[DEBATE] : (Fwd) CCS seminar by Hakan Thorn (Gothenburg): Anti-Apartheid and the Global Justice Movement, TUESDAY 1 AUGUST, 10:30am-noon

[Patrick Bond]

Centre for Civil Society Seminar, 1 August, 10:30am-noon
CCS Seminar Room, Memorial Tower Building, Howard College Campus, 
University of KwaZulu-Natal

Presenter: Dr Håkan Thörn, Department of Sociology, Göteborg University 
(Hakan.thorn at sociology.gu.se)

Topic: Anti-Apartheid and the Emergence of a Global Civil Society, 
London/New York: Palgrave Macmillan

(This is the intro chapter to the book:)

Anti-Apartheid, the Media and ‘New Social Movements’ – Beyond Eurocentrism

The long journey
Even through the thickness of the prison walls … we heard your voices 
demanding our freedom.
(Nelson Mandela, Wembley stadium, London, 16 April 1990).1

Soon after he was released from Robben Island on the 11 February 1990, 
Nelson Mandela travelled abroad. He visited Zambia, Zimbabwe, Tanzania 
and then Sweden, where he saw Oliver Tambo, African National Congress 
(ANC) president in exile, who at the time was hospitalized in Stockholm. 
Here, he also appeared in front of thousands of cheering people in the 
Globe Arena. In April, he went to London, where he attended the second 
‘Mandela concert’ at Wembley Stadium, organized by the British AAM 
(Anti-Apartheid Movement) and broadcast by BBC on television globally.
This was the beginning of the end of the long journey, or as Mandela 
puts it, ‘the long walk’, to freedom from the brutal apartheid system in 
South Africa.2 As a prisoner for 27 years, Mandela’s movements had in a 
literal sense been limited to walking within an extremely limited space 
for most of the period of which the anti-apartheid struggle lasted.
However, for many of his fellow anti-apartheid activists, journeys 
across borders were an important and necessary part of the 
anti-apartheid struggle (as for Mandela himself before and after he was 
imprisoned).
In order to defend its system, the apartheid regime did not just 
imprison many of its opponents, it also fenced the country in, 
attempting at strict 1 control over movements across, as well as within, 
its borders, be it of people or information. However, in an era of 
increasing cultural, political and economic globalization, this became 
increasingly difficult.
Across borders
Through the years millions of people participated in the movement to 
abolish apartheid in South Africa. A large number of them were living in 
South Africa and were experiencing the violence of the apartheid system 
as part of every day life.
But the struggle against apartheid in South Africa also benefited from 
the support of large numbers of people around the world who were not 
sharing this direct experience of the apartheid system. People living in 
various countries like Japan, Holland, India, Sweden, Guyana, Britain, 
Ghana, Jamaica, Cuba, New Zealand and the United States made 
contributions through taking part in collective action. Most of them had 
not even been to South Africa. Their support was an act that in the 
context of the movement was defined through the concept of ‘solidarity’.
There are a number of different opinions and theories about the causes 
of the end of apartheid in South Africa – and about the role that the 
anti-apartheid struggle played in the process that led to the 
transformation.
In these discussions, a distinction between ‘internal’ and ‘external’ 
factors has been central. On the ‘internal side’, attention has been 
paid to the intensified internal struggle during the 1980s, led by the 
United Democratic Front (UDF), and in which youth movements and trade 
unions played a significant role.3 It is argued that this struggle in 
the end made South Africa ‘ungovernable’ from the point of view of the 
apartheid regime. Yet others point to the economic decline in South 
Africa during the 1980s, and South African big business’ changing 
attitudes towards the apartheid regime, leading to negotiations with the 
ANC.4 On the ‘external side’, one argument emphasizes strongly that it 
was the shift of international power balance that followed the end of 
the Cold War that ultimately brought apartheid down. This meant that the 
‘communist threat’ that had helped the South African government to 
sustain its position internationally was no longer there and that the 
Western powers and the Soviet Union started to negotiate about finding 
solutions to conflicts in Southern Africa.5 Others emphasize the 
pressure of the international solidarity movement, resulting in boycotts 
and sanctions against South Africa.6 During my research on the 
anti-apartheid movement, I have come across a number of accounts about 
how the struggle ‘inside’ South Africa 2 Anti-Apartheid and the 
Emergence of a Global Civil Society was constantly influenced by the 
‘outside’, just as the struggle ‘outside’ was influenced by, and 
dependent on, the struggle ‘inside’. This displays the difficulty to 
establish a clear, unambiguous ‘inside’ and ‘outside’ of South Africa in 
the struggle against apartheid, just as it is difficult to establish any 
fixed or clear-cut borders in an increasingly globalized world, where 
people and information increasingly are moving across borders, be it 
geopolitical, cultural or ‘racial’.
Such an account is for example provided by Michael Lapsley, to many 
known as ‘Father Michael’, one of many anti-apartheid activists that 
embodied the movements across borders that characterized the 
antiapartheid struggle. Lapsley, born and raised in New Zealand, and 
trained as an Anglican priest in Australia, was sent by his church 
community to South Africa in 1973 to study at the University of Natal. 
Here, he also worked as a chaplain to students at campuses, most of them 
black, and got involved in anti-apartheid activities. Because of this, 
he was expelled in 1976, and went to live in Lesotho, where he also 
became a member of the ANC. In the early 1980s he spent nine months in 
London, working in the ANC office, speaking at meetings organized by the 
British AAM.
