The African Activist Archive Project: Preserving the History of the Solidarity Movement
Richard Knight is Director of the African Activist Archive Project (www.africanactivist.msu.edu). He worked from 1975 to 2001 at the American Committee on Africa. He can be reached at rvknight@earthlink.net.
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As someone who was active in the struggle against apartheid inside South Africa and later for two decades in the US, I believe that it is extremely important that the history of the solidarity movement be documented.
-- Dumisani S. Kumalo, South African Ambassador to the UN
From the 1950s through the mid-1990s American activists organized campaigns to support African struggles against colonialism, apartheid, and social injustice. This diverse movement included student, religious, union, human rights and civic organizations mobilizing in states and cities across the US. It brought together broad coalitions in which African Americans, women, and Africans in exile played key roles in achieving a long-term mobilization that had a significant impact on US policy and investment and trade with Africa, especially through the anti-apartheid movement from the mid-1970s through 1994. The democratization of foreign policy was unprecedented and it is important that the lessons learned be documented for the benefit of ongoing activism.
In its earliest days, the movement was closely related to the civil rights movement and the struggle for racial justice in this country. In the 1940s singer and activist Paul Robeson was a founder and chair of the Council on African Affairs which included such prominent members such as W.E.B. Du Bois. In 1952 African American activist Bill Sutherland, on a trip to London, learned that the African National Congress planned to launch a Defiance Campaign in which people would openly violate apartheid laws. He alerted the Congress of Racial Equality, which, seeing it as similar to their campaigns against Jim Crow segregation, launched Americans for South African Resistance, which the following year became the American Committee on Africa (ACOA).
Religious organizations and labor unions also played important roles. Unions such as AFSCME had a strategic position in the 1980s campaigns to seek divestment by pension funds of public employees from companies doing business in apartheid South Africa.
Another important aspect of the movement was its close ties to African liberation movements and the key role of Africans in exile. The number of exiles from South Africa increased after the banning of the ANC and PAC in the wake of the Sharpeville Massacre in1960 and again in the aftermath of the repression following the Soweto student uprising in 1976. This was an international movement with solidarity organizations existing in many countries around the world.
Many of the hundreds of organizations engaged were local -- operating in one city or state or within one institution such as a college or church. There were active groups in virtually every state and city in the country. Some groups were exclusively African American, others were ethnically mixed. Some organizations were specifically formed with an African-related agenda; others already existed and took up the cause of African self-determination. Politically, they were also diverse ranging from faith-based organizations to anti-imperialist, Communist, and Socialist. Frequently, these organizations formed coalitions to achieve a particular goal such as the adoption of a divestment policy by a particular state, city, or institution.
By the 1970s a major focus of the anti-apartheid movement was on economic links -- especially US banks and companies doing business in apartheid South Africa, illegally occupied Namibia, Rhodesia, and the Portuguese colonies of Angola, Mozambique, and Guinea-Bissau. There was a campaign to boycott Gulf Oil because the company's exploitation of oil in Angola provided funding to Portugal for its military operations fighting against liberation movements in its colonies. For decades apartheid South Africa relied on transnational corporations for capital and technology. Finding their way blocked by US policy in Washington, activists seeking to stop corporate collaboration with apartheid developed other strategies for exerting pressure on the corporations.
One major focus of this effort was the divestment campaign, aimed at moving individuals and institutions to sell their holdings in companies doing business in South Africa. There were campaigns against specific corporations, including Chase Manhattan, Citibank, and Manufacturers Hanover (major lenders to South Africa), Mobil and Shell (which sold petroleum products to the police and military), Ford and General Motors (which sold vehicles to the police and military), and IBM and Control Data (which sold or leased computers to the government including the military and prisons).. Some campaigns, such as those against the oil company Shell, were international.
This activity increased in parallel with the growth of the movement on the ground in South Africa first in the aftermath of the 1976 Soweto student uprising and again with intensifying resistance in the 1980s as black South Africans mobilized to make the townships ungovernable. The government declared a State of Emergency in 1985 and used thousands of troops to quell "unrest." As the international media gradually came to recognize the importance of the struggle being waged, television audiences throughout the world were able to watch more frequent reports of massive resistance to apartheid, the growth of a democratic movement, and the savage police and military responses. The voices and activities of religious leaders such as Bishop Desmond Tutu and the black unions affiliated with the Congress of South African Trade Unions inspired action by parallel constituencies in the US. Faced with growing resistance in South Africa and mounting pressure at home, US companies began to withdraw, and by mid-1985 US banks effectively stopped making loans. This reduction of foreign capital significantly impacted the apartheid regime and supported the democratic movement. The combination also helped generate the thrust for a victory in 1986 when passage of the Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act was won over the veto of President Reagan even though the Republican Party controlled the Senate at the time.
The African Activist Archive Project of the African Studies Center at Michigan State University is working to preserve for history the rich record of activities of organizations and individuals involved in this movement.
The project is locating material produced by organizations and individuals and preserving that material by arranging for it to be placed in an archival institution such as a library as well as digitizing many of the documents, so that they become easily available. The national organizations such as ACOA, TransAfrica, and the Washington Office on Africa have already placed material in archival institutions. The project focuses primarily on the many other and often local organizations which flourished in states, cities, and college campuses across the US working to support struggles against colonialism and white minority rule especially in Angola, Guinea-Bissau, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, and Zimbabwe. Many of the organizations were ad hoc and no longer exist, but individuals have preserved vital records such as fliers, pamphlets, newsletters, posters, buttons, correspondence, newspaper clips, photos, and video. Collections that have been saved include material from the American Negro Leadership Conference on Africa, the Boston Coalition for the Liberation of Southern Africa, the Coalition to Stop Rhodesian & South African Imports, the Committee for a Free Mozambique, Educators Against Racism and Apartheid, the MPLA Solidarity Committee, the Seattle Coalition Against Apartheid, and a number of important individual collections including that of Mary-Louise Hooper, an American Quaker who moved to South Africa in 1956 to serve as the personal assistant to ANC President Albert Luthuli and continued her solidarity work in the US after being expelled by the apartheid regime.
