Stephen Seaborn

Doug Miller 00:00

Thank you very much. Meeting in progress, I can get rid of this participant listing, I know who you are. Good morning and welcome Steven Seaborn, our project, the Canadian Anti-apartheid Activist History Project, getting renamed and reborn in different forms, but essentially the same, same entity. I’m here Doug Miller in Montreal, talking to Steven Seaborn in Toronto and with Gwen Schulman also in Montreal on December the 19th, 2025 Good morning, Steve. Good morning. Nice to see you, Steven. I know it sounds a little stuffy and so on, but we do have to get your verbal assent to the consent form that we that we sent you. I got it back. Thank you very much, and appreciate that and all I need you is I’m going to say, Steve, do you accept that we do this recording, that it be you acknowledge that it’s going to be used in educational and public forums and store drives for future reference? Happily. Yes. Good. Thank you so much. Well, generally, we just throw out the easy lob there, the easy. the low fruit comes first, and that is, could you just introduce yourself Steven, and give us a little bit of your background, and in that process, sort of weave in how you became aware of the apartheid and that struggle that was going on in South Africa and southern Africa.

Stephen Seaborn 01:46

Okay, so my name is Steven Seaborn. I’m from Montreal but currently live in Toronto. And when I was when did I first notice that something was going on beyond the beyond the horizon of Montreal? It was actually when I had a summer job working on a Norwegian freighter, cleaning the engine room and ended up in Cape Town, South Africa and there, found my way into a church basement where the youth group of which I was also, at the age of 17, was producing leaflets for the ANC, and the leaflets were on the 90 day detention without trial, a law that had just been passed by the apartheid regime.

Doug Miller 03:01

Holy smokes. Let’s get back a step here. What year was this? How old were you again? And end up on a Norwegian steamer going to South Africa, of all things.

Stephen Seaborn 03:13

Well, you know, Montreal, there’s like, lots of ships down by the port, which always interested me. The year was 1964 and I was like, I need a summer job. I really want to get on the ship, because it looks really fun. I was quite fascinated with ships at the age of 17, so I got the job, and three months later I came back. I could say a changed person, but I think that’s probably exaggerated. I might have been already sort of gullible, and, you know, at some level, interested in what was going on beyond the horizon, having been involved a little bit in the civil rights movement, in the US.

Doug Miller 04:09

What? Oh, boy, now you’re really baiting the hook here. How does that, abou,t could you just introduce that too?

Stephen Seaborn 04:20

Well, I was part of a youth group, actually, president of a youth group at the Unitarian Church in Montreal. And one summer 1962 probably there was a bus going down to Ohio for a training session on civil rights movement. So I’m like, “I want to get on it. I want to get on that bus”. So I did, and it was a one week training, which was quite fascinating. And then the next year, there was another bus leaving Montreal, so I jumped on that happily and ended up in Carolina, where we actually were introduced to the desegregation of the Woolworth’s lunch counters campaign, and around that time, in the early 60s. So we’re sort of trained in that. And then we took, you know, we got on the bus again, headed back to Montreal, and we’re told we’re going to stop in Washington. And we did, and there were 250,000 civil rights activists from across the US and Canada, with the largest march on Washington for Jobs and Freedom was the title, and so was there, like it was very educational. And at the front there was someone giving a really interesting speech, which later was termed, “I have a dream”. And, and, you know, I think it, it probably had some impact on my later involvement.

Doug Miller 06:08

Martin Luther King, I have a tack to the wall in my dining room. Well, that’s very interesting. So here you are, 17 in South Africa. The I presume, the church group, again, is Unitarian in South Africa, yes, known as activist in this kind of, in this sense.

Stephen Seaborn

06:34

Yeah, I mean the person who met me at the when we docked in Cape Town, they first of all, gave me a training about, look, he took me to different parts of Cape Town, and then up onto the veld, where the first housing for African South Africans was being built in order to force all that community out of the cities in South Africa so that the cities would be White by night.

