As part of a defiance campaign against the apartheid Government, SA is hit by a nationwide wave of protests

On 6 September 1989, the majority of South Africans witnessed the election of a national government in which it had no say; this was to be the last all-white election in South Africa. This election took place under a State of Emergency which had been in force for over 3 years; which prohibited freedom of speech, assembly and association and under which arbitrary detention without trial awaited anyone stepping over an invisible line drawn anywhere at any time by any member of the apartheid security forces. In a move to put forward the real issues concerning the majority, the Mass Democratic Movement embarked on a defiance campaign launched at the beginning of August 1989. The campaign gathered momentum and spread across the whole country embracing a wide range of issues. South African police clashed with the peaceful marchers throughout the country. On 21 September 1989 a protest by almost 2000 students as part of the End Conscription Campaign (ECC) was met with the brutal force of the police in Johannesburg. The students were protesting the detention of four of their campaign's organisers. On the same day, a consumer boycott and overtime ban was launched, some 10 000 protesters marched in Durban and more than 5 000 in Oudtshoorn in the Cape. Ironically, rallies by neo-Nazi Afrikaner Resistance Movement (AWB) and a splinter group the Boerestaat Party were allowed to go ahead with no police interference. Yet, a march by a coalition of women activists, 'Women Against Repression' was banned even before it started on the grounds that there had been no application for permission to demonstrate.