He then went to Zimbabwe, where he continued to work against apartheid.7 
Lapsley gives the following examples of the important role of both media 
and travel, as the anti-apartheid movement outside South Africa also 
became present within its borders: To give you an example of a specific 
moment, there was a particular day, where three o’ clock in the morning 
in South Africa, white South Africa, got up to watch a rugby match in 
New Zealand. And the rugby match was stopped by this massive 
anti-apartheid movement. And it was electrifying, because we were told 
in South Africa, people were being told, look there is a few longhaired 
layabouts, and suddenly it’s not a group of longhaired layabouts, but 
it’s actually a broad cross section of society in New Zealand. I think 
there was enormous appreciation in the majority community that there was 
an international movement there. And also the (anti-apartheid) 
leadership and many people in prison talked about that.
Obviously, there were always people who travelled, church people loved 
travelling. I think that the international church network was often a 
vehicle for communication, because often political people couldn’t 
necessarily travel, they didn’t have passports, they were detained, 
whatever. The churches were having conferences everywhere, so that the 
South African connection of the faith community coming back Introduction 
3 into the country I think was very significant, a very significant 
gateway of communication. And there were people from church networks 
visiting South Africa as well, those communications remained throughout, 
they never really stopped. So there was that vehicle of communication in 
both directions.8 As I see it, these quotes show that an adequate 
analysis of the antiapartheid movement has to pay attention to the 
construction of networks, organizations, identities, action forms and 
information flows that transcended borders. In this sense the 
anti-apartheid movement could be seen as a part of a complex and 
multi-layered process that could be defined as a globalization of politics.
The globalization of politics
I would like to argue that the global struggle against apartheid must be 
seen in the context of the emergence of the ‘new social movements’, that 
have addressed global issues in new ways, for example, solidarity, 
anti-colonialism, ecology, peace and gender inequality, as well as the 
increased internationalization of ‘old movements’ (predominantly labour 
and church movements).9 During the last decade, these phenomena have 
begun to be discussed and analysed in terms of a global or international 
civil society. There has also been an increasing interest in these 
issues after the ‘global justice movement’ (sometimes called the 
‘anti-globalization movement’) became visible in the the World Social 
Forums in the South (Porto Alegre, Mumbai) and in the streets in cities 
in the North (Seattle, Genua), as well as in a globalized media space.10 
In these more recent discussions, the Internet is often highlighted as 
something that has made the construction of an effective global civil 
society possible.
However, I would like to argue that more important, the present ‘global 
civil society’ has historical links to the post-war, transnational 
political culture that the anti-apartheid movement was part of.
This political culture can be understood as part of an increasing 
globalization of politics, taking place predominantly after the Second 
World War. In this historical context a new, global political space 
emerges, constituted by three interrelated phenomena: (a) the new media 
which creates new possibilities for global communication, the creation 
of (b) transnational networks of individuals, groups and organizations, 
made possible not only through the new media, but also by face-to-face 
interaction facilitated by the new possibilities of travel. Not the 
least important, these networks must also be seen in the context of 
de-colonization and 4 Anti-Apartheid and the Emergence of a Global Civil 
Society post-colonial migration and (c) the rise and consolidation of 
new ‘global’ organizations and institutions.
This book emphasizes the importance of a historical perspective on 
political cultures, social movements, and political globalization. It 
looks at anti-apartheid as part of the history of present global 
politics. It analyses the crucial action forms and identification 
processes of the antiapartheid movement as a transnational phenomenon, 
relating it to relevant political and historical contexts. I argue that 
the anti-apartheid movement could be seen as part of the construction of 
an emerging global civil society during the post-war era. Consequently, 
the transnational anti-apartheid struggle proves a relevant case for 
recent theorizing and research on transnational movements and global 
civil society.
Anti-apartheid and human rights
Given the number of people that participated in the transnational 
antiapartheid movement, as well as its geographical dispersion and its 
achievements, there is no doubt that it was one of the most influential 
social movements during the post-war era. In addition to the South 
African movement organizations, the transnational anti-apartheid network 
connected thousands of groups and organizations, including solidarity 
organizations, unions, churches, women’s, youth and student 
organizations in more than 100 countries.11 For example, only in Britain 
more than 184 local groups were affiliated to the British AAM in 1990; 
and its list of international contacts included anti-apartheid 
solidarity organizations in 37 countries.12 Existing as a transnational 
movement for more than four decades, anti-apartheid’s impact was not 
limited to the South African context, as it created transnational 
networks, organizations and collective action forms that made – and 
still makes – an impact on national as well as transnational political 
cultures.
The significance of this movement has often been recognized in the 
context of social movement studies and international relations.13 
However, little research has been done on anti-apartheid, especially 
from the perspective of social movement theory. Further, while one of 
the most crucial aspects of this movement was its construction of 
transnational networks and forms of action, most research has focused on 
its national aspects, looking at the Australian, American, British or 
South African anti-apartheid movement.14 In the context of international 
relations, Audie Klotz argues that the history of the anti-apartheid 
struggle refutes the realist notion of international politics as purely 
dominated by the self-interest of states. In an Introduction 5 attempt 
to move beyond the debate on realism versus idealism, she argues for 
considering norms as a force of change in international politics.15 
Although the focus of her analysis is not on the level of civil society, 
it nevertheless implies a strong role for the anti-apartheid movement.
