and the United States, attitudes that they have carried within themselves to the

present.31

Opposition to apartheid complicates a narrative of leftist defeat that pervades histories of

activism in the 1970s and 1980s. Despite continual setbacks, activists against apartheid

continued to work even when the issue was not receiving substantial media attention. Moreover,

they raised a number of points about activism, racism, and the Cold War geopolitical structure

that ran contrary to the conservative turn that most historians of the modern United States have

noted in the 1970s and 1980s. Seen in the long-term, once-controversial ideas such as the support given by U.S. businesses to oppressive regimes had become more or less commonplace ideas by the 1980s and onward.32

31 Wits, A3299, Tape 37. 32 The common trope that the 1960s disillusioned a generation of activists is discussed in Nikos Sotirakopoulos’ The Rise of Lifestyle Activism: From New Left to Occupy, (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), 62.

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The anti-apartheid movement in the United States also reflected the changing nature of

activism. Some of the shift was owed to professionalization, as activism within certain

organizations shifted from volunteers over to dedicated staff people, but it was also the

integration of more diverse peoples. At the movement’s inception, such as it was, activists were

more often than not middle-class with little direct experience in their chosen

area. George Houser had had a long career as a civil rights activist by the time he came to

ACOA, but he did so with virtually no experience with Africa proper. AFSC was an organization

whose professional staff was dominated by Quakers, and often they had no substantive

experience with the areas they worked on. In part because of the anti-apartheid movement, AFSC

included more representation from people with more lived experience of the subject they worked

on. Today, AFSC focuses more closely on Palestinian issues, the organization’s general secretary

is a Palestinian woman, Joyce Aljouny. This process happened in other groups, too. By 1986,

ACOA and the Africa Fund were effectively dominated by three South African staff members:

Jennifer Davis, Dumisani Kumalo, and Stephanie Urdang.

Influence of the Anti-Apartheid Movement

The arena in which the legacy of the anti-apartheid movement is most visible today are in two other issues: Palestinian rights, and the fight against climate change. Boycott, Divestment,

Sanctions (BDS) is the group that had most explicitly adopted the tactics and rhetoric of the anti- apartheid movement to end the occupation of the West Bank by Israel. Indeed, the group explicitly draws inspiration from the fight against South Africa and applies the same tactics of the anti-apartheid movement to what it calls “Israeli apartheid.” While this comparison is an evocative one because it implicitly casts BDS in a line of moral protest movements, it is a line of thinking that goes beyond rhetoric. Omar Barghoutti, one of the co-founders of BDS, argues that

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Israel is an apartheid state (though not one identical to South Africa) in its treatment of

Palestinians and matches the criteria set by the UN for apartheid. BDS is not unified on this point, but the number of supporters who support this particular idea suggests that the framework of Israel as an apartheid state motivates many of the group’s backers.33

In that same vein, Barghoutti and others believe that boycotts and other actions were responsible for the end of apartheid in South Africa, and thus should be deployed in largely the same manner against Israel today. The tactical emphasis on divestment at the local level to force local bodies to repudiate Israel’s behavior. Agreement over the scale of boycotts and divestments varies because BDS is made up of a large coalition of companies, but broadly speaking, they agree on the need to divest from and boycott bodies that participate in the occupation of the West

Bank.34

Climate change activism is the other movement that has engaged with the lessons of the anti-apartheid movement. In 2012, author and environmentalist Bill McKibben wrote an essay for Rolling Stone claiming that in order to prevent climate catastrophe, activists needed to draw on the lessons of divestment. While acknowledging that fossil fuel companies would be a more difficult opponent than apartheid South Africa, McKibben argued for the moral necessity of it as well as the need to stigmatize fossil fuel usage. This focus on the stigmatization of behavior seems to be one of the key lessons climate activists have internalized. While they acknowledge and indeed hope that divestment will limit the financial power energy companies can wield, they hope more fervently that divestment will force conversations about fossil fuels. Those

33 Taken from the BDS website. Accessed February 15, 2019: https://bdsmovement.net/what-is-bds; Meghan Elizabeth Zibbly, “Legitimizing Struggle: The Rhetoric of Nonviolence and the Palestinian and International Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions Movement,” (MA Thesis, University of Colorado at Boulder), 2015, 68-69. 34 Zibbly, “Legitimizing Struggle,” 71.

