B.C. Unions Take a Stand Against Apartheid in South Africa
by Patricia Wejr, Rod Mickleburgh and Donna Sacuta
Longshore workers respected picket lines set up around Vancouver’s Centurm container dock 20 March 1986 to prevent offloading of South African goods. Pacific Tribune, 26 March 1986, 1.
The fight against apartheid in South Africa was long, arduous and often violent, costing many lives. Starting in 1976, until the first free election in 1994, B.C. union members worked tirelessly in support of those fighting to end South Africa’s heinous apartheid system.1
A story of international solidarity at its best, B.C. unions and activists did everything in their power to press for an end to South Africa’s brutal system of apartheid. One of the first union members in B.C. to join the growing network of opposition here was Jef Keighley. “I got involved with the South African anti-apartheid movement before I joined the trade union movement. But because there was so much activity in and around the Vancouver & District Labour Council, being a very progressive group, that gave us connections between the citizen activists and labour activists. And so it became like a seamless whole so that we’re all working on the same thing together.”2
Union members and the public protest outside a government liquor store. Pacific Tribune, 5 March 1986, 12.
Over more than a decade, the SACTU3 Solidarity Committee of Canada, remained active. In B.C., that meant participating in “shop-ins” to disrupt the sale of consumer goods made in South Africa, pickets around ships delivering cargo, direct actions that targetted the sale of South African wines, the use of goods produced in South Africa, lobbying, protests, events and public rallies all of which were aimed at raising awareness, cash and building political support.
BCLHC Archives
CUPE BC (Canadian Union of Public Employees) activist Colleen Jordan recalls how workers at Burnaby schools successfully lobbied the board of education to ban the use of South African goods. It wasn’t long before the inevitable happened. “My phone rings and it’s the maintenance director at the School District. He said, ‘Colleen, the grounds guys will not go to work.’ I said, ‘What the heck’s going on?’ He said, ‘they say you said they’re not supposed to touch stuff from South Africa, and we have chicken wire that they’re supposed to put up around the grass and it says, ‘Made in South Africa’, and they say they’re not touching it.’ I said, ‘Yep, that’s right. You better go get some chicken wire that’s not made in South Africa because we’re not touching it.'”4
Anti-apartheid Network at Burrard Street Shell Station, 1988.
Unions also took the question of solidarity with South Africa to the bargaining table. CAIMAW union members at the Shellburn Refinery in Burnaby took a bargaining proposal to Shell Oil Company demanding they no longer import any products from South Africa into Canada. “It was sort of a symbolic thing, but important to keep the issue on the table,” says Cathy Walker. The membership was “completely supportive.”5
The BCGEU (B.C. General Employees’ Union) whose members worked in government liquor warehouses and stores called on its members to stop handling South African wines, after the Social Credit provincial government of Premier Bill Vander Zalm steadfastly refused to de-list them. The public should “make up their own minds,” insisted Corporate Affairs Minister Elwood Veitch, making B.C. the only province in Canada that refused to de-list South African wines.
BCLHC Archives
Government workers knew which side they were on. “They were simply not touching them [South African wines] in the warehouse. In most cases, we removed the bottles right off the shelf. And there wasn’t a lot of pushback at that time. Simply, we were part of the overall movement,”6 according to Randy Pearson, an activist in the BCGEU’s liquor store component at the time.
In March of 1986, many unions took part in a special Solidarity Week of Action against apartheid. Telephone operators refused to process calls from South Africa. South African mail went unsorted at the post office, and, as much as they could, union members refused to handle goods from South Africa.
BC unions and committed labour activists can be proud of their role in the worldwide campaign to end apartheid in South Africa. Their years of commitment left a lasting legacy of unions standing up against racism and other social injustices.
“There was no question that South Africa was amongst the most egregious example that you could look at for discrimination. And only the willfully naive could ignore that. And so that helped all sorts of people, myself included, see far lesser examples of discrimination and racism as being in the same ilk and the same path. I think that helped a lot,”7remembers Jef Keighley.
- Apartheid was a system of institutionalised racial segregation that existed in South Africa and South West Africa – now Namibia – from 1948 to the early 1990s. It was characterised by an authoritarian political culture, which ensured that South Africa was dominated politically, socially, and economically by the nation’s minority white population system. Source: “Apartheid.” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 29 March 2025, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apartheid.[
] - Jef Keighley. Interview by Doug Miller and Jane Armstrong, Canadian Anti-Apartheid Activist History Project. 26 January 2022. Uploaded by SACTU Solidarity Alumni Archive, 12 March 2023. https://youtu.be/JO3oabUZDTY?si=Pi7IJiW5NVxvkpR9[]
- South African Congress of Trade Unions[]
- Colleen Jordan. Interview by Keith Reynolds. 22 June 2023. https://www.labourheritagecentre.ca/oral-history/colleen-jordan/ []
- Cathy Walker. Interview by Doug Miller, Canadian Anti-Apartheid Activist History Project. n.d. Uploaded by SACTU Solidarity Alumni Archive, 13 March 2023. https://youtu.be/ljVjfVkNZvk?si=1vXNCS9Gr_eKzlTI[]
- Randy Pearson. Interview by Patricia Wejr. 17 February 2025.[]
- Keighley interview, 26 Jan 2022[]