Through advocating the global norm of racial equality, initially 
emerging in the context of the anti-slavery movement, and through 
connecting this norm to demands for sanctions, the transnational 
anti-apartheid movement could become a powerful actor in world politics, 
influencing the interests and actions of states, corporations and 
intergovernmental institutions. Klotz also argues that the transnational 
anti-apartheid movement was related to, and supported by, the emergence 
and strengthening of issues like human rights and democratization in a 
global political context during the last decades.
This analysis might also explain the increasing interest in social 
movements among international relations theorists, as well as the fact 
that social movement theorists are turning to international relations in 
order to borrow theoretical concepts when formulating theories of 
transnational social movements.16 An important example in this respect 
is Margaret E. Keck’s and Kathryn Sikkink’s Activists Beyond Borders: 
Advocacy Networks in International Politics. Advocacy networks are 
distinguished from other types of transnational networks through ‘the 
centrality of principled ideas or values in motivating their 
formation’.17 In the book, the authors identify the anti-apartheid 
struggle as one of the most successful transnational campaigns in 
history. However, it is not included as a case in their study.
Although emphasizing historical predecessors in the nineteenth and early 
twentieth century, such as the anti-slavery campaign and the 
international suffrage movement, Keck and Sikkink argue that a major 
change regarding the global diffusion of human rights discourse and 
practice took place between late 1960s and early 1990s. Before this 
human rights had, with a few exceptions, been an empty declaration 
rather than a forceful political discourse. It was only through the 
emergence of transnational networks, launching successful campaigns 
during this period, that human rights became powerful as a discourse.
I would argue that this process started a bit earlier, in the early 1960s.
Important in this respect was not just the forming of Amnesty 
International, but also the emergence of the transnational 
anti-apartheid movement. In 1956 Canon John Collins formed the Treason 
Trial Defence Fund out of Christian Action, which in turn had roots back 
to the British Anti-Slavery Society. Later it changed its name to the 
British Defence and Aid Fund, and in 1965 the International Defence and 
Aid Fund (IDAF) was set up with the purpose of providing legal support 
to 6 Anti-Apartheid and the Emergence of a Global Civil Society 
individuals prosecuted for violating the apartheid laws and to support 
the families of ‘apartheid prisoners’.18 It became one of the most 
important international anti-apartheid organizations. However, the 
broader international campaign against apartheid took off after the All 
Africa People’s Conference in Accra made a call for an international 
boycott of South African goods in December 1958. Four months later the 
ANC, who had been discussing a boycott since the early 1950s, launched a 
boycott in South Africa.19 In Britain the anti-colonial Committee of 
African Organizations (CAO) responded to the call at a meeting in 
Holborn Hall in London. Invited to the meeting as Speakers were Julius 
Nyerere, president of the Tanganyika Africa National Union, and Father 
Trevor Huddleston.20 A boycott committee was formed, and soon it evolved 
into the independent Boycott Movement, which in 1960 changed its name to 
the AAM, consisting of South African exiles and a few of their British 
supporters.21 In March 1960, the campaign was fuelled by the Sharpeville 
shootings, which was reported globally by the media and caused a moral 
outrage all over the world. In various countries anti-apartheid protests 
occurred, demanding that governments and the United Nations (UN) put 
pressure on the South African government to end apartheid.
Partly as a result of this emerging global mobilization, the UN General 
Assembly a year later passed a resolution, explicitly referring to the 
demands of the ‘world public opinion’. It declared that the ‘racial 
policies being pursued by the Government of the Union of South Africa 
are a flagrant violation of the Charter of the United Nations and the 
Universal Declaration of Human Rights’.22 The British AAM, which in 1965 
decided to pay special attention to co-ordination of the transnational 
anti-apartheid network,23 continued to refer to apartheid as a human 
rights issue in its internationally distributed AA News in the 1960s. In 
the Human Rights Year of 1968, AAM sent a circular letter to all 
organizations in the international anti-apartheid network, urging them 
to campaign about the apartheid issue as a violation of human rights.24 
This might prove a case to conceptualize the transnational antiapartheid 
struggle in Keck’s and Sikkink’s terms as a human rights advocacy 
network. However, in this book, I will argue that such a 
conceptualization is not sufficient, as the anti-apartheid struggle 
clearly took the shape of a social movement.
Anti-apartheid and new social movements
In the cases where the anti-apartheid struggle has been analysed in 
terms of a social movement, it has often been related to the discourse 
on ‘new social movements’ (NSM). In an article on the British AAM, 
Introduction 7 Stuart Hall argues that it could be seen as one of the 
new social movements, since it ‘cut across issues of class and party, 
and organizational allegiance’.25 In a similar mode Christine Jennett 
has analysed the Australian anti-apartheid movement as a new social 
movement, emphasizing its cultural orientation.26 I agree that the 
anti-apartheid movement displayed many of the central features of new 
social movements as these have been defined in the context of NSM 
theory.27 The struggle against apartheid was as a part of the emergence 
of a new transnational political culture during the post-war era, that 
also included other solidarity movements, as well as student’s, green, 
peace and women’s movements, often conceptualized as ‘the new social 
movements’. The anti-apartheid movement was able to unite an extremely 
broad ‘rainbow coalition’ of organizations and groups, with a socially 
diverse support base and ideological orientation.