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conversations will turn investors and governments against fossil fuels in the same way divestment increased awareness of apartheid.35

Protest against apartheid normalized certain forms of student activism. Student activists

had of course been in the vanguard of opposition to the Vietnam War, but had in turn engendered

a conservative backlash that wanted to end protests and bring campuses back under control.

Opposition to apartheid set certain standards of behavior for activists and gave them a veneer of

politeness that made their politics more difficult to effectively combat. Apart from giving student

activists a striking amount of success in the 1980s and revitalizing student activism (as noted by

Philip Altbach and Robert Cohen, student activists saw their greatest victories under a

conservative presidency), the anti-apartheid movement structured student activism for the

foreseeable future.36

In less visible ways, the anti-apartheid movement’s tactics and aims continue to shape public activism. While scholars have argued that the CBC lacks a consistent focus on African

affairs. as a body it can act in an activist manner, and it has copied its prior actions against

apartheid in the twenty-first century. Members of the CBC staged a number of protests against

the Sudanese government at its Washington embassy over the ongoing genocide in Darfur,

leading to their arrest.37 While its record is inconsistent and it can depend on constituent pressure

to act, the CBC is understood to be a vehicle for certain kinds of protest in no small part because

of the anti-apartheid movement.

35 Bill McKibben, “Global Warming’s Terrifying New Math,” Rolling Stone, July 19, 2012; Andrew Cheon and Johannes Urpelainen, Activism and the Fossil Fuel Industry, (London: Routledge Books, 2018). 36 Philip Altbach and Robert Cohen, “American Student Activism: The Post-Sixties Transformation,” The Journal of Higher Education 61 (Jan-Feb 1990): 40-41, 47-48. 37 “Rep. Lee Arrested at Protest,” The San Francisco Chronicle, May 17, 2006.

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Lastly, the anti-apartheid movement served as an incubator of sorts for a generation of activists. More research is needed to understand how participants branched out, and what effect their exposure to the anti-apartheid movement had on subsequent activist activity. Some individuals ended up in southern Africa. Carrie Pratt was a student in Madison in the 1980s and a member of MACSA, and she has lived in Pretoria for several decades now as an educator. Other

people moved on to different kinds of activism. Kevin Danaher was a sometime researcher who

worked with Prexy Nesbitt at the Institute for Policy Studies and later became an anti-

globalization and climate change activist.

Understanding the anti-apartheid movement’s transnational character does more than

illustrate the obvious, which was that awareness of apartheid fomented opposition to it. It helps

to lay bare why the movement succeeded, which was based on education and tangibility, taking

action even if the action was symbolic because it connected people with the broader issues. As

the anti-apartheid movement continues to be cited as a model for activists in the twenty-first

century, organizers and thinkers would do well to consider the ways opposition to apartheid was

constructed.

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Books, Articles, and Dissertations Aidoo, Akwasi. “Review of the Political Economy of Race and Class in South Africa,” Review of African Political Economy 21 (1981): 114-118.

Allman, Jean. “Nuclear Imperialism and the Pan-African Struggle for Peace and Freedom,” Souls 10: (2008), 83-102.

Altbach, Philip and Robert Cohen. “American Student Activism: The Post-Sixties Transformation,” The Journal of Higher Education 61 (Jan-Feb 1990): 32-49.

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Anderson, Carol. Bourgeois Radicals: The NAACP and the Struggle for Colonial Liberation, 1941-1960, (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press), 2014.

