Southern Africa Support Committee
Southern Africa Support Committee
Alternate Names: Southern Africa Support Coalition
Location: Los Angeles, California, United States
Duration: 1975 - 1990
Newsletter(s):
Southern Africa Support Committee News Letter
In 1975 Michael Zinzun and others associated with the Black Panthers founded the Southern Africa Support Committee (SASC) which became a leading liberation support organization in the Los Angeles area, often working with other organizations in campaigns. SASC always related the struggles of marginalized communities in Los Angeles to those in the...
In 1975 Michael Zinzun and others associated with the Black Panthers founded the Southern Africa Support Committee (SASC) which became a leading liberation support organization in the Los Angeles area, often working with other organizations in campaigns. SASC always related the struggles of marginalized communities in Los Angeles to those in the liberation struggle in Africa, for example, showing that police brutality by the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) was not very different from apartheid police brutality and linking high infant mortality of African-Americans in Los Angeles to their poverty and lack of access to health care, similar to conditions for high infant mortality rates of Africans in Rhodesia, the Portuguese colonies, Namibia and apartheid South Africa. In the 1970s SASC mobilized people to lobby the city council against the opening of a South African consulate in Los Angeles, successfully blocking the consulate in that city. (The consulate had been forced by anti-apartheid organizing to move out of Berkeley, and, after being unable to move to Los Angeles, had to settle for Beverly Hills.) In support of the sports boycott, in April 1977 SASC protested South African participation in the Davis Cup in Newport Beach, including participating in demonstrations at tennis matches. Between 1976 and 1978 SASC was involved in a campaign against Del Monte for fishing in Namibian waters, as they had already done off the shores of northern California and Hawaii. In the late 1970s SASC led the campaign against the South African gold coin called the Krugerrand. About January 1980 the Southern Africa Support Committee changed its name to the Southern Africa Support Coalition (SASC), expanding for the purpose of pulling together the different groups, organizations and individuals who were doing work around Southern Africa. In the 1980s SASC was involved in the cultural boycott of South Africa, working with Athletes and Artists Against Apartheid, set up by Harry Belafonte and Arthur Ashe. They picketed performers who played at Sun City, a resort complex in the Bophuthatswana bantustan. (Because Bophuthatswana was considered by the apartheid regime as the "independent" state for people the apartheid regime classified Tswana, blacks were legally able to visit Sun City and mix socially with whites, but few blacks could afford to do so.) SASC joined a Southern African Resource Project (SARP) initiative to raise funds equally for children at Drew Medical Center in Los Angeles and for Sally Mugabe's child survival program in Zimbabwe; several thousand dollars were raised, and equally shared, to link the issue in Los Angeles to Zimbabwe. Based in the city of Pasadena for many years, SASC moved to Los Angeles about 1981. In 1990 SASC was merged into Friends of the ANC and the Frontline States. (Source: Carol B. Thompson and SASC documents on this website.)
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