Further, the anti-apartheid movement had a strong cultural orientation, 
it was highly media oriented and the production and dissemination of 
information was one of its central activities. Finally, although its 
actions often had the purpose of putting pressure on governments and 
political parties, it engaged in extra-parliamentary political action, 
such as civil disobedience and boycotts, the latter its most important 
form of collective action.
However it is not possible to use NSM theory to analyse the 
transnational anti-apartheid movement without making a few modifications.
First, ‘old social movements’, predominantly labour and church 
movements, and their increased internationalization during the post-war 
era, were an integral part of anti-apartheid, as a ‘movement of movements’.
Second, and more important, the case of anti-apartheid as a 
transnational social movement reveals some highly problematic 
Eurocentric assumptions made in the context of NSM theory. I would like 
to argue that this implicit Eurocentrism to a large extent is related to 
a lack of a theoretically developed global perspective on contemporary 
collective action in the theoretical literature on new social movements. 
Although the global dimensions of contemporary collective action has 
often been pointed out, Western nation states have been the point of 
departure for theorizing on new social movements. Theorists of new 
social movements have pointed to the new social conditions of 
‘post-industrial’, ‘complex’ or ‘informational’ societies as a 
precondition for the emergence of these movements. Consequently, where 
no such new conditions are clearly present, no new movements can 
possibly emerge.
In spite of this, the concept of new social movements has in a few cases 
been applied in analyses of collective action in the South, however 8 
Anti-Apartheid and the Emergence of a Global Civil Society often without 
theoretical debate.28 One important exception is Ernesto Laclau, who has 
argued that: is it not the case that this plurality of the social and 
this proliferation of political spaces which lie behind the new social 
movements, are basically typical of advanced industrial societies, 
whilst the social reality of the Third World, given its lower level of 
differentiation, can still be apprehended in terms of the more classical 
categories of sociological and class analysis? The reply is that, 
besides the fact that this ‘lower level of differentiation’ is a myth, 
Third World societies have never been comprehensible in terms of a 
strict class analysis. We hardly need to refer to the Eurocentrism in 
which the ‘universalization’ of that analysis was based.29 The 
Eurocentric and evolutionist thinking often implied in NSM theory is 
clearly expressed by Christine Jennett as she is applying Alain 
Touraine’s theory of social movements in her analysis of the Australian 
Anti-Apartheid Movement (AAAM). The organization AAAM, consisting of 
predominantly middle-class Australian solidarity activists, is by 
Jennett defined as a new social movement, characterized by its 
orientation toward participatory grassroots democracy. The exile 
liberation movements, including organizations such as the ANC, the Pan- 
Africanist Congress of Azania (PAC) and South West African People’s 
Union (SWAPO), are by the same author defined as ‘historical movements’, 
characterized by hierarchical forms of organization and nationalist 
ideology.30 In a sense NSM theory has often implicitly been reproducing 
the Eurocentric evolutionist thinking of classical modernization theory, 
in which each country in its development has to pass through similar 
stages, and where the ‘underdeveloped’ countries of the South are always 
lagging behind the developed countries of the North. This mode of 
thinking is also based on what has been called ‘methodological 
nationalism’ in the sense that the nation state is always the basic 
unity of the analysis, and development/underdevelopment thus always is 
related to ‘internal factors’.31 This paradigm ignored the existence of 
global power relations and economic and political interdependence. In 
the case of theories of post-industrial society, it was often 
‘forgotten’ that the transformation to post-industrial economies in the 
North presupposed moving industrial production to so called ‘low-wage’ 
countries in the South. Although few advocates of classical 
modernization theory are to be heard today, many of its assumptions are 
still implicitly present Introduction 9 in current social theory. This 
is the case even in recent globalization discourse, as social conditions 
and trends specific to countries in the North are often being 
universalized.32 As I see it, this is not to say that NSM theory has not 
contributed with valuable insights regarding contemporary collective 
action. However, it has to be de-linked from its Eurocentric 
implications. Social movement studies could thus benefit from 
integrating perspectives from postcolonial theory. Postcolonial studies 
have not only emphasized the presence of a colonial legacy in the 
context of the latest phase of the globalization process, but also the 
presence and influence of the de-colonization process and the politics 
of anti-colonialism on present-day politics.33 Applying this perspective 
to the transnational anti-apartheid movement, and relating it to the 
debate on ‘new social movements’, it is evident that this movement, 
displaying all the characteristics associated with new social movements, 
emerged out of transnational interactions located in the context of 
de-colonization. It was initiated under strong influence not just of 
South African anti-apartheid organizations and exiles, but also of the 
broader anti-colonial struggle. The de-colonization process clearly 
marked established politics as well as the emerging alternative 
political culture in Britain at the time when the two internationally 
important solidarity organizations, IDAF and AAM, were initiated. These 
organizations were part of what in Britain in the late 1950s and early 
1960s was called ‘new politics’, as I see it an early conceptualization 
of certain forms of collective action, foreshadowing the latter ‘new 
social movements’.
