The Dambusters Mobilising Committee (DMC), active from 1969-1972, was an umbrella organisation of anti-apartheid and anti-colonial groups, set up at the request of the African National Congress (ANC), to campaign against the construction of the Cabora Bassa dam in Mozambique, then still under Portuguese rule. The dam's purpose was to supply hydropower to apartheid South Africa and Southern Rhodesia.
Affiliated groups included the Committee for Freedom in Mozambique, Angola and Guinea (CFMAG), the Haslemere Group, the Young Liberals, the Portuguese Students Committee, and the Anti-Apartheid Movement (AAM) which played a key role in coordinating the campaign. It was spied on between 1969 and 1971 by HN326 ‘Doug Edwards’ and HN339 'Stewart Goodman’.
The DMC targeted British companies to prevent their involvement in the project. They organised protests and pickets at branches of Barclays Bank, for example, which was supplying credit for the dam’s construction. DMC developed a programme of shareholder action, organising the purchase of single shares and distributing them to activists who would then attend the companies’ AGMs, either to disrupt proceedings or to vote against their involvement in the dam. They hosted teach-ins at universities to recruit students to the campaign.
Although the dam was eventually built and the DMC was disbanded, its campaign against Barclays' involvement in the dam was crucial to the high profile campaign against the bank’s involvement in the apartheid regime in South Africa, which continued through the 1970s and 1980s. This campaign saw success when Barclays pulled out of South Africa in 1986.
Sources
Anti-Apartheid Movement Archives