So you know this Unitarian minister, was quite involved in what was going on, and certainly educated me about, you know, why people are living in different neighbourhoods because they were either white or maybe Asian workers or and, or, you know, white working class members of the community or, and also in the northern suburbs with swimming pools and beneficiaries of the apartheid regime. So I got that introduction. And then, you know, also met the youth group.

And clearly, within that context, it wouldn’t have been necessarily easy to do a lot of things, but I, you know, they were, I would say, part of that large movement in South Africa that began with the introduction of the apartheid legislation, and the movement was populated by a huge number of white South Africans who whose strategy, as we know at the time was to hit infrastructure, power lines and communication were and no one would be injured, but there would be a big impact on the apartheid regime and the economy and so on. And I had been introduced to that aspect later on the trip when I took a train up to Johannesburg to visit a schoolmate of my mother’s who said, “I’m going to like, you need to wake up, this, what’s going on here. You know, Mandela was just reincarcerated and the entire, you know, executive leadership of the ANC along with him and this is what happened at this train station that I just picked you up at last week. It was attacked, and it was part of this, the beginning of the end of Apartheid”, is how she put it. She also said, this is the beginning of what could well be a bloodbath.

Doug Miller 10:09

Wow, 64 it was very interesting time indeed, and near fascinating for you to arrive into the middle of that as much as arriving at Martin Luther King’s rally in in Washington, my goodness gracious, what exciting adolescence you had compared to my life in Ottawa.

Stephen Seaborn 10:30

Well, you know, at that age, you’re not, well, I was, I was pretty naive. So a lot of what I experienced and just described took on a deeper meaning. As you know, I ended up working in southern Africa, for example, and read books about the history that that I had been sort of marginally exposed to

Doug Miller 10:59

Fascinating well, so then you’re, you’re still in high school. What’s, what’s the next stage in your life that takes you to contact with apartheid?

Gwen Schulman

11:13

Well, oh, sorry, I’m missing you. Sorry. Can I? Can I just interrupt before we move to that, Steven, I’m curious when you came back in that first phase of exposure, do you remember what degree of awareness there was among other Montrealers or Quebecois Canadians about apartheid?

Stephen Seaborn 11:39

Yeah, I do. This was just my, you know, circle of friends at school and so on. And there was zero knowledge. There were like, absolutely now, I of course, we know that there was an active, emerging anti apartheid movement at that time. But in, you know, my circle of friends at Concordia University later on, and certainly in, in, you know, I had to repeat grade 11, there was no knowledge among my school friends or my acquaintances. There were members of the Unitarian church who were aware of it, you know, pretty vaguely.

And I would say that most of my awareness in those years was receiving letters, you know, this girlfriend of my mother’s would write every month, as people used to do in the old, old days. And so there would be letters arriving. And there was this sort of tradition of my father reading the latest letters that came in the mail, and the letters from this this school friend of my mother’s, who began by saying, “You’ll never guess what’s happening here and what legislation has been introduced that’s now Being called apartheid. I fought the Nazis in northern you know the fascists in Northern Africa? You know when I was 21 and now I find myself in this country, where the same thing is happening again”, but otherwise, no one was talking about it. It was off the radar in terms of my sort of sheltered circle of friends.

Doug Miller 13:53

So moving along through your career at Concordia now.

Stephen Seaborn 13:59

So what was happening in those days is people were my good friends were saying, hey, they’re free tickets. If you want to go work somewhere for two years, you should come to this like briefing session. So indeed, there were free tickets if you’re willing to go teach, for example, in places around the world, you didn’t need a teaching degree. All you needed was a BA so when I, when I got close to getting my bachelor’s with a major in sociology, surprise, surprise, I ended up going to one of these briefing sessions. And, you know, I my friends were going to Nigeria, so I basically said, I want to go. And I was sent to a country called Zambia, and part of the and it was a two year teaching job. And with an organisation called CUSO and the agreement we had to sign before getting on the plane was we would not cross the border into Rhodesia or South Africa during our term with that organisation. I was employed by the Zambia, the government of Zambia as an international teacher, and the agreement with the organisation that organized it, CUSO, was that there would be no travel south of that frontline state border.

