NAAIC Newsletter

Contents: SOUTHERN AFRICA COMMITTEE • MADISON AREA COMMITTEE ON SOUTH AFRICA (MACSA) • The document is apparently from an issue of the North American Anti-Imperialist Coalition newsletter. The document says major work over the past months have included setting up our new office in Durham. Already six people are at work, establishing our resource center. The document says in New York, the Committee met with representatives of the African National Congress of South Africa; ANC has established an office in New York. The document say SAC members were also privileged to meet with Jane Ngwenya of ZAPU--Zimbabwe African Peoples Union; with Marcelino Dos Santo of FRELIMO-the Mozambican Liberation Front; and with Amilcar Cabral of PAIGC-the African Party for the Independence of Guinea-Bissau and Cape Verde. The document says the SAC participated in a Third World People's Coalition forum, presenting the slide/tape show "Partners in Apartheid" which deals with U.S. economic involvement in South Africa, and the film "A Luta Continua" dealing with the liberation struggle in Mozambique our magazine SOUTHERN AFRICA, is being sold on subscription basis. The document says the Madison Area Committee on Southern Africa has concentrated during the fall on a fund raising campaign for PAIGC in Guinea-Bissau; during a week of concentrated effort in October we used two movies as vehicles for in forming people of the current situation in the Guinean liberation struggle; the movies were shown widely in the area, at high schools, churches, and at many locations on and around the university campus; in addition we attempted to contact all local names on our mailing list, to 'canvas' among those most sympathetic and presumably most knowledgeable on Southern Africa issues; the initial stages of the campaign were not as successful as hoped as a means of generating material support, its educational value was probably of greater significance; MACSA cooperated with two other campus groups in the campaign, one of these being the University Afro-American Community Center. The document says by early December, however we had raised approximately $1000. and due to the circumstance that Gil Fernandes, the official PAIGC representative to the UN was able to come on a short speaking tour in the Midwest at this time, it was possible for us to hand the funds collected directly to him as one of the leaders in the Guinean movement. The document says in other areas, MACSA members have been active in initiating a boycott of South African products in local grocery stores; copies of a press release have been sent to campus, city, and labor newspapers; several stores have been objects of a sort or symbolic picket; in at least one case, the manager was highly embarrassed to 'learn' in this manner that his store carried South African products and promised immediately to remove them. The document says a MACSA member has persuaded members of large food buying cooperative to cease purchasing cashews imported from Mozambique; currently an effort is being made to determine whether cashew might be purchased from Tanzanian sources.