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Shopping Against Apartheid: Consumer Activism and the History of AA Enterprises (1986–1991)

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Apartheid and Anti-Apartheid in Western Europe

Part of the book series: Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies ((CIPCSS))

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Abstract

This chapter traces the history of AA Enterprises, a company set up in 1986 to sell anti-apartheid merchandise. It interprets the company as an attempt to transform the well-known anti-apartheid boycott into a buycott to support the liberation movements in South Africa and its neighbouring states. The chapter analyses the sales operations of the company and the way it tried to use consumer products to raise awareness about apartheid. Secondly, it contextualizes the company within a broader transformation of NGOs and social movements in the 1980s, in which consumer products and popular culture became a key factor of political campaigns. I use the term ‘banal solidarities’ to describe the way political protests were linked to everyday practices in these forms of consumer activism.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    The term is borrowed from Michael Billig, Banal Nationalism (London: Sage, 1995).

  2. 2.

    See, for example: Mary Guyatt, “The Wedgwood Slave Medallion: Values in Eighteenth-Century Design,” Journal of Design History 13, no. 2 (2000): 93–105; Philip John Davies, “The Material Culture of US Elections: Artisanship, Entrepreneurship, Ephemera and Two Centuries of Trans-Atlantic Exchange,” Journal of Political Marketing 1, no. 2–3 (February 3, 2002): 9–24, https://doi.org/10.1300/J199v01n02_02. For the “Buy British” campaign, see: Stephen Constantine, “The Buy British Campaign of 1931,” European Journal of Marketing 21, no. 4 (1987): 44–59.

  3. 3.

    Catherine Flood, Gavin Grindon, and Victoria and Albert Museum, eds., Disobedient Objects (London: V&A Publishing, 2014).

  4. 4.

    The biographical information comes from Håkan Thörn’s interview with Margaret Ling in February 2000. A transcript can be found here: http://www.aamarchives.org/interviews/margaret-ling.html

  5. 5.

    The biographical information comes from an interview with Roger Harris by David Shortland from October 2013. A transcript can be found here: www.aamarchives.org/interviews/roger-harris.html

  6. 6.

    See Jakob Skovgaard’s contribution in this volume.

  7. 7.

    Margaret Ling/Roger Harris: “Memorandum to the officers of the AAM” (20 January 1986). (Oxford, Bodleian Library, Archive of the Anti-Apartheid Movement, 1956–1998, MSS AAM 3250; in all following citations: MSS AAM 2350).

  8. 8.

    Ibid., p. 1.

  9. 9.

    Ibid.

  10. 10.

    Ibid., p. 3.

  11. 11.

    Ibid.

  12. 12.

    Ibid.

  13. 13.

    Ibid., p. 1.

  14. 14.

    Ibid., p. 4.

  15. 15.

    Popular Polling: AA Enterprises Business Plan (1986), MSS AAM 2350.

  16. 16.

    Ibid., p. 2.

  17. 17.

    Ibid., p. 3.

  18. 18.

    Ibid., p. 4.

  19. 19.

    Ibid.

  20. 20.

    Thomas Frank and Matt Weiland, Commodify Your Dissent. Salvos from the Baffler (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1997).

  21. 21.

    “The Research Marketing Consultancy LTD.: Market Research AA Enterprises” (August 1986), MSS AAM 2350.

  22. 22.

    Both documents can be found only in draft versions in the AAM archive: Contract between Anti-Apartheid Movement and AA Enterprises, Second Draft (December 1986), MSS AAM 2349.

  23. 23.

    Ibid., p. 2.

  24. 24.

    Ibid., p. 3f.

  25. 25.

    Draft Code of Practice for Joint Steering Committee (no date), MSS AAM 2349.

  26. 26.

    For the history of the fair trade movement in Britain, see: Matthew Anderson, A History of Fair Trade in Contemporary Britain from Civil Society Campaigns to Corporate Compliance (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015).

  27. 27.

    Benjamin Möckel, “The Material Culture of Human Rights. Consumer Products, Boycotts and the Transformation of Human Rights Activism in the 1970s and 1980s,” International Journal for History, Culture and Modernity 6, no. 1 (2018): 76–104.

  28. 28.

    Monroe Friedman, “A Positive Approach to Organized Consumer Action: The ‘Buycott’ as an Alternative to the Boycott,” Journal of Consumer Policy 19, no. 4 (1996): 439–51; Emmanuel Adugu, “Boycott and Buycott as Emerging Modes of Civic Engagement,” International Journal of Civic Engagement and Social Change 1, no. 3 (July 2014): 43–58, https://doi.org/10.4018/ijcesc.2014070104

  29. 29.

    See, for example, the leaflet “Are we Guilty?”, which explicitly connected British consumers’ money going to South Africa and the military equipment used by the South African regime to enforce its racist policies: See “Are We Guilty?” (protest flyer, c.1960), MSS AAM 2227.

  30. 30.

    See, for example: Christian Lahusen, The Rhetoric of Moral Protest: Public Campaigns, Celebrity Endorsement, and Political Mobilization (Berlin; New York: W. de Gruyter, 1996); Lilie Chouliaraki, The Ironic Spectator: Solidarity in the Age of Post-Humanitarianism (Cambridge, Malden, MA: Polity Press, 2013); Monika Krause, The Good Project: Humanitarian Relief NGOs and the Fragmentation of Reason (Chicago; London: The University of Chicago Press, 2014).