Doug Miller 15:50

Zambia is a frontline state. Yep. So, so that’s Zambia two years teaching any other con. If I remember Zambia at that time, there would have been newspapers, lots of talk about unilateral declaration of independence, lots of talk about the apartheid and of course, Zambia was retooling its economy to boycott to live up to the boycott of South Africa and Rhodesia was that part of the reality you saw and lived?

Stephen Seaborn 16:26

Oh, yeah. I mean, it was fascinating to see what was going on and the very determined anti-apartheid movement at the government level, at the economic level, at the boycott of, you know, an economy like Zambia, which had been totally integrated into the into, you know, is part of Rhodesia, and then had managed to fight for independence and there it was. They moved very quickly and worked very tightly with the African National Congress.

Doug Miller 17:22

And as well the neighbouring states like Tanzania, where they started, as I say, retooling their economy to enforce the boycott by bringing oil in and copper out via the Great North Road.

Stephen Seaborn 17:36

Yeah, absolutely. And two years later, I found myself teaching in Dar es Salaam in Tanzania, where the whole anti apartheid movement played itself out in the hosting of the ANC In Tanzania, and that the training of exiles for, in the military training of exiles in Tanzania, which was again fascinating. And the organisation, the people I was, you know, working with when I wasn’t teaching school, was totally involved in the anti apartheid struggle and its connection to Canada and Canada’s position in in terms of supporting the apartheid regime.

Doug Miller 18:34

Now this is CUSO, Canadian University Service overseas, uh, nominally an NGO, a non governmental organisation, but funded very largely by government funding to pay all these airfares and so on to gets to get these young people overseas.

Stephen Seaborn 18:51

Yeah, in fact, an extension of Canadian government policy and supporting this kind of send smiling faces overseas to places and keep the door open in terms of Canada’s policies. In this case, perhaps apartheid will not be cool anymore, so we’ll have had connections with the government of Zambia and Tanzania by funding a non government organisation called CUSO to help with, you know, teachers and agriculture and so on. So it was like a political policy, a strategic policy of the Canadian government, to which I like was a beneficiary, because I got to be there in the front line states, teach and learn a tremendous amount, which then impacted the rest of my life. I think.

Doug Miller 20:00

I think, I think the whole relationship now of the NGO world at that time, with Canadian government, and the kind of directions they could take, as I understand it, what you just said, the region’s structures really supported the struggle, and yet the Canadian government didn’t defend or didn’t, didn’t, didn’t accept armed struggle as a method of liberation.

Stephen Seaborn

20:37

Absolutely, how it went down, the economic ties to South Africa and Rhodesia probably as well, and not so much, but perhaps to some extent, to the Portuguese colonies in southern Africa, all of that. I mean, Canada had an interest to keep economic interest, to keep that relationship going and therefore political interest.

Gwen Schulman 21:17

Did you feel? I mean, that’s a very contradictory position to be in, in the sense that you’re being financed by a government that is bolstering apartheid, and at the same time, you’re being exposed increasingly to the anti-apartheid politics and being pulled into that side of the struggle. Do you recall you as an individual in that situation, feeling any kind of conflict or discomfort or –

Stephen Seaborn 21:47

I was, I was totally naive, like I wasn’t aware of how the organisation and the institutions that I was involved in really operated, and their relationship to the Canadian state

Gwen Schulman 22:12

Retrospective like this is looking back, you see all of this.

Stephen Seaborn 22:16

Yeah, and it wasn’t that long after that, it became clear. But, you know, I was a smiling face, going places. I was learning. I was just sucking up the information and the experience and the relationships, direct relationships, with people who were South African exiles and regular folks living in the front line states and feeling the impact of boycotting the apartheid regime.

Doug Miller 22:50

You what year we had now?

Stephen Seaborn 22:55

So in Zambia 1970, Tanzania was, 1973 when I began there.

