The London Recruits: undercover in apartheid South Africa

The history of the Anti-Apartheid movement brings up images of boycotts and public campaigns in the UK. But another story went on behind the scenes, in secret, one that has been never told before.

This is the story of the foreign recruits and their activities in South Africa, how they acted in defiance of the Apartheid government and its police on the instructions of the African National Congress (ANC).

Ken Keable made two undercover trips to Johannesburg and Durban in 1968 and 1970 to distribute letters and propaganda for the ANC. The latter involved the novel approach of bucket bombs to distribute tens of thousands of anti-apartheid leaflets. Simultaneously Bevis Miller and his friend Graham Brown carried out a similar mission in Johannesburg.

Bristol Radical History Group are very pleased to have Ken Keable and Bevis Miller, some of the ‘London Recruits’, now living in Somerset, speaking about their activities in the struggle against apartheid in South Africa.