  31. 31.

    Matthew Hilton, The Politics of Expertise How NGOs Shaped Modern Britain (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013).

  32. 32.

    Hilton, 83.

  33. 33.

    Hilton, 82. Monika Krause highlights the same argument: Krause, The Good Project.

  34. 34.

    On Live Aid, see, for example: H. Louise Davis, “Concerts for a Cause (Or, ’cause We Can?),” in The Routledge History of Social Protest in Popular Music, ed. Jonathan C. Friedman (New York, 2013), 211–26; Andrew Jones, “Band Aid Revisited: Humanitarianism, Consumption and Philanthropy in the 1980s,” Contemporary British History 31, no. 2 (April 3, 2017): 189–209, https://doi.org/10.1080/13619462.2017.1306193

  35. 35.

    On the concept of mega-events, see: Reebee Garofalo, “Understanding Mega-Events. If We Are the World, Then How Do We Change It?,” in Rockin’ the Boat: Mass Music and Mass Movements, ed. Reebee Garofalo (Boston, MA: 1992), 15–35; Christian Lahusen, “Mobilizing for International Solidarity: Mega-Events and Moral Crusades,” in Political Altruism. The Solidarity Movement in International Perspective, ed. Marco Giugni and Florence Passy (Lanham, MD: 2001), 177–95.

  36. 36.

    Colm Regan, “Live Aid: A Challenge to the ‘experts’?,” Trócaire Development Review, 1986.

  37. 37.

    Benjamin Möckel, “‘Free Nelson Mandela’. Popmusik und zivilgesellschaftlicher Protest in der britischen Anti-Apartheid-Bewegung,” Jahrbuch des Zentrums für Populäre Kultur und Musik 60/61 (2016): 199–217. See Detlef Siegfried’s contribution in this volume.

  38. 38.

    Market research played a key role in inventing and defining this new group of consumers. See, for example: Thomas W. Thomas Junior and William H. Cunningham, “The Socially Conscious Consumer,” Journal of Marketing 36, no. 3 (1972): 23–31.

  39. 39.

    Interview Ling, p. 14.

  40. 40.

    Interview Ling, p. 14.

  41. 41.

    Interview Harris, p. 7.

  42. 42.

    “Report on Sales of AAM Fund-Raising Merchandise, Financial Year ended 31 May 1987” (MSS AAM 2351).

  43. 43.

    See “AA Enterprises: Report of Activities” for these years: MSS AAM 2351.

  44. 44.

    “AA Enterprises: Trading Against Apartheid: Report of Activities 1987–88” (MSS AAM 2351).

  45. 45.

    Ibid., p. 1.

  46. 46.

    Ibid.

  47. 47.

    Ibid.

  48. 48.

    “Futures Co-Operative Limited: Report from the General Council for the year to 31 May 1987” (MSS AAM 2349).

  49. 49.

    AA Enterprises. Catalogue Winter 1986: Goods and gifts from the Front Line (MSS AAM 2352). The catalogues can be found online: http://www.aamarchives.org/browse-the-archive/miscellaneous-goods.html

  50. 50.

    AA Enterprises Records released albums: The Kafala Brothers: Ngola (AA Enterprises Records, Cassette and LP, 1989) and Trio AKA: Mama Christina (AA Enterprises, LP, 1989).

  51. 51.

    AA Enterprises Catalogue, Summer 1988 (MSS AAM 2352).

  52. 52.

    Product leaflet: “Café Vitoria” (MSS AMM 2350).

  53. 53.

    AA Enterprises Catalogue, Winter 1986/87, p. 7 (MSS AAM 2352).

  54. 54.

    Product flyer: Cashew Nuts from Mozambique (MSS AAM 2352).

  55. 55.

    Ibid.

  56. 56.

    Ibid.

  57. 57.

    “Black Market,” Time Out, November 3, 1987, “Green Gifts and Politico Pressies,” City Limits, December 7, 1989. Both in: (MSS AAM 2352).

  58. 58.

    “Black Market,” Time Out, November 3, 1987, 125.

  59. 59.

    W. Lance Bennett, “Branded Political Communication: Lifestyle Politics, Logo Campaigns, and the Rise of Global Citizenship,” in Politics, Products and Markets: Exploring Political Consumerism Past and Present, ed. Michele Micheletti, Andreas Follesdal, and Dietlind Stolle (New Brunswick, 2004), 101–26.

  60. 60.

    “AA Enterprises: Trading Against Apartheid: Report of Activities 1989–90” (MSS AAM 2351).

  61. 61.

    Ibid.

  62. 62.

    AA Enterprises Catalogue, Winter 1990/91, p. 2 (MSS AAM 2352).

  63. 63.

    The early fair trade movement was also confronted with this phenomenon. Consumers purchased handicrafts and anti-apartheid merchandise only once or twice, not regularly. This was one reason why the fair trade movement began to rely much more on everyday commodities like coffee, chocolate and bananas.

References

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  1. University of Cologne, Cologne, Germany

    Benjamin Möckel

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  2. Hamburg, Germany

    Sebastian Justke

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    Detlef Siegfried

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Möckel, B. (2021). Shopping Against Apartheid: Consumer Activism and the History of AA Enterprises (1986–1991). In: Andresen, K., Justke, S., Siegfried, D. (eds) Apartheid and Anti-Apartheid in Western Europe. Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-53284-0_4

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