Doug Miller 23:03

Okay, and so you, so you had two stints as a CUSO teacher, I guess what to call it,

Stephen Seaborn 23:11

Yeah, and as a teacher, as like a secondary school, high school teacher, and those were the two –

Doug Miller 23:19

Students you got involved in the structures as well.

Stephen Seaborn 23:23

Oh yeah, I was swallowed up. I was encouraged, because of my involvement. I was encouraged to apply for a staff position in this organisation called CUSO, and ended up for three years in Botswana, right on the edge of South Africa, in a way that I hadn’t been. And there I was basically a director of the program, and that involved a lot of agricultural work, a lot of expertise from Canada in various fields, including education, teachers and so on. But because of the position of that office, very much involved in what was going on right next to South Africa, and what the organisation, what CUSO, had begun doing in the frontline states, and its relationship with Canada, and the education going on in Canada, and the links to the anti-apartheid movement as well. So all those things began to come together in in the capital of Botswana, Gaborone.

Doug Miller 24:45

And you, between that and what you’re experienced in Tanzania. You were part of East Africa CUSO, East Central, Southern Africa, as it came to be known, exa, which, on the one hand. It was kind of on the edge for CUSO, even it was pushing CUSO perhaps faster than it might want to go down certain roads. I remember, particularly the debates around things in development charter that came out of Dar es Salaam. Were you involved in that at all?

Stephen Seaborn 25:17

Yes, yeah. I mean, you know, this part of the organisation that is CUSO in the region was sort of edgy, right? It’s like really pushing the limits of government, a state funded organisation, and the results of that we’re seeing, you know, somewhat later, but very much, you know, the nature of the organisation was allowed for this sort of regional work on anti-apartheid, to an extent that wasn’t the case in other parts of the organisation.

Doug Miller 26:08

And as I recollect, you also represented the region, which included the plans for what they called liberation support in Ottawa, in Annual or semi annual meetings to promote whatever we were supporting and pushing in that region. How did that go down?

Stephen Seaborn 26:28

Well, I think that’s actually where I began to learn what was what was really the challenge, what was going on and what I guess, how the organisation was working, and how the organisation was linked to the Canadian state through direct funding from the international component called CIDA, the International like development, so called funding component. So it became clear because I was representing the region and basically defending the policies of CUSO in southern Africa around direct support for the liberation movements

Doug Miller 27:27

And how did that dynamic appear in CUSO Ottawa?

Stephen Seaborn 27:34

There was a lot of questioning, lot of concern, a lot of, yeah, there were, like, direct concerns about using the money of their organisation on this kind of work. A lot of skepticism about whether this was really the kind of work that an organisation that was basically set up as a benevolent organisation should be involved in.

Gwen Schulman

28:13

Sorry, at this point, are you back in in Ottawa, or are you still in Botswana?

Stephen Seaborn 28:17

I’m still in Botswana for three years, but Ottawa, yes. So after those three years, I applied for a job at head office in Ottawa and was encouraged to actually take up a job in Ottawa in charge of public education. So the organisation had a domestic policy of public education about around issues related to Central America and Southern Africa and more generally, what was happening in the rest of the world, the so called, what we would call now the third world, or the global south.

So yeah, and the first thing I did when I walked into the office was open a folder which told me that my office, and my work, was to fund the anti-apartheid movement and directly through what then was the bank campaign. So it was a direct, very interesting campaign involving the, you know, whole number of churches, community groups, activists, political parties who are fighting apartheid and took hold of the bank’s investment in apartheid. In South Africa as an effective way to sort of organize public opinion, because, you know, most people have a little bit of money in the bank somewhere, so it was making a direct link.

So I was involved in that right away. In addition to the work, some really interesting work in Central America, and began to see the links, I guess, between liberation work throughout Latin America and anti apartheid work.

Gwen Schulman 30:40

Getting back to the banks for a second. So what specifically was the demand of the banks?

