‘It’s worse than Tutu getting the peace prize’

By Daniel Nelson For many Western campaigners, the collapse of apartheid was a highlight – perhaps the highlight - of their political lives. “Separate development” was so disgusting and the enemy so obdurate that success was particularly sweet. I vividly remember turning to the person sitting next to me at the final Anti-Apartheid Movement meeting in London and saying, “It’s an amazing feeling – a campaign that’s actually been won.” The only time since that I have experienced a similar euphoria was East Timor’s independence, which again was victory over a seemingly intractable foe and its powerful Western allies. In Have You Heard From Johannesburg: The Bottom Line, documentary filmmaker Connie Field tells the story of how grassroots groups mobilised to cut the South African government off from its financial allies in the West. It’s an inspiring and instructive story, from the moment that two Polaroid workers in the US spotted that the company’s product was being used to make the hated Pass Books for the country’s Black population – who were considered citizens not of South Africa but of the absurd “Bantustans”, where no-one could earn a living. Polaroid, seen as a relatively liberal employer, initially tried to deflect the ensuing campaign, which included placards asking “Did Polaroid shoot every South African Black?” More and more companies and organisations were drawn in, such as Barclays Bank on one side and the World Council of Churches on the other. Under pressure, General Motors invited an African-American Baptist preacher, Leon Sullivan, to its board, only to be shocked when he challenged a stockholders meeting on the issue. His colleagues were angry, he recalls – “’Nothing like this has happened before. Where did this guy come from? Why did we put him here?’ “I used the board as a pulpit,” he says. With interviews and old documentary footage, the film charts growing public participation in boycotts and protests in Western countries, and the gloves-off response of the South African government (let’s not forget that it bombed and killed anti-apartheid activists in London), corporations and right-wing politicians. Gradually, the squeeze began to bite. A newsreel from the time illustrates the seriousness of the situation: asked about rising petrol prices, a South African motorist replies, “It’s worse than Tutu getting the peace prize.” At the same time, dissent and repression on the home front escalated. Chase Manhattan Bank stopped rolling over loans; financial crisis and bankruptcy loomed. Finally, a group of top business executives realised the game was up and started talking to the African National Congress. One of the businessmen, Tony Bloom, says that once he and his colleagues were satisfied that the ANC negotiators were nationalists not communists, “I found it very easy to like them on a personal level.” It’s a great story, and the film tells it clearly and succinctly. For campaigners, there are many lessons. One campaigner recalls, “For Americans used to success, it was something to learn that you need the endurance of the long distance runner.” But the outstanding lesson is that “you can make an effort and make a change. It’s a drop in the ocean, but the ocean is made up of drops.” In this case, the good guys won. It can happen again. * Have You heard From Johannesburg: The Bottom Line will be screened at the London Film Festival, Southbank, on 26 and 28 October

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