Ansah-Birikorang, Robert. “A Case Study of the Role of the African Affairs Sub-Committee of the House Foreign Affairs Committee in Shaping U.S. Foreign Policy towards South Africa, 1981-1992,” PhD Dissertation at Howard University, 2002.

Bernstein, Hilda. The Rift: The Exile Experience of South Africans, (London: J. Cape), 1994.

Boesak, Allan. Farewell to Innocence: A Socio-Political Study on Black Theology and Black Power, (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock Publishers), 2015.

Bradley, Mark Philip. The World Reimagined: Americans and Human Rights in the Twentieth Century, (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press), 2016.

Brutus, Dennis. The Dennis Brutus Tapes: Essays at Autobiography, (Woodbridge, UK: James Currey), 2011.

Bundy, Colin. “National Liberation and International Solidarity: Anatomy of a Special Relationship,” in Southern African Liberation Struggles: New Local, Regional, and Global Perspectives, ed. Hilary Sapire and Chris Saunders, (Cape Town, SA: University of Cape Town Press, 2012), 212-228.

Buthelezi, Jabulani. Rolilahlahla Dalibhunga Nelson Mandela: An Ecological Study, (Bloomington, IN: Trafford Publishing), 2006.

Carson, Clayborne. In Struggle: SNCC and the Black Awakening of the 1960s, (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press), 1981.

Cheon, Andrew and Johannes Urpelainen. Activism and the Fossil Fuel Industry, (London: Routledge Books), 2018.

Craig, Campbell and Fredrik Logevall. America’s Cold War: The Politics of Insecurity, (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press), 2009.

Culverson, Donald R. Contesting Apartheid: U.S. Activism, 1960-1987, (Boulder, CO: Westview Press), 1999.

Danielson, Leilah. “Not by Might: Christianity, Nonviolence, and American Radicalism, 1913- 1963,” PhD Dissertation at University of Texas-Austin, 2003.

De Klerk, F.W. The Last Trek: A New Beginning, (New York: St. Martin’s Press), 1999.

Downes, Aviston. “Forging Africa-Caribbean Solidarity within the Commonwealth? Sports and Diplomacy during the Anti-Apartheid Campaign,” in Diplomatic Games: Sport, Statecraft, and International Relations since 1945, ed. Heather Dichter and Andrew

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Johns, (Lexington, KY: University of Kentucky Press), 2014.

DuBose, Carolyn. The Untold Story of Charles Diggs: The Public Figure, The Private Man, (Arlington, VA: Braton Publishing House), 1998.

Dubow, Saul. Apartheid, 1948-1994, (New York: Oxford University Press), 2014.

Dunbar, Ernest. The Black Expatriates: A Study of American Negroes in Exile, (New York: E.P. Dutton & Co., Inc.), 1968.

Feld, Marjorie N. Nations Divided: American Jews and the Struggle over Apartheid, (New York: Palgrave Macmillan), 2014.

Fischbach, Michael. Black Power and Palestine: Transnational Countries of Color, (Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press), 2018.

Fletcher, Laurel, Luke Cole, and Alison McCorran. “South Africa: United States Economic Sanctions and the Impact on Apartheid,” Harvard Human Rights Journal 1 (1988): 236- 247.

Focer, Ada. “Frontier Internship in Mission, 1961-1974: Young Christians Abroad in a Post- Colonial and Cold War World,” PhD Dissertation, Boston University, 2016.

Gaines, Kevin. African Americans in Ghana: Black Expatriates and the Civil Rights Era, (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press), 2008.

Gleijeses, Piero. Visions of Freedom: Havana, Washington, Pretoria and the Struggle for Southern Africa, (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press), 2013.

Grant, Nicholas. “Crossing the Black Atlantic: The Global Anti-Apartheid Movement and the Racial Politics of the Cold War,” Radical History Review 119: (Spring 2014), 72-93.

———. Winning Our Freedoms Together: African Americans and Apartheid, 1945-1960, (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press), 2017.