Stephen Seaborn 30:46

To disinvest from apartheid, disinvest from South African companies, and not too dissimilar than something that I’m directly involved in right now, which is divesting from fossil fuels in order to protect our pensions from being stranded assets. So it’s a very interesting economic strategy that I’ve seen now working through the decades.

Gwen Schulman

31:25

So tell us how effective it was back then.

Stephen Seaborn 31:28

It was mostly effective in raising public opinion and building the anti-apartheid movement. The banks didn’t actually budge a lot. Surprise. And they you know, that’s how things go down in in a couple of country. But it was a very effective campaign in terms of ramping up public opinion against apartheid.

Gwen Schulman 31:59

And what tactics did you use to ramp up that opinion?

Stephen Seaborn

32:05

Well, the tactics included direct work with communities on walking over to their bank and saying, “Hey, I’ve got money here. I understand that some of it’s like funding bad things in South Africa”. And it was a very, it was, that kind of thing is very effective. Because, you know, all the adult education you can study in the world is you start where people are at and move from there. And this was a campaign, unlike a number which preached about how bad apartheid was, which is not a bad place to start, but this is the one that started with, with my money in a bank. And why should I be concerned? Like, are there other places to invest my money, maybe. And why the fuck are you investing in this kind of, like, horrific impact on people’s lives day to day in South Africa.

Gwen Schulman

33:23

Did it resonate with people, not everyone?

Stephen Seaborn 33:28

You know, “It’s long way away. You know, it’ll never change. I can’t do anything, so good luck”. But it that’s not happening. On the other hand, it helped to build a wider anti-apartheid movement, like it’s a kind of fishing expedition that that we go on when we do political work. It’s like, who’s going to bite and who’s going to want a little bit more information? Who’s going to want an explanation about why this is something they should be concerned about. Each of those things is really important in terms of building a movement.

Gwen Schulman 34:15

What about talking to Canadians about armed struggle?

Stephen Seaborn 34:20

A harder sell, a much harder sell, surprise, surprise, which is also a surprise retrospectively, and a surprise to me at the time too, because, you know, we’re pretty aware that there had been, like, some kind of major military fight against fascism, and you know that resonated with me because of the letter from my mother’s school friend about. It, and they’re starting up fascism here again in South Africa. So, you know, for some people it was clear, but very few people it was clear, but it, but that was the thing is, like, it’s not so far away. You know, we’re talking 1970 like, fascism, obviously continued in different parts of the world, but the defeat of the Nazis, you know, 25 years before that in living memory. But I think what happens is, you know, people get over something and we all do it. We like we move on to the next thing. We sort of block out the historic roots and the causes and the economic causes, the economic basis of oppression, such as apartheid.

Gwen Schulman 36:01

But do you do you would you recall having to confront Canadians racism that well, you know, these are Africans who, quote, unquote, don’t know how to rule themselves, and it’s best that the in fact, white rule is better than them ruling themselves, which was certainly the message that was being beamed by the apartheid regime around the world and being beamed directly into Canada. Did you feel that you came up against that kind of racism among regular Canadians who you were interacting with daily?

Stephen Seaborn 36:36

Daily. Definitely, like totally that. That was, it was the context we’re working in it and it, it didn’t surprise me. I mean, because of my own history, I think partly, but because of like, we live in a society that’s structured to actually increase the profits of, you know, businesses. That’s the kind of thing we are, and that’s pretty much linked to racism, and the historic links are really tight.

Gwen Schulman

37:26

I think your microphone is off.

Doug Miller 37:30

Back to business, the within the NGO world, and still within CUSO, there was still a huge debate around our primary function in CUSO was to send smiling faces to far away places, and that gave us a per capita budget from CIDA that allowed us to do that. Versus this kind of politics is putting in jeopardy the whole operation. Those kinds of debates went on as well. What they couldn’t accomplish by fighting the logic they were trying to accomplish by going through the administrative processes and the bureaucracy as a reason to oppose. I guess that’s not a question, is it?