While the project is focusing on campaigns related to colonialism and apartheid, it will include other issues though the year 2000 such as the campaign to achieve forgiveness of Africa's debt and for democracy in Nigeria during the dictatorship of Sani Abacha and the role played in that country by international oil companies such as Mobil and Shell.
The project is developing an extensive website which includes:
- Digitized historical documents such as newsletters, fliers, pamphlets, reports, and conference papers.
- Photos, buttons and posters
- Historical audio and video
- Interviews and written remembrances
- Slideshows used by activists.
What you can do to help
The success of this project depends in large part on people who were involved in the solidarity movement. The further the historical reach, the more difficult it is to locate material and people. For example, the project has not been able to locate anyone who knows about Bostonians Allied for South African Resistance which supported the Defiance Campaign in South Africa in the early 1950s. People should contact Richard Knight, even if you have no material but can suggest connections, people we should seek or better yet, how to find them.
Tell us about your organizations and campaigns -- We are eager to hear about as many organizations and campaigns as possible even if you have no archival material.
Deposit your records and materials in an archive -- Even if you have only a small amount of material, such as a single folder, it is important to preserve it.
Share photos, posters, buttons, videos -- we can digitize and post all or a selection of them on the website.
Honoring our History
The US solidarity movement, part of a broader worldwide movement, played an important role in the historic victory over colonialism and apartheid. This people's movement was important both to the political history of African countries and within the US -- where popular action had a significant impact on government and corporate policy.
Current solidarity campaigns have drawn on the experience and success of the African solidarity movement, focusing campaigns on both governments and companies. Save Darfur has launched a "Divest for Darfur" campaign lobbying US institutional shareholders such as investment banks and pension funds to sell their ownership in companies doing business in Sudan such as the Chinese oil company PetroChina. Western Sahara Resource Watch, an international network of activists and organizations, supports the right to self-determination for the people of Western Sahara, which is illegally occupied by Morocco. The Jubilee USA Network is working for canceling the debt of poor countries to allow them to spend their resources on development and meeting basic needs such as health and education. AIDS activists are campaigning for adequate funding from wealthy countries to allow poor countries to provide life-saving drugs to all people in need.
The end of apartheid, in the words of Nelson Mandela, brought to a close "a history of five hundred years of African colonization that began with the establishment of the Portuguese empire." In this era of official lies, deliberate distortions, and rewritten history, it is more important than ever to protect, preserve, and make available the many aspects of this "peoples' history" in order to underscore how effectively power can be challenged by determined mobilization. With the help of activists, the African Activist Archive Project is working to record the contributions of too often uncelebrated "ordinary" citizens who committed years of their lives to efforts to support African liberation struggles.
Rhodesian Chrome
In 1965 the white minority regime in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) unilaterally
declared independence from Britain rather than move toward majority
rule. In response, in 1966 the UN Security Council adopted mandatory
sanctions against Rhodesia. In opposition to UN sanctions, in
late 1971 Congress passed the Byrd Amendment that allowed chrome
imports to the US from Rhodesia in violation of the sanctions.
In early 1972 a group of mostly black students and faculty at
Southern University at Baton Rouge organized a protest of the
first shipment of chrome. They were supported by the predominantly
black dockworkers, members of the International Longshoremen's
Association (ILA), who refused to handle the chrome. At one demonstration,
the ship was protected by deputy sheriffs with shotguns, and two
students were arrested. This action sparked similar protests in
other port cities where the ILA also refused to handle the cargo.
Polaroid Revolutionary Workers Movement
An early successful campaign was against Polaroid, maker of instant cameras that used a special self-developing film. In 1970 two black workers at Polaroid, Caroline Hunter and Ken Williams, discovered that the company's film was being used to create the apartheid passbooks in South Africa. They established the Polaroid Revolutionary Workers Movement (PRWM) which demanded that the company disengage from South Africa, make a public statement in both South Africa and the US confirming its position on apartheid, and contribute its profits made in South Africa to recognized African liberation movements. When the company did not respond, PRWM called for a worldwide boycott of all Polaroid products.
In January 1971 the company issued the "Polaroid Experiment" which promised better wages for black employees of its South African distributor Frank & Hirsch and a ban on sales of film to the South African government. The plan was announced in the US in full page advertisements in major daily newspapers and 20 black weekly papers. The plan did not pacify the PRWM which continued the boycott campaign in line with the call for sanctions that had been issued by the African National Congress (ANC, South Africa's anti-apartheid opposition party). Polaroid fired Hunter and Williams.
In 1976 ANC activist Indrus Naidoo, who had served 10 years in Robben Island Prison for sabotage and was then working in the shipping department of Frank & Hirsch, sent Paul Irish of the American Committee on Africa a copy of a delivery slip showing that Polaroid film was being sent to the South African government's Bantu Reference Bureau for use in the passbook while the invoices were sent to a pharmacy in Johannesburg so there would be no record of payment from the government. When Naidoo went into exile, Irish gave a copy of the delivery slip to the Boston Globe. As a result of this disclosure, Polaroid ended its relationship with its distributor and all direct sales to South Africa.
