The Netherlands against Apartheid
- 1960s (2/3)

Action against Portuguese colonialism

Sietse Bosgra

A group of activists, many associated with the Pacifist-Socialist Party, had been campaigning on the war in Algeria back in the 1950s. After armed rebellion had broken out in Angola in 1961, their attention had shifted to those areas in Africa that suffered under Portuguese colonial rule.

The Angola Committee could not have hoped for a better advertisement: police action during the Amsterdam NATO tattoo of 1963

An informal 'Action Committee Angola' was formed around Sietse Bosgra; it subsequently rose to fame as the 'Angola Comité' (Angola Committee). The group started a campaign against Portugal's wars against the liberation movements in its colonies.

Initially the focus was on Angola; later on, Guinea-Bissau and Mozambique came within the scope of the committee after liberation movements had taken up arms there, too. The campaign to sever Dutch ties with Portugal made the front pages in a spectacular way in July 1963, when committee members and sympathizers disturbed the performance of a Portuguese military band at a NATO tattoo in Amsterdam. The police, ruthlessly putting down the demonstration, did the rest: the Angola Committee and its message gained instant national fame.

Rivonia Trial against ANC leaders

ANC-supporters at the court building during the Rivonia Trial

In 1963, after the South African government had had to back down in the Treason Trial, a group of top people of the ANC were arrested. Their organisation had been banned and activities were carried on underground. Under the new legislation they risked the death penalty in the subsequent 'Rivonia Trial'.

The trial was closely followed by a member of the Dutch embassy staff in Pretoria, Coen Stork (who was later to become Dutch ambassador to Cuba and Rumania - and, still later, chairman of the Netherlands institute for Southern Africa). There was no instruction from The Hague to attend the trial, but Stork's superiors allowed him a free hand.

Nelson Mandela in 1962

The verdict was passed in 1964: eight of the accused, among whom Nelson Mandela, a lawyer by profession who had risen to the position of leader of the ANC, were sentenced to life imprisonment. The words by which Mandela in the trial concluded his statement from the dock left a deep impression; they were quoted time and again in the decades that followed, also in the Netherlands:

"I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in harmony and with equal opportunities. It is an ideal which I hope to live for and to achieve. But if needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die."

100,000 guilders for IDAF

'A gift from the Netherlands: Something really different' [in Dutch: 'Quite apart']

The trial of 1963-1964 against the leaders of the ANC encouraged greater interest in the work of the Defence and Aid Fund (DAF). DAF had been set up in England in the 1950s and offered legal assistance to political prisoners in South Africa. In the UN the Netherlands had voted in favour of support to the Fund.

In 1964 the International Defence and Aid Fund (IDAF) was founded. A Dutch branch was set up in 1965 by the Comité Zuid-Afrika (CZA). That same year, the Cals government, with Joseph Luns as Foreign Minister, earmarked a considerable sum for support to IDAF in the 1966 budget: 100,000 guilders, or, in Dutch: one ton (also meaning 'barrel' - see cartoon).

'A ton on top'

Art auction for 'A ton on top' campaign

With the help of a committee of artists and writers, DAF Netherlands now organized the 'Een ton d'r op' campaign aimed at adding 'a ton on top' of that of the government. It was to become the first Dutch campaign to rally support for South Africa to be aimed at the public at large; it included an art auction broadcasted on television. The proceeds amounted to well above 100,000 guilders. As part of this campaign for the victims of apartheid a book was published entitled Apartheid: Feiten en commentaren ('Apartheid: Facts and Comments').

Real seller during the 'A ton on top' campaign

The South African government banned the work of IDAF in March 1966, accusing it of 'communism'. Police raids followed, funds were seized, and the organisation was forced to go underground. The Dutch government now didn't want to pass the money to IDAF anymore. Instead, the government's ton went to the United Nations Trust Fund for Southern Africa which had been set up to provide legal and humanitarian assistance to victims of apartheid - through which it was yet channelled to IDAF.

Dr. Beyers Naudé in the Netherlands

C.F. Beyers Naudé

In 1965 a then unknown South African minister visited the Netherlands: C.F. Beyers Naudé. The Reverend Beyers Naudé had turned his back on the ideology of apartheid propagated by his own white Afrikaner Nederduits Gereformeerde (Dutch Reformed) church. The visit came two years after Beyers Naudé had set up the Christian Institute, a meeting place for Christians of every denomination and skin colour, going right against apartheid principles. In the Netherlands, bits of information on his work had already trickled through via articles by journalist Ben van Kaam in the Protestant daily Trouw.

The activity displayed by both Van Kaam and the theologist professor Johannes Verkuyl - who arranged for Beyers Naudé to preach in the Netherlands and to meet prominent figures in the Protestant Anti-Revolutionary Party - laid the basis for the formation, a few years later, of the Working Group Kairos, which mounted a support campaign for Beyers Naudé's beleaguered institute in the Netherlands. A fundraising campaign was held already in 1965; the Giro account number used continued to be in use later on. "So our Giro number is already thirty years old!", chuckled Kairos chairman Hans Spinder at the group's 25th anniversary in 1995.

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