Doug Miller 38:38

Sorry, Steve. [Can’t hear Steve]

Doug Miller 38:53

Can you hear me?

Gwen Schulman

We lost you.

Doug Miller 39:03

We lost you for a while there, yeah, sorry. Are you back now? Have you got us?

Doug Miller 39:22

I’ve got two pictures of, you hear me? Okay, so, okay, I’ll come. I see you there now. Okay, good. I thought, I thought I’d said something wrong there and offended you. Yeah, well, your face went off.

Stephen Seaborn 39:39

That’s not a bad assumption. Doug, I mean, we go back a long way. No, the internet somehow is unstable, but my phone is much better. It’s paid for by the union.

Doug Miller 39:54

So, good. Okay. Well, excellent. You, the way you’re describing it, you went into your job and you started doing it for CUSO. But I do recollect that there were still large debates about the central focus of CUSO being tied to see, do we should respect CIDA’s wishes, more bureaucratic reasons to be less vocal and less vociferous on these political sides.

Stephen Seaborn 40:21

It’s very interesting, because the history of CUSO, linked to SUCO, based mostly in Quebec, was there was an AGM in 1970 of the organization, the joint organisation, and the debate then was a motion to terminate the overseas program and focus completely on the Canadian work. In other words, as it was put, then, the root of the problem being in the economics of Canada and the public opinion of Canada, so, like, forget what we’re trying to do overseas. The bigger picture is Canada. So that motion actually went down by a slim margin, and a compromise was developed, which was to support public education in Canada through a number of routes that were already happening at the time, and that public education became the this sort of way to deal with this political crisis in the organisation. But within that, the work in southern Africa went on because of the kind of decentralized nature of the organization.

Doug Miller 41:58

Well and then the anti-apartheid movement, there were also differences in strategy. We saw, for instance, the rise of the SACTU solidarity committee, and that seemed to offend greatly the approach taken by the folks in Toronto, particularly with respect to how to do liberation support work. Did? Did you see any element of that kind of internal opposition going on?

Stephen Seaborn 42:30

Oh, I was, yeah, definitely. I was totally embroiled in that because of, at that time, my position as the head of public education in in CUSO and being in charge of like getting money out to groups, one of the key recipients of money from CUSO through my department was SACTU, like that was a standing kind of support, was the SACTU solidarity in Canada. And you know that there were various dynamics, which were, we were also sending people off to different parts of southern Africa. And the group in Toronto that you were talking about were basically sectarian left who were looking for another route, then that wouldn’t be supporting the ANC, for example, tightly linked to SACTU, of course, through the trade union movement, and there was real, effective attempts to undermine that work within CUSO and steer us off in a different direction that would have terminated our relationship with the true anti-apartheid movement In South Africa, and that played itself out over the following decades, and in a not very, not very nice way. Let me put it that way.

Doug Miller 44:34

Okay, I also know that this, this spun out from CUSO into the union movement as well, by virtue of your union activities in CUSO.

Stephen Seaborn 44:46

Yeah, when I, when I arrived in Ottawa having been three years in Botswana, the first thing that happened was two people came to me, who I knew for a number of years, and said, can we have coffee? And so we did, and they said, now that you’re back, we need to Unionize this organisation. So we did, in short, we organized under CUPE, Canadian Union of Public Employees, and that provided a whole number of avenues for direct union to union support, but particularly public education among Canadian workers.

Doug Miller 45:42

How did the debate go on in CUPE? I understand you tried to set up an international education committee, or an international committee?

Stephen Seaborn 45:54

Yeah, a motion had come forward to the biannual, biennial convention, the highest body of the organisation, from BC actually, to set up an international solidarity committee. And that was a challenge to get through, and I was happy to have ,you know, I was planning to speak on it, because I had this supposed marginal experience in the area. So we managed to get it through. It was passed. And because of that, you know, a committee was formed. I was invited to be part of it, the other group that was invited to be part of it were also members of CUPE, was Oxfam, and so they, the early work among the 10 of US workers from different parts of Canada was to decide how to how to introduce the membership of CUPE at that time, 500,000 members to the international solidarity. What does it mean? Why is it important to me?