Henry, Charles P. “The Rise and Fall of Black Influence on Foreign Policy,” in African- Americans in Global Affairs, ed. by Michael L. Clemons, (Boston, MA: Northeastern University Press), 2010.

Hostetter, David. “Liberation in One Organization: Apartheid, Nonviolence, and the Politics of the AFSC,” Peace & Change 27: (October, 2002), 572-599.

———. “Movement Matters: American antiapartheid activism and the Rise of Multicultural Politics,” PhD Dissertation at University of Maryland-College Park, 2004.

———. “‘An International Alliance of People of All Nations Against Racism’: Nonviolence and

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Solidarity in the Antiapartheid Activism of the American Committee on Africa, 1952- 1965.” Peace & Change 32 (April 2007): 134-152.

———. Movement Matters: American Anti-Apartheid Activism and the Rise of Multicultural Politics, (New York: Routledge), 2009.

Houser, George. “Meeting Africa’s Challenge: The Story of the American Committee on Africa,” Issue: A Journal of Opinion, 6: 1976, 16-26.

———. No One Can Stop the Rain: Glimpses of Africa’s Liberation Struggle, New York: Pilgrim Press, 1989.

Johnson, Charles Denton. “African Americans and South Africans: the Anti-Apartheid Movement in the United States, 1921-1955,” PhD Dissertation at Howard University, 2004.

Johnson, Ethan. “Black Americans and the South African Anti-Apartheid Campaign in Portland, Oregon,” Africology: The Journal of Pan-African Studies 9: (December, 2016), 159-184.

Johnson, Willard. “Getting Over by Reaching Out: Lessons from the Divestment and Krugerrand Campaign,” The Black Scholar 9 (1999): 2-19.

Kakutani, Yuichiro. “MNC Decision Making under Sanctions: South Africa and Rhodesia,” Cornell International Affairs Review 11 (2017): 1.

Keck, Margaret and Kathryn Sikkink. Activists Beyond Borders: Advocacy Networks in International Politics, (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press), 1998.

Keech, Marc and Barrie Houlihan. “Sport and the End of Apartheid,” The Round Table 349: (1999), 109-121.

Levin, Matthew. Cold War University: Madison and the New Left in the Sixties, (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press), 2013.

Levy, Philip. “Sanctions on South Africa: What Did They Do?” Paper for the Economic Growth Center, February 1999.

Love, Janice. “People’s Participation in Foreign Policy Making: Evaluating the US Anti- Apartheid Movement,” PhD Dissertation for The Ohio State University, 1983.

Lulat, Y.G.M. United States Relations with South Africa: A Critical Overview from the Colonial Period to the Present (New York: Peter Lang), 2008.

Magubane, Bernard. My Life and Times (Scotsville, South Africa: University of KwaZulu-Natal Press), 2010.

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Makhulu, Anne-Maria. Making Freedom: Apartheid, Squatter Politics and the Struggle for Home, (Durham, NC: Duke University Press), 2015.

Markle, Seth. A Motorcycle on Hell Run: Tanzania, Black Power, and the Uncertain Future of Pan-Africanism, (East Lansing, MI: Michigan State University Press), 2017.

Martey, Emmanuel. African Theology: Inculturation and Liberation, (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock Publishers), 2009.

Martin, Phyllis Slade. “A Moral Imperative: The Role of American Black Churches in the International Anti-Apartheid Movement,” PhD Dissertation at George Mason University, 2014.

Massie, Robert. Loosing the Bonds: The United States and South Africa in the Apartheid Years, (New York: Doubleday), 1997.

Matthews, Z.K. Freedom for My People: The Autobiography of Z.K. Matthews: Southern Africa 1901 to 1968, (London: Rex Collings), 1981.

McAlister, Melani. The Kingdom of God Has No Borders: A Global History of American Evangelicals, (New York: Oxford University Press), 2018.

