HIST 398: South Africa's Freedom Struggle: Home

Group 1: Nelson Mandela, ADDRESS TO THE UNITED NATIONS SPECIAL COMMITTEE AGAINST APARTHEID, NEW YORK, USA, 22 JUNE 1990

"It will forever remain an indelible blight on human history that the apartheid crime ever occurred. Future generations will surely ask: What error was made that this system established itself in the wake of the adoption of a universal declaration of human rights? It will forever remain an accusation and a challenge to all men and women of conscience that it took as long as it has before all of us stood up to say ‘enough is enough.’... Let us travel it together. Let us, by our joint actions, vindicate the purposes for which this Organization was established and create a situation wherein its Charter and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights will become part of the body of law on which will be based the political and social order of a new South Africa. Our common victory is assured."

Group 2: Sample lyrics of the song "I wonder" by Sixto Rodriguez, 1970 from Searching for Sugar Man. Some of Rodriguez's songs served as protest songs against Apartheid. 

I wonder about the tears in children's eyes
And I wonder about the soldier that dies
I wonder will this hatred ever end
I wonder and worry my friend
I wonder, I wonder, wonder don't you?

Sample lyrics of the song "Gimme Hope Jo'Anna", a reference to Johannesburg, by Eddy Grant, 1988.

"Well, Jo'anna she runs a country
She runs in Durban and the Transvaal
She makes a few of her people happy
She don't care about the rest at all
She's got a system they call apartheid
It keeps a brother in a subjection"

Group 3: UNC students march on campus in protest of the school’s investment in South Africa, November 20, 1986. (Yackety Yack 1987)

https://blogs.lib.unc.edu/uarms/2017/05/15/timeline-of-1980s-anti-apartheid-activism-at-unc/

Group 4: Romero, Rachael, Designer, and Wilfred Owen Brigade. Condemn the South African apartheid regime and support the international boycott, 1976. [San Francisco: Wilfred Owen Brigade] Photograph. https://www.loc.gov/item/2015647468/.