In 1952, the same year that Canon John Collins initiated the activities 
that would subsequently lead to the formation of IDAF, the British peace 
movement initiated a mobilization process influenced by the Indian 
anti-colonial movement. It was called ‘Operation Gandhi’, and organized 
‘sit-ins’ in central London.34 The founder of IDAF, Canon John Collins, 
was also the chairman of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND), the 
dominant peace movement organization in Britain at the time. A public 
personality involved in the more militant civil disobedience actions 
that the peace movement at this time continued to stage (and which 
amongst other things led to the trial against Bertrand Russell, that 
gained media attention around the whole world) was Reverend Michael 
Scott. Scott had been participating in militant Indian civil 
disobedience actions as well as black political activism in South 
Africa. Banned in South Africa in 1950, Scott initiated the Africa 
Bureau in London in 1952, supporting African de-colonization. Just like 
the Movement for Colonial Freedom, The Africa Bureau was an important 
part of an emerging anti-colonial political culture in Britain in late 
1950s.
10 Anti-Apartheid and the Emergence of a Global Civil Society When the 
Boycott Movement, initiated by the Committee of African Organizations, 
in 1960 changed its name to AAM, and started to reach outside of the 
exile circles, it attracted individuals who participated in this 
political culture.35 To conclude the discussion on the implications of 
the case of the antiapartheid movement in relation to the theoretical 
debate on new social movements: I argue that when using this concept, it 
must be recognized that new social movements in the West partly emerged 
out of the global context of de-colonization, and that the collective 
experiences and action forms of the anti-colonial struggles in the South 
were extremely important sources of influence.
I think that the reason for this influence being largely neglected in 
the context of NSM theory, is partly due to the methodological 
nationalism which for a long time has dominated not just social movement 
studies but the social sciences in general. However, as has already been 
mentioned, recently a new interdisciplinary field of research has 
emerged, dealing with transnational collective action and the changing 
role of the nation state in the context of the increasing importance of 
processes of globalization. As Keck and Sikkink have showed, this 
approach is not only valid in relation to the recent wave of 
transnational collective action, but also to historical cases.
Defining anti-apartheid as social movement
I define a social movement as a form of collective action that 
ultimately aims at transforming a social order. A social movement is a 
process involving as central elements the articulation of social 
conflicts and collective identities. It is constituted by different 
forms of practices: production and dissemination of information, 
knowledge and symbolic practices, mobilization of various forms of 
resources, including the construction of organizations and networks, and 
the performing of public actions of different kinds (demonstrations as 
well as direct actions).36 This means that a social movement should not 
be confused with an ‘organization’, or an NGO (although it can include 
NGOs), and that it does not consist of the sum of a number of 
individuals – that is, it does not presuppose ‘membership’ – but should 
rather be seen as a space of action.
For example, by participating in a boycott against South African goods 
you performed an action that was a part of constituting anti-apartheid 
as a social movement.
While this analytical understanding of a social movement departs from 
the so-called ‘identity paradigm’, I will also make use of the Resource 
Mobilization Theory (RMT), particularly its emphasis on the Introduction 
11 importance of previously established networks for the emergence of a 
social movement, and the notions of ‘action repertoire’ (designating the 
available, historically accumulated, stock of action forms) and ‘social 
movement organizations’ (SMOs).37 Resource Mobilization Theory has also 
been reformulated as the Political Process Perspective, an approach that 
emphasizes the role of political opportunity structures (POS), often 
being used for cross-national comparisons. Although the POS approach 
recently has been modified in order to be adapted to the emergence of 
transnational social movements that address supra-national institutions, 
it still tends to treat the nation state as a ‘pre-given’, largely 
unproblematized, context for social movement action.38 Rather than 
presuming that explanations for both national and transnational 
collective action are primarily to be sought in the context of the 
internal dynamics of a nation state, I will shift emphasis, suggesting 
that any analysis of the emergence of social movements, national and 
transnational, in the twentieth (and the twenty-first) century, must 
consider their relations to transnational processes. Further, as a 
consequence of its emphasis on political structures, the POS mode of 
analysis has in some cases tended to downplay the role of culture and 
history.
In this book, I will use a number of concepts that emphasize global 
processes, history and culture.
On the most general level of analysis, I will use the concept of 
structural context, including the economic, political and cultural 
structuring of social action. In its widest sense the appropriate 
structural context for the transnational anti-apartheid movement is the 
process of intensified globalization during the post-war era.39 Further, 
situated in the context of postcoloniality, the issue of anti-apartheid 
was articulated as an issue of de-colonization, particularly by newly 
independent states and anti-colonial movements, and the patterns of 
conflicts and positions taken in the context of international 
communities were to a large extent conditioned by the political history 
of colonialism. Finally, situated in the context of the Cold War, the 
anti-apartheid struggle, like any significant political field during the 
post-war era, national as well as transnational, was divided along the 
conflict lines that constituted the bipolar political world order. The 
Cold War was a crucial factor in the circumstances that made it possible 
for the South African apartheid government to sustain its position 
internationally. It was also the Cold War that made it possible to 
define ANC as part of a bloc that threatened world peace and security.40 
Further, in order to emphasize the importance of the cultural dimension 
of collective action, I will use the concept of political culture to 
signify a 12 Anti-Apartheid and the Emergence of a Global Civil Society 
more specific and highly relevant context for the analysis of how 
national and transnational collective action at any given time is 
structured not just by the presence of formal political institutions, 
but through historically instituted discursive formations and processes 
of identity construction on different levels.41 ‘Political culture’ 
refers to processes of communication and articulation of political 
experiences, identities, action strategies and projects – and to the 
institutions in which these processes are embedded.42 On a transnational 
level, the political cultures established by the anti-colonial movements 
and previously existing solidarity movements played a crucial role in 
shaping the character of the transnational anti-apartheid movement 
(Chapter 1).