McKibben, Bill. “Global Warming’s Terrifying New Math,” Rolling Stone, July 19, 2012.

Meriwether, James. Proudly We Can Be Africans: Black Americans and Africa, 1935-1961, (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press), 2002.

Miller, Jaime. An African Volk: The Apartheid Regime and Its Search for Survival, (New York: Oxford University Press), 2016.

Minter, William. King Solomon’s Mines Revisited, (New York: Basic Books), 1986.

Minter, William, Charles Cobb, Jr., and Gail Hovey, eds. No Easy Victories: African Liberation and American Activists Over a Half Century, 1950-2000, (Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press), 2007.

Minter, William and Sylvia Hill, “Anti-Apartheid Solidarity in United States-South Africa Relations: From the Margins to the Mainstream,” in The Road to Democracy in South Africa, International Solidarity, Volume 3 (Pretoria: UNISA Press), 2008, 745-822.

Mitchell, Nancy. Jimmy Carter in Africa: Race and the Cold War, (Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press), 2016.

Morgan, Eric. “The Whole World is Watching: Polaroid & South Africa,” Enterprise & Society 7: (September 2006), 520-549.

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———. “Black and White at Center Court: Arthur Ashe and the Confrontation of Apartheid in South Africa,” Diplomatic History 36: (2012), 815-841.

Moran, Lauren. “South to Freedom? Anti-Apartheid Activism and Politics in Atlanta, 1976- 1990,” PhD Dissertation at George State University, 2014.

Moyn, Samuel. The Last Utopia: Human Rights in History, (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press), 2010.

———. Not Enough: Human Rights in an Unequal World, (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press), 2018.

Mwakikagile, Godfrey. Life Under Nyerere, (Washington, D.C.: New Africa Press), 2006.

Muehlenbeck, Philip. Betting on the Africans: John F. Kennedy’s Courting of African Nationalist Leaders, (New York: Oxford University Press), 2012.

Nesbitt, Francis Njubi. Race for Sanctions: African Americans Against Apartheid, (Bloomington, IN: Press), 2004.

Nesbitt, Prexy. Apartheid in our Living Rooms: U.S. Foreign Policy and South Africa, (Chicago: Midwest Research), 1987.

Nixon, Ron. Selling Apartheid: South Africa’s Global Propaganda War, (London: Pluto Press), 2016.

Ntantala-Jordan, Phyllis. A Life’s Mosaic: The Autobiography of Phyllis Ntantala (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press), 1993.

Nteta, Chris. “The Linkage Between African Americans and the South African Black Immigrant Community,” Trotter Review 10 (1996).

Parrott, R. Joseph. “Boycott Gulf! Angolan Oil and the Black Power Roots of American Anti- Apartheid Organizing,” Modern American History 1 (2019): 195-220.

Payne, Richard J. “Japan’s South Africa Policy: Political Rhetoric and Economic Realities,” African Affairs 86 (April 1987): 167-178.

Pendergast, Mark. For God, Country, and Coca-Cola, (New York: Basic Books), 2013.

Plummer, Brenda Gayle. Rising Wind: Black Americans and US Foreign Affairs, 1935-1960, (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press), 1996.

———. In Search of Power: African Americans in the Era of Decolonization, (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press), 2012.

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Posnikoff, Judith. “Disinvestment from South Africa: They Did Will by Doing Good,” Contemporary Economic Policy 15: (January 1997), 76-86.

Risse, Thomas and Stephen C. Ropp. “Introduction and Overview,” in The Persistent Power of Human Rights: From Commitment to Compliance, ed. Thomas Risse, Stephen C. Ropp, and Katherine Sikkink, (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press), 2013, 3-26.

Roberts, George. “Politics, Decolonisation, and the Cold War in Dar-es-Salaam,” PhD Dissertation, University of Warwick, 2016.

Robinson, Randall. Defending the Spirit: A Black Life in America, (New York: Dutton), 1998.