So I came up with the ideas maybe we should like bring a live person from, you know, some part of the world where we might be interested in being in solidarity with them and their organisation and their work. So the representative from Oxfam suggested, you know, we, you know, we not be involved in South Africa, but that actually we should, you know, do something else. I pushed and was successful in indicating in the adoption of the decision to connect with South African Trade Union movement and to invite a South African from a trade union movement to Canada to meet with our members and to come to conventions and talk to you know, our 2000 people, persons who come to conventions. And so, it’s once we had made this decision, I called SACTU, the SACTU solidarity committee member in Toronto, and I went down to Toronto to meet with him, and within minutes, he said, no, I’ve got someone, call this number. It’s the National Education and Health and Allied Workers Union now in South Africa, and they’ll be ready to help you out. And it was clearly the fact that they had looked at my name and linked me to CUSO, which linked me to the liberation support office in Zambia. And, you know, I was good to go. Fantastic.

Doug Miller 49:14

We also generally, like we’ve talked about unions and NGOs so far, how conscious were you of Canada’s own role with native reserves, the Aboriginal struggle in Canada at that time?

Stephen Seaborn 49:33

I wasn’t, I mean, I really wasn’t aware of that. I had been out of the country for, you know, the best part of a decade. It wasn’t something that people were like talking about much at Concordia University, Sir George Williams campus. It wasn’t something that, that sociology departments were actually naming. It wasn’t in the public realm. And I was, I was part of that. I was like, I wasn’t much aware. I was pretty naive on a whole bunch of areas. But later became aware, but there was, there was little connection within CUSO as well. It’s like, it’s like a blank

Gwen Schulman 50:30

Looking back, do you think that weakened the anti-apartheid movement?

Stephen Seaborn 50:35

It definitely, definitely, it would have been, it would have made a big difference if the anti-apartheid movement had been linked to the struggle of indigenous nations in Canada,

Doug Miller 50:57

And I could ask the same question then about the struggle of the women’s struggle at the time as well.

Stephen Seaborn 51:07

There the links were stronger. You know that the popular movements, I guess we call them, today, but the various movements that emerged in the 30s, 40s and then after the Second World War, included the youth movement, the farmers union movement and so on so forth. The women’s movement was a very critical played a really critical role in building, you know, the what would be called, now the civil society action within the country. So the connections were there, women were taking a big role in anti-apartheid work, some would say, a pivotal role.

Gwen Schulman 52:04

Along the same lines, what about the links between the anti-apartheid movement in Canada and anti-racism work in Canada in general?

Stephen Seaborn 52:15

Not that good. I mean, not as good as they could have been or, or, let’s say, should have been. There were parts of, you know, parts of the network, particularly in Toronto, as I remember it, where it was clear that there the connections had been made and activism was happening that linked the two struggles. But outside of that, maybe Nova Scotia as well, which I was familiar about because I taught, taught school there and had taught black Nova Scotians within the community I was in, but generally my memory is the connections were not very strong.

Gwen Schulman

Before we wrap up, this is just really a random question. We don’t ask most people this, but as we’ve been working on the project, I’ve become sort of more curious about it. What’s your recollection of the day that we heard Nelson Mandela was released from prison? What? What impact, or how important was that to you and your sense of the progress of the movement. What do you remember from that day?

Stephen Seaborn 53:51

No, it’s a kind of vivid memory. I had taken a job in Toronto at the time, which I had agreed to do for two years, and I’m still here. Yeah, it was, it had, like, quite an interesting impact on the movement, some would say, in retrospect, a kind of demobilization, because it was like anything, well, now you’ve got what you want, like, like, why you were still whining, you know? And this is great, you know, the Prime Minister, Brian Mulroney is all behind it. He’s the big anti-apartheid hero. Now, you know the Queen and the Commonwealth is on board, and it was all like, you know, Nirvana has arrived. It’s all good.

