Taken recently in Klerksdorp where the Founder of the AABN grew up
2.4 The Anti-Apartheid Beweging Nederland: 1971–1975
The ‘motivated and fanatical newcomers’ who failed in their attempts to invigorate
the CZA were students from the two universities in Amsterdam. The initiator and
key person was Berend Schuitema, a white South African student in exile, who had
been in contact with CZA since spring of 1970. One of the most important points of
discussion between the new activists and the old guard was the need for ‘hard
action’. Finally, on the 13 November 1971, the AABN replaced the CZA. ‘Schuitema
founded the AABN and Schuitema was the AABN’, say the people who worked with
him during that period.27
The formation of the AABN implied a total rupture with the old CZA, where all
political currents except the communists were represented on the board.
Apartheid, according to the AABN, was an integral part of the capitalist system,
and this system should be fought against, both in the Netherlands and in the Third
World. ‘The AABN has to be reconstructed with the support of those organisations
that participate in the class struggle of the workers movement, that means who
strive after a socialist society.’28 The AABN declared it's solidarity with the ANC, the
South African Congress of Trade Unions (SACTU), and with SWAPO, ZANU and
ZAPU. At it's first meeting with the ANC, in Amsterdam on 21 December 1972, the
ANC representative in London, Reg September, was present and it was agreed that
regular meetings would be held twice a year in the future. At this meeting
Schuitema remarked that he was astonished at the close ties that many on the
AABN board had with the Dutch communist party CPN: ‘These ties with the CPN
are somewhat strange: the party shows little interest in Southern Africa.’ The AABN
was also disappointed that it's newspaper De Waarheid hardly paid any attention to
Southern Africa and more to Vietnam’.29
Since AABN aimed at the total boycott of South Africa, it started listing and
investigating those companies that retained links with apartheid South Africa. In
1972 it started a campaign against Philips because this Dutch firm had been
implicated in breaking the arms embargo. Two years later the focus was on
Estel/Hoogovens because the company had plans to participate in a steel project
in South Africa. The campaign was successful: Hoogovens dropped it's plans
following a local protest meeting in which 1 000 participants, among them many
workers of Hoogovens, took part. At the request of the ANC office in London the
AABN and DAFN organised another art auction in September 1975 to raise funds
for political prisoners in South Africa. On this occasion, ANC president Oliver Tambo
met the Dutch government for the first time, and also addressed an audience of
1.000 people.
During this period the AABN’s energy was directed at the liberation struggle in
Zimbabwe rather than South Africa. It was successful in proving that the Dutch
tobacco industry imported one third of it's tobacco from Rhodesia in defiance of
the mandatory UN trade embargo against that country. Berend Schuitema was
totally dedicated to the cause; so much so that he went at night to search the
dustbins of the trading firms in order to find this evidence and was injured when
waiting guards attacked him.
The AABN also supported SWAPO. A visit to the Netherlands by SWAPO’s secretary
of labour, Solomon Mifima, led to a wide publicity and a fundraising campaign for
SWAPO by the NVV Industrial Union (Industriebond NVV). At it's 1975 congress the
trade union symbolically handed over an amount of €100.000 to Mifima.
26 Edelenbosch, In Goed Vertrouwen, 30.
27 De Anti-Apartheidskrant, 2 (Sept/Oct. 1990) 24-5.
28 The AABN magazine ‘Zuidelijk Afrika Nieuws’, no. 97.
Berend Schuitema working with committee for Mine Veterans, 2011
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