Said, Abdulkadir. “The Sixth Pan-African Congress: Black Unity: Coming of Age in Dar-es- Salaam,” New Directions 1 (1984): 1-6.

Schechter, Danny. “From a Closed Filing Cabinet: The Life and Times of the Africa Research Group,” Issue: A Journal of Opinion 6 (1986): 41-48.

———. “The Day I Joined the Revolution,” in London Recruits: The Secret War Against Apartheid, (London: Merlin Press Ltd.), 2012.

Sellstrom, Tor. Sweden and National Liberation in Southern Africa: Volume II, Solidarity and Assistance 1970-1994, (Uppsala, SE: Nordiska Afrikainstitutet), 2002.

Simpson, Brad. “Solidarity in an Age of Globalization: The Transnational Movement for East Timor and U.S. Foreign Policy,” Peace & Change 29: 2004, 453-482.

———. “Bringing the Non-State Back In: Human Rights and Terrorism Since 1945,” in America in the World: The Historiography of American Foreign Relations Since 1941, ed. Frank Costigliola and Michael Hogan, (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press), 2014.

Snyder, Sarah. Human Rights Activism and the End of the Cold War: A Transnational History of the Helsinki Network, (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press), 2011.

———. From Selma to Moscow: How Human Rights Activists Transformed U.S. Foreign Policy, (New York: Columbia University Press), 2018.

South African Democracy Education Trust, The Road to Democracy in South Africa, Volume 1 1960-1970, (Cape Town: Zebra Press), 2005.

———. The Road to Democracy in South Africa, Volume 3 International Solidarity, (Pretoria: UNISA Press), 2008.

———. The Road to Democracy: South Africans Telling Their Own Stories, (Cape Town: Zebra Press), 2013.

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Sotirakopoulos, Nikos. The Rise of Lifestyle Activism: From New Left to Occupy, (London: Palgrave Macmillan), 2016.

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, ed. Jan Eckel and Samuel Moyn, (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press,) 2014, 204-225.

———. “Boycotts and Sanctions against South Africa: An International History, 1946-1970,” PhD Dissertation at Columbia University, 2016.

Stevenson, Charles. America’s Foreign Policy Toolkit: Key Institutions and Processes, (Washington, D.C.: CQ Press), 2012.

Sutherland, Bill and Matt Meyer. Guns and Gandhi in Africa: Pan-African Insights on Nonviolence, Armed Struggle, and Liberation in Africa, (Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press), 2000.

Tarrow, Sidney. The New Transnational Activism, (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press), 2005.

Tempo, Carl Bon. “From the Center Right: Freedom House and Human Rights in the 1970s and 1980s,” in The Human Rights Revolution: An International History, ed. Akira Iriye, Petra Goedde, and William I. Hitchcock, (New York: Oxford University Press), 2012, 223-244.

Tillery, Alvin B., Jr. Between Homeland and Motherland: Africa, U.S. Foreign Policy, and Black Americans, (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press), 2011.

Urdang, Stephanie. Mapping My Way Home: Activism, Nostalgia, and the Downfall of Apartheid South Africa, (New York: Monthly Review Press), 2017.

Van Vuuren, Hennie. Apartheid, Guns, and Money, (Pretoria, Jacana Press), 2017.

Vellela, Tony. “Interview with Joshua Nessen,” in New Voices: Student Activism in the ‘80s and ‘90s, (Boston: South End Press), 1988.

Von Eschen, Penny. Race Against Empire: Black Americans and Anticolonialism, 1937-1957, (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press), 1997.

Weaver, Frankie Nicole. “Art Against Apartheid: American and South African Cultural Activism and Networks of Solidarity,” PhD Dissertation for SUNY-Buffalo, 2013.

Zibbly, Meghan Elizabeth. “Legitimizing Struggle: The Rhetoric of Nonviolence and the Palestinian and International Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions Movement,” Master of Arts Thesis at University of Colorado at Boulder, 2015.

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