In Britain and Sweden, specific national political cultures influenced 
the anti-apartheid movements in the two countries (Chapter 3).
Further, I will use social movement culture as a more specific context, 
in which historical movement traditions (in terms of collective 
identifications, action repertoires, and organizational forms) are being 
reproduced, modified and/or transformed. Finally, key organizations and 
key activists denote an even more specific and methodologically relevant 
focus for an analysis of a social movement. A social movement can 
include a number of SMOs, and certain SMOs can be part of several social 
movements. For example, the anti-apartheid movement included SMOs that 
were also part of other movements (such as labour organizations or 
women’s organizations). Key organizations are however those SMOs that 
solely focus on the main conflict/issue that defines the ‘common ground’ 
of a movement, and therefore play a key role in constructing its 
collective identity. In the case of anti-apartheid, key organizations in 
South Africa at different times were the ANC, the PAC (1950s and early 
1960s), the Azanian People’s Organization (AZAPO, related to the Black 
Consciousness Movement emerging in the late 1970s), the Inkatha Freedom 
Party (formed in 1975 out of Mangosuthu Buthelezi’s Inkatha Movement) 
and the UDF (formed in 1983).43 In countries outside of South Africa, 
key SMOs were the organizations that specifically focused on solidarity 
with the former. In the context of the transnational anti-apartheid 
movement, the key movement organizations were mainly the ANC, the PAC 
and the two British key solidarity organizations, AAM and IDAF.
Key activists should be understood as those who perform the crucial role 
of being spiders in movement networks, combining the possession of 
information and knowledge particularly relevant in a movement context (a 
kind of ‘movement capital’ in Bourdieu’s terms) with strategically 
relevant spatial moves and movements as networks are spun Introduction 
13 across borders. Thus key activists have the function of being ‘nodes’ 
in the information networks of the movement, in retrospect often being 
able to provide a general view of certain processes as well as contexts 
of the movement. The function of key organizations and key activists in 
an empirical study of social movements is thus that they facilitate the 
analysis of the crucial dynamics of the processes of identification, as 
well as to the informational, cognitive and spatial networks of a social 
movement.
The approach that I am suggesting implies mainly focusing the analysis 
on the complex process of interaction through which a social movement is 
constructed. This is a process that not only involves consensus building 
but also tensions and conflicts. Although social movements may appear as 
homogenous phenomena in public space, they must be understood as 
constituted by heterogeneous and sometimes contradictory constellations 
of actions. I would even like to argue that tensions and conflicts are 
fundamental elements in the dynamic of social movement processes. An 
adequate analysis of a social movement, including its relations to the 
social and historical context in which it acts, must therefore not only 
focus on conflicts between a movement and its adversaries, but on the 
internal conflicts through which the strategies and identities of the 
movement are articulated. Such an approach is highly relevant in the 
case of anti-apartheid, that to a large extent was a ‘movement of 
movements’, consisting of an extremely broad alliance between liberation 
movements and solidarity movements, the latter composed of different 
‘blocs’ – churches, unions, political parties, student movements and 
solidarity organizations.
Social movements are frequently referred to in current discussions on 
democracy and civil society. Since this book relates to this theme it 
must underlined that the concept of ‘social movement’, in the way it is 
used here, does not per se refer to democratic processes. However, in 
the history of modernity there have seldom been processes of 
democratization without the involvement of broad social movements. The 
transformation of South African society in the 1980s and 1990s is, of 
course, one of the latest examples of this.
This theme connects to the discussion on the relation between social 
movements and social change. The fact that social movements are defined 
by an orientation toward social change does of course not mean that they 
always achieve the changes that are struggled for. Sometimes they do, 
but not exactly the way it was imagined in movement discourses.
Sometimes unimagined changes might come about in the form of unintended 
consequences of collective action. Although there are 14 Anti-Apartheid 
and the Emergence of a Global Civil Society disputes as to what extent 
the anti-apartheid movement contributed to the end of apartheid system, 
it might still be argued that it by large was a success story. Still, 
present day South African society might not look the way it was imagined 
in the utopias of the anti-apartheid movement.
However, more important, simply to asses to what extent a movement 
achieved the goals that were formulated in its programmes might not be 
the most fruitful way of reaching an understanding of the impact of its 
collective actions. To be able to reach a more complex analysis of the 
relations between social movements and social change it might be useful 
to introduce the notion of ‘learning process’ as an important aspect of 
social movement praxis.44 In the practices of social movements, 
collective experiences are made, that to its individual participants 
constitute learning processes, which might be carried into other contexts.
To what extent learning processes of social movements actually 
contribute to significant social change is of course open to careful 
empirical investigation in any given case. In any case this is not an 
easy task to assess, since it really cannot be measured. To find out 
about the number of participants is of course not unimportant to be able 
to assess the impact of a movement. But the main task for the approach 
that I am using is to find out about the quality of action. What were 
the important forms of action and interaction and what did they mean in 
the different contexts in which they were performed?
