1980 ANNUAL REPORT

Contents: 1980 Annual Report of The Africa Fund (associated with The American Committee on Africa) • Refugees and Medical Projects • Emergency Assistance • Research, Publications and Education • 1980 Financial Results • Trustees • Advisory Committee • The Future and The Africa Fund. The report says important events in southern Africa in 1980 included the independence of Zimbabwe after almost 15 years of armed struggle between Zimbabwe nationalists and the Rhodesian regime. Elections were held under British control in February, electing a government headed by Robert Mugabe's ZANU (PF). A large number of international observers were at the election, including a team sponsored by The Africa Fund. After nearly a year of independence, many problems remain, but progress has been made particularly in the economic sphere. Efforts to achieve independence in Namibia, under the control of the South African government since 1920, met with continued frustration. An armed struggle between Namibian nationalists led by the South West African People's Organization (SWAPO) and the South African Defence Force grew in intensity. Thousands of Namibians fled across the borders of adjacent countries; there are a reported 60,000 Namibian refugees in Angola. 1980 also witnessed renewed protests in South Africa, including demonstrations, strikes, and student boycotts. In the US there is a continuing concern about US economic ties with South Africa. Through publications and speaking tours, The Africa Fund provided information that helps Americans understand the unfolding events. The Africa Fund assisted a Namibian refugee and a South African war resistor to tour the US for about three months, speaking in dozens of cities. A principal area of material assistance was directed at Namibian refugees in Angola. Associate director Paul Irish followed up Africa Fund projects while on a trip to Africa including Zimbabwe and Mozambique in July, meeting with health officials, visiting rural clinics, and reporting on reconstruction efforts. During 1980, eight students from colleges such as Bennington, Columbia and UCLA worked with our program. Special research projects focused on a review of documents on a US-Canadian firm, Space Research Corporation, convicted of illegally shipping arms to South Africa, and studies on the critical importance of multinational corporations supplying oil to South Africa. Publications included an analysis of the strategic implications of US energy, computer and transportation investments in South Africa, a resource guide for effectively utilizing films on South Africa (published in cooperation with California Newsreel), and an anthology of quotations from black South Africans and US leaders on the role of foreign investment in South Africa. Articles by executive secretary George Houser about the struggle for self-determination in the Western Sahara and problems facing the new government in Zimbabwe were reprinted from The Progressive and Christianity and Crisis. The Africa Fund sponsored several extensive speaking tours for field representative, Dumisani Kumalo, an exiled black South African journalist, in the spring and fall. Kumalo addressed audiences about conditions under apartheid and US corporate and government policy at more than 20 campuses from Ohio to Hawaii, and in major cities such as Los Angeles, Detroit and Chicago. The report discusses South African military forces, the South African Defence Force (SADF), medical supplies, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, the Mozambique Ministry of Health, the current impasse between the United Nations and South Africa over Namibia, the Africa Resource Center in the San Francisco bay area, the UAW (United Automobile Workers), the drought in the Sudan, the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, the Bantustan policy, The Chicago Defender, black unions in South Africa, reporters, The Wall Street Journal, NBC Magazine with David Brinkley, CBS News, the New Haven Advocate, Princeton , Fordham, Barnard, Long Island University, the New School for Social Research, research files, George M. Houser, Jennifer Davis, Richard Knight, Frank C . Montero, John L.S. Holloman, Marvin Rich, Isaac Bivens, Robert Boehm, Jacob Clayman, Wesley Hotchkiss, Sophia Yarhall Jacobs, William B. Landis, Tilden LeMelle, Andrew Norman, Robert Potter, Lionel Rogosin, Robert Stover, Peter Weiss, Julian Bond. Dick Clark, Ossie Davis, Ruby Dee, James L. Farmer, Coretta Scott King, Rep. Parren Mitchell, Frederick O'Neal, Stanley Sheinbaum, and Eugene Stockwell.