Workshop from the BDS Conference in Montreal

Program Title: Lessons from South Africa
Description: Beginning in the 1960s and culminating in a worldwide movement in the 1980s and 1990s, the boycott of South Africa by individuals, organizations, and governments protesting that country’s apartheid system succeeded in both isolating apartheid South Africa and in impacting the daily lives of the country’s white population. The international campaign to politically and commercially isolate apartheid South Africa was instrumental in bringing about the end of apartheid in South Africa in the mid-1990s. This workshop will examine the boycott tactics used in the campaign against South African apartheid and draw lessons which will be useful in building and intensifying the global BDS campaign against Israeli apartheid.

Host(s):
Featured Speakers/Guests: Steve Faulkner (South Africa) was born in the North of England and has been an active trade union and political activist for more than forty years. For many years he worked for the Commonwealth TUC and travelled extensively providing support to projects and campaigns across the world. He relocated permanently to South Africa twelve years ago. He is now the International Officer of the South African Municipal Workers Union (SAMWU), one of the larger affiliates of the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU), and plays a leading role in several campaigns including the Coalition for a Free Palestine, a united front of South African Palestine solidarity groups. SAMWU recently launched a campaign to make all of the 283 municipalities Israeli Apartheid-Free Zones. Steve is convenor of the Swaziland Democracy Campaign, and actively contributes to campaigns on Xenophobia and Zimbabwe. Steve’s partner has worked for the COSATU transport affiliate for many years and together they have a son who is used to discussing the state of the class struggle over breakfast. Dan O’Meara has been a professor in the Political Science department at the Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM) since 1988. Originaly from South Africa, he has written six books and more than 50 articles on sociopolitical relations in Sub-Saharan Africa. He taught South African politics in South Africa, Tanzania, and Mozambique in the 70s and 80s. Dan was a member of the African National Congress (ANC) for 20 years and was active in the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa, Great Britain, the USA and Canada. His chapter “What are the lessons of the ‘South African miracle’ for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict?” will appear in Josiane Tercinet (ed), Proche orient et sécurité internationale, published by Bruyant in 2011.

Credits:

Comments: Presentations in French and English.