On June 16, 1990, a frenzied crowd cheered ANC leader Nelson Mandela, who had been released that year, from Leidseplein. For years, Dutch movements had campaigned for the abolition of apartheid in South Africa.
In South Africa, in 1948, the government introduced apartheid, a legal system of racial segregation. With this she strived for a total separation between whites and colored people. The African National Congress (ANC), which had already been established in 1912 to represent the interests of South Africans of color, rebelled against this. The lawyer Nelson Mandela wanted to forcibly overthrow the apartheid regime in South Africa and was sentenced to life in prison for this in 1964. During his imprisonment, the ANC continued to fight. Slowly, more and more aid came from abroad, including from anti-apartheid movements in the Netherlands.
Until the 1970s, the role played by apartheid and the fight against it was relatively small-scale in the Netherlands. There was a South Africa committee and there was also attention for it in churches, but the turning point came in the 1970s. Progressive youths united in anti-apartheid movements and started campaigning. This would grow into the largest and most effective anti-apartheid movement in Europe. The action groups supported the ANC freedom fighters in exile with money and equipment. Most actions and demonstrations organized in the Netherlands were peaceful. The main goal was to inform people about the situation in South Africa.
Establishment of anti-apartheid movements
Kier Schuringa was a member of the Anti Apartheid Movement Netherlands (AABN) in the 1970s, founded in 1971. It was one of the five major movements, alongside many regional and smaller groups. Today, Schuringa manages the collection on the Dutch anti-apartheid movements at the International Institute of Social History in Amsterdam (IISH). With the abolition of apartheid in 1990, these movements had become redundant and their archives could be sent to the IISH. Treasures are kept here that are only occasionally explored or loaned out. For example, fierce anti-apartheid campaign posters from the collection were part of the recent exhibition Hope about South Africa in the Rijksmuseum.
Schuringa was quite active within the AABN. “I have protested a lot against political prisoners and participated in demonstrations and boycotts. Our activities were nonviolent and primarily informative. Small actions, such as a protest with a few people for visibility, for which we did not have to ask the authorities for official permission.”
Critique of government policy
The fact that Dutch independent action movements in particular are so fanatically committed to the South African cause was not only due to a shared past. There was also a practical component to it. According to Schuringa, millions in subsidies ended up with these associations, in particular from the National Development Strategy Commission (NCO, also known as the Claus Commission). “In other countries there were also institutions that gave a lot of money, but there were political consequences. Not in the Netherlands, as the Claus Committee was independent. Here movements could freely criticize the government and their policies, without affecting the subsidy.”
“In addition, all the paperwork surrounding the subsidies ensured professionalization within the movements. In total, the anti-apartheid movements employed about thirty paid full-time workers. This in contrast to other countries, including former colonizer Great Britain, which had to do it mainly with volunteers. The Netherlands was truly exceptional in this.”
Blood oranges
To force the government of South Africa to change, the Dutch anti-apartheid movements wanted to hit the country economically. An early action that has become world famous is the Outspan boycott of 1973 and 1974. The anti-apartheid movements called on Dutch citizens and supermarkets to boycott oranges from this South African brand, because of the appalling working conditions for the dark workers on the Outspan. plantations. This was the first national boycott that was massively followed up and subsequently followed in other European countries.
The image of blackmailed workers inspired graphic designer Rob van der Aa when designing the campaign poster. Like Schuringa, Van der Aa was a member of the AABN and his poster with the head of a black man on a citrus juicer has become one of the most iconic and recognizable images of the fight against apartheid. The poster was first issued in March 1973, when the AABN organized a conference on the boycott of Outspan. The orange season started in June and the boycott was supposed to start in May. They approached importers and traders to avoid Outspan. Most of them got zero claims. Sellers hid behind the customers and would only stop selling if it turned out that people no longer wanted these oranges.
The most important because largest supermarket chain to have was Albert Heijn. When the latter initially refused to cooperate, the AABN decided on the strategy of negative publicity. This could have had a big impact because the range of the movement was great. Press conferences were well attended, newspapers placed the poignant poster and AABN also reached many people through the collaboration with Wereldwinkels. And not unimportantly, people who went shopping would see the activists protesting in front of the supermarkets. But even before the anti-AH advertising material was ready, the supermarket chain chose eggs for its money. Albert Heijn announced in an official statement that it was boycotting Outspan, and other supermarkets soon followed. With this boycott, which spread internationally, the anti-apartheid movement touched a sensitive economic chord in South Africa.
More violence
Another well-known action is the boycott on petrol from Shell. The Shell campaign was global but initiated and coordinated from the Netherlands. The movements wanted to force Shell to leave South Africa with a boycott. Despite the fact that many Dutch people ignored the Shell pump and the company clearly saw a decline in turnover, it never heeded this call. A cut off Shell pump cap is part of the collection at IISS. “In the second half of the eighties, activist groups switched to more radical methods, such as cutting off caps at the gas pump. These activists were probably people of the squatters' movement and one of them dropped the nozzle at the entrance of the AABN headquarters. I was working there at the time and I found and saved the nozzle”, says Schuringa.
The effect of all these actions was that apartheid was placed on the political agenda. The Dutch government could no longer ignore South African policy and debated what to do and how to respond. Internationally, world leaders increased pressure on the South African government. “The ANC played a leading role in abolishing the apartheid regime, but the international component was also very important. The Netherlands was one of the strongest in the world in this respect. Not only the movements but also the government started to support South Africa with boycott actions. In South Africa, companies turned against apartheid because of all the international sanctions on their trade.”
In early 1990, the new president De Klerk lifted the ban on the ANC and released Nelson Mandela. Negotiations to end apartheid had begun.