African Activist Archive

Mailing seeking donations to the American Committee on Africa. The mailing says 1972 is a presidential campaign year; to us at the American Committee on Africa, this means primarily two things; first, this is the one time in four years when the American people face and hear about issues of broad national policy; it is a rare opportunity for us to focus attention on U.S. policy towards southern Africa; second, it's a frantic fund-raising marathon for potential candidates, candidates, and people with our kind of concerns. The mailing says the enclosed Annual Report for 1971 is a rundown on what we were doing last year. The mailing says the Administration appears to be siding quite openly with the racist colonial status quo in southern Africa - first permitting the sale of planes to both South Africa and Portugal; then giving Portugal an extraordinary (compared with aid to any African country) amount of aid in return for the Azores air and naval bases; and it didn't put up a fight when Congress voted to break the Rhodesian embargo. The mailing says on the other hand, as the year closed the situation in southern Africa became more exciting than for many year; Africans met the sell-out settlement between Britain and Rhodesia with well-organized and widespread protest, despite the state of emergency; and in Namibia, a general strike of Ovambo workers against the contract-labor system won such wide spontaneous support that instead of being instantly crushed - the fate of African strikes in South Africa - it is winning concessions. The mailing says we must help by publicizing the situation there, and by trying to change U.S. policies. One of the ways we do this is through extensive distribution of literature. [The Annual Report mention in the mailing is on the website dated January 1972.]

African Activist Archive

[Dear Friend, 1972 is a presidential campaign year]

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