Social movements and the mediatization of politics
In March 1960, the international campaign against apartheid that was 
initiated the year before was fuelled by the Sharpeville shootings, 
which was reported globally by the media and caused a moral outrage all 
over the world. In various countries, anti-apartheid protests occurred.
However, media attention related to dramatic events in South Africa was 
short-lived. During long periods anti-apartheid activists experienced 
difficulties to get a voice in public space. In response to this, an 
active approach to media was developed. This involved the two 
interrelated strategies of trying to influence established media, and to 
develop alternative media.
The rise of the transnational anti-apartheid movement was parallel in 
time, and was indeed part of, the mediatization of politics, which 
followed the changes in the media structure in societies all over the 
world, beginning in the 1960s. The changes included the expansion of the 
tabloid press and the increasing importance of television.45 These 
changes brought about (a) new national media spaces, where political 
Introduction 15 identities are constructed in new ways and where local 
problems can become national issues; (b) a visualized transnational 
media space, which can be seen as a part of the process of 
globalization.46 This is not only a space for the immediate transmission 
of news across the globe, but also a site of political struggle, where 
different political actors, through symbolic actions, are trying to 
influence opinions (such as in the case of, for example, Greenpeace). In 
relation to this John Keane, in his influential book Media and 
Democracy, argued that we have seen a ‘slow and delicate growth of an 
international civil society’.47 The media orientation that is 
characteristic of new social movements must be seen in relation to the 
broader context of the construction of a new movement culture, beginning 
in the late 1950s. Although often involving antagonistic relationships 
the different movements had in common that their identities were defined 
in anti-establishment terms, and together the various groups, 
organizations and networks made up an ‘alternative culture’. This was a 
context for articulating new issues and identities, related to regular 
activities taking place in ‘invisible networks’ as well as within the 
framework of ‘visible’ movement organizations and institutions: 
journals, small publishing houses, co-operatives and festivals including 
performances, theatres and rituals related to political issues. It has 
been argued that this alternative political culture can be seen as a 
reaction to the decline in the public sphere that Jürgen Habermas was 
referring to in 1962 and that the movements represented an attempt to 
revitalize and redefine civil society and politics itself.48 Just as in 
the case of the new media structures, the rise of new social movements 
is not only a part of the changing character of national political 
cultures, but also contributes to the emergence of a new transnational 
political space. In 1968 the protesters outside the Democratic 
Presidential Convention chanted ‘the whole world is watching’, and since 
the 1960s new social movement groups and organizations are increasingly 
staging media oriented public manifestations addressing a global 
audience.49 At the same time movement mobilizations are often shaped in 
response to events that are globally reported by the media; movement 
intellectuals and groups are taking part in the struggle over the 
interpretation of the political implications of these events. For 
example the globally reported news reports from the war in Vietnam 
played an important role for the articulation of the anti-war movement 
politics in different places of the world.50 Further, the reports on 
events in Sharpeville in 1960 and in Soweto in 1976 were followed by 
intensified mobilization against apartheid in different parts of the 
world. However, as I will show, a simple cause-and-effect analysis of 
the relation between ‘media events’ 16 Anti-Apartheid and the Emergence 
of a Global Civil Society and political mobilization is deeply 
problematic. Further, studies have shown that the actual interpretation 
of global media events, and the way that international and global 
political issues are articulated and related to action strategies in 
different parts of the world, must be seen in relation to local, that 
is, often national, political traditions and institutional conditions.
Sharpeville and the role of media events
In this book, I will look at the role of the media and information in 
the context of the transnational anti-apartheid struggle, particularly 
at the development of what I will call media and information strategies.
Through these strategies, the anti-apartheid movement took part of a 
struggle for representation that was played out on national arenas as 
well as in a transnational media space. However, the discussion on 
transnational media and media activism is particularly related to the 
national contexts of Britain and Sweden, two countries in which 
important actors in the transnational struggle against apartheid had 
their base.
An important focus in the analysis on the relations between the 
anti-apartheid movement and the established media in this book is the 
role of certain ‘events’. ‘Events’ played an important role in struggle 
for media and information; for example Sharpeville and the protests 
against the tour in 1970 of the South African cricket team in Britain, 
which will be dealt with in Chapters 5 and 6; Soweto (Chapter 7), the 
shootings in Langa on Sharpeville day on the 25th anniversary of 
Sharpeville in 1985, and the release of Nelson Mandela (Chapter 8).
In the context of academic history as well as media studies, the 
definition of an ‘event’ has often been an issue under investigation and 
debate.51 But whatever the definition, in a modern media society, an 
event is rarely an event if not reported by the media. Further, a 
clear-cut distinction between a ‘real event’ and a ‘media event’ risks 
reproducing a problematic view on the relation between ‘reality’ and 
‘media’ – and a seldom-contested way of looking at the character of 
particular historical events and the role of collective action of in 
relation to such events.
For example, in the case of an established narrative of the role of 
‘Sharpeville’ for the early emergence of a transnational anti-apartheid 
movement, a causal chain of events is constructed. It starts with the 
Sharpeville massacre, which is causing media to report on the naked 
brutality of the apartheid regime. This in turn gives rise to a moral 
outrage translated into public action and the emergence of a broad 
anti-apartheid movement. This chain of logic is based on the implicit 
assumption that ‘the event in itself’ is the fundamental reason for all 
the other things to Introduction 17 happen. Thus, it is argued that the 
key to understand the event and its effects is the moral outrage caused 
by the sheer brutality of the South African police, as mediated in the 
news coverage.
