EVENTS AND ACTIVITIES

CONFERENCE ACTIVITIES

LAUNCH OF DOCUMENTARY SERIES

Connie Field, a renowned producer/director from Berkeley, California will be launching a documentary series and a 12 hour DVD both of which are intended for educational use. This documentary series represents a pioneering attempt to put together the story of the international movement.

Ms. Field has worked on numerous dramatic and documentary films such as "One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest" , as well as independently producing her own work. Her most recent feature documentary, "Freedom on my Mind " , a history of the civil rights movement in Mississippi, was nominated for an Academy Award and won the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance film Festival. She is also the recipient of the John Grierson Award, as most outstanding social documentarian and the John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship. The University of KwaZulu-Natal is proud to be associated with the launch of her documentary series in South Africa.

The launch episode to be screened during the conference is entitled "The Other Side of the Rubicon". It focuses on the role of the international civil society in confronting corporations whose investments sustained the apartheid regime. Companies justified their reasons for investment, pointing out that they could be a force from within. But the ANC called for total withdrawal and stepped up its campaign to make South Africa ungovernable. Foreign companies pulled out in a massive exodus that crippled the economy. It was the first coordinated campaign to use economic pressure to bring down the government. Its success moved South Africa one step closer to a negotiated settlement.

There will also be a side bar along with the conference for those who would like to view and comment on additional episodes such as that entitled "Apartheid and the Club of the West". This episode tells the fascinating story of the anti-apartheid movement in the USA.

ORAL HISTORY

In partnership with Michigan State University and the Centre for Popular Memory at the University of Cape Town, we will attempt to collect oral testimonies of those who have been involved in the international movement against apartheid, during the period of attendance at the conference. The preservation of the nation’s collective memory is really the sum of many, many individual memories that are in danger of vanishing with the generations that created them. We hope that by taking advantage of the remarkable and unique opportunity afforded by this conference, we can add a priceless, authentic oral resource to the existing national resources and to the world’s stock of knowledge about the historic events surrounding our freedom from apartheid.

These interviews will be shared with institutions interested in generating research on this area of our struggle. The project is supported by generous assistance from Michigan State University, the University of KwaZulu-Natal and the University of Cape Town. It is intended as a supplement to, and not a replacement for, oral histories collected by other worthy and important collecting efforts underway in South Africa.

We urge participants who have been involved in anti-apartheid activity to participate in this important project.

BOOK LAUNCHES

Professor Francis Njubi Nesbitt from California will be launching his book entitled , Race for Sanctions: African Americans against Apartheid, 1946-199 (Indiana University Press).

This book is a political history of the first successful example of transnational mobilization against the forces of corporate globalization in the USA. It shows how a determined minority can transform the foreign policy of a major superpower. The first part examines the role of anti-colonial organizations like the Council on African Affairs to the role of Civil Rights leaders such as Martin Luther King Jr. The second part looks at the impact of the Civil Rights and Voting Rights reforms that led to the election of African American legislators, thus providing the anti-apartheid movement with access to policymakers for the first time.

The book focuses on the major organizations that led the movements like Transafrica, the Free South Africa Movement and the Congressional Black Caucus.

Professor Nesbitt is an Assistant Professor of Africana Studies at San Diego State University.