But I do remember being parts of organizations and knowing people with within progressive organisations, including the Communist Party of Canada, which had direct links with their counterpart in South Africa, and therefore with the ANC, who are like, well, hold on a minute. It’s a time to celebrate. But, and how did this deal come about? And what are the conditions, and what are going to be the implications of those conditions? And, you know, it may not be the ideal moment. I mean, we’ll watch it play out, but things have probably been agreed to that we’re not aware of.

And this is a termination of a, you know, an armed struggle that might have been successful in creating a viable and New South Africa that would end apartheid, in the workplace, in the community, in that you know all the things we know about and are aware about now, in the upshot of the agreements that were made behind closed doors that resulted in the release of Nelson Mandela and eventually elections and so on. I mean, people were really very pleased about the fact that, you know now there would be elections, and now things would, you know, there would be great hope, because it was clear the ANC would be, would win the elections. Wasn’t clear right away, but you know, Nelson Mandela is free. People are going to talk to each other and but people generally who look more deeply at these things were like holding their breath.

Gwen Schulman 57:11

You mentioned Mulroney, can you, and him taking credit for Mandela’s release and the transition and Commonwealth’s position and the transition to negotiated settlement. What was your take on Mulroney taking credit for that?

Stephen Seaborn 57:31

Well, surprise, surprise, I wasn’t a big fan of the conservative movement in Canada or Brian Mulroney and what he had done to working people, and how he had attempted to crush unions and certainly take away some of the advances that we as a trade union movement had tried to, tried to move forward. And so, you know, I was a little skeptical. I didn’t think that he was a hero at all, and the fact that he was there waving the flag for freedom made me suspicious of what actually that freedom was going to be. Wow,

Doug Miller 58:21

if, if I asked you to look back on your life, how do you think your participation in the struggle affected you and influenced what you became and how you worked out to me in in the end?

Stephen Seaborn 58:37

It totally diverted me from where I might have gone. It totally absorbed me in a different perception of the world that I think it helped me very clearly understand the role of class, the role of workers and the role of ourselves as working people in attempting to make fundamental transformations of an economic system that’s not really helping many people right now and hasn’t for a long time.

I think particularly towards the end of this engagement, it was the trade unions in South Africa that helped to teach me and other members of Canada’s largest union about some of the more fundamental goals that we need to keep holding on to and to maintaining in the continuing struggle to improve our lives and begin to make fundamental change. Change. It’s a long process. We’re up against a lot, and today we know that even more than ever, with the expanding reach of the far right and its economic base being our economic system of capital accumulation and profit making.

Doug Miller 1:00:25

Wow, I think that’s kind of fantastic conclusion. Don’t you win? Steve, Steve, I’ve known you so long. Thank you so much for this. Any last words before we part?

Stephen Seaborn 1:00:40

I’m really happy that you guys are doing this. I think it’s really, really important. And I mean, we need to be able to help ourselves reflect on a really important struggle and think about how that works. And the fact that that the two of you and this podcast is helping us do that is amazing. Like kudos to you guys, thanks.

Gwen Schulman 1:01:14

Well, it was certainly a very fascinating conversation. You’re helping to plug in some holes and tell the story from a really interesting perspective. Thank you so much

Doug Miller 1:01:23

to you, sir.

Doug Mi..= 1:01:27

No, it’s great. Thanks. It’s good to, I mean, you sort of carry on with the present, right? So it’s good to have people like you say, stop a minute and think about where you’ve come from. It helps in the job of knowing where you want to go to

Doug Miller 1:01:49

Well, thanks again. Okay,

1:01:51

it’s great seeing that. I’ll bid you adieu for the day, and we’ll catch up

Gwen Schulman 1:01:56

When you’re in Montreal again. We’ll grab another drink.

Stephen Seaborn 1:02:00

We certainly will. That’s a deal, okay, so let us know.

Doug Miller 1:02:08

Thank you. Here’s my recording button there. Okay, it’s.