However, as I will show in more detail in Chapter 5, a closer look at 
the processes occurring before, and partly leading to, Sharpeville, 
points to another way of understanding the role of the massacre as an 
‘event’.
For certain occurrences to be reported in the media as an event, the 
media must be prepared for such reporting. Three months before 
Sharpeville, there was a massacre in Windhoek in which 11 people were 
killed and 44 were wounded. It was however largely neglected by the 
international media.52 The wave of international mobilization often 
claimed to be caused by the Sharpeville massacre and the fact that it 
was reported world-wide, in fact originated before Sharpeville – and 
prepared the ground for the media attention paid to the massacre on the 
21 March 1960. This pre-Sharpeville process of mobilization, which the 
protest in Sharpeville in fact can be seen as a result of, began inside 
South Africa, included as a crucial element the call for a boycott of 
South African goods, and culminated in the months before the Sharpeville 
shootings.
At this time there was attention to, and debates on, the boycott in the 
media in both Britain and Sweden.53
Border thinking
During the last decades, a number of scholars from different disciplines 
have argued that the study of global or transnational phenomena requires 
a theoretical and methodological approach that is different from the 
dominant paradigm that equals the study of ‘society’ with ‘national 
society’.54 Attempts to think about power, territoriality, identity, 
structure and action beyond the ‘nation state paradigm’, or 
‘methodological nationalism’, have often been centred on the concept of 
‘border’. Walter Mignolo has coined the concept of ‘border thinking’ in 
order to theorize present globalization in relation to the global 
history of colonialism.55 It might also be used as a name for a 
‘transnationalist approach’ shared by a number of scholars working in 
fields such as postcolonial studies, cultural studies, sociology, 
international relations and anthropology. Different from the images of a 
‘boundless world’ of globalist ideology, ‘border thinking’ urges us to 
think in new ways about borders and boundaries, geopolitical as well as 
cultural or racial. It is an approach that pays particular attention to 
practices involving movements, mobility and diaspora – the crossing of 
borders and the construction of spaces across and in between 
institutionalized and relatively fixed 18 Anti-Apartheid and the 
Emergence of a Global Civil Society boundaries – the latter understood 
in terms of ‘borderlands’ or ‘third space’.56 Although I am arguing that 
‘border-crossing’ is a key for understanding processes of organization 
and identification in the anti-apartheid struggle, it is just as 
important to focus and analyse the prevailing importance of old borders 
and the construction of new ones in this context. For example, as is 
stated in Michael Lapsley’s account in the beginning of this chapter, 
not all people could travel. In fact, the South African borders were 
closed to a number of people, who wanted to leave or visit the country. 
And in the sense of cultural or ‘racial’ borders, not just the politics 
of the apartheid regime, but also the practice of solidarity work, 
involved constructing a number of borders between ‘us’ and ‘them’. Such 
borders were often related to national identities and interests as well 
as national political cultures.
As this book shows, globalization does not necessarily mean that the 
nation state, understood as a political space, is fading away. Rather, 
the nation state gains new meanings in the context of globalization, 
just as globalization has different meanings in different national 
contexts. The different ways that international and global political 
issues are articulated and translated into political action in different 
parts of the world, are dependent on local, that is, often national, 
political traditions and institutional conditions. Thus, in order to 
find out about the implications of the process of globalization in 
different parts of the world, comparative approaches are necessary.
Empirically, my work has mainly been focused on two national contexts – 
Sweden and Britain, with complementary material collected in the United 
States and South Africa. Comparisons will be made, but this is not a 
comparative study in the classical sense. Britain and Sweden are not 
comparable units. Neither are they as nation states as closed entities 
as the classical comparative methodology presupposes. Rather, during the 
period of the anti-apartheid struggle, political (as well as other) 
practices in Britain and Sweden were increasingly related to worldwide 
processes. The main purpose of the book is to find out how transnational 
communication in the context of the anti-apartheid movement was carried 
out, what made it possible, and how transnational strategies, 
experiences and identities were articulated in the discourses of the 
movement.
Consequently, I am interested in if and how organizations, groups and 
individuals based in the different countries were involved in 
transnational networks and processes of communication and identification.
Comparisons between the two national contexts will thus be related to 
the context of transnational communication and political globalization.
Introduction 19 Looking at the various national contexts of the global 
anti-apartheid struggle, both Britain and Sweden are, for different 
reasons, significant cases. As a ‘postcolonial capital’, London became 
an important centre of South African exile activists, organizations and 
activities. Further, two of the most important organizations in the 
transnational solidarity network, IDAF and the British AAM, had their 
base in London.
Looking at the case of Sweden, Southern Africa was the most important 
region receiving Swedish aid during the period of the anti-apartheid 
struggle.57 The extensive financial support to the ANC from the Swedish 
State, under the rule of Social Democrats as well as non-socialist 
coalitions, could partly be understood in relation to contacts between 
ANC leaders and young Social Democratic and Liberal internationalists in 
the 1950s and 1960s. However, it was also the result of pressure from 
the Swedish anti-apartheid movement, which emerged in the early 1960s 
and continued to put pressure on the government until the first 
democratic elections in South Africa.


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