Bassey’s blunder: Shirley Bassey, Welsh anti‑apartheid activism, and the cultural boycott against South Africa

Based on archival research carried out with the papers of the Welsh Anti-Apartheid Movement (WAAM) and the British Anti-Apartheid Movement (AAM), this article contributes to the burgeoning project of provincializing the history of domestic anti-apartheid activism. In particular, it focuses on WAAM’s campaign to boycott the singer, Shirley Bassey. In 1981, Bassey had defied international sanctions and had flouted the cultural boycott against South Africa by playing Sun City, a casino resort in the Bantustan of Bophuthatswana. Foregrounding their shared Welshness, WAAM emerged as her enthusiastic castigators, demanding contrition for what they perceived as her collaboration with the apartheid regime. By the time she finally renounced Sun City, the campaign against her had become increasingly internationalised, moving through the corridors of the UN in New York through to the Nordic peninsula of Fornebu. In focusing on WAAM’s efforts to boycott Bassey, this article therefore examines the everyday production of activism and international solidarity, whilst also reflecting on the questionable ways in which WAAM mobilised and used “race” to appeal to her. In a broader sense, then, it reflects on the complicated place of “race” within the domestic anti-apartheid movement whilst adding further texture to the nascent history of Welsh anti-apartheid activism.