African Activist Archive

This document discusses: 1) political events in South Africa, 2) U.S. city and state divestment actions, 3) recent divestment actions on U.S. campuses, 4) four purposes of the Northeast Anti-Apartheid Conference, leading up to National Weeks of Action (March 21-April 6, 1985), and 5) the conference program. Protest and repression in South Africa have escalated, sparked by rejection of elections to the new, but powerless, "Indian" and "Coloured" houses of parliament. The South African army has moved into Black townships, leaving an estimated 150 people dead, hundreds wounded, and over 1,000 arrested. A highly successful general strike has raised the mass challenge to apartheid; nine labor, student and community leaders who were coordinating the general strike were arrested. The white minority regime is losing control of the situation, particularly since 200,000 of its troops are needed to maintain the illegal occupation of Namibia. Since December 1983, legislative divestment actions have taken place in Maryland, Nebraska, Boston, Newark, New York City, Santa Cruz, Washington, D.C., and Cuyahoga County, Ohio as well as actions in Detroit and San Francisco, where 63% of voted decided that the city will ban all pension fund investments linked to South Africa. A similar matter will be decided soon in Oakland. The conference schedule includes picketing a Ray Charles Concert at the Schubert Theatre in New Haven. Moderators of conference sessions include William Johnston, Episcopal Churchmen for South Africa; Janet McLaughlin, the Washington Office on Africa (WOA); Lee Farris, Boston Coalition for the Liberation of Southern Africa (BCLSA) and MASS DIVEST; and students from Yale and Dartmouth. Rally moderators are Brooke Baldwin and Joshua Nessen; rally speakers are Mel King, Prexy Nesbitt, Hinganyerwa Asheeke, Andrea Ross of the the Yale Workers Union, Elombe Brath of the the Patrice Lumumba Coalition, Willie Terry of Black Students Organizing Network, and others. The program discusses the United Democratic Front (UDF), the U.S. Conference of Mayors, the City University of New York (CUNY), Harvard, Dartmouth, Wesleyan, Amherst College, Williams, Princeton, and formation of a "South Africa Free Endowment Fund," material aid, political prisoners, sports and cultural boycott, relating anti-apartheid organizing to other struggles, and Bishop Desmond Tutu. [Note: This document was part of a conference packet.]

African Activist Archive

NORTHEAST ANTI-APARTHEID CONFERENCE

Background: Events in Southern Africa and U.S. Anti-Apartheid Organizing

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